Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters, which is an open source version of the classic Star Control 2, has managed to get a Steam release from Pistol Shrimp Games. The developer team includes both of the original designers Paul Reiche and Fred Ford and they're currently working on The Ur-Quan Masters 2.
The Steam release sadly only comes with the Windows version, even though the main project fully supports Linux and macOS too. According to the FAQ post: "This release includes a few things which are not default settings in other releases, like voice over, 3DO music, and other minor changes. No source code has been modified. We also wanted to bring the game to Steam to reach the millions of players who use it as their game library of choice."
It will no doubt run just fine in Proton though for those who want an easy click and play experience.
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Game Features:
- Experience an open-world adventure, venturing through space to defeat the invading Ur-Quan and its hierarchy of battle thralls.
- Travel through extra-dimensional HyperSpace and discover nearly 500 unknown star systems filled with alien worlds.
- Fight enemies in fast-paced space battles with 25 different starships, each with its own unique attacks and powers.
- Befriend, threaten, or fight a diverse cast of aliens with unique personalities, from scary, to funny, to just plain weird.
- Explore thousands of planets, collecting resources and technology to upgrade your flagship and grow your fleet.
- Play standalone Super Melee to practice space combat against AI opponents or to duel against a friend.
- Mod and tinker with freely available, open-source code and content.
Nice bit of gaming history there that inspired designers on all sorts of games like Fallout, Mass Effect, Stellaris and the list goes on. It also gives the developers another way to advertise their new game, whenever it appears.
Check it out on the Steam store page. It's free of course still.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: pbAnd it's a good thing to do--I have no problem with it. But I do have to agree with slaapliedje that it's a bit weird in that there is a Linux build all packaged up, I for one can testify that it works with no issues, so why exclude it from the Steam release? It doesn't matter because I'd install it from my distro's repository anyway, it just seems a bit odd.Quoting: slaapliedjeIt always weirds me out a little bit when someone basically takes an open source project and throws it up on Steam and hopes to make some money, or they don't fully support all the operating systems that the opensource project supports.
It was released by the creators of the original game, for free, as a part of building hype for the upcoming sequel.
Sure, the lack of the Linux version makes no sense and I hope it will be added. I was referring more to "someone basically takes an open source project and throws it up on Steam and hopes to make some money". BTW it doesn't really happen that often, usually the releases are done by the project team.
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Curious game. Tried to install it from different sources, and looks like native uqm from Linux Mint's repository has version 0.6.2 and Windows version from Steam has version 0.8.0. It's more up to date, and at first glance it at least is supporting bigger resolution (max is 1280x960 instead of 1024x768). And probably other things also. So you might prefer Steam version just because of this.
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soulsource Feb 20
Quoting: JarmerI have relatively little knowledge about SuSE (last time I used it was more than 20 years ago), so I cannot really help here. It seems though that there is an experimental package for Tumbleweed: https://software.opensuse.org/package/uqmQuoting: soulsourceIf one doesn't care about Steam additional features (like Steam Input, Remote Play Together), it's probably more convenient to just get it via the distribution's package manager. I only checked Debian and Gentoo, but they both have it in their official repositories, the package name is "uqm".
I'm on Opensuse Tumbleweed and the official repo doesn't have it, and when I search flathub, all I get is a mod? Is that the full game you're talking about?
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Quoting: JarmerI'm on Opensuse Tumbleweed and the official repo doesn't have it, and when I search flathub, all I get is a mod? Is that the full game you're talking about?
It's right here.
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robertosf92 Feb 21
Quoting: slaapliedje
sudo apt install uqm
Then download the 3do version from archive.org? It always weirds me out a little bit when someone basically takes an open source project and throws it up on Steam and hopes to make some money, or they don't fully support all the operating systems that the opensource project supports.
No supporting other operating systems is a weird choice indeed. The rest I don't agree, I wish more FOSS games offered paid for releases on steam/gog whatever while maintaining a free download version on their webpages. That might give them some extra money and people would get to play them with some extra services like cloud saves, automatic updates or mod integration via steam workshop.
It's how this was meant to work as a business, after all, offering services around a program as a source of income
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slaapliedje Feb 21
Quoting: robertosf92It... depends. A good example of this is games that are ancient, and in the 'who actually owns this?' state. If you look at Rogue (yes, THAT Rogue that is ancient, but published for a lot of platforms by Epyx) on Steam. What did they do on Steam? They released the crappy DOS version instead of the ST or Amiga version that actually have graphics. If they did a 'proper' release, they'd let you select which version to play! It is a very cheap move to get a few bucks. The Discussions on Steam are all about 'this is illegal!' and 'You don't own this!' though they likely do.Quoting: slaapliedje
sudo apt install uqm
Then download the 3do version from archive.org? It always weirds me out a little bit when someone basically takes an open source project and throws it up on Steam and hopes to make some money, or they don't fully support all the operating systems that the opensource project supports.
No supporting other operating systems is a weird choice indeed. The rest I don't agree, I wish more FOSS games offered paid for releases on steam/gog whatever while maintaining a free download version on their webpages. That might give them some extra money and people would get to play them with some extra services like cloud saves, automatic updates or mod integration via steam workshop.
It's how this was meant to work as a business, after all, offering services around a program as a source of income
Some of the open source stuff put on Steam are shady at best and not published by the main developers. Also, can you get the source code through Steam? Assuming the software is under the GPL, then you should be able to.
The best things for the stuff like this is to have Lutris or even the Debian packages that people make that will ask if you have gog / steam, and download the closed source data files for the open source binaries. For example, OpenMW has stuff for the game-data-packager in Debian where it will package up the data files for Morrowind, then allow you to use the updated open source engine to play it.
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This may be supportable via luxtorpeda, I'll plan on taking a look
1 Likes, Who?
robertosf92 Feb 22
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: robertosf92It... depends. A good example of this is games that are ancient, and in the 'who actually owns this?' state. If you look at Rogue (yes, THAT Rogue that is ancient, but published for a lot of platforms by Epyx) on Steam. What did they do on Steam? They released the crappy DOS version instead of the ST or Amiga version that actually have graphics. If they did a 'proper' release, they'd let you select which version to play! It is a very cheap move to get a few bucks. The Discussions on Steam are all about 'this is illegal!' and 'You don't own this!' though they likely do.Quoting: slaapliedje
sudo apt install uqm
Then download the 3do version from archive.org? It always weirds me out a little bit when someone basically takes an open source project and throws it up on Steam and hopes to make some money, or they don't fully support all the operating systems that the opensource project supports.
No supporting other operating systems is a weird choice indeed. The rest I don't agree, I wish more FOSS games offered paid for releases on steam/gog whatever while maintaining a free download version on their webpages. That might give them some extra money and people would get to play them with some extra services like cloud saves, automatic updates or mod integration via steam workshop.
It's how this was meant to work as a business, after all, offering services around a program as a source of income
Some of the open source stuff put on Steam are shady at best and not published by the main developers. Also, can you get the source code through Steam? Assuming the software is under the GPL, then you should be able to.
The best things for the stuff like this is to have Lutris or even the Debian packages that people make that will ask if you have gog / steam, and download the closed source data files for the open source binaries. For example, OpenMW has stuff for the game-data-packager in Debian where it will package up the data files for Morrowind, then allow you to use the updated open source engine to play it.
I agree there are shady practices, yeah. But if. for example, 0AD was released by Wildifre at a fee, even a minimum one, on steam/gog whatever, it wouldn't be a problem IMO.
Plus it would make it more difficult to come up with the shady practices in the first place.
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slaapliedje Feb 22
Quoting: scaineBTW, I tried this on Debian Sid and it doesn't work - you need to add "non-free" into your source. Just edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list and add "non-free" to the end.Yes. Debian splits out their packages based on their licensing. Anything that requires commercial data blobs, like omw (open morrowind) and uqm (the subject of this post), will be in non-free. It's that nice place for things that are technically open source, but are useless without non-free data.It's pretty much the first thing I do when installing Debian on a new system I use for desktop, add non-free and contrib to the sources.list.
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