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Caesar III is an absolute classic and you can play it on modern systems, like Linux, with the free and open source game engine Julius which recently had a big new release.

Originally released in 1999, like a lot of classics it is showing some age but a plenty of the gameplay ideas still hold up quite well. The Julius game engine comes with plenty of enhancements like support for high resolution displays and widescreens, support for higher quality audio, plus lots of smaller in-game quality of life fixes you would expect from a modern open source release. Saved games should even be compatible too with the original!

A few days ago Julius 1.2.0 was released upgrading the SDL version used, has an AppImage for Linux gamers giving you an easy way to run it, diagonal scrolling with the keyboard when holding down two arrow keys was added, Aqueduct images are updated when sections are deleted plus a bunch of gameplay and other technical fixes. Support for the game Editor was also improved in this release.

This is another great example of open source working to keep old games alive. Much like openXcom, OpenMW, OpenRA, CorsixTH and more.

You can find it on GitHub. Since it needs the original game assets, you can pick up a DRM-free copy of Caesar III on GOG.com to make it easy.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments

razing32 Jan 10, 2020
Cool.
Wonder if the engine will be able tohandle other games in the future , like Pharaoh , Zeus or Emperor.

Also , Liam , what about this engine re implementation :
https://github.com/REGoth-project/REGoth-bs
Liam Dawe Jan 10, 2020
Quoting: razing32Cool.
Wonder if the engine will be able tohandle other games in the future , like Pharaoh , Zeus or Emperor.

Also , Liam , what about this engine re implementation :
https://github.com/REGoth-project/REGoth-bs
Covered it before, still no actual release yet.
Cyril Jan 10, 2020
Quoting: razing32Cool.
Wonder if the engine will be able tohandle other games in the future , like Pharaoh , Zeus or Emperor.

Oh I would LOVE that! But I don't think Julius will do that, but I hope for another project to do it.
Not to mention that it took 11 years to do Julius to Bianca van Schaik the author behind it.


Last edited by Cyril on 10 January 2020 at 9:35 pm UTC
Kercus Jan 10, 2020
I played this game so many hours, it was one of my first.

I also remember the Caesaria, a clone, I think at some point it was abandoned, not sure if it can still be found on Steam.
Captain_Rage Jan 11, 2020
I pray that they will reach a fell reimplementation of Pharaoh: Queen of the Nile, Swedish translation included, eventually. These projects are beyond great.
chr Jan 11, 2020
Quoting: Captain_RageI pray that they will reach a fell reimplementation of Pharaoh: Queen of the Nile, Swedish translation included, eventually. These projects are beyond great.

Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: razing32Cool.
Wonder if the engine will be able tohandle other games in the future , like Pharaoh , Zeus or Emperor.

Oh I would LOVE that! But I don't think Julius will do that, but I hope for another project to do it.
Not to mention that it took 11 years to do Julius to Bianca van Schaik the author behind it.

You're right. The author mentions it here.

I would speculate that if the project would get a Patreon/Liberapay and enough supporters, then the author might have enough time and motivation to work on other engines. And if an absurd amount of money were constantly given to them, then they might get several full-time developers working on it. But right now it seems unlikely or extremely far away in time.

An alternative would be to wait for another super-motivated volunteer to carry a project with decent skill on their back for a decade or so.
PTLyon Jan 11, 2020
Another one?

There was CaesarIA, which was even release in Steam through GreenLight.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/327640/CaesarIA/
https://bitbucket.org/dalerank/caesaria/wiki/Home

I have played it before, but now it seems abandoned.
tpau Jan 12, 2020
Maybe the engine now becomes more popular and attracts more developers. Otherwise it wont get to a state of running the sequels.
It is amazing that people already remaster the assets used.
I really liked pharaoh and its add-on.
tpau Jan 14, 2020
https://www.pcgamer.com/nebuchadnezzar-channels-classic-city-builders-like-pharaoh-and-zeus/ is a similiar game , if we don't get a linux version, i am sure proton/wine will make do
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