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OpenRW, an open source engine for Grand Theft Auto III

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I love open source! OpenRW joins the ranks of game engines like OpenMW (Morrowind), OpenRA (Command & Conquer, Red Alert) CorsixTH (Theme Hospital), OpenXcom (X-COM: UFO Defense) and many more.

It's early days for the project, but I have high hopes that it will join the ranks of many other playable and open source game engines.

Like other the other open source game engines it will require a legal copy of the games data files to run and it's completely unofficial.

Hopefully more developers interested in having it on Linux will join in on the effort, would be pretty awesome to have it on Linux. I remember when it first came to PC and my little unit couldn't handle it!

Find OpenRW on github. It's licensed under the GPL. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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34 comments
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wvstolzing May 19, 2016
Quoting: rcritI build from source and it seems promising.

What does the file structure of the GTAIII folder have to look like?

I have the original boxed cd editions from back in the day -- could I just copy the CD contents into a folder and try it like that?
STiAT May 19, 2016
I hope the studios / publishers will stop going after reimplementation of engines for playing the games in linux requireing the original copy (since we need to pay for it anyway).

Happened with the guys reimplementing vampires: bloodlines (Project Vaulderie? Seem to have forgotten..)

Looks promising though, taking a few minutes browsing the source I didn't really think they would be able to render properly yet...


Last edited by STiAT on 19 May 2016 at 8:10 pm UTC
Plintslîcho May 19, 2016
Quoting: wvstolzingWould Vice City also work with this?

Exactly my first thought as well when I read about OpenRW.
STiAT May 19, 2016
Quoting: Plintslcho
Quoting: wvstolzingWould Vice City also work with this?

Exactly my first thought as well when I read about OpenRW.

Same engine (RenderWare, that's why it's probably called RW). Even San Andreas is same engine. All after those - different engine (RAGE).

Don't know the technical detail, and don't know if RAGE is some evolution of RenderWare, but it does not sound as if it was...


Last edited by STiAT on 19 May 2016 at 9:12 pm UTC
wvstolzing May 19, 2016
Quoting: STiATSame engine (RenderWare, that's why it's probably called RW). Even San Andreas is same engine.

I believe Vice City is essentially GTAIII with new art assets; that's why I *imagine* a Vice City extension of this project should be easy to do. San Andreas has too many tweaks; as a result of which I *guess* it would be harder to pull off.
STiAT May 19, 2016
Quoting: wvstolzing
Quoting: STiATSame engine (RenderWare, that's why it's probably called RW). Even San Andreas is same engine.

I believe Vice City is essentially GTAIII with new art assets; that's why I *imagine* a Vice City extension of this project should be easy to do. San Andreas has too many tweaks; as a result of which I *guess* it would be harder to pull off.

If it's RW3 it shouldn't be an issue, if SA was built upon RW4, that may be another topic because RW3 rendering formats were removed in RW4.
wvstolzing May 20, 2016
On the other hand, Vice City has loads of vehicles (motorcycles, helicopters, a plane, several RC toys) that had no counterpart in GTAIII; maybe those could be difficult to implement.
Beamboom May 20, 2016
Quoting: wvstolzingOn the other hand, Vice City has loads of vehicles (motorcycles, helicopters, a plane, several RC toys) that had no counterpart in GTAIII; maybe those could be difficult to implement.

That's just assets, objects with properties. They all operate under the same physics, provided by and rendered by the engine.
TacoDeBoss May 20, 2016
Quoting: rcritI build from source and it seems promising. There is a test option from the menu so I chose that. It drops you onto a parking garage with all the weapons and a variety of vehicles. The weapons can be picked up but have no ammo. The cars can be driven but they are all basically the same AFAICT. You can't damage vehicles.

It looks really good except for the minimap which isn't so mini:


I think the original games used the same engine. The current build of openrw doesn't work for me with GTA:VC (I get a segfault).

How is the framerate? I assume it's pretty bad? Also, would you maybe provide some insight on how to compile it? The Github page isn't very helpful in that regard. (No exact names for the dependencies)
rcrit May 20, 2016
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I built in Fedora 23. I didn't have to install much, just bullet-devel, boost-devel and libmad-devel. When compilation failed I used the repos to find out which package(s) include the missing files and it was pretty obvious from there.

Framerates are fine. Beyond the missing features and huge minimap it is totally playable. I ran in a 1024x768 window.

I tried a faster car and it actually worked as expected, pretty peppy. I drove around town a while and it looked like I was able to damage the car just not to the point where it would blow up. I also couldn't run people down but there are the random NPCs walking all over the place.
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