I wanted to share some of my favorite community source ports and engine remakes I played.
OpenMW - TES:Morrowind
As a long time Skyrim player and a lover of co-op I was always looking for a co-op TES experience and TES3MP (a fork of OpenMW) gave me just that. Everything worked super smooth and we were able to finish the main quest (and many many side quests) without any trouble. https://openmw.org/
CorsixTH - Theme Hospital
I played this game growing up on the PS1 and seeing it running on my modern Linux machine in HD was very nice and nostalgic. If you like management simulators this is a classic you should check out! https://corsixth.com/
Daggerfall Unity - TES:Daggerfall
Another TES game. Daggerfall Unity makes Daggerfall playable for the modern gamer, fixing many of the bugs and adding many QoL features and, IMO most importantly mod support. Daggerfall unity is really what you make it as the community has made mods expanding the game in various ways. https://www.dfworkshop.net/
GZDoom - Doom
I’m sure this game needs no introduction, but I still wanted to add it here to show appreciation for all the work this community has done over all these years. Need to blow off some steam killing demons? Doom. Have a low spec pc and want to game? Doom. Need something for a LAN party? Doom.
DevilutionX - Diablo I
Since I enjoyed many Diablo clones it was very interesting to see where it all began. Even though the game is obviously missing a lot by today’s standards, it’s surprising to see just how much was there right from the beginning. DevilutionX (a less faithful fork of Devilution) makes the game playable on many platforms and includes all the usual QoL and resolution improvements bringing this game to the modern era. https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX
What are your thoughts about projects like these? Have you played any of them or any others? What games would you like to see get this treatment?
OpenMW is basically the gold standard if you want to play Morrowind in 2023. Can’t say I’m not looking forward to Skywind though—the newer engine and assets are insane.
My personal favourite engine remake is OpenRCT2. Rollar Coaster Tycoon still holds a special place in my heart even with all the newer titles. Multiplayer alone is a literal game-changer.
There’s also a native pc port for Jak and Daxter, if anyone’s interested. I believe the team is also working on the other two games too.
I was unaware of that! Will try it for sure.
There’s a cool game that’s essentially an engine remake of Minecraft Classic (0.30) called ClassiCube - written in pure C and ported to all kinds of systems (a user in their discord even got it working on an era-correct windows 95 machine on dial-up)
I think this is amazing. I’ve used some community engines like openmw. I cannot wait for the decompilation and porting of metal gear solid to finish.
I’ve managed to reverse engineer some 3d data out of proprietary game files before, and the thought of making a new engine has always kinda been there, though I’m not quite at that level.
I’ve got one! Thanks to KeeperFX I’ve been playing Dungeon Keeper on my Steam Deck!
There was a long long list of these somewhere…
Have to shout out https://github.com/pjasicek/OpenClaw for the best childhood era platformer :D
I think this is amazing. I’ve used some community engines like openmw. I cannot wait for the decompilation and porting of metal gear solid to finish.
I’ve managed to reverse engineer some 3d data out of proprietary game files before, and have the thought of making a new engine has always kinda been there, though I’m not quite at that level.
