Brány Skeldalu (aka The Gates of Skeldal) is ready for testing
Most of you probably doesn't heard about this game, developed by a Czech company called Napoleon Games, and first released for DOS in 1998. It's a old-school type of a dungeon crawler resembling games like Stonekeep, or Legend of Grimrock. It's the second most downloaded RPG (after Diablo) in the Czech Republic, and one of my favourite game (I still have the boxed version in my showcase :^)
A little bit of history
After the initial release, and a smaller re-release two years later, the game was ported in 2005 on MS Windows by one of the original developers. In 2007 it was re-released as freeware, and in the next year, the source code was opened up, and released on SourceForge under the GNU General Public License, version 3.0. Later that year, one of the fans started working on a GNU/Linux port and eventually succeeded to make the game working in 2009. Since then, a lot of bugs was fixed and the game is now pretty stable. The last update to this port is dated from March 2011. In 2014, after a successful campain on Startovač (a Kickstarter equivalent in Czech Republic), an Android port was made available by the main developer of the game. This port doesn't have the source released.
During the development, the game also had an English version, but it was lost, and since then only the dialogs were recovered, and included in the English translation which was never fully finished.
Meantime…
When I discovered this year that the game was liberated, I made an effort to bring this piece of gaming history to a wider audience by documenting the building and setup process, and already played through the half of the game to check its playability. Currently I'm also in contact with the developer of the port to solve the remaining issues.
Anybody can help just by playing the game, and reporting problems on the bug tracker (in Czech/Slovak or English), and if you really like the game, there is also the English translation that really needs some love. So show your support and please make some bug reports (I'm really counting on you guys, so prove that this community is worth more than just a bunch of overgrown kids, spending their time trolling here, and doesn't contributing anything useful).
Not to forget, all the neccessary information is available on this page.
I'm attaching some screenshots. I also found this YouTube video that can provide some insight to the game looks and its mechanics (omit the bug appearing on the character creation screen since it's not present in the GNU/Linux port):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RiLf8CKHjM
Excelent mYself, thank you for sharing this with us, a lot of people who are reluctant to free softwera put gaming as an argument.
I've been watching the video on youtube and I have to soy that seems very interesting.
I think that one of the key points for improvement is the language. Once this issue is solved, more people could help the project.
Thank you, also, for documenting the building process.
> I think that one of the key points for improvement is the language. Once this issue is solved, more people could help the project.
Do not judge by the video since its the original version, not the English one. Go try the game yourself, and let me know if you stumble upon any problem.
Here are some random screenshots from the english version.
Nice game! I like the screenshots. :)