Multiplayer online games for casual players
Hello!
Lately I've been thinking about how games affect our social lives. I have met a lot of friendly and interesting people thanks to multiplayer online games. Unfortunately, most of such games are non-free and therefore not an option. During my search for free multiplayer games, I came across a lot of nice resources, such as https://libregamewiki.org/Main_Page
The problem with most games I tried out is that they are incapable of NAT traversal. That means players either have to set up their own server, or forward their ports, neither of which is something a casual user can always simply do. Therefore, I'd like to ask everyone to share any good games they know. The game must be playable for two or more players, simple to set up, work across the internet, without port forwarding and/or setting up your own separate server. If the game relies on servers, but there are usually public servers available, that's okay. Here go my contributions:
Xonotic
Probably one of the better known free games. It's a fast paced sci-fi arena First Person Shooter. I usually find public servers and a friendly community: http://xonotic.org/
Teeworlds
A battle arena arcade-like 2D game with cute characters. It's quick, simple and fun. I usually find public servers there: https://www.teeworlds.com/
Lix
If anyone remembers Lemmings, this is it's clone. You get little people spawning and you need to guide them to the goal using your wits and provided tools. I used the public server, which was empty, but worked fine: http://asdfasdf.ethz.ch/~simon/index.php
Hoping to learn about more from you! :)
With Minetest you have to port-forward, but you can usually find a decent server in the server list. Minetest is an Infiniminer-type game (like Minecraft).
There are usually a lot of OpenArena servers. OpenArena is a variant of Quake III.
Hedgewars (in Trisquel's repository) on the official server. Shoppa mode! ;-)
0ad is very fun with multiplayer but dont play with more than 2-3 other players as its currently in alpha and very laggy
I have a website dedicated to listing gpl mmo's. You might find it of some use: http://codesync.org
Thank you! That looks like a very nice resource! I haven't stumbled upon your website before, but it names some games I also haven't found yet. I will definitely check at least some of them out and probably report my findings back here, unless someone does first :)
I am a translator!
my favorite multiplayer experience on gnu is Scorched3d ->
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scorched3d/files/scorched3d/Version%2044/
very funny to play wit few friends online or on a same pc!
liked to contribute to be a fan of multiplayer games.
but not know anything about linux as my knowledge only covers w xp and w7. hope for a short time already ordered the libreboot x200 and I will give my first steps to freedom.
I hope within a short time to give my contribution pc games are my obie.
Regarding the topic of this thread, I suggest The Battle for Wesnoth which can be played offline, connecting directly to a friend's computer, in the official server or in an independent server. Using a server doesn't requires NAT traversal.
MANHOSO: Welcome!. I hope that you will find free software enjoyable for it's technical advantage, but more importantly, because it respects you as an user instead of just using you as a tool for profit. Linux is a kernel but unfortunately there is the common misconception that “Linux” is an operating system, which it is not (and there is people who actively promote and are proud of making this mistake). We use the name GNU/Linux which also credits the GNU project, which is the project that started the free software movement and developed a big part of the operating system. See What's in a Name? and Linux and the GNU System. The Spanish language Wikipedia rectifies this mistake, and its article for GNU/Linux uses that name. Bear in mind that even though learning to program is not especially demanding, contributing to a serious project (with > 10 000 lines of code) requires experience, patience, and time. If you have further inquiries, then please open a new thread.
Mana World! It's the only MMORPG that I really like. There aren't any complex abilities or classes or strategies to memorize, you just go out and fight monsters with friends :) which to me, is what an MMO should be about. They have lots of regular updates and it's already a pretty big world.
Aside from that, everyone else mentioned the multiplayer games I have tried: Minetest, Wesnoth, 0 A.D., and Xonotic.
Come on guys, don't forget Doom!
You can play DM, Co-op and such with the original iwads or FreeDoom (A free culture replacement).
I haven't figured out how to host a multiplayer Freedoom game. Odamex supports it, but I never got to learning how to do it.
is gzdoom free software?
you can get the source here
git clone git://github.com/coelckers/gzdoom.git
its under a few licenses can anyone find a non-free license?
how to compile:
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Compile_GZDoom_on_Linux
I am a member!
ZDoom, and engines derived from ZDoom, are not free software.
License: http://zdoom.org/wiki/License
There are several different licenses governing ZDoom source code, but a few of them (notably the Build license and the original Doom license) are not free licenses.
I'm not sure what the best free Doom engine around is. Maybe Odamex?
Doomsday Engine: http://dengine.net/
This?
“The Doomsday Engine is licensed under the terms of the GNU/GPL License ver 2.”
Don't know about its online capabilities, but i agree on "battle of wesnoth" being an excellent game.
> The problem with most games I tried out is that they are incapable of NAT traversal. That means players either have to set up their own server, or forward their ports, neither of which is something a casual user can always simply do.
I hope you've filed bugs with the games so they will hopefully be improved in the future.
Minetest and the mods people made for it are godsent.
By the way, one thing I should note about Minetest: most mods are under a libre license (usually WTFPL), but the Minetest forum's main mod section permits restrictions on non-commercial distribution, and a small number of mods have such a restriction.
Also, I haven't been successful convincing the maintainer of the "mod database", which Minetest directly connects to, to only allow libre licenses,[1] even though at least some of the Minetest developers agree with me; it permits mods under CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND, which are all non-libre licenses. When I last checked, no mods under these licenses were actually there, but this cannot be depended on.
This actually means we should only have a modified version of Minetest in the repositories of libre systems, because the Minetest distributed by its developers has the potential to recommend proprietary software. It's not actually a problem yet, but the problem of proprietary mods in the forum's mod section does already exist, so do take care to avoid those.
[1] https://bitbucket.org/iqualfragile/mmdb/issue/11/forbid-proprietary-software-explicitly
I too would have liked it to accept only libre licenses. Anyway, the MMDB is currently broken, so most people (including me) use the forums.
The Minetest supplied by Debian already removes the in-game “mod store”. So, the one in Ubuntu and Trisquel repositories should be fine.