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Soldat, a side-scrolling multiplayer shooter that was ridiculously popular in the early 2000s is now open source.

They're now working on Soldat 2, which will be a much upgraded cross-platform Unity remake with all sorts of advanced features. To give back to the community for now though, the classic Soldat has been put up on GitHub under the permissive and OSI approved MIT license. Interestingly, this is not the current live version but an in-progress 1.8 build with some major differences like:

  • Source can be compiled with FreePascal (instead of Delphi 7)
  • Fully cross-platform
  • Uses well known libraries (SDL, OpenAL, GameNetworkingSockets, PhysFS)
  • Old GUI has been removed and needs replacing
  • Config files have been replaced with IdTech style Cvar’s
  • Major refactoring

The creator recently put up a video to give a brief talk on it:

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"Anyone interested in expanding, improving and fixing Soldat or simply interested in how it was made can now do so with the open source version", says the creator Michal 'MM' Marcinkowski, "I hope this will spawn many amazing creations, mods and even full-conversions"​, he adds.

You can find the code up on GitHub. They hope that more people will get involved so they can finish up 1.8 and release it for everyone. If you do want to get involved, they have a guide up here on what's going on. I think it's wonderful to see an increasing amount of developers warming up to open source!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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6 comments

KayKay91 May 25, 2020
Never heard of it but it sure looks like a rip off of worms
Cept this game has nothing to do with Worms, the combat is not turn based and it's basically ya pick a weapon you wish to start with and ya go around killing, using your mouse to aim.
Liam Dawe May 25, 2020
Never heard of it but it sure looks like a rip off of worms
Cept this game has nothing to do with Worms, the combat is not turn based and it's basically ya pick a weapon you wish to start with and ya go around killing, using your mouse to aim.
It's a fast-paced retro action platformer. Worms is a turn-based group battler. They're incredibly different.
scaine May 25, 2020
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Never heard of it but it sure looks like a rip off of worms
Cept this game has nothing to do with Worms, the combat is not turn based and it's basically ya pick a weapon you wish to start with and ya go around killing, using your mouse to aim.

Can only presume the comment was aimed at another article - the Shellshock one, maybe? Even then, not really anything like Worms in execution, but at least the gameplay concept in that is vaguely similar to Worms? A little?
furaxhornyx May 26, 2020
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Never heard of it but it sure looks like a rip off of worms
Cept this game has nothing to do with Worms, the combat is not turn based and it's basically ya pick a weapon you wish to start with and ya go around killing, using your mouse to aim.

Can only presume the comment was aimed at another article - the Shellshock one, maybe? Even then, not really anything like Worms in execution, but at least the gameplay concept in that is vaguely similar to Worms? A little?

From what I recall (haven't played this game in years), it was more like a Tribes - 2D platformer edition, with approximately the pace of Quake.
WildCoder Sep 18, 2020
I'd like a copy!
Calinou Sep 18, 2020
I'd like a copy!

Here, have as many as you want! :P
https://github.com/Soldat/soldat
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