We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

After a long period of silence, it seems a lot was going on behind the scenes for Unvanquished and it's now properly open source all the way through.

Originally forked off from another game, Tremulous, which has a lot in common with the Natural Selection game. Two opposing sides of Aliens vs Humans that mixes first-person action with a little strategy with some building. Unvanquished was an effort to continue Tremulous with more modern features and it appears to be close to a new release.

In a long round-up blog post, a lot of effort has been put into splitting up assets and tools needed for Unvanquished into their own respositories, making it easier to track down and properly sort out licensing. Lots didn't have a license, or one that was problematic for the project. Now though? They're announcing that Unvanquished is now "fully open source again, from engine to game code, from models to textures".

Part of their move to ensure it's open source comes from how many games are now on Linux or can be run unofficially, so they want to continue to show off free and open source gaming. So it's a cross-platform game across Linux, macOS and Windows that's also fully free and open source. It took a few years and lots of effort to do but I for one appreciate how far they went to ensure it.

The best news is that a new release, Unvanquished 0.52, is almost here. Sounds like it's going to be a big one too, as they mentioned it's going to need multiple blog posts to cover. Exciting times.

See more on the Unvanquished website.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
21 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked 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. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
17 comments

Tchey Sep 17, 2020
Hm, tried to install, but

Crashed with signal 11: Segmentation fault

Tried with auto-updater and universal zip, same.


Last edited by Tchey on 17 September 2020 at 11:46 am UTC
Tchey Sep 17, 2020
No issues here (openSUSE Tumbleweed). I used the updater.

Ah, good to know then. I’m on Manjaro.

You do the same, right ? I don’t miss a step ?

- download,
- run the updater,
- inside the launcher, click the arrow to DL the files,
- inside the launcher, click the next arrow to launch the game
- here i have the error.

(i also tried to change directory)

And from the folder via the zip file, chmod +x daemon and ./daemon, to launch the game ? 
Perkeleen_Vittupää Sep 17, 2020
Very good. Looks like for fans of the likes of Xonotic
Oet_ Sep 17, 2020
Ah, good to know then. I’m on Manjaro.

You do the same, right ? I don’t miss a step ?
I had this same issue on Arch.
Purple Library Guy Sep 17, 2020
Good for them!
Phlebiac Sep 18, 2020
toothwheel symbol

Is that a common alternative for "gear" or "cog"? Not sure I've seen it used before.
Eike Sep 18, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
toothwheel symbol

Is that a common alternative for "gear" or "cog"? Not sure I've seen it used before.

It would be the word-by-word translation of the German word for it, "Zahnrad".
mZSq7Fq3qs Sep 18, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter
Hm, tried to install, but

Crashed with signal 11: Segmentation fault

Tried with auto-updater and universal zip, same.

Same for on arch linux. Tried updater and installed from aur.

Probably missing some libraries or something.
CFWhitman Sep 18, 2020
toothwheel symbol

Is that a common alternative for "gear" or "cog"? Not sure I've seen it used before.

Don't know if it's common. Just what came to the mind of a non-native speaker....

It was clear enough, anyway. Just for reference, "gear" is the common word. Technically, "cog" is just one tooth in a gear, especially when made of a different material than the wheel itself.
scaine Sep 19, 2020
View PC info
  • Contributing Editor
  • Mega Supporter
I downloaded the torrent, got this:



No idea what to do. Nothing in the wiki either, that I could find. Why is the torrent different from the universal updater? Why are good guy open source game designers so poor at making their games easily accessible? Weird.

I'll try the actual download button. I tend to avoid them if there's a torrent, a I don't like placing load on a free game resource.
Mnoleg Sep 19, 2020
The updater works for me in Fedora 32 with no tweaks needed. It's a pity there aren't many players around, but I'm enjoying being slaughtered by bots anyway.
whizse Sep 19, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter
I downloaded the torrent, got this:



No idea what to do. Nothing in the wiki either, that I could find. Why is the torrent different from the universal updater? Why are good guy open source game designers so poor at making their games easily accessible? Weird.

I'll try the actual download button. I tend to avoid them if there's a torrent, a I don't like placing load on a free game resource.
The .zip will have the same file structure.

You're supposed to run the game using "./daemon -pakpath /path/to/pkg/" but the game version that's available to download is from 2018 and suffer from bitrot. It seems to depend on an outdated libstdc++.
illwieckz Sep 20, 2020
Ah, good to know then. I’m on Manjaro.

You do the same, right ? I don’t miss a step ?
I had this same issue on Arch.

Hi, we are investigating that crash that looks specific to Arch:
https://github.com/Unvanquished/Unvanquished/issues/1215

Do you used our official build (using the updater or the universal zip archive)?
If yes, can you try this instead? https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/unvanquished/

-- illwieckz from Unvanquished
illwieckz Sep 20, 2020
I downloaded the torrent, got this:



No idea what to do. Nothing in the wiki either, that I could find. Why is the torrent different from the universal updater? Why are good guy open source game designers so poor at making their games easily accessible? Weird.

I'll try the actual download button. I tend to avoid them if there's a torrent, a I don't like placing load on a free game resource.

Move everything from the “linux-amd64” folder right to the “pkg” one (in fact the “linux-amd64” folder does not exist in the archive but was created by your unarchiver, we can't prevent this).

So, your folder must looks like this:

```
pkg/
crash_server
daemon
daemonded
illwieckz Sep 20, 2020
You're supposed to run the game using "./daemon -pakpath /path/to/pkg/" but the game version that's available to download is from 2018 and suffer from bitrot. It seems to depend on an outdated libstdc++.

You don't need to use any argument if you move the binaries right to the pkg/ folder, see my previous comment.

About bitrot, one problem we face is that we need to build the game on an old linux distribution to make sure people with old distros can also run it. So it's all about choosing a build platform that is not too much recent and not too much old at the same time. What is the distro name and version you use so we may check it for our upcoming release?
whizse Sep 21, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter
What is the distro name and version you use so we may check it for our upcoming release?
I use Debian unstable, so I'm afraid I almost always run the latest versions.
Oet_ Sep 23, 2020
Do you used our official build (using the updater or the universal zip archive)?
If yes, can you try this instead? https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/unvanquished/

-- illwieckz from Unvanquished
Both the updater and universal zip contain an executable called daemon which gives the Segmentation fault.

So I tried the AUR:
[user@arch unvanquished]$ makepkg -sci
==> Making package: unvanquished 0.51.1-1 (Wed 23 Sep 2020 10:40:01 PM CEST)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Installing missing dependencies...
error: target not found: unvanquished-data>=0.51.1
==> ERROR: 'pacman' failed to install missing dependencies.
==> Missing dependencies:
  -> unvanquished-data>=0.51.1
==> Checking buildtime dependencies...
==> ERROR: Could not resolve all dependencies.


Okay... Then this:
[user@arch unvanquished-data]$ makepkg -sci
==> Making package: unvanquished-data 0.51.1-1 (Wed 23 Sep 2020 10:41:18 PM CEST)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Checking buildtime dependencies...
==> Installing missing dependencies...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (2) c-ares-1.16.1-2  aria2-1.35.0-2

Total Download Size:   1.59 MiB
Total Installed Size:  5.74 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
:: Retrieving packages...
 c-ares-1.16.1-2-...   117.6 KiB  1867 KiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
 aria2-1.35.0-2-x...  1507.3 KiB  8.18 MiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking keys in keyring                     [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking package integrity                   [######################] 100%
(2/2) loading package files                        [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking for file conflicts                  [######################] 100%
(2/2) checking available disk space                [######################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/2) installing c-ares                            [######################] 100%
(2/2) installing aria2                             [######################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
==> Retrieving sources...
  -> Downloading download-dpk-torrent.sh...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   168  100   168    0     0    569      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   567
100  2615  100  2615    0     0   4402      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  4402
==> Validating source files with md5sums...
    download-dpk-torrent.sh ... Passed
==> Extracting sources...
==> Starting build()...
==> Entering fakeroot environment...
==> Starting package()...
Downloading torrent...

09/23 22:41:22 [NOTICE] Downloading 1 item(s)

09/23 22:41:22 [ERROR] CUID#7 - Download aborted. URI=https://cdn.unvanquished.net/unvanquished_0.51.1.torrent
Exception: [AbstractCommand.cc:351] errorCode=19 URI=https://cdn.unvanquished.net/unvanquished_0.51.1.torrent
  -> [AbstractCommand.cc:789] errorCode=19 CUID#7 - Name resolution for cdn.unvanquished.net failed:Could not contact DNS servers

09/23 22:41:22 [NOTICE] Download GID#484b22c138f02411 not complete: 

Download Results:
gid   |stat|avg speed  |path/URI
======+====+===========+=======================================================
484b22|ERR |        n/a|https://cdn.unvanquished.net/unvanquished_0.51.1.torrent

Status Legend:
(ERR):error occurred.

aria2 will resume download if the transfer is restarted.
If there are any errors, then see the log file. See '-l' option in help/man page for details.
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in package().
    Aborting...
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.