Free and open source RTS Warzone 2100 gains Vulkan support in the 4.0 Beta

Ready for even more open source goodness? The classic real-time strategy game Warzone 2100 is gearing up for a new release with some absolutely huge changes.

Warzone 2100 was originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive, released as open source in 2004 and the legacy of it continues on as a completely free game. To this day it's still one of the most innovative RTS games around.

The brand new 4.0.0 Beta version is out and it brings in a rendering overhaul. There's now support for Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.0 / 2.0, DirectX (using libANGLE) and Metal (using MoltenVK) in addition to the OpenGL 3.0 Core and OpenGL 2.1 Compat modes it already supports. Switching can be done in-game via the Video menu.

By itself the new rendering systems would make for a huge release but there's plenty more, here's the highlights:

• New “Factions” for multiplayer / skirmish
• Higher-res terrain textures, backdrops
• New Music Manager, + AlexTheDacian’s new soundtrack album
• Support for “script-generated” / “random” maps (and two new built-in maps that take advantage of this: 6p-Entropy and 10p-Waterloop)
• Scrollable room chat, and many other UI / widget improvements
• Updated / smarter AI bots (Bonecrusher, Cobra)
• New “headless” mode (for --autogame, --autohost, --skirmish)
• JS API enhancements, + a new “Script Debugger”
• Removal of Qt as a dependency, + a new embedded JS engine: QuickJS
• Quality-of-Life / smoothness improvements
• Hundreds of bug fixes

Will let you know once the full release of 4.0 is out, looks like it's shaping up to be one of the best releases ever for such a classic game. Yet again, we see the community keeping it alive and continuing to enhance it thanks to the original being opened up. Would be nice to see more developers do this with their old games.

See the release announcement here.