Open Source alternatives to GTA

[Mircea]

I hope this is the right forum for this question. I've been involved with many open source games, and open-source software is what I like spending my time around. I found several categories of such games, including First Person Shooters, car games, MMOs and more. But playing GTA has got me wondering: Has anyone ever made (or attempted making) a GTA-like open source game as well?

 

I'm not talking about an open sourced engine for the current GTA's (or anything that uses content from them). Mostly since nothing from them is free, and such a port would still require the original game to work. But basically, any open source game like GTA, that is a full game and not a mod that works off something else.

 

What I mean by that is: A 3D space where you walk around a city as a character, and can shoot weapons / punch. In that city, have people and cars spawn on the streets, and walk / drive around idly. The player is able to walk on foot, and to hijack cars and drive them around. As for the people, they take damage when hit with a car and punched / shot.

 

That's mostly it... everything else would be the details. Of course I'm not looking for anything as fancy as the GTA's, since I know no one likely made such a thing. Still, I'd be interested in even something as simple as what I described above

[The-King]

It might not be quite what you're looking for but APB (All Points Bulletin) is going Free to Play in the near future, since it's developer went belly-up and the IP got bought out by, if I remember right, Nexon. It's essentially touted as an MMO GTA-Clone.

[Mircea]

 

It might not be quite what you're looking for but APB (All Points Bulletin) is going Free to Play in the near future, since it's developer went belly-up and the IP got bought out by, if I remember right, Nexon. It's essentially touted as an MMO GTA-Clone.

That is an interesting project Not open source but very good for a (future) free game. Still curious about open source alternatives, but I'll keep this one in mind too. Thanks!

[Scharkey]

This may go against what you were saying, but I don't know if you know about it.

 

www.multitheftauto.com

 

It's a mod off of San Andreas, but it's done very well. Rockstar gave MTA it's source for San Andreas' engine, and now the functionality and hit detection in the mod is leaps above what it use to be, or what SA-MP is. User created maps and scripts are also available. I think you can include peds in the script, but I don't know how comparable it is to the actual game, I just play in DM servers.

[james227uk]

He didn't ask for a modification. He wants a separate game.

 

 

Rockstar gave MTA it's source for San Andreas' engine, and now the functionality and hit detection in the mod is leaps above what it use to be, or what SA-MP is.

 

 

Link please? I'd like to see this. At the moment I am very doubtful that Rockstar would give away their engine source. They're not perfectly happy with people modding, which is why I doubt they'd release the source

Edited December 12, 2010 by james227uk

[nerner]

 

Link please? I'd like to see this. At the moment I am very doubtful that Rockstar would give away their engine source. They're not perfectly happy with people modding, which is why I doubt they'd release the source

As far as I know, they didn't. Rockstar are happy with mods being made as they increase the net sales of a particular game; why else would they make their games so easy to mod on the PC? However they wouldn't give away the source code as if you were given the choice between a free version or a paying version of GTA: SA, most people would pick the free version.

 

However, this article is all that I could really find on the subject. And that being from over 5 years ago, maybe there have been developments since? I wouldn't know. Although they don't boast about receiving Rockstar's source code on their own website, which, I think, is what most people would expect them to do if indeed they had received it.

[james227uk]

I always thought they were pretty much against modding now, due to the whole Hot Coffee controversy, which cost them millions of dollars.

 

GTA:SA became to "harder to mod". They tried to stop IMG file editing, but this failed. You could just swap the EXE with a V1 EXE and you would be fine

GTA 4 needs patching to be modded, right? Unless I'm terribly mistaken

[Dimitroco]

The engine (GRIT) in my signature is meant to be used for open source GTA style games, although it's in develpment and there's nothing playable yet except driving a car and flying in some test maps.

[Mircea]

Hehe. I never understood why the Hot Coffee mod had such a big negative impact. It's not something I'd wanna use and look at myself But the fact that someone actually cared and minded that is hilarious imo.

 

As for GTA 4, I didn't try it yet. I couldn't... *ahem* find it anywhere. But I always loved the GTA 3 / VC / SA engines, for being flexible and easy to mod (though I think the San Andreas one removed some stuff while it added others).

 

MTA looks like an interesting mod though. I only tried SAMP, but didn't like it so much (mostly because it removed peds and cars... not sure if MTA keeps them together with online players). Also, does it require an account with Rockstar to use? Or was that another San Andreas multiplayer mod?

 

And GRIT looks like a great idea, and exactly what I was looking for Can't wait to test it tomorrow. Hope it will go well and continue.

[Mircea]

Been playing around with GRIT today. I must say I'm deeply impressed by what I see. It's much more complete than I expected If any free GTA will be made, I think that's the engine to do it with.

 

In my opinion, it wins most on physics and rendering (both better than those in the original GTA's). The physics are plainly perfect to me. I tried ramming objects with a car, ramming other cars, and it's perfect and completely realistic in all situations. Then the rendering looks wonderful, and is also gentle on the performance. The shadows are beautiful and very correct (apart from some small z-fighting). Although it doesn't have bloom, motion blur and all that stuff yet, it's still great.

 

I'll clearly be following the project to see how it goes Best of luck with it! I'm bad at complex codes like C++, but I hope I can also be of help in the future.

[Mircea]

Ugh, triple post. But I heard about another game that might be a working GTA clone. It's called Supremacy Errands, and it's also open source. The binaries are packed improperly (missing dll's) so I couldn't test it, but I seen some videos on Youtube.

 

It seems to have a controllable player in first person mode, that can shoot guns and stuff. Also some cars, though I don't know if they can be driven yet or are just static models. Is this project also close to becoming a full GTA clone, or anyone knows more info about it?