Wolfire Games Open Sources 'Overgrowth' After 14 Years of Development
"We have worked on Overgrowth for 14 years," begins their new announcement. Development first began in 2008, and the game runs on Windows, macOS and Linux platforms. Overgrowth's page on Wikipedia describes the realistic 3D third-person action game as "set in a pre-industrial world of anthropomorphic fighter rabbits, wolves, dogs, cats and rats." And now, "Just like they did with some earlier games, Wolfire Games have now open sourced the game code for Overgrowth," reports GamingOnLinux. "[J]ump, kick, throw, and slash your way to victory.... The source code is available on GitHub. You can buy it on Humble Store and Steam." The Overwatch site adds as a bonus that "we're also permanently reducing the game's price by a third worldwide" (so U.S. prices drop from $29.99 to $19.99). "Only the code is getting open sourced," the announcement notes, "not the art assets or levels, the reason is that we don't want someone to build and sell Overgrowth as their own." Wolfire CEO Max Danielsson explains in a video that "you'll still have to own the game to play and mod it.""What it does mean, however, is that everyone will have full and free access to all our source code, including the engine, project files, scripts, and shaders. "We'll be releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license, which allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including relicensing and selling it, with very few obligations. We tried to keep this easy... "This isn't the next big engine. We don't intend to compete with any other great open source game engines like Godot, which is a great option if you're looking for a general-purpose game engine. But if you're interested in looking at what shipped game code can look like, want to look at specific code, like the procedural animation system, or if you're an Overgrowth modder who wants to make an involved total conversion mod, then this is for you. "We have wanted to open source Overgrowth for a long time," says the announcement on Wolfire's site, "and we are incredibly grateful to our team and community for making this happen. "We are excited to see what people do with this code and we look forward to the spirit of Overgrowth living on for another 14 years."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.