Many people may not know, and even to me this is rather exotic, so it kinda was unable to catch my attention, until now. Although we have many people from the Linux-community here and surely a "strong voice" toward open source. So, in fact there are some games that became open source aswell, although most of them are not very interesting to me.

However, there is a "hidden jewel" in the RTS genre, one of the first 3D-RTS back in the 3DFX-Voodoo-era (a time without Nvidia and AMD was without Radeon) i kinda enjoyed playing when i was a teenager very long time ago. I always had in mind "how to get it" because not available for sell anywhere. And the original had a dirty Secu-Rom... stuff i nowadays want to avoid at all cost.

However, the copyright-holder made this game "open source" and the source code is aswell available on Github: https://github.com/NightDive-Studio/machines

The games assets are open source too... i guess the best source is this one: https://lordovervolt.com/machines

Surely weird dev... pretty unusual in todays economy but for some reason i enjoyed that game, and it seems many decades later i got some new insight on the matter of "why".

I guess, the current owner is now "nightdivestudios", and when i checked their site https://www.nightdivestudios.com/games i had a pretty amusing moment, because they indeed... rather rarely the case... are making advertisement for GoG. So, it seems like they enjoy the idea of GoG and indeed open source. I hope there will be more Linux support in the future, and so far... at least a open source game can leave some smile at some gamers face. Do not get me wrong... no issue with marketing and how the economy works, there is many valid ways. However... i told countless times that i enjoy diversity and no one truly knows "whats right and whats wrong", in this term there is many valid ways, even the "minor paths". I i think, the open source, which is automatically involving DRM-free, community might be a minority, but they actually got some voice.

As for the files: I was trying out both EXE but the normal EXE is working very bad on my Win 10, maybe it was tuned for Linux in mind (indeed rare case). However, the DEV-Version of the execution works pretty good so far.

I do recommend 1366x768 resolution, seems to work best for me. I am glad i can enjoy one of my first RTS i every played once again... now even DRM-free and open source.

In case of "data preservation" i see much use of making a source code available to the public because there was already some stupid cases a dev truly was losing their source code and it can be much of hassle making such a game playable anymore... and if so... it may need a emulator at some point, for example Shadow Madness. https://www.gog.com/en/game/shadow_madness

https://ibb.co/McBb0b2
https://ibb.co/r6S4hKC
https://ibb.co/M1fn8ZH
https://ibb.co/3Mz28WF

Nearly ;)

ATi released the first Radeon the next year, although it was originally going to be the Rage 6 (later R100) as a successor to the Rage 128 Pro. AMD bought them later.

nVidia were around, with the Riva 128 launched in 97 and the first Geforce card (the venerable 256) in 1999 - which released in North America exactly 6 months after Machines: Wired for War was released.

Of course, you are right in those days, anyone who was anyone had a 3Dfx!

Also, great game, if a little lost in the late 1990s rush of RTS games.

Feel free to add it to the free open source games thread then :)

As for Nightdive, well, there's https://www.gog.com/forum/general/atari_acquires_nightdive_studios
And there used to be a thread actually, https://www.gog.com/forum/general/devoted_night_dive_thread_anything_and_all_night_dive_related
They even had a recent publisher sale here.

Nah, "Machines" was one of the oldest real 3D-RTS... the very first one released around 1-2 year more soon but it was not sooner than the late 90s (1997 and up) PCs was capable to.

Sure, there was Command and Conquer: Red Alter in 1996 but this is somewhat "fake 3D"... rather 2.5D or something, same issue for Warcraft II. Then in 1997 the first "Dark Reign", which too was something like 2D or 2.5 D. Guess "Myth the fallen Lords" can be considered the first real 3D RTS in 1997, pretty much at the same time the first Voodoo-GPU was released which in my mind was the probably first "fully capable 3D-GPU" on the PC market and to me the first real "Gamer-GPU" on PC. The Japanese consoles had a slight edge and the first 3D gaming hardware ever, because at this time the PC was more of a "workhorse", it was not so much focused on gaming such as today. So at this time most of the games i played was on console which was fully 3D in the year of around 1994 or so (with the release of the Sega Saturn i would say)... PC needed some years more for this to happen. Japan surely was very innovative those days... but this "old glory" is nowadays mostly gone.

However, the first typical 3D RTS, as we know it today, was probably Battlezone in 1998, it surely was the start of a rush of many RTS... with Machines released in 1999 a year later and Dark Reign 2 and Earth 2150 in 2000. Pretty much in the later 90s and in the beginning of 2000. The golden era of the millenium-games i call it... it was around 1995-2005 where some of the best games was made in many aspects. Especially on Console but even PC had a big rush for many genres. After 2005 the RTS slowly was fading away and not so much new titles anymore. In the year 2005-2023 there was lesser stuff made than at the time around the millenium, despite its bigger timeframe.

My most enjoyble was Machines, Dark Reign 2 and Earth 2150. I played Battlezone too but somehow i was confused... not really able to get access at this time. Dark Reign 2 and Earth 2150 can be gotten on GoG, with Battlezone i do not know how to get right now. Probably this one, but this is not the original, a remaster: https://www.gog.com/en/game/battlezone_98_redux

Even today, the PC is still mainly a workhorse... although it is now mainly "portable" doing so. The "big rigs", as we know it today are mainly gaming oriented (most other users simply do not need this power anymore, except the minority of workstation-users)... or server if we go even bigger than that. All the other users mainly are able to use portable stuff, which is indeed a rather new transition.

Ah yeah, Warzone 2100 from 1999. I guess i even got this game but i can barely remember, probably because issues getting it to run, not sure anymore. Seems open source now: https://wz2100.net/de/