Tag: sourceforge

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Ancient Web: TuxKart Is the Linux Racer That Became SuperTuxKart

The original TuxKart website is still online, and it looks exactly like the sort of page that could have convinced a Linux user in 2000 to compile a kart racer for no sensible reason.

Visit the original TuxKart site

Steve and Oliver Baker’s page introduces a game starring Tux, the Linux penguin, with six racetracks and the wonderfully modest assessment that it “plays pretty reasonably.”

That tiny project has a much longer shadow than the page suggests.

Before SuperTuxKart

The modern SuperTuxKart project’s own history traces the original TuxKart to April 2000. Steve Baker created the game for his son Oliver, who helped design tracks, and the project used PLIB, a graphics library Steve had also created.

Development eventually entered maintenance mode, with the final original TuxKart release arriving in March 2004.

Then things got messy in the traditional open-source way.

A Linux Game Tome “Game of the Month” effort tried to improve TuxKart in 2004. The later SuperTuxKart history describes that effort as going badly enough that the project became unstable and effectively died. A fork named SuperTuxKart emerged from the wreckage, was later revived, and ultimately became the actively developed cross-platform kart racer known today.

The descendant still carries fossils from the original.

The SuperTuxKart team points to ideas and track lineage that reach back to TuxKart, including Oliver’s Math Class, rescue behavior, penalty concepts, and the zipper speed boost.

That makes the old SourceForge page more than a download page for an obsolete game.

It is the visible root of a software family.

The page also preserves a specific era of Linux gaming when a developer could put up screenshots, thank Larry Ewing for Tux, link to source and downloads, admit to a couple of bugs, and call the project usable.

CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list contains many surviving project pages whose importance only became obvious after later forks, communities, and software ecosystems grew from them.

TuxKart is one of those little ancestors still sitting on the web.

Return to the original TuxKart site

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Ancient Web: CloneKeen Kept Commander Keen Playable in Free Software

CloneKeen is what old PC game preservation looked like when a fan decided the cleanest answer was to rewrite the game engine and give away the source.

Visit CloneKeen

The project describes itself as a nearly complete clone of Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons. It is written in pure C, uses SDL, and was released as free software under the GPL.

The surviving site carries a 2003-2016 copyright line, which places it squarely in the era when SourceForge pages were one of the main public homes for hobbyist open-source projects.

Preservation by portability

CloneKeen did not stop at making the old gameplay run on a contemporary desktop.

The site lists support for GNU/Linux, BSD and other Unix-like systems, Windows XP-era Win32 machines, Mac OS X, Haiku, GP32X, Symbian phones, and even the Sega Dreamcast.

That list is almost more interesting than the game itself.

It captures a period when “portable” meant somebody had actually made the code compile on a ridiculous collection of machines.

The clone also added things the original did not have: two-player support, a built-in level editor, shared user maps, alternate game modes, and deliberately silly options such as a fully automatic raygun.

That is the nice thing about source-level preservation. Once the engine is understood well enough to recreate it, preservation can turn into experimentation.

The website itself is just as period-specific as the software. Small graphical navigation buttons lead to downloads, screenshots, installation instructions, modding information, and contact details. There is no launcher account, no cloud library, and no store client between the user and the source code.

You download it. You compile it. You mess with it.

CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list includes many SourceForge-era projects because they preserve more than executables. They preserve the point where old commercial software met the free-software culture that wanted to keep it running everywhere.

CloneKeen is a compact example of that transition.

A DOS platformer became C source, then wandered onto Unix boxes, handhelds, phones, and a Dreamcast.

Return to CloneKeen

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Ancient Web: ZMatrix Turned the Matrix Code Rain Into a Windows Desktop

There was a point in computing history when making your Windows desktop look like The Matrix counted as a legitimate software project.

Visit ZMatrix

ZMatrix is a desktop enhancement that renders streams of characters behind ordinary desktop icons in the visual style popularized by the film. The project page is still sitting on SourceForge with its original screenshots, downloads, change log, bug reports, support links, and development notes.

The surviving page captures the software culture around Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP unusually well.

Desktop customization used to require code

ZMatrix was not simply an animated GIF stretched over a wallpaper.

The program rendered text, blended it with existing backgrounds, tried not to interfere with desktop icons, included configuration controls, and eventually gained multi-monitor support, screensaver operation, Winamp visualization support, and special text streams.

The change log is the best part.

It documents taskbar-position bugs, disappearing icons, Active Desktop compatibility, installer privileges, password-protected screensavers, font spacing problems, Windows 9x support, and the sort of obscure rendering failures that only appear after strangers install your program on machines you have never seen.

In March 2002 the author released source code, initially under a BSD-style license and later under the GNU GPL. The page says a full build required Visual Studio 6.0 and Borland C++ Builder 6.0, which dates the project almost as efficiently as the screenshots do.

By February 2002, the author noted that the program had been linked from enough places to earn a USA Today “Pick of the Day.”

The site also preserves a miniature history of freeware distribution: dial-up-conscious installer sizes, SourceForge bug trackers, download portals, donation links, and irritation at commercial download sites charging developers for faster listing updates.

That is why pages like this belong in CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list. The software itself is interesting, but the surrounding page records how independent Windows utilities were actually made and distributed.

Return to ZMatrix