openc2e is an open-source game engine intended to run all the games in the Creatures series.

openc2e is intended to support:

• Creatures (1996)
• Creatures 2 (1998)
• Creatures 3 (1999)
• Docking Station (2001)
• Creatures Playground (1999)
• Creatures Adventures (2000)

• Agents (COBs) work
• Imperfect physics
• Creatures biochemestry
• Sound effects

• Actual creatures (C3+ creatures work somewhat, C1 and C2 ones don't work at all)
• Physics improvements (Especially C3+)
• Network ability (the Docking Station warp)
• Serialization (world saving, creature exporting, ...)
• Music

There are lots of open issues on the old Google Code issue tracker that still need solving.

openc2e depends on:

• SDL 1.2
  • SDL_gfx
  • SDL_mixer
  • SDL_ttf
  • SDL_net
• OpenAL
• re2c
• Perl
  • The YAML module
• Qt4
• boost
• CMake

On Ubuntu 18.10 you'll need these packages:

sudo apt-get install \
  build-essential \
  qt4-qmake \
  libqt4-dev \
  libsdl-gfx1.2-dev \
  libsdl-net1.2-dev \
  libsdl-mixer1.2-dev \
  libsdl-ttf2.0-dev \
  libyaml-perl \
  re2c \
  libalut-dev \
  libboost-all-dev

Install dependencies using Homebrew:

brew install sdl sdl_mixer sdl_gfx sdl_net sdl_ttf re2c cmake boost
brew tap cartr/qt4
brew tap-pin cartr/qt4
brew install qt@4

Getting the YAML module is a little trickier, you'll have to set up CPAN. Doing so is beyond the scope of this README, but you might find some help here.

Good luck! Open a PR if you get a good process for building on Windows.

Create a new build directory and compile:

cmake -B build .
make -C build openc2e -j4

You need to provide openc2e with the path to the game's data, for example:

./build/openc2e -d /path/to/Creatures2