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Openblack is a an attempt to recreate lost god game Black & White in a modern, open source game engineYou’ll need the original game to try it
You’ll need the original game to try it
Image credit:Lionhead Games
Image credit:Lionhead Games
Black & Whitewas a god game that frustrated more often than it delighted, but which was nevertheless delivered with enough verve and ambition to be worth playing. It’s a crying shame that it’s not currently available to buy anywhere digitally, presumably because the rights are soaked in a gutter between EA (the original publisher) and Microsoft (who bought and closed developers Lionhead).
If you do still own a physical copy of Black & White however, you might be interested in Openblack. It’s a fan-led project to create a modern, open source engine for running Black & White, and its first build was just released yesterday.
Openblack has been in development for several years - since at least 2018 - with people contributing to the project over on Github. You can nowdownload it as a pre-built binary, although there’s still some command line fiddling necessary to actually get it to run.
That command line requirement is a signal that it’s still in many ways early days for the project. Its developers consider it v0.10, so I wouldn’t necessarily rush to dig out your old discs yet. Still, there’s a lot of potential here for those seeking a version of Black & White that runs better on modern machines and which has support for more operating systems. There’s already a Linux build available, for example.
Even if it’s impossible to buy digitally, it’s not impossible to play Black & White on modern computers if you do own a copy, merely less than ideal. For those willing to try, I thinkthese old instructions, which includes installing a slightly-modernising fan patch, should still work.
And of course, if it’s a choice between following a fan-led open source project to modernise Black & White, orfollowing Masters Of Albion, I’d wager the former is more worth my time.
Thanks,GamingOnLinux.
