''AstroMenace'' is a 3D scrolling shooter, developed and published by Russian independent game developer Viewizard.

Gameplay

The game features 13 levels, within which, money and experience points are earned by destroying enemy aliens, pirates, or meteorites. Using this money, the player can purchase from a selection of 22 ship types, 19 weapons, and 20 ship upgrades.

Development

In 2006, Viewizard's developer Mikhail Kurinnoi began

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

development of . The Windows version was offered for $14.95 as

Shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

early access title, having a free downloadable test version. However, a Linux version was offered as

donationware Donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational unrestricted software to the user and requests an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary (usually a non-profit). The amount of the donation may also ...

. After full release in February 2007, Viewizard sold the Windows version directly from their website for $19.95. In October 2007, version v1.2 of the game's C++

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

was released as

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

under

GPLv3 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

. A fork called was started at

SourceForge.net SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

. Some years later, Viewizard moved its own development to this fork by unifying both branches and making it the official version. Ports for other platforms were later developed, with

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and OpenPandora versions being released. In 2016 the game's content was re-released under an open content CC BY-SA 4.0 Creative Commons license. In April 2018 some artwork with sources (

.3ds 3DS is one of the file formats used by the Autodesk 3ds Max 3D modeling, animation and rendering software. It was the native file format of the old Autodesk 3D Studio DOS (releases 1 to 4), which was popular until its successor (3D Studio MAX ...

render files) were released under the

in their own repository. Development continues on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

(as of November 2022). Astromenace Gameplay

Reception

In December 2007 the UK magazine Linux Format rated with 8/10 credits. In 2008 a Full Circle magazine review named among a list of "Top 5 space games". In a 2010 Unixmen.com review, the Linux version was received favourably, with them noting that the game was . In 2011 Unixmen.com placed as number one in their list. Linux For You September 2009 ranked 4/5.

References

External links

* {{Official website, viewizard.com 2007 video games Linux games Windows games MacOS games Open-source video games Scrolling shooters Commercial video games with freely available source code Creative Commons-licensed video games Indie video games Freeware games Video games developed in Russia Formerly proprietary software

Gameplay

Development

Reception

See also

References

External links