Difficult without Steam? A friend of mine plays Zero-K on Linux without Steam.

Maybe drop by the Discord to see if anyone can help you debug the issues you've run into.

Also, just because it might be hard to use on non-closed systems doesn't make something not open source.

It's still somewhat easy for Zero-K : just copy the game and maps into the respective folders inside the engine folder and run the engine binary (bypassing the lobby).

It's somewhat easier for BAR despite in theory being harder due to the lack of these standalone files due to the rapid file system, but in practice easier because you can just use the unofficial Skylobby (BAR still uses Springlobby protocol, at least for now).

Hmm. I read the licence.md. Does this mean if I fork the game to try my own patches, I'm forbidden from using the game's artwork in my forked version?

If so, that is a serious impediment, tbf.

It just concerns some of the artwork, which is a major endeavour to recreate. For example https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-Artwork/blob/master/musi... is under a Noncommercial License, so you can probably fork ZeroK just fine, as long as you don't have commercial plans.

Unfortunately non-open source artwork is a problem with many games whose sources were released by the original publishers, after they abandoned any commercial plans.

For example I'm a big fan of OpenRA, but its artwork is still non-free.

I think ZeroK is a great game, and BAR probably also, so I didn't mean to distract from the great accomplishments of its FLOSS gameengine authors.

> Since version 4.0 [of ND], derivative works are allowed but must not be shared.

played Zero-K at local LAN party without any issues, it was a breeze to get to work.