Surge Engine

Unleash your creativity with Surge Engine, an open source game engine for retro games! It features Surge the Rabbit, a free retro platformer with a charismatic character. Players MOD it to create their own games.

Download now | Create your games | Learn scripting | Watch videos

About

The project is written from the ground up in C language, using the Allegro game programming library. It has been started by Alexandre Martins, a computer scientist from Brazil. Nowadays, it has contributors all over the world!

Contribute

See CONTRIBUTING.

Advanced users

Command-line options

Run opensurge --help

Running MODs

Extract the MOD to your filesystem and run the game.

• Windows: launch the executable.
• Linux: run opensurge --game-folder /path/to/mod/folder/ on the command-line.
• macOS: use the --game-folder command-line option or launch the native executable if provided.

Use preferably the same engine version as the MOD if a native executable isn't provided (check logfile.txt).

Linux users should extract the MOD into their home folder, preferably into ~/Downloads.

Visit the wiki for more information on user-made MODs.

Paths

Content is distributed in the following locations: (since version 0.6.1)

• bin: executable file
• share: game assets (images, audio, levels, scripts, etc.)
• user: user-modifiable data (preferences, logs, screenshots, additional assets such as user-made levels)

The default paths of these locations vary according to the platform:

• Windows (.zip package):

  • bin: ./opensurge.exe
  • share: .
  • user: . or %OPENSURGE_USER_PATH%

• Linux:

  • bin: /usr/games/opensurge
  • share: /usr/share/games/opensurge/
  • user: ~/.local/share/opensurge/ or $XDG_DATA_HOME/opensurge/ or $OPENSURGE_USER_PATH

• Linux (Flatpak):

  • bin: flatpak run org.opensurge2d.OpenSurge
  • share: /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.opensurge2d.OpenSurge/current/active/files/share/opensurge/
  • user: ~/.var/app/org.opensurge2d.OpenSurge/data/opensurge/ or $OPENSURGE_USER_PATH

  If you use $OPENSURGE_USER_PATH, make sure it points to a subdirectory of ~/Downloads ($XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR).

• Linux (Snap):

  • bin: snap run opensurge
  • share: /snap/opensurge/current/share/games/opensurge/
  • user: ~/snap/opensurge/current/.local/share/opensurge/ or $OPENSURGE_USER_PATH

  If you use $OPENSURGE_USER_PATH, make sure it points to a subdirectory of your home folder.

• macOS:

  • bin: Contents/MacOS
  • share: Contents/Resources
  • user: ~/Library/Application Support/opensurge/ or $OPENSURGE_USER_PATH

If you intend to hack the game, it's easier to have all files in the same place (read-write), because some of the above folders are read-only. Download the sources, extract them to your filesystem and use the --game-folder command-line option as explained in Running MODs.

Tip: since version 0.6.1 you can use the command-line option --verbose to see where the files are. The directories will appear at the beginning of the output.

Compiling the engine

Dependencies:

• Allegro version 5.2.7 or later
• SurgeScript version 0.6.0
• PhysicsFS version 3.2.0

Compile as usual:

cd /path/to/opensurge/
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j4
sudo make install

Use cmake-gui or ccmake for tweaking, like installing the engine to or finding the dependencies on non-standard paths.

License

Open Surge Engine Copyright 2008-present Alexandre Martins. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. For more information, see LICENSE.