Freelancer's prequel StarLancer runs natively on Linux through OpenReliant, and four cut missions return

OpenReliant rebuilds the 2000 space combat game's engine in Zig on SDL3. The full campaign is playable from your own discs, and a mod brings back four missions found on the Dreamcast version.

AI-drafted from 5 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

StarLancer, the 2000 space combat game from Warthog and Digital Anvil, published by Microsoft, has a new engine. OpenReliant is an open-source reimplementation written in Zig on SDL3, drawing with Vulkan, or Metal on macOS. It runs natively on Linux, macOS and Windows using the files from the player's own copy of the game, and includes none of them.

Its developer introduced it to r/linux_gaming on 9 October, writing that StarLancer "was never re-released and has been hard to run since Windows XP". The project's website adds that the game's copy protection does not work on current Windows. It also explains the link to Freelancer (2003): that game's nations descend from sleeper ships the Alliance sent away from StarLancer's war.

The whole campaign, and the original saves

OpenReliant is in beta. The README says the full campaign is playable from the first mission to the end, and that games saved in the original carry on. Each Linux release is a single self-contained binary for x86_64 or ARM64, with no Wine or Proton involved, and its installer reads the game's CDs or .bin/.cue and .iso images directly. Widescreen at native resolution, per-pixel lighting, real-time shadows and 3D sound come as standard, and an --original switch restores the old look and sound.

The original game had no mod support, the developer says. OpenReliant's mods can replace textures, models, sounds and movies, add ships, weapons and pilots, and change how the game plays through Luau scripts. Version 0.11.1, released on 12 October, lets scripts change the planets and add new ones "such as Earth", makes the game's file readers refuse what a hostile file asks for, and has the sltool utility read Privateer 2's sound banks.

Missions cut from the PC game

The Cut Dreamcast Missions mod, version 1.0, went up on the project's mods site on 9 October. It restores missions 12, 13, 17 and 22, whose files were found on the Dreamcast version of StarLancer, and puts them back in their places in the campaign with Enriquez's briefings. The mod page states that the voices for the radio lines are AI-generated.

The two prequel missions from the demo disc are also available as a mod. With both, the developer wrote, there will be "30 official missions instead of the original 24". A mission editor is the next item on the roadmap, followed by a 1.0 release and, later, multiplayer.

Sources

Image: Piloootes on YouTube

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