davidichalfyorov-wq/project-sirius

Project Sirius is an open-source remake of Freelancer, a space trading and combat simulator released by Digital Anvil and Microsoft in 2003. The goal is to rebuild the game's engine from scratch in modern C# while keeping full compatibility with the original game's data files, so the same assets, missions, and worlds load in the new engine without conversion. The engine is built on LibreLancer, an existing open-source Freelancer engine project, and uses the Discovery Freelancer 4.86 modification as its base game data. Discovery is a large community mod with over two decades of development history that expands the original game substantially: where the original had 48 star systems, 4.86 has 152, plus 139 factions, 617 bases, more than 290 ships, and a faction-based economy with over 275 commodities. Project Sirius reads the original .ini format files from Discovery directly. The rendering is handled by a Vulkan backend (the default, validated against an OpenGL reference path using screenshot comparison). It includes physically-based rendering (PBR) for ships and environments, an HDR post-processing pipeline with bloom and light rays, anti-aliasing, and cascaded shadow maps. The game runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. At the time of the README, active development includes: loading and rendering full game worlds (systems, planets, asteroid fields), basic physics and networking, and built-in editors for models, particles, and the in-game UI. Work in progress for Discovery compatibility includes the faction-based economy, weapon damage modifiers, Jump Drive and Docking Module support, and player-owned base logic. The technology stack is C# 13 on .NET 10, with SDL2 for windowing, OpenAL Soft for audio, BepuPhysics2 for physics, and LiteNetLib for networking. Project Sirius and LibreLancer are both MIT-licensed. Freelancer is a trademark of Microsoft, the project is not affiliated with Microsoft or Digital Anvil.