About
Vangers is a 1998 racing role-playing video game developed by Russian studio K-D Lab, later re-released on Steam and GOG.com in 2014 with Mac OS X and Linux support. This is the open-source, GPLv3-licensed Vangers project, a recreation of the 1998 K-D Lab racing/RPG built with SDL3, libvorbis, ffmpeg, and other libraries, supporting Windows, Linux, and macOS. It includes SDL3-based gamepad support with hot-plugging and rumble, and a Docker-distributed dedicated server for multiplayer.
How it differs from the original
The bundled Fostral world data is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 by Association K-D Lab, but the rest of the original game's assets (maps, sounds, textures) still require a purchased copy from Steam or GOG.
Getting started
Building requires SDL 3.2+, SDL_net, libvorbis, ffmpeg, and a few other libraries described on the project's wiki. User settings live in a single config file, and the game automatically imports legacy save-compatible settings from an older installation on first launch after an update.
Media
Additional notes
- Technical
- The open-source build doesn't call Steam Input directly — it keeps the active SDL gamepad handle, so a Steam build can still associate Steam Input with the same SDL-managed device.