In Liero, two worms fight each other to death for score (or frags) using a choice of five weapons from a total of 40 in a two-dimensional map. Most of the terrain, except for indestructible rocks, may be dug or destroyed by explosions.

Liero is a video game for MS-DOS, first released by Finnish programmer Joosa Riekkinen in 1998. The game has been described as a real-time version of Worms (a turn-based artillery game).^[1]Liero is Finnish for earthworm and is pronounced [liero]. Inspired itself by the earlier game MoleZ,^[2]Liero provided inspiration for the later games Soldat^{[citation needed]} and Noita.^[3]

Gameplay[edit]

In Liero, two worms fight each other to death for score (or frags) using a choice of five weapons from a total of 40 in a two-dimensional map. Most of the terrain, except for indestructible rocks, may be dug or destroyed by explosions. In addition to the weaponry, each player has a ninja rope which can be used to move faster through the map. This grappling hook-like device substitutes for jetpacks and can even latch onto the enemy worm to drag him closer to his foe.

While playing, there are health power-ups to heal your worm. It is also possible to replace one of your five weapons by picking up bonuses. Before playing, you can select certain weapons to be available only in bonuses, in the entire game, or completely disabled.

Unlike most side-scrolling deathmatch games, the weapons in Liero have infinite ammo. Key factors include the reload rate of each weapon and how fast they shoot, whereas in most others include how much ammo a gun sports and how frequent more ammo for that gun can be found. Liero depends all on timing and swift maneuverability.

The gameplay mode can be deathmatch, Game of Tag or Capture the Flag. It can be played by two human players simultaneously in split screen or in a single player mode against the game's artificial intelligence, although the game's popularity is derived mostly from the fast-paced player-vs.-player action it provides.

Development history[edit]

Original Liero by Joosa Riekkinen[edit]

Nba 2k10 online. Joosa Riekkinen developed Liero as DOS game with the first version released in 1998. Liero was inspired by the previous freeware game MoleZ, and took many weapons and sounds from its precursor.^[2] The original Liero's latest version was 1.33, which was released in 1999.^[4][5] However, the author lost the Pascalsource code in a hard disk crash, and due to the lack of backup, no new 'classic' versions have been released since.^[4]

Community developments[edit]

Despite this, and with the author's approval, the Liero community has distributed several altered (or hacked) versions of the game through the LieroCDC, and others.^[6]

Merge[edit]

In 2009, 'classic' Liero was officially merged^[7] with the OpenLiero project upon the release of Liero 1.34 (not to be confused with the total conversion by that name). The new versions are released by Gliptic, although Joosa Riekkinen endorses them as official. The original Liero data and binary files by Riekkinen were released available under the WTFPLlicense.^[8]

Liero's last release was version 1.36, release September 3, 2013.^[9] This version is compatible with almost any OS but lacks network gaming (unlike some of the remakes).

Clones, remakes and derivatives[edit]

Liero Xtreme[edit]

Liero Xtreme (often called LieroX, Liero Extreme or just LX) is a 2Dshooter game. It is an unofficial sequel to Liero, and is the most popular of all the Liero clones.^{[10][11][12][13][14]} It features online play, fully customizable weapons, levels and characters. Liero Xtreme was created in C++ by Jason 'JasonB' Boettcher, an Australian programmer.^[11] With its source release on April 10, 2006, a new project has become available on October 24, 2006, known as OpenLieroX,^[11] while the development of the original LieroX project has stopped. At the time of writing (May 6, 2009), OpenLieroX has tripled in code size^[15] and has many new features.^[10][16][17]

The game is based on a deathmatch setting, where multiple players face off in a closed level. Each player is equipped with five weapons selected out of all the weapons allowed, and with a ninja rope that allows the player to move in any direction. Players begin with a set amount of lives, and whilst the game records the number of kills, the last man standing is usually considered the winner. Liero Xtreme also allows team deathmatches, which has made it common for players to form clans. OpenLieroX runs on Windows, on MacOSX, on Linux and on FreeBSD.

The first release announcement of Liero Extreme was made on October 14, 2002.^[18]LieroX has become very famous over the time. On February 14, 2006, Jason Boettcher stopped the LieroX development for good. The last version he released was 0.62b, which had many new features, but suffered from crashes and various errors, and did not catch on within the community which continues to play the 0.56b version. Before leaving the community, he released the source code of the even older version 0.55b under the zlib license.^[19][20] Development of LieroXtreme is now in hands of Karel Petranek and Albert Zeyer, used the source code to create OpenLieroX, which is compatible with the popular 0.56b version, but has multiple new features and bugfixes.^[21] Michał Futer took care of the new frontend. Currently the majority of players play OpenLieroX.

As a customizable game, it allows players and developers to script their own mods. Different mods have different sets of unique weapons, and may also differ in player gravity and movement. The default mod is Liero 1.0, also called Classic, which is roughly equal to the basic setting in original Liero. On top of this, several player-created mods are included in the standard game packs, some of which are more popular than the default setting. Similarly to Liero, the default level is Dirt Level, consisting of diggable terrain with some indestructible rock. The default level is comparatively rarely played compared to more complex player-created levels.

The game interface allow players to modify factors of the game such as which weapons in a mod are allowed, and how fast they reload and many other parameters which have huge impact on the game play.

NiL[edit]

NiL (recursive acronym for NiL Isn't Liero) is a clone of Liero, which runs on Linux and Windows and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. NiL is not limited to two players, like the original Liero is. It has support for an infinite^{[citation needed]} number of players over a TCP network. It was met with considerable enthusiasm in the Linux gaming community.^[22]

The project was initiated by Flemming Frandsen in winter 1999 after he had stumbled across Liero, which he liked so much that he decided to reimplement it under Linux. He abandoned the project five months later, due to being too busy for it. NiL was dead until the beginning of 2004 when Christoph Brill, found out about the project and took over as maintainer. Thereafter Daniel Schneidereit joined the project as well, but soon left. Other contributors included Nils Thuerey, Harri Liusvaara, David Hewitt and Phil Howlett.

Development proceeded slowly as the project's source code became almost unmaintainable and NiL was lacking developers. By mid-2005 Alexander Kahl joined development, convinced Christoph to start over and re-think the whole concept of NiL, as the other Liero clone Gusanos already existed at that time. Development seems to have stopped around mid-2006.^{[citation needed]}

OpenLieroX[edit]

OpenLieroX is a remake of classic Liero, built from scratch in a new engine. It adds many features to the game, such as modding support, custom sprites, maps, and weapons, and online and lan play. The game also supports more than two players at once.

WebLiero[edit]

Classic-like Liero clone in web browser with multiplayer capability.

Modification[edit]

Liero is a versatile game in terms of modification. All of its 40 weapons can be completely replaced with new ones that can be given different images and sound effects from the original set. The images of the worms themselves can be transformed into completely different characters, although their movement animations are less flexible regarding modification. The maps can be given permanent terrain other than rocks alone. Destroyable terrain can also be colored more than simply plain dirt. The AI can be modified to be harder or easier. Nearly the whole game can be converted into something entirely different, except for the main aspect having to do with slaughtering another player/AI.

Reception and usage[edit]

In 2006 Liero received a TopDog award from Home of the Underdogs.^[1]OpenLieroX has been positively reviewed by multiple gaming news sites.^{[10][11][14][23][24]} In 2013 Derek Yu's webpage TIGSource reviewed Liero v1.36 favorably.^[9]

The Liero variants NiL, Gusanos, and OpenLieroX were downloaded multiple hundred thousand times from Sourceforge alone between 2001 and 2016.^[25][26][27]

Calling Liero a 'masterpiece', Liero was selected for a collection of 100 classical Finnish games, which were presented on the opening of the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere in 2017.^[28]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abLiero on HOTU (2006)
2. ^ ^abLiero Wiki: MoleZArchived March 24, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
3. ^'Noita Early Access Launch Date Trailer'. Gamasutra. 29 August 2019. Retrieved 30 November 2019.
4. ^ ^abofficial Liero wikiArchived January 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
5. ^official Liero wiki about Liero 1.33Archived March 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
6. ^official Liero wiki about modabilityArchived January 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
7. ^See the changes.txt file in Liero 1.34 or newer.
8. ^license.txtArchived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine on www.liero.be 'The original Liero data and binary files are copyright 1998 Joosa Riekkinen They are, unless otherwise stated, available under the WTFPL license: 'WTFPL — do What the Fuck You Want to Public License'. Archived from the original on 2012-03-13. Retrieved 2008-05-25. The LIERO.EXE binary contains the SMIX sound library: 'SMIX Digital Sound Effects Library'. Archived from the original on 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2016-07-16. The author of SMIX has stated that it is available under a BSD-3-Clause license, with a request for donations for use in commercial products. LIERO.SND contains sounds from Molez: 'FRACTiLE Games - Error 404'. Archived from the original on 2011-08-10. Retrieved 2011-04-02. Molez is freeware and freely distributable.'
9. ^ ^abliero-1-36Archived 2016-07-20 at the Wayback Machine on TIGsource.com (2014-02-14)
10. ^ ^abcJames Murff. 'Freeware Friday: OpenLieroX'. Big Download. Game Daily. Archived from the original on 2015-01-30.
11. ^ ^abcd'OpenLieroX review'. LANThrax. Archived from the original on 2016-01-05.
12. ^Liero review with side note about OpenLieroXArchived 2010-02-02 at the Wayback Machine
13. ^Liero Xtreme entry in official Liero wikiArchived January 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
14. ^ ^abeGamer about OpenLieroXArchived 2012-11-12 at the Wayback Machine
15. ^Ohloh statistics of OpenLieroX
16. ^Czech review of OpenLieroXArchived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
17. ^Change log of all OpenLieroX releases^{[permanent dead link]}
18. ^Webarchiv of Liero Extreme original release post of Jason Boettcher
19. ^Original post by Jason Boettcher
20. ^Notes of original source release
21. ^Official OpenLieroX homepageArchived 2009-10-03 at the Wayback Machine
22. ^Open-source, networkable shooter has Linux gamers buzzingArchived 2017-12-22 at the Wayback Machine by Lee Anderson, April 12, 2000, CNN
23. ^Liero review with side note about OpenLieroXArchived 2010-02-02 at the Wayback Machine on tigsource.com
24. ^Liero Xtreme entry in official Liero wikiArchived January 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
25. ^Gusanos - statsArchived 2016-10-04 at the Wayback Machine on Sourceforge.net
26. ^OpenLieroX - statsArchived 2016-10-04 at the Wayback Machine on Sourceforge.net
27. ^NiL Isn't Liero - statsArchived 2016-10-05 at the Wayback Machine on Sourceforge.net
28. ^Muistatko vielä nämä suomalaiset klassikkopelit? Nämä 100 pääsevät Tampereen pelimuseoon on aamulehti (15.12.2016, English translation)

External links[edit]

• Official website - Created by fans, endorsed by Joosa Riekkinen
• OpenLiero official site (obsoleted by Liero 1.34)
• MoleZ Official Site (spiritual precursor to Liero)

Game information

Download from this site

Instruction/comment

NOTE: This game can be played directly on Windows using a source port (see the links section below).

Screenshots

Description (by Eric Savage)

Imagine Quake and Worms combined! Liero might appear tame on the outside, but with such weapons as the Gauss Gun and Napalm, you will have blown half the landscape away within the first minute, let alone the opposition worm. Liero is a 2-d action feast, with vivid sound effects and hectic battles. It is best played against a friend, though, since the computer opponent spends half his time blowing away himself rather than you.

Cheats (by VGTips.com)

Weapons and first aids: Push [Alt]-[Tab] to minimize the game. Keep maximizing and minimizing the game over and over. Eventually you'll start getting different weapons and first aids.

Game links

• Gusanos (Liero clone)
• OpenLieroX (Liero remake)
• OpenLiero (Liero cross-platform port)

Rating

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