Sopwith (SDL Sopwith)

Game: Sopwith (DOS, 1984)

SDL Sopwith: a port of Sopwith, BMB Compuscience’s 1980s DOS game in which you fly a Sopwith Camel biplane to bomb enemy targets, based on the source code its original programmer, David L. Clark, released in 2000 (it’s not a rewrite or a recreation), now under the GPL 2. It uses SDL for video and sound, emulating the PC speaker. By default it behaves like Sopwith 2, plus the additions of Clark’s Author’s Edition such as wounded planes, and it can be set to behave like Sopwith 1. It replaces the original multiplayer, which didn’t work, with two-player games over TCP/IP, on a LAN or over the internet. It adds palettes that mimic various old monitors, medals and a high score table, gamepads (since 2.8.0), and .sop mission files for levels and mods, with new targets and graphics and the option to replace the sprites, the title music, and, in the next release, the title screen. The latest release, 2.9.0, is from December 6, 2025. It publishes builds for 32- and 64-bit Windows and macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), the source to build it on Linux and other systems, and an Emscripten browser version playable on its website; since the game is free, it needs no extra files. The project has announced that it’s dropping the macOS build and points Mac users to the browser version.

You needNo copy needed: the original author released the game’s code, now under the GPL 2, and everything needed is included. Plus 32- or 64-bit Windows, macOS, Linux or another system with SDL where you build it, or a web browser. Playing over the internet requires forwarding TCP port 3847.

How it gets to PC

Port of the released source code

Console

MS-DOS

Original studio

BMB Compuscience

Year

1984

Author

Simon Howard

Stars

120

Last activity

2026-09-28 · 1 month ago

Latest version

sdl-sopwith-2.9.0 · 2025-12-06

License

GPL-2.0

Language

C