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Race into Space is the free software version of Interplay's BuzzAldrin's Race into Space. This is the reworked version following thesource release for the computer version of the Liftoff! board game byFritz Bronner. The original was developed by Strategic Visions and published byInterplay as a disk-based game in 1992 and a CD-ROM in 1994.

The most recent stable release is 2.0.0, released on March 27, 2025. The release contains the following files for download:

• raceintospace-2.0.0-Debian12.deb
• raceintospace-2.0.0-Linux.deb
• raceintospace-2.0.0-Linux.rpm
• raceintospace-2.0.0-Linux.tar.gz
• raceintospace-2.0.0-Source.tar.gz
• raceintospace-2.0.0-win32.exe
• raceintospace-macos-arm64.zip

Further information can be found at therelease page. Thegame manual can be viewed from our docs section.

Race Into Space is distributed under GNU General Public License(GPL) version 2. You can find the terms and conditions in fileCOPYING.

We have aMatrix space, whereyou can obtain help, discuss the game in general, and also find others to playagainst, The space consists of two rooms:

We coordinate development through theGitHub issuetracker. Feel free toreport bugs, discuss tasks, or pick up work there. If you want to makechanges, please fork, edit, andsend us a pullrequest.

There's a.git-hooks directory in the root. This contains apre-commithook that verifies code styling before accepting changes. You can add this toyour local repository's.git/hooks/ directory like:

$ cd raceintospace$ ln -s ../../.git-hooks/pre-commit .git/hooks/pre-commit

Pull requests that don't match the project code style are still likely to beaccepted after manually formatting and amending your changeset. The formattingtool (astyle) is completely automated; please try to use it.

Clone the git repository:

git clone --recurse-submodules git://github.com/raceintospace/raceintospace.git

Or try via https if you encounter issues with git protocol:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/raceintospace/raceintospace

This creates sub-directoryraceintospace where you can build the game.

In case you did not specify--recurse-submodules when cloning the repository,you will need to initialize thevcpkg submodule inside the cloned repo:

git submodule update --init

You need a modern C++ compiler and CMake.

The build system usesvcpkg.io to automatically downloadand build all dependencies.

The creation of binary packages for releases is described in aset of separate instructions.

We rely on the operating system to provide most of the dependencies. If you'reon a Debian-based system, you can get everything with:

sudo apt-get install cmake libsdl1.2-dev libboost-dev libpng-dev \    libjsoncpp-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev \    libphysfs-dev libcereal-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler

Or enter this all on one line:

sudo apt-get install cmake libsdl1.2-dev libboost-dev libpng-dev libjsoncpp-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev libphysfs-dev libcereal-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler

If you don't already have git installed, you'll also have to run:

sudo apt install git

You may also need to run (especially if you get "No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found."):

sudo apt-get install build-essential

If you are on a Fedora-based system, you can get everything with:

$ sudo dnf install cmake gcc-c++ SDL-devel protobuf-devel boost-devel libogg-devel libvorbis-devel libtheora-devel jsoncpp-devel physfs-devel libpng-devel cereal-devel

To compile and run the game quickly run the following commands from the source directory:

cmake --preset linux-releasecmake --build --preset linux-release --target run

The build directory isbuild/release, you can always delete it to start from a clean build.

Alternatively, you can have all dependencies downloaded and built automatically:

cmake --preset linux-vcpkgcmake --build --preset linux-vcpkg --target run

To install in the default system location:

sudo cmake --build --preset XXX --target install

To install in your home directory, you need to pass--prefix to configure first:

cmake --preset XXX --prefix "$HOME"cmake --build --preset XXX --target install

Building is supported on MacOS 15 and later, on Apple chips.

You need CMake, which is readily obtained fromHomebrew, which you probably have anyway. You also needpkg-config,if you don't have it already. The only external dependency needed issdl.

$ brew install cmake sdl pkg-config

CMake and vcpkg automatically handle all other dependencies.

To obtain source code and build use:

$ git clone --recurse-submodules git://github.com/raceintospace/raceintospace.git$ cd raceintospace$ cmake --preset macos-vcpkg$ cmake --build --preset macos-vcpkg

You might want to use Xcode for development. CMake can generate an Xcodeproject file:

$ cmake --preset macos-vcpkg -G Xcode$ open raceintospace.xcodeproj

The easiest way to compile the game is the following:

1. Before you start, ensure that the following is installed:

   • Visual Studio Community ($0, but read the fine print)
     • Install at leastMSVC,C++ CMake for Windows andWindows SDK components! It may show as "Desktop development with C++"
     • If you have already installed Visual Studio but are missing a component, you can launch the Visual Studio installer app, choose "Modify" and select further components for installation.
   • Git (You can accept the defaults, though you may want to tell it to use Notepad for the default editor.) You may need to reboot for git to be added to your $PATH.

2. Start Visual Studio and select Continue without code

3. Launch Tools -> Command Line ->Developer Command Prompt. This is important and puts cmake and ninja into your path.

4. In that command prompt (not the Windows one), clone, configure, and build the game:

   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/raceintospace/raceintospace.gitcd raceintospacecmake --preset windows-releasecmake --build --preset windows-release

5. After building, navigate to the raceintospace folder, and you can start the game:

   .\build\release\src\game\raceintospace.exe BARIS_DATA=data

The following instructions may be relevant for setting up in Visual Studio IDE:

• Start Visual Studio by opening "raceintospace.sln".
• Right-click "ALL_BUILD" and choose "Build" (Everything will download and install)
• Right-click on "Race Into Space" and choose "Set as startup project"
• Right-click on "Race Into Space" and choose "Properties"
• Open "Configuration Properties" and choose "Output Directory" and set it to the path for "raceintospace-build\local\bin"
• Click on "Debugging" and edit "Environment".Add:

   BARIS_DATA=[path to raceintospace\data]   BARIS_SAVE=.\save

Click "run"

Due to copyright concerns, the game's music has been placed in a nonfree repository.To add music to the game, obtain the files from the repository:

git clone https://github.com/raceintospace/raceintospace-nonfree

Then copy thedata/audio/music directory fromraceintospace-nonfree to:

1. data/audio in the source code directory - if you're building the game from source, or
2. data/audio in the directory where you installed the game.