They said it couldn't be done... they said it shouldn't be done... but 3 years later, it's done. Today I'm proud to present SMAR•CADE: Anarchy Edition 100% free for you to download and play, right now. The BEST game of its genre. More than a sandbox game; it's a sandbox of sandbox games.
You can live inside your computer;
Immerse yourself like never before possible.
SMAR•CADE is the only game that incorporates all of your favorite games, music, movies, and media in a persistent 3D world where you are surrounded by only the most awesome stuff; as according to you.
Work your way up from your 1 bedroom apartment to running the game convention's showroom floor and turning it into the most immersive media experience you and your friends have ever played.
Over 50 Achievements
Each achievement grants you cool in-game content you can show off to your friends. Press "C" to track your achievements and claim your rewards!
How To Play SMAR•CADE for FREE
Even though SMAR•CADE is listed as a Half-Life 2 mod, it does NOT require Half-Life 2 or any other game to play. All you need is Steam and SMAR•CADE and you're good to go!
Community Support
The innovative gameplay of SMAR•CADE is a new concept for players to get used to and learn how to take advantage of. To keep things simple, there is a series of very short in-game tutorial videos that you can access at any time by pressing F1. For example, here is the video explaining how to place your favorite YouTube videos right on the wall:
There is also a community help forum that I personally moderate where we can work through any questions you may have. To learn more about how the Anarchy Arcade community is supported, read the article Enjoy Your Experience - Making it Easy.
The Concept Behind It All
Anarchy Arcade is not something that I just woke up one morning and decided to see if I could make. As a user I wanted a program that would my make media library more entertaining and easier to share, but after looking at the programs available I found that they all had blatant problems.
The main issue was that they were all too restrictive to be useful in one way or another. Some forced you to shop from a particular store, turning their entire program into 1 big marketing scam. Others would only let you launch specific types of files, or they wouldn't play nice with your OS and force you to change how you used your computer. It seemed like they all had their own agenda and didn't care about the user.
That's when I set out to create my own non-restrictive 3D frontend. It had to let you shop from any store, launch any type of file, not interfere with how you use your OS, be completely customizable, and above all be fun to play and easy to learn.
Anarchy Arcade is a concept I have been researching and developing for 3 years. It has had 3 iterations of public prototypes with SMAR•CADE: Anarchy Edition being the first to provide nearly all of the features of the core concept.
So enjoy SMAR•CADE: Anarchy Edition completely FREE and have a great time!
Help Anarchy Arcade get on Steam by following us on our social media pages, leaving lots of comments, and voting for us when ever possible! Thank you for your support!
We're on Steam Greenlight!
Wow this is awesome... is there any way to expect a multiplayer version with internet-content only? :O... I can only assume no due to everything is written clientside for loading files but... would be epic.
Also, I am a mapper, can I load a custom map in this or will it explode / not remember them?
Hi Fourty7.
Addon maps are fully supported. Drop your BSP into the maps folder like normal and you're good to go; just be sure to enable addons in the Start Arcades menu to see your map on the list.
And good news; THIS version of SMAR•CADE has multiplayer support! It takes a bit of explaining how the client-side file loading is handled, but it works out about as well as you could desire.
:O Wow thanks, and thanks for the quick response! When I get a chance I'll do up a map or two for it for sure. This kind of reminds me of "3D operating system" dreams I've had, to an extent :P. Great work guys!
This could be interesting to people even who don't play games.. Even just the web browser and video support, such a better representation of what you have than a list!
Make sure nobody steals your source code! I don't think I've ever seen this done so smooth on Source engine, and it would appear very valuable to any dev team. Embedding html's into bsps with the screens setup and entity input/outputs on it :X... Ok I'm ranting, sorry! Thanks though!
Yeah I can sooooo picture this being applied in different settings for different audiences. It's always great when smalltime creations of the internet made out of enthusiasm and supported by a community of peers rise to change the face of culture, it certainly affirms the power and freedom of creativity we have these days :-)
From my perspective as a n00b to this kind of functioning I will voice a question which comes up for me: does smar•cade allow people to have multiple windows open adjacent to each other, such as - ehem, in my case - playing some Little Fighter 4, reading its moves list beside it, watching a youtube collection of vines in an upper corner, perusing my files in a lower corner, and occasionally clicking over to the science writing I need to do.
Whether humans should change our habits of how we engage with media isn't part of this particular question, just wondering if the program supports such habits...
Holy ****...
Hi, this is really cool, but I downloaded it from Desura, and I got "hl2.exe has stopped working"
If possible, please try the installer instead. Some people are reporting an issue with Desura that I've already contacted them about.
damn never thought youd expand upon smarcade , this is epic , keep up the great work
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Well done man! It is awesome how you don't need to own HL2 (even though everyone does) to play this. It is basically a game all in itself. I had a lot of fun in this last night, and tonight I think I might stream some video of myself building a wicked arcade with all the new cabinets I've earned. twitch.tv/xdrallocx Check me out!
Sorry about the double post... I forgot to log in. :S
Do I need any games to play this? I've never heard of this until today. It looks awesome!
Very interesting. I keep thinking: my desktop is a mess. Shortcuts everywhere, most of them important, but not at every given moment. It would be nice to put them all on a wall and dedicate "rooms" of my flat to certain topics. Then I could stroll around from time to time and look them up. I also like the visualisation. great previews!
Do you think you could make this system a little deeper to also let you store bookmarks (from Chrome, Firefox, etc) in a place? I have so many bookmarks and browsing them isn't easy or fun.
I think you got something great there. Very nice work and good concept.
ProjectMisfit, you don't need any games. All you need is Steam and SMAR•CADE.
SinKing, thanks for the feedback. I haven't considered importing your bookmarks yet, but I'll look into it. For now, you can place websites on the wall very easily though if you already have the URL or you know how to find them on the net.
anyone else having performance issues running this?
Specs:
i7 3770 3.4GHz
8GB DDR3
Gigabyte GTX 660 Windforce OC 2GB
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Its just black screen with music.I did the read me and got the update
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