Gaming Daily A-Z

No, Free Gamer has not met a premature demise! I am merely temporarily really, really busy . Still, there were a few notable releases in the last week. ScummVM hit version 0.9.0 which brings GUI enhancements and support for [at least] two [new] games. Legends jumped 0.0.0.1 versions to 0.4.1.40, and you should see the changelog . I've already ranted about discussed versioning debacles issues. Warsow bumped out another release and really seems to be picking up momentum both as a game and a community. They have started up a development blog . This is a great idea and it would be cool for every major Free game to have one; then we can have Free Game Planet! I spotted yet another 3d engine on Freshmeat : Nelit2 . Information is sparse but the screenshots show off some fancy features. It has a long way to go to compete with the heavyweights of this division like OGRE and Crystal Space . I also saw Carworld as well. It looks like it could be a very cool driving simulator...

Going back to Yoda Soccer , I had earlier talked about performance issues on my 1ghz laptop. Upon reporting the problem , I had this response: This is likely because the game requires a graphics card with 64MB of video ram. Let me get this straight. A remake of Sensible Soccer - a game that ran on the Amiga 500, an Atari ST, the SEGA Mega Drive, and a 486 PC - requires a 64mb graphics card? That is ludicrous. If you are making an open source game, know your market. Your market is typically not people with high-end graphics cards. If anything, it's people with older PCs who have less cash who do not want to invest in an uber-PC to play games. Of course, you have the ideological few who purchase a Cray to play Supertux , but they are the minority. So, with your market in mind, and knowing the kind of graphical and computing intensity your game requires, an open source developer should not be satisfied with something that performs badly. Optimise, and optimise early. Why optim...

To any regular readers, apologies for the lapse in posting - I did, though, have a valid reason . It tooks 2 weeks to get infected and 2 days to get out of it! I blame myself for not using protection, especially when it's freely available . Balazar Brothers Arkhart There was an update to Balazar Brothers over the weekend. This fun 3D platformer has great visuals for a Free Software game and is a little brother to Balazar . It comes from the same stable that produced Slune and Arkhart , the French setup Nekeme Prod [uctions?]. Delving deeper into Nekeme I found out that Arkhart is still being developed with a release (0.2.0) scheduled for Christmas. Whether this sees the light of day is yet to be seen, given the 3 years that has passed since the last Arkhart release, but it's good to know that the project is not dead. It's one of those open source games that you look at the website and screenshots and your jaw drops, only to close it with a sigh when you see how [in]comple...

ScummVM FIFE OpenTTD Today is a game engine special on Free Gamer. These are the projects that take your favourite [old school] titles and provide not only a native port but also fix all the nasties that had you saving and loading or even resetting your PC in the past. I remember the days of autoexec.bat and making every byte of that 640k count. Well these won't give you that fun but at least you get to play your old games! Let's start with the exciting FIFE: Flexible Isometric Fallout-like Engine . Started as an attempt to make a Fallout engine, it is becoming more ambitious and there are even rumours of a FIFE-based game in development. It should be able to run fan-made Fallout mods like the aptly named Fan Made Fallout . I have a pet favourite among RPG engines - GemRB . (I respect the steady progress on a difficult project.) This Infinity Engine emulator aims to be able to run the Baldur's Gate titles and even improve the experience they offer. The development...

Sauerbraten There is an updated release for Sauerbraten . This innovative open source 3D FPS is an evolution of the popular game Cube . For those who don't know, Cube and Sauer are not just FPS games but live map modding tools as well where you can manipulate the game world in real time. The game maps are combinations of deformable cubes giving map creators massive control with minimum complexity. There are already some jaw dropping maps available for Sauer which is adding new eye candy all the time. The developers are designing a roaming action RPG using Sauerbraten engine called Eisenstern . The entire game world will be in one massive level which the player will have to battle around. It seems to be more in a proof-of-concept stage whilst Sauer matures but is definitely one worth looking out for. TA Spring In other news, playing TA Spring just got a whole lot easier for Ubuntu (Dapper) and Debian (Sarge+) users. There's an entire guide to getting it up and running...

I'll start by acknowledging I've been mentioning games I've not yet added to the list. I'm redesigning the layout to be tri-columnar - 3 columns - so they are going into that design and not the current one. The new design should make browsing the list even easier. I'm busy putting together a special on game engines. So for today I'll just make a note inspired by the fate of Parsec in the hope it will encourage freeware developers to publish their games under a proper open source license. It is a lesson for all freeware developers to heed; just because you have glorious plans and motivation now, know that the future is known to no-one. It is as easy to lose the desire as it was to initially dream. By keeping your project closed you exclude the world from it's development. Should life take you in another direction nobody will be there to pick up your project. Your efforts will be wasted and that is a tragedy only the Freedom of software can avoid. Do y...

Nexuiz , a rising star of open source gaming, has reached milestone 2.0 . This version brings improved and optimized graphics, weapon balancing, new maps, bug fixes and a single player campaign with "advanced AI" ( possibly incomplete changelog ). Here are some screenshots from the showcase video which can be seen on youtube or downloaded in a higher resolution . My machine is not powerful enough to play this, but it looks absolutely fantastic. If you have the hardware, check it out and support the best Free games; they are community dependent. I could, however, play Bontago . This Windows-only (boo!) freeware (boo!) title is an innovative (yay!) 3D RTS (yay!) where you use blocks to build structures and use special features to destabilize your opponents. I've contacted the authors and encouraged them to make the game Free Software so that it can be ported to other platforms and it's development continued. Along with the Nexuiz 2.0 release, there was a note on 3...

Well a few days without posting is put down to an all-day BBQ and the trappings of such social occasions. After a good rest I can think lucidly once again. I'll start with the news that Scourge 0.14 is ready. This is a very promising RPG game that is beginning to pick up pace with new artists recently joining the project to enhance it. Whilst I'm not a massive fan of the premise for the storyline (aged has-been adventurers... need I continue?) the main developer is focused on making the game easy to extend and mod so hopefully, before long, a more serious background will be developed by the playing community. RG Pro Hockey is a promising looking 3D ice hockey simulation. I emailed the developers and, despite the project showing few signs of recent life, they are actively working towards a 1.0 release at the end of this year. I did advise an earlier, interim release. Release early and release often - this is the mantra of the most successful open source projects. There w...

Welcome to a space game special on Free Gamer! No Gravity Vega Strike Oolite Parsec Crimson Space At the heart of open source space game development is Vega Strike , a 3D space trading and combat game. With a dynamic universe and dynamic econmies, there is massive depth to the game. However the current stable version (0.4.3) is aging. While there is an update to the development version , it is not yet stable nor easy to try but does include some great new models and art on top of various gameplay improvements. Feature-wise it rivals commercial counterparts and the next releases should restore Vega Strikes position as one of the showcase open source games. Vega Strike is highly moddable and has spawned some excellent mods. There's something for Babylon 5 , Star Wars , and Star Trek fans, with the latter moving forward nicely. The most well-known mod is Privateer Remake , a modernization of Wing Commander: Privateer - an offshoot of the Wing Commander series . Privateer Remak...

I have an ever-growing list of games to add. Soon the existing organisation of the games list will be inadequate so I'll be forced to think of how to make the list more scalable. I'm thinking of an AJAX driven table where I can assign more information to each game and make it orderable and searchable. However I don't want to commit to something requiring too much manual management; the current list is quite simple to maintain. Ideas on a postcard (or in a comment) please! Anything I can host on blogger.com is best. Several games got recent updates; Empty Clip 1.0.2 , OpenArena 0.4.1 , and Vulture's 2.1.0 were some notable ones. I downloaded Enigma which is a good test of your mouse handling ability. Inspired by two retro games I've never heard of, you manoevure a ball with the mouse to find matching stones. It was simple and fun, and felt like a complete game for what it is. As a potential distraction from work, I had to pay Enigma the compliment of deleti...

I contacted the author of Karting Race with regards to open sourcing the game, and he agreed! There's something to be said for GPL advocacy after all. I really think it's a good idea... I think the main reason, that I haven't opensourced it yet, is that I think the code is too bad. Same thing when people mail me for the sourcecode because they wanna learn from it; It's just not good enough. But maybe it doesn't really matter when it comes to opensourcing... Do you think I should just upload it to my own homepage, with a link alongside the final game? I recommended a sourceforge project so we'll wait and see. On a racing-related topic, VDrift will come as an autopackage for it's next release. The VDrift forums are alive with development progress and I look forward to an update to this very promising racing game. With new features and bug fixes plus cars and tracks being imported from the Racer community, this game seems to be picking up momentum. I ful...

I'll start with the exciting news that the source to Stunt Playground was released at the end of May. This is a really cool looking game written using the OGRE 3D engine. It really highlights the spreading understanding of the importance of Free Software when reading the reasons behind the decision: I have decided to release the entire source code for Stunt Playground 2.0, to aid those interested in Ogre / OgreNewt / Newton Game Dynamics programming. The source is available under a free license, and might be of particular interest to people using the Newton Game Dynamics vehicle constraint, as it was used for the vehicle physics in the game. How could I forget two of the classic Free games - Liquid War and Jump n Bump , both frollicking fun . It seems that Liquid War 6 is under development. Whilst not expected before 2008, it is always good to see the ongoing development of original Free games. I hope it brings a nice update to the rather garish graphics of it's pred...

I added a few more titles to the list: Runescape (online only), FreeCNC (game over), and Karting Race (freeware). Those readers who are Game Tome regulars may already be aware of an update to Armagetron AD. It's reached version number 0.2.8.2 which is something I want to talk about. To me, version 1.0 of a project represents a stable release of the original concept. Not the perfection of that concept, but the playable implementation of it's core features. Armagetron passed this mark a long, long time ago. Also, the popular X.Y.Z versioning usually has respective major, minor, and bugfix connotations. For brown-paper-bag releases there is an occasional 4th digit version number. Strikingly, this update (0.2.8.1 to 0.2.8.2) implemented new features. I just can not grasp such a minor version increment for a feature-based release. It's nonsensical. It almost reduces the significance of the new features. Armagetron AD should ditch the 0, putting the version at 2.8.2 ...

There was an update for the only well-developed Free football management simulation I know of, Bygfoot 2 was released. Sadly the lead developer is moving on so it may be the last release if nobody takes over maintainership. Saying that, open source project addiction may bring him back. Bygfoot is fun but the user interface can be fairly non-intuitive and the game lacks depth when it comes to player management and information - e.g. there's no indication of a player's performance in the game. Outside of the players, there are plenty of features. With some UI love and elaboration on the player management it could be a very competent footy manager. There was also an update to Alien Arena 2006 ; another mod-turned-standalone freeware deathmatch game. Since Q3A now is available under a Free license, I wish these mods would adopt a similar approach. Still, that is their perrogative. Today I received a laptop with Windows installed, so if you know any Windows-only Free Softwar...

[UPDATE 2009] FreeTrain was translated quite sometime ago, thanks to people who saw this campaign and helped out! It still only runs on Windows but there is hope of a port to Linux - contact the team via the mailing list if you think you can help. There is a project , website , forum . [/UPDATE 2009] FreeTrain is a clone of A-Train. I can't find much information right now (please comment if you know where to look) but it's a long-running series developed by ArtDink and is primarily marketed to the Japanese. I remember playing A-Train 3 about 10-12 years ago and quite liking it. The problem with FreeTrain is that it's only availabe in Japanese. The game needs localizing and translating. I have spoken to the author before and he's open to contributors. From the website: I wanted to do a proper localization of FreeTrain to English at some point, but the game just doesn't have enough interest outside Japan to justify the effort to myself. The lack of interest...

Thanks to those out there who pointed out the broken Wing Commander Universe link in the exciting prospects section. The link is fixed, now pointing to the WCU section of the Vega Strike wiki (WCU is a VS mod). The original project page currently serves as the homepage for Privateer Remake which has, as far as I'm aware, been superceeded by Privateer Gemini Gold . PR was created from the WCU codebase and PGG was a fork of PR. It does make sense, I promise. Privateer is a classic PC game from the mid-90s and was an off-shoot of the Wing Commander series . You play the role of a space merchant and/or mercenary who fights his way across the galaxy in a game where you travel without limits, sometimes following the storyline if you were so inclined. PGG and WCU development is still very active and there are more WC games expected to be created out of the WCU project. The next PGG release has high-res base backgrounds, more graphics, more balancing, and lots of bug fixes so look...

Well I just did another large update, including adding another 30+ games to the list - even I'm beginning to get surprised at the quantity of quality Free games out there. I also tweaked the layout further, added an FAQ, and a 'Jump To' quick-nav for the sidebar. Hopefully this will be the last major update for a while meaning all subsequent updates will be properly described so in the future the list won't change radically overnight like it has done every night since it's inception.

A rather topical title has just been released, Slam Soccer 2006 (a.k.a. Bolzplatz 2006), a 3D soccer game with cartoon-style players. It requires Java 1.5 but don't let that put you off. With some half-decent hardware, it looks like fun. It did not perform well enough on my machine to be playable - however I blame my GeForce2 , so do not let the Java tag put you off. Quite a few decent games are appearing in Java recently. There's even a Java port of Quake 2 - Jake2 . Warzone 2100 The not-so-well-known Free game Warzone 2100 continues to be updated. Importantly, for me, it looks good and runs good on older hardware. It is a 3D RTS game that was originally a commercial title. One of the contributors is an Ubuntu user and, over in the forums, gave an overview of the state of Warzone . It looks like it's coming together nicely. Even though a bit of the original game content still isn't working in the Free version (notably the cut-scenes), it still feels like...