Night of the Living Unofficial Builds

Unofficial builds are much like zombies, who rise out of the dirt to seek out human flesh and consume it. Only unofficial builds usually come from the community and don't always kill the black dude and the crazy but not-so-cute lady. Instead they give people access to [the latest version of] games. And don't walk with some form of broken-bone induced limp. Although they may have bugs! And zombies tend to have bugs! Maggots infested in their now-defunct brains and flies swarming around their rotten carcasses. The similarities are uncanny.



It could be worse. Anyway... now that I feel relatively normal, the point was...



SoulFu


There's a Linux build of SoulFu posted on the SoulFu forum. Some complaints about low resolutions and issues with widescreen monitors but otherwise it looks good. The main reason Aaron Bishop released SoulFu as kind of open source (i.e. not Free but free with source, we must be pedantic about such matters lest we fall afoul of the various pitfalls of not adhering to high standards) was to get SoulFu ported to Linux. To be honest I'd rather he adjusted the license to a simple attribution based license and concentrated on making money from merchandise and advertising (he could make enough to get by) instead of the rather daft limitations in place at the moment. Shareware never made anybody famous or rich. Except iD. But they rule.



It's worth noting that soulfu.com points to an older release (1.3) than aaronbishopgames.com does (1.4_devtool) although - other than source availability - I'm not sure if there's any difference. Also there is now a public SVN server (go to the forum for info, I think).



CSP


Onto other matters, specifically the [fight] Combat Simulation Project where there's an unofficial Windows binary on the CSP forums. The latest official version is a little dated so demonic slaves Windows users can check out the latest features.



I like where CSP is going. It's detailed, and development has been ongoing and steady for 5+ years. Hopefully they will make another official release soon for both Windows and Linux. :-)



Speaking of accuracy (well, detail implies accuracy) it seems the Danger from the Deep project is doing OK in that regard, getting the thumbs up from a retired (sub)mariner. Danger from the Deep is a submarine combat simulation game set in World War II for Linux & Windows. And FreeBSD, although *BSD is dying.



The second part of the Rubygame tutorial is up on the newish development blog libertygaming. Wannabe developers should check it out.



And on a similar note, I just came across the Games and Simulation wiki where somebody is attempting to gather together common algorithms to aid game developers. It's a bit sparse but you gotta start somewhere!



Y'know, my girlfriend [yes, I know, amazingly I have one] just pointed out that if I took my work as seriously as this blog I'd be a rich man already. ;-)

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