Gaming Daily A-Z

I came across an interesting Ubuntu forum thread the other day - where I posted this on May 26th 2006: This thread has inspired me to do something: http://freegamer.blogspot.com/ Fascinating. It's come a long way since then! :-) The big news of today is probably the Secret Maryo Chronicles 1.0 release. It's an intriguing project and is gaining some very nice vector-based graphics. I'm still not convinced they have replaced all the ripped graphics and sounds that were in the previous version (0.99.7) nor addressed the gameplay defficiencies I felt were present - the feel of the game wasn't quite right - there is no acceleration, you are either running or not running, making it hard to control the character. It is still an ongoing project and importantly it's a playable game with a fair amount of levels and decent graphics so is worth checking out. It's definitely close to being an open source game that makes people go, "Oooh, nice!" ;-) Finity F...

You may or may not have noticed - depending on whether you have had your morning coffee or not - that Free Gamer has a new look! Thanks go to Iwan 'qudobup' Gabovitch for a sterling contribution. It gives the site it's own identity and he has come up with a cool fg logo and smart little icons. Anyway I love it, so thanks Iwan. In the spirit of open source he has made his work available as public domain. Only a short one today as I'm short on time and energy after sorting this out... Java CRPG Dungeon Craft There's a new release of JCRPG . Whilst it's still a long way from being a game, it is looking very nice and a few people have started to contribute models. If development pace keeps up of this 3D classic RPG framework I think we can expect some interesting games to the not-too-distant future coming from this project. Whilst reading the comments on the JCRPG blog , somebody brought up another Dungeon Master inspired game... Dungeon Craft : is an effort...

Battle Tanks Battle Tanks is, "a funny battle on your desk." . Choose one of three vehicles and eliminate your enemy using an arsenal of weapons. Original cartoon-like graphics and cool music, "fun and dynamic," and it has different network modes for deathmatch and cooperative style gameplay. I don't believe it has a single player version, yet. The game is open source and available for Linux (source) and Windows. It's a relatively new game (sf.net project was registered in 2006) so there are still some teething issues it seems. Adonthell , a longstanding open source console RPG engine has seen it's first update in a couple of years - version 0.4.0 alpha 1. The previous version, 0.3.5, is packaged with a small game called Wastes Edge which is one of the few completable open source games with a storyline and is available for every OS known to man. Whilst the new 'development' version doesn't come packaged with a game, it's good ...

With many thanks to ghoulsblade and hagish of SFZ fame, there is a new Free Gamer forum . :-) Unfortunately there is no way to transfer to old database over and even if it was possible the majority of useful content was posted during the period of data loss (anything after June 30th). However, lessons learned, this new forum should be more responsive (freeforums.org was slow), have better uptime (freeforums.org was frequently down) and is far more customizable (i.e. expect a FG theme in the near future etc). Parallel Universe There's a new release of Privateer Gemini Gold . Bug fixes and some improved artwork prompted the team to release 1.02a just a month after 1.02 - release early, release often so this is a good thing in my book. I'm not sure if they have addressed the reported high difficulty level of the game though. If you find PGG too difficult, check out Privateer Remake and/or Parallel Universe . Or wait for the new Vega Strike release which is coming in August....

Star Wars: TA Spring 1944 TA:Spring 0.75b2 is out (a few days after 0.75b1). These are the first releases under a new lead since the previous stable versions. TA:Spring is a spectacular 3D RTS based largely upon Total Annihilation, although these days you do not need TA to play Spring. It has a very healthy mod scene with some amazing looking mods . One such mod is Star Wars: TA . It is, unsurprisingly, set in the Star Wars universe. It looks like the realisation of every 1970s kid's dream - commanding your own army of stormtroopers annihilating those rebel scum. (Yes, The Empire Strikes Back was by far the best of Star Wars movie. You are wrong if you disagree.) Another exciting mod is Spring 1944 which looks really promising but is yet to be officially released so I don't know if you can play it yet. So this screenshot will have to do. Do you like old school (NES) Zelda RPG and do you not really care about uber graphics? Monster should be good fun for you. Worldfor...

The forums are moving - I'll come back to that after a few game snippets. 8 Kingdoms 1.1.0 has been released, with bug fixes and minor improvements over the previous stable release ( release notes ). They have yet to update their website but the new version is on the download page. 8 Kingdoms is an open source 3D TBS game with nice graphics, and can be downloaded for Linux and Windows. Dave, the author of Battle for Wesnoth , is making a new 3D RPG game with the working name Sliver Tree . It is very early days but Dave has an unusual position in the open source game development world - he has a lot of artistic resources at his disposal. If he really pushes this game, Wesnoth contributors (of which there are many) will back it with artwork, so it is going to be an interesting one to watch. Also I like Dave's approach of keeping games simple. He resisted many calls to add lots of features to Wesnoth which may have taken away from the pure simplicity of the game. So, back t...

Well let's start with the fact that despite the complete lack of any announcement whatsoever and no update to the website, SuperTuxKart 0.3.0 is available for download and has been since the 5th July. Well, I'm doing the announcement for them it seems. ;-) This Super Mario Kart inspired game is available on all popular OSes - Linux, Linux PPC, Mac OSX, and Windows. There's quite a few new features in this release that is a massive improvement over version 0.2: Highscore lists Shortcut detection Improved AI Fullscreen support New track: the island New kart: hexley New penalty: bomb MacOSX support OpenAL and ogg-vorbis support Two new Grand Prixs Improved user interface I've no idea why it hasn't been announced anywhere. Thanks to the commenter who point out the fact it is available after I complained yesterday about it not being released yet. (Comments are helpful!) Vega Strike development news - 0.4.4 has been branched . Expect a new version in August once ...

I dunno what happened yesterday. A combination of not-much-happening and being-very-busy I guess. I wish SuperTuxKart 0.3 would come out, and FreeCiv 2.1 , and SuperTux 0.4 , and a bunch of other games that are close to release but just are taking ages to get over their respective hurdles. Promisingly there's quite a bit of movement on the Pingus revival. People are working on an SDL port for it and it's mostly back to it's previously released state of the Lemmings-like game. The number of interested contributors bodes well for future development which may see a decent level editor among other cute features. For more information the best place is probably the Pingus forum . Development of Mars: Land of No Mercy continues at a steady pace. There's plenty of new graphics going into the next version of the game which may also be playable in a tech demo kinda way. I was trying to post a sceenshot to give readers an idea of what the game is going to be like, but my ...

PR: Parallel Universe Too busy to post properly today. :-( Ecksdee is not dead (news update) Parallel Universe (a mod for Privateer Remake - which itself is a Vega Strike mod) now has a gallery Interstate Outlaws is definitely open source (confirmed with the author) SoulFu author leaves game to community development but still under dubious license More information on the latter two tomorrow.

Last Remaining Last Remaining is a 3D FPS RPG in the same vein as Deus Ex. The idea is to have an engrossing storyline where the player must take whatever action is necessary to get to the bottom of the mystery. The game is written in Java with JMonkeyEngine and first version was uploaded yesterday . Intriguing and definitely one to watch. :-) The author is the same guy behind Passenger and Nuclear Graveyard , and has a devblog on his various game programming endeavours. A previous release of Nuclear Graveyard had managed to become corrupted when uploaded, a fact which - much to the author's dismay - nobody reported for nearly 2 months despite over 100 downloads. Anyway, if you were one of those people who downloaded the game and (benefit of the doubt) was unable to get it working then now would be a good time to try again ! He is also moving Passenger from JOGL to jMonkeyEngine (which uses JOGL) which should make subsequent development of the game easier. Anybody who thin...

Global Conflict Blue Global Conflict Blue is a:" a real-time 3D naval and air warfare simulation game similar to Fleet Command and Harpoon. The goal is a scalable single player and multiplayer game that can handle scenarios ranging from simple engagements playable in 30 minutes to massive campaigns contested over weeks. It's only available for Windows but it's open source and a lot of it is written in Python so that can change. Intriguingly it has been adapted by the Thai Navy for for training purposes although sadly they haven't made their changes availalbe to the wider public. There's a Linux binary of FreeOrion available for download here . I'm not sure whether it's the latest stable version or latest from SVN but it should provide an opportunity for people who hadn't previously played the game to get an idea of what it is about. It is confirmed as working on an i386 Unbuntu Feisty system. Development of FreeOrion continues at the same steady p...

A little bit late today, but that's ok because tomorrow is Sunday, a Holy day, a day of rest, so I don't have to post. :-D Eek, where to start? Tilt-n-Roll is an innovative open source project that uses the tilting mechanism in modern laptops to recreate the classic wooden labyrinth experience. GPL, runs on Lin, Mac, and Win. What more could you ask for? Version 1.4 of the semi-open source 3D RPG game SoulFu is available for download from Aaron Bishop's homepage . The page only lists .exe downloads but I'm sure Linux versions will appear in the official forums sooner rather than later. SoulFu minivid Soul Fu creator Aaron has responsed to the general querying of his "unique" distribution methods for the game: I wanted to make a good game, and I do want people to improve it -- I simply don't have the time or desire to do it myself. Getting millions and millions of people to play the game is a goal, but SoulFu is a lot of things... It's a little e...

Interstate Outlaws Interstate Outlaws is a 3D vehicle deathmatch game based on the 2 Interstate games released by Activision. Developed using Crystal Space , they announced their first public release which shows a lot of promise. It is available for Linux and Windows. It reminds me a little bit of Automanic which is also a 3D vehicle deathmatch game based on the Interstate games and developed using Crystal Space. Automanic development seems to have stalled for the time being though. :-( There's rumblings of development resuming on Dungeon Digger , the Dungeon Keeper inspired project. Good. I was getting concerned that it was another early, promising project to bite the hard reality dust. FreeCol 0.7.0 is supposed to be out today. Also SuperTuxKart 3.0 was branched a week ago in svn so must be imminent too. Both should have Windows and Linux releases possibly with Mac releases to follow later. *twiddles thumbs impatiently*

Tower New VS Models :-) Tower - a rogue-like with a difference. The art is ascii, but it's rendered in 3D. Interesting... The devblog for Vega Strike is full of activity. People are sorting out new artwork, replacing the frail sound server, and implementing lots of other improvements to the game. It seems that school is oout and summer is in, so the developers are rallying to make a superb new release of VS a reality in the next month or two. The up and coming space game Stress Free Zone is seeing lots of development activity . They are working on implementing the ability to walk around your ship. Since your ship is modular this involves generating the ship internals as well as just modelling them. Whilst a lot of the art is placeholder work, the concepts are really cool and I can't wait for that game to get a few more features, a bigger community, and blossom into the awesome game it's threatening to become. I really like the ideas behind SFZ - like reducing t...

A bit of a FG special here and a slightly different topic for FG, but still very pertinent to open source development. Today saw the last ever release of the -ck kernel patchset. Anybody who ever tried ricing their Gentoo in order to attain half-decent audio/visual perforance, or knows much about kernel patchsets, will no doubt be aware of the -ck kernel patchset . It is a patchset for the Linux kernel that is aimed at providing an optimal desktop experience. It made my old machines usable with Gentoo Linux back in 2001-2003 before I switched to Ubuntu and gave up hope of my old machines ever being able to handle more than one sizeable task at a time. Con took a problem, solved it, but because he wasn't well integrated in Linux kernel development his solution never got the proper attention it deserved. The two main features of Con's patchset are his Staircase Deadline scheduler and Swap Prefetch . The kernel scheduler decides what processes get access to your computer...

Good news today. Not only did I finally succeed in getting to name a What the Duck strip, but there's a new Thunder and Lightning release. There are some sweeet new features, focused around AI and an aircraft carrier as well as purty graphical enhancements as you can tell from yonder youtube video below. Also the game is now available as an autopackage making it easier to install for Lusers everywhere, as well as Wusers (!?). That's the first time I've embedded a youtube video on this blog. Should I do it more regularly? I've avoided it in the past but I quite liked that one. iteam progress The iteam project is making rapid progress. Only incepted about a month ago they have made tangible progress. Whilst you still can only get this Gunbound-inspired game via SVN for the time being, it surely can't be long before an actual release should they keep up this kind of momentum. I'd never heard of Gunbound before I came across iteam. Showing my age a bi...

Open Arena now with bloom Simutrans , one of the major open source rail games, gets an update with version 0.99.13 - bug fixes and optimizations are the topic of the day here and with large speed ups for vehicle routing and map scrolling the game should have a nicer feel. Open Arena ends an 8 month barren spell of releases with 0.7.0 which comes with 10 new player models and 26 new maps. Open Arena looked like a struggling project a year ago but now it is thriving and a worthy Free replacement for the proprietary Quake 3 content. Irrlamb 0.0.4 is now available, with a bunch of new features for this 3D abstract action / puzzle game. There are binaries for Linux and Windows . I love the regular updatse to this project. :-) Rumour mill... Angels Fall First demo may be out soon . Check out the trailer . Sumptuous. FG Note: I should try and interview that guy! Regular readers may know that I'm not big on posting web games (this is an open source games blog after all) but I fo...

When looking at stuff like the Ubuntu forums , full of I-love-my-Windows-games posters crying about how WINE and Cedega don't run World of Warcraft perfectly, it's very easy to glance at something and dismiss it as commercial. Fortunately, I gave this thread a second look. Remorse demo Remorse is the first game project by Phenomena Games , a group of enthusiasts who have created the Existence 2.0 engine which supports all kinds of fancy things (shaders, physics etc). There are some impressive screenshots and videos - the motionblur effect video is delicious. Remorse is primarily going to be a single player game, good news in the FPS genre that is swamped with deathmatch games. Anyway, they seem to have a few people working on it and hopefully a bit of exposure might get them a few more contributors. It looks like it has lots of potential. I mentioned Project Open a few days ago, a place to consolidate efforts to get copyright holders to release abandonware / freeware ti...

Parallel Universe , a modification of Privateer Remake , has gotten itself a rather smart website and community forums . There's a good bit of work going on over there and the feedback on PU is generally pretty good. Definitely worth a look for space game fans. It is also part of a rather complex development scene based around Privateer & Wing Commander games. I'll get back to that in a bit. A couple of Ubuntu users have posted their first serious effort at a game, Slingshot . It's a fairly simple 2D affair, take it in turns to shoot at each other, your shots being affected by the gravity pulls of planets. I've mentioned Egoboo Resurrection a few times - a continuation of the classic game Egoboo. I've not really mentioned that it's only released for Windows despite the original predominantly being a Linux game. It just comes down to a lack of Linux based contributors. However there's another "branch" called Egoboo 2.x which has binari...

There's a preview version of Bos Wars 2.4 , an RTS in the style of Red Alert, available for download for Linux and Windows (and should compile on other OSes). This version introduces... "a completely new rate-based economy. Energy is produced by power plants and magma by magma pumps. Building also consume resources continously instead of requiring an upfront payment. It sounds interesting. Bos Wars development is very active although the majority of developer communication happens on irc instead of the mailing list, which can make it look - to the casual onlooker - as if not much is happening. They could probably do with a devblog too! Freedroid RPG FreedroidRPG 0.10.2 final got released as well - well, renamed from 0.10.2rc4, whichever way you prefer to call it. One thing I didn't mention yesterday was that I really like FreedroidRPG's graphics . They are very distinctive and quite good. :-) The SuperTuxKart 0.3.0 release is tantalisingly imminent. Announcement...

Typical. I stop monitoring Vega Strike for a week or so and everything starts happening. They get a new website, a devblog , and one of the developers commits to an August update for the game to bring the latest developments to players not prepared to dabble in SVN. Vega Strike has never been a dead project, nor an inactive one, something the lack of a release since 2003 has betrayed for a game purportedly "in development". I think the devblog is an excellent compromise between showing activity and spamming the news page with not-newsworthy items. VS is an strong example of the growing pains experienced by a popular open source project and how managing releases and resources should be considered as much a task as development itself. I would put the lack of releases down to a failure to manage contributions, but I think they have turned the corner with this. For an excellent example of good resource management, look at the Battle for Wesnoth project. I'll also note ...

I'm happy today. No, not just because Arsenal signed a quality striker , but also because it looks like a Pingus revival is on the cards. :-) The game has been mostly ported to SDL but the SDL port is unplayable. The stable version depends on the aged and not well supported Clanlib 0.6 and it seems there is not enough interest or expertise in upgrading Pingus to Clanlib 0.8 which was released earlier this year. Anyway, a few people have expressed interest in working on the codebase so we can only hope that interest can be turned into tangible progress. JCRPG continues to get new features, now featuring day and night cycles among other things. If that project keeps up the current development pace we'll have a tidy game come out of the JCRPG framework before the end of the year. Orbiter . A mature 3D project for contemporary space flight simulation. No explosions. Snowball is an interesting looking platform game. No development for two years but perhaps it does not nee...

Good morning to open source game enthusiasts and any normal people reading. I feel a bit refreshed after getting back to the Internet having spent nearly 48 hours offline. I know, I nearly died, the withdrawl symptoms were horrendous, but it's ok as I am back online now and have been for nearly 12 hours. So a few things today. Freedroid RPG development has become really active and a string of new releases has occurred in the last couple of weeks. It is a cross platform isometric RPG game similar to Baldur's Gate Diablo only, instead of swords and scantily clad heroines, you have cattle prods and robotic penguins. It's good to see development pick up and they are focusing on making development easier and fixing bugs, so it's looking like a bright future for the game. The latest release is available for Linux and Windows. Another game that shows off some of the originality that you can find in indie and open source game projects is Which Way Is Up . A platform g...