Gaming Daily A-Z

The first major community effort is coming out of the FreeGameDev community. It has been identified that the major weakness in creating quality looking Free games is the lack of Free art - either hard to find or just non-existent. So, we will be creating the first Common Media Project. As yet untitled and unorganised, it will be an effort to create a set of quality artwork for a specific genre - the fantasy genre is looking like the choice of the involved artists - that will be hosted in an easy to find / use place so that Free game developers can easily use this common media to create the basis of their own game before branching off in their own artistic direction once they attract contributors. Games like Scourge , JCRPG , Xarvh , 8 Kingdoms, and the many other open source fantasy/medieval games out there. Speaking of new projects, FIFEngine and Zero Projekt have announced that they will collaborate to create a commercial quality techdemo (i.e. mini-game) that will showcase FIF...

The latest Sauerbraten release is now available from getdeb , and since I have a new spiffy laptop I thought I'd give it a try. The RPG levels are pretty awesome to look at - now maybe I'm not quite up to date on the latest commercial offerings but compared to recent popular commercial games like Enemy Territory and Half Life 2, a well designed Sauerbraten level looks very nice indeed. The grass and water shaders look lucious. Freeciv 2.1beta6 SDL I wanted to take screenshots of Sauer but it seems to have a few problems - occasional hangs, dumping me back into low-res X - and I'm too busy to resolve them. So somebody asked for a few Freeciv SDL screenshots, which I oblige. Irrlamb 0.0.5 is out, introducing springs and other new features. The Linux binary won't work out-of-the-box on Ubuntu Gutsy :-( so I haven't tried it, but it seems to be shaping up nicely . Window and Ubuntu Feisty binaries are provided. There's also a new Thunder 'n' Lightning...

Since I'm a bit tight on time today I'm just going to post a few gripes I have with Freeciv 2.1beta6. Don't get me wrong, I think this is shaping up to be a really, really nice game, but the SDL interface has some very annoying usability issues to address. If you run it in windowed mode, you can't resize the game by resizing the window. The game display logic should be independent of the resolution, an absraction that many games fail to make. Auto-scrolling is annoying. It is especially annoying when playing in windowed mode when you are often moving the mouse cursor in and out of the game window. It would be better to scroll when pressing the right-mouse-button since the RMB is already used for manual movement. There is no UI to save/load games in the SDL client. A work around is to open a chat dialog and use the /save and /load commands. Freeciv dialogs have a red X with the tooltip "Cancel" to close them. Not only is 'cancel' a horrible word ...

Pingus 0.7.0 is available for download. With revival work complete, Pingus now uses SDL and comes with lovel anti-aliased fonts. There's no new levels yet but with development seemingly back on track hopefully the level editor will return and some good levelsets will get contributed. It has a lot of potential as a game because the Lemmings series kinda, well, was more fun when it was 2D. If enough level makers could get together, I'd love to see a release inspired by "Oh no! More Lemmings" which was my favourite of the series and also incredibly challenging. Another game with a major update is Egoboo Resurrection . There is a new fully working music system and major graphic enchancements - antialasing, shading, dithering and prespective correction all supported. (A long list of buzz words there.) Most importantly the lead developer Zefz is trying to get the game in SVN so others can contribute more easily and, speaking of contributions, somebody is already h...

A new beta of the upcoming Freeciv 2.1 has been released. The last major beta - beta4 - was nearly 5 months ago. There was a beta5 (uploaded a few days ago) but it was not announced due to some serious bugs. Anyway, beta6 is now available from the Freeciv FTP server. Whilst it is currently only up there as a tarball, a Windows and Mac binaries won't be far behind and I'm sure packages for the Linux distribution of your choice will pop up in the relevant places e.g. getdeb for Ubuntu. The main changes since beta4 are numerous bug and stability fixes. Freeciv 2.1beta4 was a bit prone to crashing unexpectedly - beta6 should be in much better shape. There isn't yet a NEWS page up for beta6 but since beta6 is just beta5 with a few critical fixes, the beta5 NEWS page gives you a good idea of what changed since beta4. Anyway I'll compile it a bit later if a .deb hasn't appeared by then. I think Freeciv 2.1 is going to be one of the best open source games to poin...

Cannon Smash Last night I downloaded and played Cannon Smash . I was quite impressed - the ball movement is good, the gameplay fast and fluid. The graphics, although quite simple, are quite nice as well when in motion. The main problem with this game, and what would be a good mini-project for a budding developer, is the controls. Currently you use the LMB to hit backhands, the RMB to hit forehands, and a slew of keys to target a point on the other side of the table. It's unwieldy - it takes a while to get used to hitting the correct mouse button and at the same time varying the destination of the ball - but, once mastered, it's not even skillful. All you need to know are the far corners (1 and 7) and to be able to time your forehand (RMB). The controls are complex enough to confuse, but once understood are not powerful enough to realistically model table tennis. It's a shame because the ball physics and presentation are really good. I think it an autochoice of foreha...

Linux users can now get their hands on the latest version of FreeOrion , the turn-based space stategy project inspired by Master of Orion games, without having to compile it themselves. See this thread for details. It worked well for me, although the game is not easy to figure out and is incomplete - I couldn't work out how to do too much. However for fans of the genre the project is definitely worth following and I'm sure the FO guys would be glad of any extra help. There's murmours over at the FreeTrain project - tangible progress on an SDL port is evident . One of the developers posted a screenshot with a basic UI much closer to the original A-Train games. Moving to SDL is the major hurdle for making FreeTrain run on Linux - currently it uses .NET and DirectX so can only be run on Windows. Forunately the project is moving towards Mono and SDL. :-) Er, what else is happening? Not too much... There's an opinion article on Linux Lookup discussing the problems ...

Sauerbraten has a new release with 2007-08-19 "Summer Edition" . There's tons of new small features although nothing really stands out - but perhaps that's me just being ignorant of some jargon in the changelog. What does stand out is the absurdly impatient community reaction to the release. Read the linked thread to see what I mean. OpenLieroX I came across a fork of LieroX , itself a Liero -clone, in the Gentoo forums where the team seem to be posting news updates. OpenLieroX is a real-time, brutal, excessive Worms-clone with lots of levels and mods. Interesting. :-) OpenLieroX is available for Windows and Mac OS X from Sourceforge , although it seems Linux users will have to compile it or wait for distro support. One of the lesser-known open source Elite-inspired games is Elite Strike (a Vega Strike mod). After a period of relative inactivity, development has resumed . Whilst the game has a long way to go to catch up with the likes of Oolite , it's g...

Air Carrier The rather sumptious looking Air Carrier project - a 3D aerial combat game written in Java - has put up an install guide . Basically you need to get it from CVS at the moment and run it from Eclipse. So, if you don't like CVS and Eclipse, er, you are out of luck for the moment. There's been a bunch of testing releases for TA3D as it approaches version 0.4.0 in style. Large parts of the codebase seem to have been rewritten and many bugs fixed. TA3D is an engine to play Total Annihilation but with better graphics and AI, so you need the original TA to play TA3D. TA3D obviously shares a lot in common with TA:Spring , however there are some important differences. Firstly, TA3D is Linux centric - whilst there is a Windows version, it is developed on and released primarily for Linux. Also TA:Spring includes modifications to the gameplay and does not make use of some TA files like maps, facts which don't sit well with the TA3D author, so TA3D definitely has a n...

Well what would you know. There actually was plenty happening yesterday just I wasn't looking in the right places... The assualt course racing game Sturmbahnfahrer has been renamed for reasons of political correctness. The new name is Stormbaan Coureur (dutch for "assault course racer") and there is a new release, version 1.5, which has save points, a half pipe, turntables, brakelights and more. It is currently only available as a source download , but hopefully that'll change soon. Whilst the game is aimed at Linux, it uses PLIB and ODE so is theoretically compilable on anything those two support (which is all major platforms). Crashtest Stormbaan Coureur is also the basis for another game - crashtest , the education crash test simulator for Linux. Interesting... :-) There's also a new version of the Atomic Tanks . It's a worms clone and the project makes regular releases. Good stuff. There's a lovely long post on the Vega Strike devblog from t...

There's very little of note happening. I should use the opportunity to work on some more interesting content for Free Gamer (fixed lists? awards? etc) but instead I have a new laptop (shiney!) and so will spend time fiddling with it. Want to know what the Linux Game Tome looked like 10 years ago ? Where is FreeCiv 2.1 ? Patience is a virtue, but an updated beta would be nice. I'm contemplating checking out latest SVN to see where it's up to. I played SuperTuxKart 0.3.0 a bit. Lots of potential but still rough around the edges. Some very dodgy collision detection, very annoying instant deceleration if you go slightly off the road, and only 1 really decent track (island) plus a couple of OK ones. Most of the tracks, IMHO, are not worth including. There's an interesting list grumbel's grumbles ; things grumbel thinks are wrong with SuperTux . I think he's spot on with most of them, he's an astute game programmer ( Free Gamer interview ) and fixing most...

There's very little of note happening. I should use the opportunity to work on some more interesting content for Free Gamer (fixed lists? awards? etc) but instead I have a new laptop (shiney!) and so will spend time fiddling with it. Want to know what the Linux Game Tome looked like 10 years ago ? Where is FreeCiv 2.1 ? Patience is a virtue, but an updated beta would be nice. I'm contemplating checking out latest SVN to see where it's up to. I played SuperTuxKart 0.3.0 a bit. Lots of potential but still rough around the edges. Some very dodgy collision detection, very annoying instant deceleration if you go slightly off the road, and only 1 really decent track (island) plus a couple of OK ones. Most of the tracks, IMHO, are not worth including. There's an interesting list grumbel's grumbles ; things grumbel thinks are wrong with SuperTux . I think he's spot on with most of them, he's an astute game programmer ( Free Gamer interview ) and fixing most...

There's a new Bos Wars release - version 2.4 comes with a new resource system and a new tutorial (presumably to reflect the new resource system). These days Bos Wars is the flagship game using Stratagus , the 2D isometric RTS engine that powers Wargus and the lesser developed Stargus . Tutorials are good. If you want a good player retention rate for your game, code a tutorial. I can't stress enough how effective that is - most players are lazy. Take me for instance. I'm busy, if I play a game I want near instantaneous enjoyment. If I don't know what's going on I will quit a game within 30s. Many FOSS games I install are uninstalled very quickly - not because I don't like them, but because I don't have the desire to learn them on my own. (Note, I do not play commercial games at all.) Good news for Egoboo ! It gains SDL_mixer support - Egoboo now music and improved sound support. They still don't have somebody producing Linux builds though, w...

200 posts to this blog now. :-) Pingus Pingus revival efforts are looking for bug testers. That means we can expect a new Pingus release soon, and even sooner if you head over there and help test it. Also looking for testers is iteam , the Gunbound/Worms clone. Test packages are avaialabe for Windows and Ubuntu. Links and compilation instructions can be found in the Ubuntu forums thread where the game concept was originally incepted . There's another snapshot release of JCRPG too, which has very lovely foilage lately. Now a few modellers have started contributing to the project so in the next few weeks hopefully we'll see a bit more gameplay development and perhaps the beginnings of the first game to use JCRPG which itself is a framework project for creating classic RPGs. Somebody commented on yesterday's article that perhaps the Flightgear team should be avoiding the version number 0.9.11 given that the game is a flight sim. What do you think?

I registered the domain name www.freegamedev.net yesterday. Initially it will just point to the Free Gamer forums , but I want to evolve that into a proper Free Software game development community with useful features e.g.: announce.freegamedev.net - a really easy way for people to announce Free games in a single location. No accounts, no web forms, just email to e.g. announce@freegamedev.net and (pending moderator approval) it'll appear. planet.freegamdev.net - a place where Free game development blogs are syndicated. forums.freegamedev.net, wiki.freegamedev.net etc Simple ways to help consolidate the Free gaming community will be the order of the day - none of this "let's implement a super redundant multi-layered workflow based CMS with tightly integrated thingymajigs" that will never happen because we are all busy people. KISS . Anyway, the forums are a good place for organisation. Flightgear A new Flightgear snapshot - 0.9.11pre1 - is available but it'...

Did you miss me? ... Tough luck, I'm back! ;-) Ultimate Stunts Editor Ultimate Stunts 0.7.2 is out with an improved and integrated track editor, a new car, and a few other minor improvements. I like this project, even if it isn't the best or most complete amongst the Free car games out there, it just has a nice vibe about it. On the topic of car games, The TORCS guys are running a robot championship. If you think you can write a nice racing robot AI and win the prestigious TORCS Endurance World Championship 2007 then sign up and get involved! More details are on the TORCS website . Whilst checking for [sadly no meaningful] updates to the Combat Simulator Project , I came across Delta3D (although I'm not sure if CSP uses it). There seem to be a few fairly well featured but not-so-well-known open source 3D game engines out there. Somebody brought up Sylphis3D in the FG forums. JCRPG and Air Carrier use jMonkeyEngine . Are there any other good but lesser-known op...

There's a new release of SoulFu . Whilst the source still comes under a funny license that many would not consider true open source, I believe any restrictions previously placed in the game are now removed. Downloads are up for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. If you like the game concept but feel strongly about the source code license then the main alternative has to be Egoboo Resurrection - ironically also originally developed by Aaron and no surprise given the graphical similarities. [Edit - a better link , thanks Jacky. Also worth noting is that Egoboo Resurrection is currently available only for Windows although it should be compilable for Linux.] Also the FreeOrion team snuck out another release - 0.3.1-rc6 - a couple of weeks ago. It's an explore, expand, exterminate [is that correct] kind of space strategy game with a very nice user interface and designed for a deep gameplay experience. I don't recall seeing this release announced anywhere. Also, it seems a st...

A while ago I mentioned cspop, a 3D populus clone. Whilst the game itself hasn't yet gotten a website - the author is waiting until it's playable before really marketing it - there has been progress: CSPop Work is still going on on the project, it is quite advanced already, but still some work on ui and some finishes on logic are needed to consider it playable. Anyway I have a couple of EXCLUSIVE screenshots - to be seen nowhere else on the web. (Oh yeah, I make blogging sound more like magazine writing every day!) This is a very exciting looking project and I'm hopeful that it'll be "out there" sooner rather than later. The daring can grab it from SVN . You'll need Crystal Space and CEL too. :-) Speaking of exciting projects linked to Crystal Space, there's more details on Project Apricot following a CS conference last month. Project Apricot is going to be a high profile effort to create an open source game using Blender and Crystal Space...

With the time I've spent sorting out the site I've had less time to stay in touch with general open source game developments, so slow news at the moment. The author of Passenger and Nuclear Graveyard seems to be making headway on his latest project, Last Remaining : I've just added some more hardened enemies to Last Remaining, and some more serious firepower. I don't want the game to become just another FPS, as the story is quite important, but it won't do any harm to have a bit of action in the middle of it! He uploaded a version to Sourceforge on 25th July with 3 levels and the aforementioned hardened enemies. He's also looking for modellers. I will note that his games seem to lack a little graphical atmosphere due to using only simple lighting techniques, but I think this is something he is trying to address in Last Remaining. JCRPG trees I mention it a lot, but JCRPG is a nice regularly* updated** blog /project and his latest addition, billboard trees...