Gaming Daily A-Z

Last weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of "leading" a large (20+) team of dedicated artists, coders, and writers in the creation of a wonderful (if a bit rough around the edges) 2D platform game called Last Escape. I put "leading" in quotes, because my position was more of organizer and first-among-equals (save for a couple of executive vetoes, mostly to save time and keep things moving). It was an amazing experience, and I'm very proud to have been a part of it. It was also highly educational, so I'm going to try and take stock of what we did right and what we did wrong, and write about it here, in hopes that it helps other teams develop games later on. First off, a little more about the project. Last Escape was ambitious from the outset. Before the project began, we decided that we were going to work with C++ instead of Flash or JavaScript. This decision was of a practical nature; the two coders who had committed the largest amou...

I'm so proud of saving more than killing... I discovered a tiny and minimal Java/Processing game through future superstar game designer William :    Stop the Zombies! Launch nuke circles. Save human pixels. Kill zombie pixels. Or just kill everything. The code is under a "Do whatever you want with it" license as far as I'm concerned, as it says in the code, it was based on someone else's code already. It should be noted that that code will no longer compile due to changes in the Processing environment over the years.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably like me in that you feel that current copyright law vastly overreaches in favor of the "content industry" and at the expense of culture as a whole. You may or may not also enjoy playing unlicensed fan-made games -- games that make use of IP from other games without the original owner's permission. Today I'm going to talk about a little game company named Squaresoft(*). I liked Squaresoft -- a lot. I never cared for the company Squaresoft all that much one way or the other, but I loved their games (as you may have figured out from my previous blog entries). Chrono Trigger, in particular, is a game that frequently shows up in the ubiquitous "Top 10 video games of all time" lists and polls that gaming magazines like to do from time to time -- and it's also one of my personal favorites. Among Chrono Trigger fans, the Chrono Trigger franchise is generally considered to have been treated very poorly by ...

C pointer syntax is an egregious design flaw. It's so bad, in fact, that it's solely responsible for multiple generations of programmers struggling with pointers, which frankly aren't that hard of a concept. I'm going to take some time today to explain pointers and, in the process, point out exactly what it is I can't stand about C/C++ pointer syntax. If you've never been able to wrap your head around pointers up until now, please give this a read, and hopefully you'll have a better understanding of them by the time you get to the end. I'll start with the basics (which you probably already know, but please bear with me). Conceptually, a pointer is a variable that points to a location in memory, generally another variable. In C and C++, the actual data stored in a pointer is a memory address, which is just a number that signifies a particular location in memory. You can interact with a pointer in two ways. You can either look at the actual value ...

So you got this shiny 25 megapixel camera from your grandma last Xmas, and are getting bored making photos of your cat with it? Put it too a good use and make some environmental pictures and upload them to the burning well ! Wait, you don't have a rich grandma?... well take some photos from the website above (all public domain) and convert them to some nice textures to use in games ;) And of course FOSS is to the rescue and provides you with all the tools you need: Most importantly THE GIMP of course! Which is the premier open-source image manipulation software, that doesn't need to hide behind other commercial programs starting with Photo and ending with Shop (the other major FOSS contenders being Krita and MyPaint both in that order aiming more at digital paining then image manipulation. Oh and check out Alchemy for a funny sketching app.). Creating a seamless texture So what you will normally want to do is take a picture that shows a relatively flat surface with an inter...

Do you like Let's Plays (Commented gameplay videos)? I do. Antibody of Xonotic made something similar with pro Xonotic/Nexuiz players and sometimes developers: Interviews during playbacks. Um, I hope you like YouTube..

The Sintel The Game crew contacted me and asked me to take down the post due to a misunderstanding, will keep the couple of screenshots here though. ~Goat Sintel Ultralite Awesome.

The Red Eclipse project, forked from the now-defunct Blood Frontier project, has made it's first release - Red Eclipse 1.0: Ides Edition . It has been continuous under heavy development, as was BF before it, but the RE team took their time over a release opting to "Get Things Right" first*. Thus, the '1.0' should be an accurate reflection; solid gameplay, stable game, and embodies the majority of the game design the developers first envisaged. It claims to have both single- and multi-player modes. At time of writing, the website has no about page, no details on the game other than the very basics (genre, platforms, etc). I am told that, in the single player game, you lead a squad through a series of zombie-infested maps. Who doesn't love zombies?! Gameplay is described as 'agile' so it's frantic and fast-paced with acrobatics and super powered weaponry. Red Eclipse is based on the Cube 2: Sauerbraten engine, so comes with a very powerful...

The recent blogging activity, spurred on by the growth in official Free Gamer blog authors, is a pleasure to see. When I started the blog back in 2006, I didn't think it'd ever be so popular, let alone last this long. * Casual reference to remind readers that I am the original author and, should I ever be displeased, I will smite thee with banana flesh limbs. ^ Reference to IVAN ; LIVAN or IVANX are better - see community site for variants. Vega Strike Shaders There's a new beta release for Vega Strike . Version 0.5.1 beta 1 ( forum announcement ) is a bigger point release than the 0.5.0->0.5.1 step implies. Improved planet shaders, lots of bug fixing, lots of general tidy up, video support (mainly for mods) and a lot more ships. Coincidentally, one of the original Vega Strike authors is working on a project called OurBricks for online collaboration of 3D resources. Lots of the Vega Strike ships are already uploaded. The ever impressive Pioneer Space Sim pro...

 All the screens I could find of RGJ 1-5 submissions Reddit Game Jam 06 starts March 25 and ends two days later (22:00 UTC). Anybody can participate. Those who can't code should get together with coders in a team. Team size this time is unlimited. FOSS is encouraged, not required. [ full rules ] From the subreddit's sidebar: A game jam is an event during which all participants create games according to a provided theme within a short amount of time (usually between two days to a week). The Reddit Game Jam hosts game jams as part of the wonderful Reddit community. Anybody can participate, experienced or newbie, flash developer or C hacker. The main goal of this game jam is to be a learning experience for everyone involved. There is nothing to win except for fame, comments and of course karma." RGJ 1 entries

Grave-Itation Pit! I don't like gravity shooters. In fact I don't like them so much I don't play them. They require more precision and skill than I want to give and are unforgiving. It is ridiculous that I like one gravity shooter though. A ridiculous one. M.A.R.S. So.. new version.. let my just copy-paste that changelog.. OH MY DOG THEY HAVE A VISUAL CHANGELOG ! new music (by Obsidian Shell ) new game mode (Grave-Itation Pit) improved AI (collect powerups, use specials, kick more butt) new planet gfx new ships new specials (Freezer, Fire Wall) gamepad support (tested with Xbox360 controller) more languages (total of 15) But seriously, check out their changelog ! Awesome video: Pink! Metal! Bugs! Updates since the 0.7.0 release: M.A.R.S. has experimental OSX builds! M.A.R.S. is in need of Arabic, Hungarian and Italian translators! The web needs more visual help requests!

SDL -makers Galaxy Gameworks are looking for a talented developer who would be interested in developing and maintaining SDL . Pfunked might support artists starting their own funding campaigns for creating art for FLARE , as he did with Justin's . Here are some asset ideas. Then there's the option to offer high-quality art for being 'funded into free' at OpenGameArt. The current target is $130 for this dwarf warrior . I wish there were (more) open source projects at 8bitfunding , Kickstarter , Fundry  and IndieGoGo . The only open source game dev projects I found are a flash game  (successful), FAR Colony and an interactive fiction engine iphone port  (successful). I'm sure not only full game projects could make use of these fundraising services but free content creators as well. Slick contest - art by danc Then there's a game competition by the Slick java game engine. Check the image above for rules and prizes. That's about all I can find and think of ...

Well I certainly didn't see this coming, but 0 A.D. has decided to switch their game-play concept and turn the game into a Diablo like hack and slash RPG (while keeping the historical accurateness of course). For the first teaser pic see below: Ok bad phun, I admit...in reality they decided to turn it into a FPS game, which I really can't understand at all :( I mean, just look at these horrible screen-shots they are putting out as a 'proof of concept': However, unrelated to these shocking news... check out this boring new alpha 4 RTS release, code named Deadalus . It features a boring new AI, and a bunch of other boring stuff (including boring additional celts stuff)... so don't bother with it until the new and shiny 0 A.D. RPG, errm FPS arrives ;)

icculus  will be talking about gaming on Linux in Chicago April 2nd. Ryan "Icculus"  Gordon is a former Loki Software employee who is now responsible for icculus.org, which hosts many Loki Software projects as well as several new projects created by himself and others. Gordon's site hosts projects with the code from such commercial games as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Quake III Arena and many other free and open source projects for multiple platforms. I can tell the   Flourish! conference is a good one because it does not have "Free", "Libre" or "Open" in its title directly. ;) Last year's conf was documented in  videos  and hopefully the same will happen with icculus' talk. There is a recent interview [ Czech version ], in which icculus talks about himself, graphics programming, a better world and porting.

As the self proclaimed FPS expert here on FreeGamer (who doesn't have a PC to play any FPS right now :( ), I have to keep you updated on the newest released and developments of course! So what is the big news for this weekend? Well looks like the Cube2 engine powered Red Eclipse is finally getting an official release tomorrow :) Red Eclipse release teaser Head over to their IRC chat to not miss the release, which is expected for Sunday 13th of March, 2am GTM! Oh and they are also having a small donation drive to fund their new player-model which will be released as all art assets of the game under a FOSS compatible creative commons license (170 Australian $ still needed at this time) AFAIK. Alien Arena 7.51 released A smaller release comes from the Alien Arena team today . Not much changes in version 7.51 in regards to gameplay or media, but under the hood the engine got some serious performance upgrade ( full change log ). Enemy Territory Xreal development picked up again To m...

In a bold (desperate?) move the guys behind the nearly completely FOSS but still commercial MMORPG Ryzom have decided to make their game free-to-play , but with some smaller limitations (which are supposed to make you buy a subscription at some later point of course ;) ). Ryzom running on Linux We mentioned it before, but Ryzom also runs fine under Linux (as seen above), and check out their developers page , and art asset repository if you are thinking about contributing. Personally I feel the game shows it's age a bit too much on the desktop platform, but a mobile version (lets say on Maemo and Android) could really shine and attract a lot of users. But now is your chance to try it out as long as you like ;)

Besiege Besiege is a space based real time strategy game where you conquer planets to let them produce new ships (and eventually research new technologies for you). Somewhat inspired by Eufloria and Galcon. The description resembles Qonk . The project did one thing that I think is very, very right: BIG SCREENSHOT ON FRONT PAGE . The ardor3d game runs on Linux this way: java -Djava.library.path=native -cp lib/*:Besiege.jar net.playbesiege.Besiege Besiege 1.0 Beta gameplay with sound

 Manic building on a ManicDigger server ManicDigger started as a third-party client for Minecraft Classic. According to the FAQ only Windows is supported but if you have Mono, you can do the following: Get nightly binary (.zip: warning, it is a .rar), unpack. mono GameModeFortress.exe Thanks to gustavo for the instructions! Must.. build.. house.. Unfortunately ManicDigger has the "most commonly used textures (grass and dirt) are ugly"-feature (just like Cube2/Sauerbraten for example). ArdorCraft ArdorCraft runs in Java ( Ardor3d ) and I got it running with its webstart file. I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that development halted four months ago. ArdorCraft Dev [mute] Even more ArdorCraft screens By the way, Notch (Minecraft lead dev) just posted his first (technical) article about terrain generation . How is this open source related? Weeell.... not that much, except for the following scrap of text ( from here ): Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed...

Take this for not doing your own "thing, number" logo! ;) PyWeek 12 is a game challenge/competition. It goes for a week. It starts on 2011-04-03. It's kind of open source: code needs to be visible, FSF license list is recommended, open source license appears not to be required though. See rules for rules. Screens of PyWeek11 's entries Here's the initiator's blog (+feed) - in case you're the stalker type. I know I am. :) PGB and SP banners/logos Horst, a Wien-based friend of FOSS hosts the Python Game Book wiki and Spielend Programmieren ("Programming by Playing") which is a wiki used for his courses teaching kids to make games using open source tools and libraries. There might be a guest post by him on this blog sooner or later. Some cool kids on his YT channel .. I hope you like das German. PSA for psychodelic PyGame Hirnschoner

We recently featured another air race kind of game , but this on has much more eye-candy: BGE_Airrace ocean demo And believe it or not, but it is made with Blender3d 2.49b's game engine (update to 2.5/2.6 planned at some point)! Another video with a nice terrain you can find here (beware crappy sound) . And an in-game track editor is under development too! You can have a look at the development of it and download some old versions of the .blend over at the Blender artists thread . But don't expect visuals like above, as the awesome Blender artist Martinsh just recently started to overhaul the graphics like that. So where is the catch? Well licensing is a bit unclear... in a recent BlenderNation news posts the main developer stated: "This air-race related project is a non-commercial open -source freeware and source .blend file will be released for common good", but I am not sure in how far this will extend to the new art assets, and a clearer commitment to a Creative...

OpenDungeons finally released version 0.4.7 of their Dungeon-Keeper like game, now with a new UI, better team colors, and many more animations. Very exciting to see the project develop! Download the new release here   The Peragro Tempus project also kindly enabled DAMN asset managing for the OpenDungeon's media repo, which could really help with getting artists to contribute in the future (go to the DAMN link, then browse, and you should see the OD assets).

as3sfxr-b [ Flash version ] [ Code ] Before was: as3sfxr Before before was: sfxr

Flare v0.11 gameplay (spoiler warning) v0.11 of FLARE got released and developer Clint Bellanger writes in the FLARE blog about how it is tempting to add features (like adding more skills or replacing old ones) instead of moving to the next target (in this case vendors and action bar customization). Luckily what leads to a complete game wins in this case. :) Note: polish != re-inventing/re-creating. FOSS games are vulnerable to feature-creep and in many cases just don’t feel “finished” because they never really are. [...] It may be more fun to add new features than it is to polish those you already have, but polish is far more important if you want your game to be any good. - William In his 4 problems with FOSS games the author identifies following weaknesses of FOSS: Technical problems Lack of originality Lack of personality Design by committee By the way: if you haven't read the challenges of developing long, plot-heavy FOSS games by OpenGameArt-admin Bart K yet.. you s...

Last month MCMic reviewed Purity and now he started making maps for it. Stepbouncing for Purity by MCMic p00 and p01 for Purity by MCMic

Maratis' editor Maratis is a simple and visual game development tool designed for artists and developers. Tested on Windows, Mac and iPhone. [ full feature list ] Simple is good and Maratis' Interface is very pleasantly simple. I suspect the same thing (without iOS support) could be achieved by providing a simple blender UI setup and a few instructions. The default Blender interface is quite intimidating for beginners after all. Maratis and Blender demo tour Data Yo Frankie copyright Blender Foundation | apricot.blender.org .

Self-built fort in WorldForge The trend of environment shaping has reached WorldForge . The building seen above is one static model piece though. Terrain Molding in WorldForge This video makes me dream of an open source Populous3-like. :)

Billiards , a Techne game Techne is a simple real-time physics engine. Aviation Aviation is a simple flight sim framework.  Airrace And then there's Airrace . Airrace is a proof-of-concept Application written on top of Aviation implementing an air race game where the player has to pilot a light-weight aircraft through a track consisting of pylons or air gates. Although its written as a test of Aviation and in order to promote its development, it's still a full-fledged game. Currently there are 7 training courses and 5 race-tracks but adding more is a piece of cake. We seem to be talking much about funding lately on this blog.. Well here's another one: the developer of all these wrote "an idea about a community-funded game development project but as this probably sounds like a cheap scheme to profit out of free software please consider reading the full text for the rationale behind it." The author speaks of open source games and t...