Gaming Daily A-Z

AI lift-off in Fachoda Complex Fachoda Complex is an old Linux 3d flight battle simulator with flat visuals and extremely low system requirements. The developer wrote an interesting logbook  of how they recovered the game from the depths of Assembly Code Country in six days. Some restore antique furnitures or old cars for a hobby. I am restoring a vintage piece of code, a small game that was quickly put together at the end of the former century then had its bits abandoned to rust. The original author is long gone and his ideas and thoughts forgotten. He was the me of 12 years ago. Even after reading the readme, I am completely incapable of lifting off in this game and am unable to play it... :( I still tried: video: I don't know what I'm doing...

Testing Coldest Bots 2012-02-28 git video: Coldest Bots/AI on the Moon 2012-02-28 git Coldest builds that feature bots are available for Windows and Linux. So far bots are able to navigate simple terrain and seem to be looking for the closest enemy. However they don't worry about their own health too much and fire their lasers until they explode from overheating. The developer announced that they might organize a play testing session mid March. Stay tuned!

Onslaught Arena Onslaught Arena , a HTML5 top-down shooter that has a non-space-ship-scenario, is now open source code, non-free assets on GitHub . video:  Onslaught! Arena: How to beat the Green Dragon The assets are included under non-commercial terms and the developers did not have the time to read about Creative Commons licenses, which I'm sure is one of the reasons why CC-BY-SA isn't widely adopted: time. If you are able to give a concise description, please do in this thread . Three LostCast moderators The team's blog is also home to a podcast about HTML5 games .

Frozen Bubble for Android 2012 February the 6th was the 10th birthday of Frozen Bubble 's first release. The development was started in november 2001 by "ayo", amaury and Guillaume Cottenceau, members of the MandrakeSoft team (Mandriva nowadays). Frozen Bubble is a beautiful game inspired by Puzzle Bobble (published by Taito in 1994 , also called Bust-a-Move). The game has nice graphics and music (from matths alias Matthias). Frozen Bubble level editor for Android Development has stopped in 2008, but Frozen Bubble and its ports still enjoy high popularity, especially on the Linux and  Android  platforms. A Java port also exists. Only the first version is available  for Windows. A French language interview with the makers was recently published on linuxfr.org .

AltDevConf 2012 videos have been released under CC-BY license . None of them seem to be directly related to open source but most should still be relevant and apply to flosgame development. Programming Track The Integrated Influence Architecture – Combining Reactive and Deliberative AI for NPC Control by Luke Dicken Cross Platform Game Development in C# by Matthieu Laban, Philippe Rollin, and Miguel de Icaza Control, Configure, Monitor and View Your Game Engine From the Web by John McCutchan Understanding the Second Generation of Behavior Trees and Preparing for Challenges Beyond by Alex Champandard Real Time Area Lighting – Now and Next by Sam Martin PowerVR Hardware Architecture and Application Performance Guidelines by Gordon MacLauchlan Dynamic Global Illumination by Wolfgang Engel, Tim Martin, and Igor Lobanchikov Education Track Centred for Excellence – The Challenges Inside Abertay’s Games Programmes by Ken Fee Building Better Rubrics Using Game Design by Ian Schreiber ...

Wolfire made an unfinished prototype using the proprietary Unity engine for the private Humble Bundle  Mojam. You can watch thic entertaining, commented timelapse video  to find out more. another video: Mojam Art Overview  Art assets have been released into the public domain ( .zip here ), with a few exceptions mentioned here  (music and sand texture). Blender import of a few .obj files from the .zip for testing Included are 47 .obj 3d models, 41 .png/.tga/.psd images and 7 .wav sounds. If you're interested in the ongoing development of The Broadside Express, follow this thread .

(video) podcast FLOSS Weekly #202 A (video) podcast show called FLOSS Weekly interviewed Crystal Hammer of Stunt Rally about the project in their issue #202 . I only recently discovered the vast spaces of open source and Linux podcasts. If you know of open source games podcasts, please let us know in the comments! :)

A little while ago, Ancient Best dropped the NonCommercial license they were using for art and assets and are now DFSG -free. Facebook announcement about Ancient Beast's license change The game runs in HTML5 and is a turn based strategy in early, active development. It is supposed to run on low-spec computers. Ancient Beast Battle Mock-Up Their 1.4 G repository of concepts, drawings, mockups, audio files and 3d models is impressive:  Ancient Beast Concept Art Ancient Beast Icons More can be seen in the official gallery You can support the project through PayPal, Bitcoin and Flattr here .

A link to some Fosdem Resouces has been already posted here before , but now we have a complete list of available slides and audio and video recordings from the event: Event Slides Audio Video Speaker Xonotic: The road to 1.0 Yes No No Merlijn Hofstra FreedroidRPG: Anatomy of a RPG Yes Yes Yes Arthur Huillet Unknown Horizons: Data-Driven and Component-Based Game-Entities Yes Yes No Thomas Kinnen WorldForge: The Dynamic Data Driven Worlds Yes Yes No Alistair Riddoch Pandora: Mobile Linux Computer with Gaming Gontrols No No No Michael Mrozek Wesnoth: Balancing a Game the Open Source Way Yes Yes No Jeremy Rosen Ogre3d: Getting Started with Game Development Yes Yes No Erik Ogenvik Gluon: Game Creation and Distribution Yes Yes No Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen The Future of Open Web Gaming Yes No No Rob Hawkes

Losing in Gigalomania Gigalomania  [ blog ] is an open source 2D Real Time Strategy game, for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Nokia smartphones (Symbian, Maemo and Meego). The gameplay consists of researching and developing new technology with which to conquer your enemies, from rocks and sticks to nuclear weapons and spaceships. You can advance through ten different ages, from the stone age to the future. There are 28 different maps to play through. CTruck3D CTruck3D  is a simple-looking OpenGL truck simulator. term_CTruck3D There is an ASCII-Art variant called term_CTruck3D . EDIT: What's quite interesting about the game is the marketing(?). Two YouTube accounts seem to be quite excited about the game:  simhgamedev  and  violinperforming .

In case you haven't heard the news already, development on the popular 2D block mining game Terraria has ceased .  A lot of people are disappointed to hear this, since at this point it would appear that a lot of features that people want will never materialize.  What I'm here to talk about today are the inevitable open source clones that will no doubt pop up in Terraria's wake.  There's a power vacuum right now, and it would be nice to see a FOSS game capture the imaginations of a massive audience now left clamoring for developer support.  For the people considering starting up a clone project, here are some things you ought to take into account: First and foremost, don't just make a clone. If you want people to actually play your game in large numbers, you need to avoid the feeling of it being a knock-off.  If you're thinking about naming it OpenTerraria or Freeraria or something like that, stop right now and consider the reasons why an experienced Terraria pla...

video:  OpenArena 0.8.8 - New Neko Model & Pxlfan Map OpenArean 0.8.8 brings  many additions and changes . See some of them below: OpenArena 0.8.8 - hover for info - more images here On a related note: OA's lead dev recently uploaded a Sorceress 3d model that did not make it into the game under GPL2 and CCBY(SA)3: This is a rejected mystical elf sorceress for my game project OpenArena 3.x. It's rejected due to technical (2 surfaces, and too low poly) and anatomical reasons (regarding the hands and feet). The skin is muddy and low quality is well. This was done in 2009-2010. Comes weighted to a standard rigify mesh. She has no actual fingers, her hands are mittens! Might be suitable for a low poly distant camera dungeon crawl. Could even be suitable to produce other characters with in that dungeon crawl. An alternative worse skin is also included. It's on the second UV Texture layer.

Naev  became XDG-compliant on *nix systems. By following the Freedesktop  XDG Base Directory specification . Join the right cause! [edit] Here's a second post on the topic by the Naev developers.[/edit] Examples of non-compliant ~/.placement: .alephone .freeciv .OpenLieroX .allacrost .freeciv-client-rc-2.2 .openttd .ardentryst .frogatto .phlipple .Avoision .frozen-bubble .q3a .chromium-bsu .ivan.conf .redeclipse .civserver_history .IvanSave .renpy .coldest .scavenger .dosbox .minetest .supertux2 .fall-of-imiryn .nikki .teeworlds .feuerteufel.conf .nikki-free-levels .trigger .fife .openarena And here are some good ones: .config/flare .config/inkscape .config/mapeditor.org .config/violetland

Hi folks, My name is Artem (KroArtem in IRC) and I wanted to post an article here almost for a year. Nowadays I have an opportunity to do this. Let me introduce myself: I'm studying at St.Petersburg State University, Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Control Processes, trying to become a programmer and a mathematician :) In my spare time I like to test some linux games, report bugs, give feedback, translate them and so on. Actually this is the way I've met SuperTuxKart developers. Today I want to obtain an interview from them. Firstly, let me remind you what SuperTuxKart is. SuperTuxKart is a kart racing game that features free software mascots, has a cartoony style, includes different game modes and supports multiplayer (split-screen). You can visit STK's site and receive some more information about the game. SuperTuxKart's new track, Blackhill Mansion Secondly, I want to name our beloved developers and contributors: Joerg «hiker» Henrichs, Marianne «Auria» Gagnon,...

Just a small reminder: Don't miss today's  (at 8:00pm CET = UTC/GTM+1 e.g. central European time) grand final of the Xonotic 1v1 tourney ! Check out videos of the semi finals here , and I will probably update this post with the video of the grand final once it is available. Edit2: Congrats to Fisume , who won 3:1 in a pretty exiting match (especially the last two matches were great to watch). Watch this spot for a video of this match. Edit3: Here are the videos .

Hey Freegamers,  My name is Antoine and I’ve been a devotee of this site and the Linux Game Tome for years. Now I have the priviledge to contribute back an article. Thank you qubodup for helping me out with this article. I love open source games, but I have a particular soft spot for those that allow creativity and collaboration from their users. Imagine if there existed an open source, and therefore completely editable, game engine with as much content as Morrowind’s fans have created available for it? As many of you are aware, there are currently fan projects working to extend the life, reach, and functionality of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind far beyond what’s possible using Bethesda’s Construction Set modding tools. Can you guess which screen is rendered by what engine? :) About Morrowind: Morrowind is an enormous proprietary game loved by fans for its atmospheric and immersive world filled with bizarre giant mushrooms, homes built into giant vines, and barren wastelands....

Fosdem Game Dev We already mentioned the FOSDEM 2012 role playing game development talk but recently I found links to more open source game development and game design "devrooms" here . Alistair Riddoch - The Dynamic Data Driven Worlds of WorldForge.mp3 Arthur Huillet - Anatomy of a role playing game.avi Erik Ogenvik - Getting Started With Ogre3d For Game Development.mp3 Jeremy Rosen - Balancing a game - the open source way.mp3 Thomas Kinnen - Data-Driven and Component-Based Game-Entities.mp3 I also recommend "A New OSI for A New Decade" here , which starts with explaining how not to be annoying when advocating freedom.

In yesterdays post qubodup already mentioned AltDevConf, which seems to have attracted a lot of interesting presentations. Another one I noticed was about using Mono/C# for game development; see the summary on Phoronix here or get the slides here . I guess a video should be available at some point too. But I know that Mono/C# is a controversial topic ( see also the comments for the linked article ) so fire away in our comment section about how you feel about using it for FOSS game development ;) Personally I see no reason why it should be preferred over Java or Python, but plenty against using it... but the slides might convince you otherwise ;) However the main reason why I posted about Mono games was to have a nice intro to this really awesome looking Train simulator, called openBVE , which is also written in C#: OpenBVE You can find a nice overview in how far openBVE has surpassed its spiritual successor BVE over here (link also includes some more nice screenshots). Licensing seem...

Arthur Huillet of Freedroid talked about RPG development at FOSDEM 2012: video:  FOSDEM 2012 - Arthur Huillet - Anatomy of a role playing game In two and a half hours, the online #AltDevConf starts. There seems to be no way to attend live unless you use Windows or OS X but the talks will be recorded and made available online later. There will be 25 talks from the range of game programming, education, design and production. AltDevConf is an online community-driven conference... We aim provide free access to a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts, and to create a space where bright and innovative voices can be heard.

Donations: Commercial use of Free Software and Libre Art Kickstarter for Game Dev I'm sure you heard the amazing  Kickstarter news  ;) Dusted, author of Wizznic!  shared a short thought about the news I'm actually talking about. FOSS Games and Donations Now The FLARE RPG project page now has a PayPal donation button. 0A.D. uses  Pledgie  for funding. There is a list of FOSS projects that accept BitCoin  here  and a more general list  here . OGA and Kickstarter Thoughts OpenGameArt founder and admin Bart K, shared that he is considering Kickstarter, but could use some more inspiration about what rewards could be given to high pledge-givers. OGA/CC/FSF Game Dev Contest Plan There's also a game dev contest in the works, which will be organized this summer by Creative Commons, Free Software Foundation and OpenGameArt. The details are still getting ironed out. Donations on Free Gamer By the way: here on FreeGamer, we have Flattr ...

Justin Nichol finished the Kickstarter-crowd-funded portrait marathon! The art has been uploaded here to OpenGameArt. Back in December 2010, the project was funded with USD 2,567 (of at least USD 1,500) to make 30 portraits. Now all 30 portraits of the backers that sent him model photos have been finished. The remaining five backers have been asked to get in contact with the artist. Best via Kickstarter. Kickstarter will take a fee of USD 128.35 (5%). Justin has a blog  you can follow.