Gaming Daily A-Z

I have to admit that we are a bit slow on reporting the news on FOSS gaming projects with we actually host ourselves via the freegamedev.net forums . Valyria Tear is sadly no exception, and their new 0.6.0 release has been out a few days already. Sorry to all whom this may concern. For those not in the loop, Valyria Tear is based on the engine of Hero of Allacrost and aims to be an all FOSS jRPG. To give you a better idea of the game-play, here is a (slightly older) cool video of it done by some Linux enthusiasts: (Thanks also to Rootgamer who reminded me of this news ). If you like the new release, give them some praise on our forums !

Free the Monsters!  is a collaborative Indiegogo campaign to create and share five fantasy creature 3d models under CC-BY-SA 3.0 5 3d models and 10 works of concept art will be released if the goal of USD5000 is reached. Perks include t-shirts and voting rights. Voting will be based on short creature descriptions. The top 10 will be turned into concept art and of those, the top 5 will be turned into 3d models. Two additional creature concepts and models for each additional USD2000 will be produced. Justin Nichol will be creating the concept art. You can find his past contributions to the free and open pool of game art on his OpenGameArt profile page . Jonathan Williamson  - partner at CG Cookie (aka Blender Cookie) - will be creating the 3d models.

A 15 minutes long video profile of Stephen Cameron was published on YouTube by Jack Younger - hacker (presumed) at  TX/RX Labs . Stephen Cameron Video Profile The video includes an interview of Cameron's about his latest project Space Nerds in Space including inspiration and actual authentic gameplay video footage of the crew (highlights at 08:30). Video thumbnails Some of  Word War Vi 's history also is covered in the video (4:00). Do I need to spell it out? Press that like button if you can! :) Source: Announcement on the FreeGameDev forums

This is a guest post by Julien Jorge, developer, artist and musician behind the open source indie games Plee the Bear and Andy's Super Great Park, here to present the fundraising campaign he launched for the former. Some years ago, with the help of three of my friends and anonymous people on the web, I have created Plee the Bear , a great platformer in which you play an angry bear whose son has been kidnapped by god. Here is a guy hard to brave! You sure will jump in this amazing journey to find and rescue your son. Because you want to rescue him, don't you? Or to slap him? Maybe both…. The game was a spare time project for a long time, then we recently decided to create a real, full, complete, fun and original version out of the prototype. We have thus created our company, Stuffomatic , published a first game and now we are launching a fundraising campaign for Plee the Bear ! The prototypes of the game have always been released for Windows and Linux as free software, availabl...

Yes, it looks like the developers behind the long running idTech2 based AlienArena are going make a more slower paced & 'tactical' spin-off and try to sell it. As before the engine will stay open-source (GPLv2), but the assets for the spin-off will stop being free-as-in-beer. Here is the official launch-trailer of the new update and the alpha demo: Beside the new game-play mode, they have also finally updated the menu, and the new version of it is rather spiffy. You can see it in action and more of the regular game-play in this recently uploaded random YouTube vid ( warning: goofy British accents and profanity ). GamingOnLinux also recently had a small preview-article . Last but not least (while we are on the topic of idTech2 based games), a small game-developer's advertisement of a new project currently unfolding in our forums . If you know your way around Quake(2) based engines and/or pixelish art, please join the effort ;)

There were some game development related events at Flock Fedora Contributor Conference, August 2013 in lovely Charleston, SC, US. Trigger Rally Map Workshop  So far my contributions to Fedora were merely a few wiki edits but my conference proposals were well-received. Free Art Game Making presentation slide I ended up speaking about making games using free art and leading a Trigger Rally level building workshop  ( video ). Fedora badges At the conference, I learned about  Fedora's badge program  and that it is connected to Mozilla Open Badges . Lemonade Stand (OLPC) Sugar "activity" Another discovery:  Lemonade Stand , which is an educational game developed by people from FOSS@RIT , who work on bringing Mozilla Open Badges to the OLPC . Game development appears to be getting more and more of a foot in the door at free software conferences, so I encourage people working on open games to apply as speakers at conferences, talking about technical and social aspe...

Pretty interesting news from 0 A.D. today: They are having a Indigogo crowd-funding campaign . Note that this is a flexible funding campaign, so even if they don't reach their goals all money donated will go to the project. They also released a new Alpha version , codenamed Naukratis. Change-log would be too long to list here (which I consider a good thing ;) ), but here is a picture of some high-quality newly added building models: New blacksmith buildings So check out the new version and please consider donating to this top of the crop FOSS game project.

Or something like that... because as much as I think FOSS games should cater to the other ermm... 2nd out of three(?) gender, I am not sure if this is meant ironic or not (description of the game Glamour ): You are Maddeline, a young princess just turned 16. Now you're old enough to attend the royal balls and your fairy godmother will help you get ready for the most exciting dances. Watch out your way while walking around this amazing city full of filthy foes. They may harm your look. You wouldn't like to reach the ball all covered with dirt. Visit the Make-up, Shoe, Dress and Accessory Castle to find the most beautiful outfits and win the Prince Charming heart. At least I see relatively little pink on that screen-shot... Source-code is available here for those that wonder... *stalkes slowly away* But -BAM-... here is something clearly more manly: Unvanquished Alpha 19 -BAM- check the alpha 19 changelog -BAM- Oh and the soon to released AlienArena Tactical also sound l...