Gaming Daily A-Z

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 ...

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*

Another game whose development appeared to have stagnated was Glest . This 3D RTS was widely acclaimed as a leading open source game when it came out, with high quality graphics and solid gameplay. Although it lacked features, it seemed like the ideal platform to build a game that had depth as well as eye candy. Sadly development just seemed to stop but it looks like it's restarting, with the release of Glest 2.1-rc1 . Don't expect anything spectacular with this release but hopefully it's the start of a return of Glest development. However a game that has shown very nice steady development activity (something that always makes me happy) is VDrift . And a new release is imminent . With a host of new features that really add to the gameplay, this release... well, I'll let their lead developer 'thelusiv' explain: I'm pretty excited about the release...this will be our first in almost five months, and not only fixes a ton of problems but also adds lots of ...

Well, well... my prayers are being answered. There is an open source Dungeon Keeper clone inspired game. Dungeon Digger has just 1 week ago had it's inaugral release. The author seems really eager (as happens during the inception of most OSS games) but the progress has been rapid enough to already attract a small community so hopefully it will reach a critical mass of developers if it gets enough attention. Still there is a lot to do before it is a playable game but patience is a virtue. Thanks go to Ben Schram for pointing me in the direction of Dungeon Digger. One game that I enjoyed toying with this week was the Ghouls & Ghosts Remake (that's a Freshmeat link on purpose). It brought back memories of nights spent sleeping over at friends houses as a kid and racing through Super Nintendo titles. However it is currently fiendishly hard. I'd like to see a bit of game balancing and also usage of Scale2x or another similar technique for improving the [resoluti...