Gaming Daily A-Z

I'm a big advocate of the phrase, "Release Early, Release Often." I think it is by far the best way to keep or gain community interest in a project. Of course, that simple phrase doesn't quite sum up what you actually must do - simply uploading a release and announcing it on your mailing list is unlikely to attract interest. For example, who knew about Lincity-NG 2.9beta in lieu of the intended Lincity-NG 3.0 ? Lincity-NG is in a bit of a mini-crisis. A victim of the shutdown of the Berlios developer services , all the web material is in a bit of a mess. Its home page is now on fedorahosted.org but still links back to the defunct Berlios page. There are entries on Google Code and Github that are up to date with the source, as well as an imported Sourceforge project * which is the only place you can currently find the beta , however all are unofficial / back up for now. (* Not to be confused with this redundant redundant project ) Another game project which suffer...

Update: brain malfunction. I first posted 2.7.0, then 2.7.7b, but the correct _stable_ version of Egoboo is 2.7.0b and the development version is 2.7.7, got it? =/ Thanks for the pointer, maststef A new stable Egoboo 2.7.0 2.7.7b 2.7.0 wraps up several months of development and bug fixing. This project has really come back to life over the course of 2008. It is very well tested with a lengthy changelog . If I had make a criticism, it would be that Egoboo really looks dated these days and perhaps they could renew focus on nicer textures and more detailed models - perhaps aspiring to be a bit closer to SoulFu in quality - but graphics do not a good game make. It's great to see the project successfully revived from a lifeless piece of bitrot that it had become a few years go. Now it's a pretty smooth looking experience. Check out this (slightly rambly) video review: Unknown Horizons 2009.1 was released several days ago. It now resembles a game, you can build a city, ...

The somewhat stop-start development of the various Tux Racer projects continues, but it looks hopeful that the latest incarnation of the iconic downhill penguin racer will not disappear like its predecessors. Extreme Tux Racer has finally released an updated 0.5 beta (Windows, Ubuntu, source for other Linuxi) after several months of inactivity. It's getting a bit of optimization love after I (yes, me, important mega me) unleashed my wrath helped a new developer by putting him in his place realise that ETR is not too detailed, as he incorrectly surmised , but ratyher suffers from some poorly implemented features that could be done a lot more quickly. Amazingly, I was right. :-) I'm always right and I will rule the universe soon! At least, once I've been to the doctor about this over-active procrastination gland of mine. Smokin' Guns , a total conversion of Quake 3 to recreate the feel of the Wild West is probably undermentioned here, although the graphics are star...

Mystery semi-solved. Whilst the domain appears gone, the Open Racer forum and wiki are still online although just a bit (a really big bit) harder to find. Oh and it's still not open source, which is kinda lame. Meanwhile check out a racing game that is good and exists and Free Software. Like TORCS (solid game, upcoming 1.3.1 release), or Ultimate Stunts (freeform driving fun), or VDrift (potential amazing). There are a few others, but I'd recommend those 3 first. What's your favourite Free Software driving game? Curiously, also, Open Racer was the name of a dead fork of Tux Racer, which now lives on as Extreme Tux Racer , which itself was a fork of PlanetPenguin Racer , also a dead fork Tux Racer. Fork that. You may be forgiven for thinking that the Tux Racer project is cursed, but fortunately the ETR guys are doing a bit better and the game has landed in Ubuntu. A new physics implementation is in progress, and 0.5 should be around sooner rather than later. S...

Well, I was fighting with myself not to post twice in a single day, but I have so much good stuff to post and the last post was simply a rant so it's OK! Topically, Extreme Tux Racer 0.4 has been released, bringing better graphics, a cleaner slicker ui, all new courses and more! You can find download information on the site. No new screenshots on the site yet though. I can't believe I've not seen this game mentioned anywhere else. (Who maintains the tome these days?! It doesn't even have an ETR entry!!!) ETCE XreaL ETCE (full name yet to be decided) is an already-underway project to create a successor to the popular (and proprietary) game Enemy Territory: Castle Wolfenstein. They have [wisely] chosen Sauerbraten as the base for the game. They have a forum , development screenshots , and buckets of enthusiasm. Could the gameplay of one of the most popular online FPS games of all time soon be found in a Free Software game? Let's hope so! Paintown is an a...

Extreme Tux Racer The team over at Extreme Tux Racer - the latest fork to take on the Tux Racer continuation mantle - have made their inaugral release. It's still a bedding-in period with no real major updates other than a new campaign (cup?) but hopefully it will signal the start of a new lease of life for development of a popular open source franchise. FreeLords , the project cloning Warlords, have made their first release since changing to Java as their programming language of choice. No more dependencies (except Java, of course), automatic portability, and the promise of network play, all bode well for the future but this snapshot release isn't playable yet. However it seems their time machine works well since these announcements are from 2008 - if they have a time machine then this game is sure to succeed. LordsAWar , a fork of discontinued FreeLords C++ codebase, has hit version 0.0.3. Whilst that sounds very small I think it's not really a reflection on the comp...