Gaming Daily A-Z

Stunt Rally 2.4 ... talk about feature creep, but I am not complaining ;) See more pictures of the release here , and don't forget to give some feedback on our forums . Oh and you can now browse cars and tracks online.

In my never ending search for a FOSS game engine that is usable for game modding with out having to reinvent the wheel (nor requiring to be a C++ code master) & having decent tools for content creation (because I am spoiled and think that is a minimum requirement for a game engine) I have become quite disillusioned lately. That is because *spoiler alert* sadly there is none so far... but a few are close luckily. The usual contenders for 3D action games are your mixed assortment of idTech based engines, most notably ioQuake3 . There are a few upcoming contenders like Unvanquished's Daemon engine (which is a mix of ET:Wolf, ioQuake3 and Xreal) and a yet to emerge idTech4 based champion (my uninformed guess is that it will be dhewm3 ). But all of them lack a decent game-play scripting function. On the other side of the idTech spectrum, there is the idTech1 based granddaddy DarkPlaces , which while having advanced to an quite impressive feature set, suffers a quite a bit from its...

Google's Summer of Code , is an annual sponsorship of programmers to improve selected open-source programs (or games :D ). This year, quite a few interesting FOSS game projects got accepted (again) and one being our very own friends of the SuperTuxKart project. Read more about their role as a mentoring organization here . So how about applying as a participant yourself and helping out this great FOSS game? You can also browse other accepted mentoring projects here , if SuperTuxKart isn't your thing. Other notable FOSS game (engine) projects accepted are: Battle for Wesnoth WorldForge (Hosting also Ryzom Core & CEGUI) Crystal Space OGRE3D Blender 3D Nice summer of coding ahead :)

So my recent rant resulted in a lively discussion about ARPGs, but sadly not really in any contributions or new contributors for Summoning Wars so far... but maybe that was too much to hope for ;) Anyways, another project I mentioned was just recently updated: Lips of Suna is now available as Version 0.6 ( release notes on our forums ) and this release marks the first official release with OGRE3D as the rendering engine. In my rant I dissed that rendering engine a bit due to the lack of good content creation tools (yes I know, not their focus or intention), but at least here it seems to have been put to a good use. In somewhat unrelated news, there is also a new version of OpenMW , which is continuing at their current fast pace to reimplement that well known RPG. Change-log can be also found in our forums .

Today I got a small rant: So there are a few really prominent types of games which ought to have their FOSS representatives, right? Ok, well a few like epic story driven single-player games will probably never show up due to inherent problems to develop such games through the FOSS method, but besides that lets have a look what we got: Good and playable FOSS multi-player FPS games under active development?  Check! ( Xonotic , RedEclipse and several other with un-free media) Good and playable FOSS RTS games under active development? Check! ( 0 A.D. , MegaGlest , Warzone2100 , Spring mods etc.) Good and playable FOSS racing games under active development? Hmm... not an expert, but I guess Speed Dreams and Stunt Rally apply. Flight simulators, turn based strategy? Check: Flightgear ! Check: Battle for Wesnoth ! Action RPGs like Diablo or Torchlight? Hmmm??? Ok... sure you will find some other genres (Mechsims, realistic tactical FPS etc.) which also lack a much played/far into deve...

Matt Raykowski , aka sfb, is a community herder for the Ryzom Core project and Summer of Code mentor. Some people may not be familiar with Google's Summer of Code. Annually Google hosts two programs: Summer of Code and Code In. Google Code In (aka GCI) is a contest for 13-18 year olds to engage them in open source that features a variety of tasks and projects for them to complete for points. Google Summer of Code (aka SoC or GSoC) is a program to encourage college students to participate in open source development. It is a 3 month long project that pays USD$2500 per evaluation period - there is a mid-term and final evaluation. You can find a detailed timeline on their site and a complete list of organizations . The student application period begins on March 26th, 2012 and ends on April 6th, 2012. The actual programming portion of the project is between May 21st, 2012 and August 20th, 2012. In years past Google hasn't given a lot of love to open source games in its Summer of ...

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

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.

Possible Hardwar main menu scene Hardwar is a long-term project to remake the 1998 Hardwar - a science fiction flight simulation game. There have been two recent changes: The code hosting switched from Launchpad's bazaar to GitHub . The in-game editor was dropped and instead Ogitor will be used. While in-game editing is awesome, I'm glad that a general tool is being used and time is being saved. Ogitor 0.3 Ogitor is a Plug-In based WYSIWYG editor environment for OGRE. OGRE is on a hunt for illogic in its API as a preparation for releasing 1.8 and every coder is invited !

There's a retrospective of 2010 post on OGRE's blog. Here are some interesting FOSS projects they mentioned: Project Name Type License Description Gorilla Library     MIT GUI library Hovercraft Game GPL* Racing *Depends on non-free fmod, havok and zoidcom Island Hopping       Game WTFPL*     Platformer *Depends on non-free irrklang MOGRE Library MIT Bindings for .NET OgreKinect Library MIT Input library for Kinect OgreProcedural Library MIT Procedural geometry library OpenSpace3D Tool LGPL* Scene Editor *Depends (?) on non-free newton physics QuickGUI Library LGPL GUI library Spacescape Tool MIT Create space skyboxes with stars and nebulas Zen Engine Library ZLib 3D game engine client framework Spacescape running in Wine I...

Crystal Space 1.4 is out. Features include improved animations ("integrating vertex based animation with skeletal animation") and terrain ("improves rendering and handling of large outdoor areas"), OpenAL for sound and an internationalization plug-in. Engine screenshots are very informative. This is Panda3D by the way. Panda3D has a prettier website, it released version 1.7.0 and apparently has a web-plug in . The new version makes it easier to crash the computer, but also gives a performance boost - with the magic of ' pointer textures '. I have a little crush on Panda3D, because it gives access to 3D and audio with no complicated setting up through a scripting language (Python). On the other hand it requires 3D models to be in its own format and I find converting not very convenient. For example there have been problems importing animations into Radakan . OGRE mascot Ogre has a mascot , and it might even become freely licensed, somebody just needs to c...

OGRE 1.6.0 aka Shoggoth is the newest version of the acclaimed 3D engine. I don't understand anything that's on the changelog , but it obviously goes beyond bugfixing and tweaking. :) There are no recent pre-compiled packages available, so the source way is the way to go, for now. The Infinity Engine's clone GemRB had some DONE s added to it's TODO , when version 0.3.1 was released a month ago. OpenMW , an OGRE-based engine for TES3 's game data, is now 0.5-versioned. Considering that the project started in this year's june, this number is quite impressive! Does this mean that we will have a final version of OpenMW by the start of 2009's summer? :D However, animations, interaction and user interface are not yet implemented. Also: check out these videos that show the progress of the engine so far. cocos2d-iphone is yet another LGPL-ed game framework and you can probably guess the platform it's designed for :). However, freedom freaks will argue t...

Narrator: On first sight it looks like the commercial online role-playing game Ultima Online. On the second the viewer might spot one or another change. Maybe even something special, which doesn't even exist in the original game. This game is named Iris 2, built on top of Ultima Online and is freely available online. It was developed by hobby game developers. It's their hobby, just like others knit pullovers in the evening. Florian Fischer and Iwan Gabovitch develop games in their free time. What's the thrill of developing games on your own? Florian: It's just fun to be creative and to express this creativity. Games are super for that. Iwan: First I stopped playing commercial games and started searching for new, interesting games. I found many freeware games and then came across the open source scene, where also games get developed, where it's easy to contribute, without having to get involved too much. Narrator: Most developers are not professionals but they ha...

The early bird has to wait for the worm. And when he wanders off a bit bored, he gets back to find some other bird has poached the worm and his morning was fruitless. So, there you have it, you may as well lie in. There's an update to Battle for Antargis , version 0.2.1.5 which is labelled a "developer release". The build system has been overhauled so the game should be easier to build. There have been improvements to the game too and the next version should be the first Antargis release to feature a storyline. I really like this project, Godrin is creating an entirely original game that doesn't conform to any particular standard mold. Bos Wars pre2.5 is available for download. Improved graphics with beautiful particle explosions, new maps, and bug fixes. Sounds like this project is galvanising now that the developers don't have to focus on separate Stratagus releases. Nimuh 1.0 , "searching for the andalusian treasure". Interesting looking iso...

Did I not mention this Sauerbraten update ? I don't recall doing so, and I swear it was not a thread in their forum at the weekend despite being listed as posted on the 12th June. Anyway... it fixes a whole lot of bugs, adds graphical enhancements, and cleans up scripting support a little. Probably more of an update for people making mods/games with Sauer than players but, shucks, I love this project. Embarrassingly this was a 2006 release... *oops* There's the possibility of a StarShip Troopers: Last Defense , the Glest mod, becoming available for FreeBSD . The Java Classic RPG project has posted a snapshot for anybody who wants to play with it in it's very early stages of development. Work continues at an impressively frantic pace , soldiering away on features. Hopefully a modeller or two can start contributing to the project to make the artwork updates as impressive as those to the codebase. I keep pestering the Vega Strike team to make a new release. I, and ...

Welcome to post number 100 on Free Gamer. Slowly I am finding out how to push blogger to it's limits. The list is starting to look much better, now that the layout is getting there. The tedious work of populating it with real information is looming. Once that is done, several more mini-lists will sprout up. Anyway, back to the daily grind of talking about Free Software games. It's a hard knock life, it is. ;-) Starting with Freeciv , which saw 2.1beta4 released ( download ) over the weekend. (Not sure how I missed that yesterday.) It fixes many crashes so hopefully should be a lot more stable than 2.1beta3 which, in my experience, was fairly ropey. Initial feedback seems to be pretty good. I created some Ubuntu packages for Freeciv-2.1beta4 . I felt like doing a good deed for the day, or something like that. Beyond The Red Line Battlestar Galactica: Beyond The Red Line is a game being developed by fans for fans of the series and is based on a modified version of the...

If you thought yesterday's news was big, Free Gamer comes with an equally impressive post for today! Angels Fall First The prolific artist Strangelet has not been inactive, and has made a special request of the Vega Strike community. Angels Fall First started out life as a Homeworld 2 mod. There is a plan for a UT2007 release in the future but the AFF team are looking for an official game engine to embrace. The models are spectacular and, with work on an impressive VS 0.5 release progressing at a steady pace this, this could be type mod to really compliment VS and really make waves in gaming circles. The artwork is nothing short of A-grade commercial quality. Anyway, people have volunteered to assist the VS:AFF mod, so it is a case of watch that space (pun intended).

There's a storm of comotion in the TA:Spring community after the lead developers announced intentions to rewrite the entire Spring engine stating unclean code and a desire to utilise external libraries like OGRE to both reduce the codebase size and introduce new features already expertly handled by said libraries. The two major debating points were the critical " what about the modders " and the ever-so-important " what name should we give the not-started barely-planned mod ". In all seriousness, the modders are the essence of the playing community and really make TA:Spring the eye catching open source project as it is - without them it would just be an engine for commercial content. They give the project the massive momentum it currently enjoys and the developers really need to listen to their concerns, which fortunately it appears they are doing. Some of the highlights of the proposed rewrite are dynamic lighting, inbuilt C# scripting, and the engine bein...

There is a release imminent for Mars: Land of No Mercy , which got it's own .org domain name recently. This isometric strategy mech game is developing at a steady pace and sees version 0.1.2 released next week. New Ecksdee Level The next version of Ecksdee is shaping up nicely. There's some preview screenshots of a new level for the next version (0.0.9) one of which can be seen here. There's another level in development which is more ambitious and targeted for the 0.1 release of Ecksdee. The Ecksdee developers will be at the Crystal Space conference this weekend in Aachen, Germany. An Ecksdee talk should take place on Sunday at 1pm local time. There's another stunt-like Free game on the horizon: Sturmbahnfahrer . The game describes itself as, "Simulated obstacle course for automobiles." As such, the gameplay is oriented around using physics to complete the levels rather than racing. There's a curious new freeware game based on OGRE . The Bl...

No, Free Gamer has not met a premature demise! I am merely temporarily really, really busy . Still, there were a few notable releases in the last week. ScummVM hit version 0.9.0 which brings GUI enhancements and support for [at least] two [new] games. Legends jumped 0.0.0.1 versions to 0.4.1.40, and you should see the changelog . I've already ranted about discussed versioning debacles issues. Warsow bumped out another release and really seems to be picking up momentum both as a game and a community. They have started up a development blog . This is a great idea and it would be cool for every major Free game to have one; then we can have Free Game Planet! I spotted yet another 3d engine on Freshmeat : Nelit2 . Information is sparse but the screenshots show off some fancy features. It has a long way to go to compete with the heavyweights of this division like OGRE and Crystal Space . I also saw Carworld as well. It looks like it could be a very cool driving simulator...