Gaming Daily A-Z

A couple of long standing open source game projects have received significant updates. OpenDungeons , an open source dungeon management game, has seen release 0.6 make it out the door. Release highlights from the changelog : New spell logic with cooldown, targets and cost management Fancy new spells: Heal, Explosion and Haste Particle effects! Reworked library logic and made research order configurable New creature overlays that show the creatures' mood Customisable creature sound effects! Doors to better block enemies and macromanage allies In-game settings menu support! New claimed walls graphics and various other graphical improvements New minimap camera with real-time rendering Dedicated server support with command-line parameters There's plenty of screenshots in the announcement on the frontpage of the OpenDungeons website (but no direct link for the announcement, frustratingly).     Explosions! Spells! The research tree The project has some very regular contributors...

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...

I mentioned this nice new project that appeared on our forums some time ago already, and while the promised source-code isn't available as of yet, a new and quite good looking video was recently posted: Now as you can see, it shares quite a lot of graphics with OpenDungeons , which is not completely dead either, but there is at least some discussion to "jump ship" as AgentKeeper is progressing much quicker (with it being a University supported project). You can follow AgentKeepers progress here if you fancy some nice dungeon management simulator ;) P.S.: Stay tuned for an new version of Red Eclipse early next week .

Ok, we don't normally do these kind of recruitment posts (don't send us emails about that!), but for the following two FOSS game gems we will make an exception (and it is officially sanctioned by our boss Charlie ;) ). So which ones do I mean? Well these: Link to homepage ; example video Link to homepage ; example video In recent months both games have stalled in development and people are starting to become quite pessimistic about the future ( 1 , 2 ). Strangely enough (for typical FOSS projects) it is not the artists who lack (there is actually an active group of contributors for both games, who are eager to see their artwork in the game; examples: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , all CC-by-SA licensed) but a severe lack of programmers. An example of not yet implemented OD graphics So how can you help out and dig into the code, and why am I posting about both games the same time? Well both are actually build on a somewhat similar base, utilizing OGRE3D for graphics and CEGUI for the GU...

Hello, I am one of the OpenDungeons (OD) developers and I wrote this blog post for FreeGamer. I bet you're all very excited about whats been going on lately, and I can assure you that a lot of stuff have been made for OD. We have new music for you to enjoy while annihilating your foes, we've got new concept art for the Human and Undead faction, a new forge and a completely new tile set. We have also begun working on the AI and a XML specification for creature stats. Music and trailer Recently timong join the forum and asked about some musical tasks to perform. He started working on a main theme for the game and came up with this :) While he was at it he also made a nice trailer for us which you can find in the about page or watch it below: New concept art We have also received some very nice concept art from the OpenGameArt competition for the Undead faction we got art for these creepy characters: Necromancer Bone Golem and for the Human faction we got art for these nob...

Couldn't really think of a fitting headline, but here is the bunch of randomly collected news from the FOSS gaming realm: First of all, OpenDungeons finally got a nice website and a blog (as mentioned previously). And in collaboration with OpenGameArt , the kicked off their art competitions again . SummoningWars also got a new website recently, and they have also released version 0.55 a few days ago. New Summoning Wars GUI Last but not least, the pledgie donation drive for 0 A.D. seemed to have payed off to some extend, so one of the main developers is now working full time on the game for one month. See here for his first report on things newly implemented (most notable a save-game feature). But... you can still donate to keep him motivated longer ;)

Yes, big summer hole here in FG... luckily we get at least some guest posts from Bart (aka the OpenGameArt founder). So, maybe today we just make a small summery of recent news that popped up in our Freegamedev forums (boring for the forum regulars I know :p ): First of all (as we mention that project way to little), find a release candidate of the latest SuperTuxKart version in this thread . In our showcase forum you can also find a nice (but low-fi) turn based strategy game called Strategic Initiative , which is made by the same guy who was also behind the classic Empire (well I didn't know it before ;) ). Also don't miss the updates on The Legend of Edgar . Back in the section of out hosted projects, the user Skorpio has been showcasing some nice Mechs for Linwarrior3D lately, which are now being integrated into the game: At the Red Eclipse forums an interesting collaboration project to make a mod loosely based on Team Fortress (classic?) recently showed up, with the us...

OpenDungeons also jumped on the release wagon, with 0.4.8 . This adds an actual menu system, a new gui, working traps, and normal maps. The team needs more modelers to add to the already large bestiary, there's a lot of faction creatures still unimplemented. Also, a shoutout to Venn from LinuxGameCast for contributing voice acting snippets

OpenDungeons finally released version 0.4.7 of their Dungeon-Keeper like game, now with a new UI, better team colors, and many more animations. Very exciting to see the project develop! Download the new release here   The Peragro Tempus project also kindly enabled DAMN asset managing for the OpenDungeon's media repo, which could really help with getting artists to contribute in the future (go to the DAMN link, then browse, and you should see the OD assets).

OpenDungeons , a long-time Freegamedev project has been through a lot of changes since it started on the Freegamedev forums , going through a lead-dev swap and a major re-write. In the years since we last mentioned them, they've actually produced something playable: lots of new code and artwork has been contributed by a small but dedicated team of contributors and it has been shaping up to be an exemplary FOSS game. There's still lots of work that needs doing though: loads of creatures that need concept art, models and scripting, room tiles that need textures and models, and game design work that needs finalizing. There's a lot of ideas floating around on the forums that need art and implementation With all the work that's gone into the project, they're busy readying up another release. Unfortunately they've had a bit of trouble with ubuntu/debian packaging (and linux packaging in general), so if anyone out there would like to give them a hand, it would really b...

Surt's goblin Surt contributed the first model to OpenDungeons (and it looks good!) The model also was quickly incorporated by Timong into jClassicRPG . Meanwhile, JackyJ (creator of the cool 3D platform-marble and physics game irrlamb ) released the first version of Choria , which seems to be a parody of MMORPGs. It reminds me of the funny (though unfree) Progress Quest . Word War vi has reached release 0.19! Controls are fine now and the side-scrolling arcade is lots of fun to play. It might be the first game with Xbox 360 controller rumble effects on Linux! RubyWeekend #2 is happening this weekend. I'll be helping kiba with art stuffs. It's gonna be fuun! As you might have figured, the rules are to use ruby inside the time span of the weekend to create a game. :) The 3D Ultima Online client remake Iris 2 scored first price (best project) at dusmania (german indie games ...party :) ). lalalove at dusmania Part of the dusmania was a overnight games creation co...

Nebula from FreeOrion So let's see... what's going on in the open source gaming world today? On the forum of FreeOrion are a bunch of awesome looking nebulae . Nice desktop backgrounds and even nicer galaxy view backgrounds! I started a small smiley making competition for LÖVE . You can win a copy of a print version of my favorite web comic! OpenDungeons' map editor OpenDungeons (to be renamed) has been started and a forum was created on the FreeGameDev.net forums. "Another Dungeon Keeper clone!" you say? Well, the thing is that Dungeon Digger 's development kind of stagnated... And the other thing is that Dungeon Keeper is/was pretty awesome... So far, the game features a simple level editor (which I slightly fell in love with already - just think of the possibilities!) and some neat monsters are preparing for their way into the project's CVS ! There have been multiple (mostly bugfixing) releases of the action platform game Blob Wars : Blob And Co...