Gaming Daily A-Z

Some of you might remember previous coverage of Solarus, the Free Software Zelda-like ARPG engine that comes with its own complete game creation suite and a pretty impressive palette of Zelda fan games already available under its wing. As of last December, version 1.6 has been released, and while the changes under the hood are too many to number (check the full announcement and changelog here ), it is worth highlighting the package now includes a more varied amount of libre tilesets, meaning developers now have available a wider choice of default non-proprietary graphics to use on their own creations. While the community is still very much focused around Zelda fan-games and their respective copyrighted graphics, this is an important first step to attract more developers and spark future libre game projects. The Ocean's Heart tileset, now part of the Solarus package. One such project is Ocean's Heart , the brainchild of Solarus community member Max Mraz. The game follows a game...

I tend to focus a bit on the 3D side of things, but the recently open-sourced Torque2D (note the "2") engine is pretty cool too: And in fact it got a whole lot better in the last couple of weeks with it being ported to Linux , Android and your browser (through Mozilla's emscripten ). So if you are thinking about developing an open-source 2D game targeting multiple platforms, Torque2D has just became a serious contender.

Not only from the clutches of Ganondorf, but also from the dominion of proprietary software. All thanks to the magnificent Solarus Engine , a GPLed , SDL-based , 2D action RPG engine. This amazing project aims to provide a stable and easily customizable platform for users to create their own Zelda-like games, and so far, I must say, I am darn impressed by what I've seen. The engine already has two incredible launching titles, named The Legend of Zelda: Mystery of Solarus DX , and a parody of the former, Mystery of Solarus XD . Both are true love letters to the classic SNES RPG, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past , and amazing and enjoyable games on their own. Mystery of Solarus DX But hark, the mere words of a mortal make no justice to the grandiosity of this undertaking. Sheathe thy sword, get thy green cap and ready yourself to adventure! You can start by marching straight to the Solarus download section , or, if your intentions are more creative, you can check the various s...

After an agonizingly long wait, I am happy to report that a new official release of the premier FOSS arena FPS Xonotic is available to the masses. Here is a nice (but slightly older) game-play video for those not having played Xonotic yet: Changes are quite extensive compared to the last official release... most notably an extensive update the the CTF mode , some neat additional features for competitive gaming and an assortment of great new maps. New maps in Xonotic 0.7 On the technical side of things, the engine DarkPlaces got quite a few performance improvements (mainly due to the fact that the creator now works at Valve software and thus has direct access to Nvidia's and AMD's graphics hardware divisions) and that an all new script compiler is now in use. That it runs on SDL 2.0 might also increase it's usability a lot for some. There are also finally an animation bending feature for the player-models and creation of new characters has never been easier now that the i...

Bushido Blocks is a puzzle game for Android under GPL license,  inspired by block-bashing games such as Bejeweled, Diamond Dash and Tap Blox. Bushido Blocks Screenshots Tap matches of three or more blocks to slice them with your katana. The more blocks you can slice in one go, the more time you gain on the clock. Special blocks eliminate whole rows of blocks but don't give you any extra time, so use them wisely. Links: GitHub project Bushido Blocks on Google Play Music (CC-BY-SA 3.0) Code License : GPL Content License : Unknown

Video: Erebus - Open Source RPG for Android, Linux and Symbian Erebus is a hack & slash role-playing game under heavy development, yet playable with currently three missions. Features: Classic point-n-click style RPG, with dungeons to explore, enemies to fight, NPCs to talk to, sub-quests to complete, scenery to interact with, weapons, treasure and other items to find. Also supports Rogue-like keyboard controls. Multiple quests (currently three, more will be added as development progresses!) Choice of starting characters (currently Barbarian, Elf, Halfling, Ranger, Warrior). Start straight into the action - none of this "For your first quest, please find your next door neighbour's pet cat". Vector-based world rather than tile-based - so items/scenery can be placed in any position, or aligned in any direction. 2D animated graphics, with zoom in/out, and lighting effects. Completely free and Open Source - no ads, unlike many free Android apps. User interface optimised ...

Physica screenshots Let's play Physica - a hard casual platformer game played on Linux Physica is a very simple casual platformer game where the goal is to drive a square through game levels from its starting position to his goal, avoiding hazards and without falling down. SkyRiot screens SkyRiot is available for free for Android on Google Play  and was released under open source and free content licenses on SourceForge.net [ forum post ]. SkyRiot is a 2D flying shooting platform action game for Android devices. Fly a hoverboard and use an assortment of weaponry as you, an anarchist, single-handedly wage war against a totalitarian regime. Full 360-degree aiming along with total freedom of movement will keep you glued to your device for many hours as you blast your way across over 10 game maps. OpenMW v0.21.0 Commentary OpenMW  0.21.0 has been released. Changelog: Various dialogue, trading, and disposition fixes and improvements Torch flickering improved to better match vanil...

First off as a rather fast follow up on the last post: New version of Alien Arena out , boasting a 300% increase in render speed Small, bugfix release of War§ow out now Otherwise, as previously mentioned, Garage Games has now also released their 2D game framework under the MIT license: Their 3D game engine also saw some nice updates lately, however sadly their crowd funding push to port Torque3D to Linux fell (not totally unsurprisingly) short of their 30,000$ mark (with about 10,000$ pledged).

Looks like we will get some nice x-mas presents this year: A bit delayed but probably right on time for the Mayan end of the world, we will see a long awaited new release of Cube2:Sauerbraten . Read about the release announcement here . Hmm, I wonder if it has already Occulus Rift support... Also on the FPS front, AlienArena is having a major engine update, with a claimed massive 3-4 times speed increase in BSP rendering and more VBO improvements. Mars meets CounterStrike? Furthermore they announce a new game-mode to be added soon, which tries to slow down the game-play of AlienArena a bit and add a more tactical appeal. Sounds a bit like selling out to the CounterStrike/ModernWarefare crowd to me, but lets see how it will play ;) Last but not least, GarageGames has announced that after the recent FOSS licensed release of their 3D engine Torque3D (see latest updates here , sadly no working Linux port yet), they will also open-source their 2D engine ! And in fact it will not only be a...

Knights , a top-down multiplayer quest/fighting game, received some GUI enhancements . Tales of Gydia , a Liberated Pixel Cup fantasy turn-based RPG that focuses on UGC , was started on SourceForge.net. Unknown Horizons , a historical city-building and economy RTS, received some new citizen building graphics from a first-time contributor. Black Dog , an extremely atmospheric HTML5, fully-FOSS helicopter mini-game, got its (unfinished) Android port released . Linus Torvalds not only showed his annoyance with Nvidia but also his love towards open source games in a recent talk (goto 58m20s). ctdabomb , an active community member, converted and license-clarified the Art Museum SuperTuxKart racing track over the time span of about one and a half months, after asking the community for support. SuperTux , a cute platformer, needs help finishing an animated owl sprite. To the left, you can see the current placeholder graphics. FLARE , a hack'n'slash RPG engine and game, requested...

Frozen Bubble for Android 2012 February the 6th was the 10th birthday of Frozen Bubble 's first release. The development was started in november 2001 by "ayo", amaury and Guillaume Cottenceau, members of the MandrakeSoft team (Mandriva nowadays). Frozen Bubble is a beautiful game inspired by Puzzle Bobble (published by Taito in 1994 , also called Bust-a-Move). The game has nice graphics and music (from matths alias Matthias). Frozen Bubble level editor for Android Development has stopped in 2008, but Frozen Bubble and its ports still enjoy high popularity, especially on the Linux and  Android  platforms. A Java port also exists. Only the first version is available  for Windows. A French language interview with the makers was recently published on linuxfr.org .

Phlipple Phlipple is an original puzzle game which could be useful for training thinking in 3D. It's available for Linux and Windows with 50 levels and there is a 100-level version for Android (EUR 1.70 / USD 2.30) and iOS (was it taken down? License drama senses tingling!). I don't know anything about the availability/license of the build instructions/scripts for the portable platforms and of the additional level files but assume they are closed. Phlipple is by Remigiusz 'mal1ce' Dybka, who also made Zaz (including a [proprietary?] version for Android ). Video:  Phlipple promo