Gaming Daily A-Z

Time remaining to vote SourceForge.net has " Project of the month " to promote communities supporting their favorite projects. December 2012: UFO:AI battles against JStock in the poll for "Project of the month". It's a close race. You know what you have to do.

One of the FOSS projects I really hold dear (mainly because they chose to include a few models made by myself :p ) is UFO:AI . For those totally out of the loop: it's a turn based strategy game based on the classic game X-Com utilizing an improved Quake2 engine. Recently they had a new release, version 2.4 , but the changes upcoming are even cooler (new soldier models and a greatly improved GUI): More cool screens of those upcoming changes can be found here and here . And here you can find some more as part of a slightly older, but still interesting interview with the developers. Besides these development news, there seems to have been an informal competition of who can do the nicer Let's Play videos of UFO:AI ;) FrontFox's UFO:AI Let's Play video part1 Click here for Part 2 and Part 3 , or check out this series of Let's Play videos as the alternative: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 (Part 1 starts out with an outdated version though). So if you are hooked now by this aw...

So... you might have followed the lengthy discussion in the comment section of this blog entry of mine from last week... if you didn't don't worry you didn't miss anything important :p However I was corrected in quite a few things (besides all the disagreements), so I though it would be good to post a sort of "counter statement" to clear up some recent mess-ups by me: First of all, the developers from Q2W informed us that in fact most ( but not all ) of their art assets are CC-by-SA or GPL, which is great. They have also released a Linux installer now, so feel free to check it out if you are gaming on this platform (like me). Oh and I have also updated the video to a newer one, in case you didn't notice yet. Also, and I am to be honest quite surprised by this, OverDose does in fact have an open source-code repository since some time now, where you can download the source to the engine and some of the cool in-house tools they have developed. No clearly vis...

Hello fans ;) Today we get back to the main business of this blog: gaming news! And of course my favorite genre: FPS (forevar!)... specifically everything related to the Quake2 engine (idTech2). The reason is that we got a nice mail from the developers of Quake2World , which I had not really on my radar as still under development. But now they released a public beta , which I have not tried yet as there isn't a Linux download (yet). Edit: Updated to newer video But judging from the pictures and videos, I am was quite sure that DFSG standards are not fulfilled... and they know and don't care (very short sighted... but well). So that is why I decided that they don't deserve a news post all by themselves :p Low and behold... an update on all Q2 based games that *are* on my radar: AlienArena is preparing for a new release with a reloaded trailer and some update one engine improvements : What's new in AlienArena Ya3dag , also released a new version recently and I s...

Quick Sunday afternoon rundown of recent strategy game updated... 0AD got a new beta 5 release , which improvements in rendering & AI code, a completely new faction (Iberians), and a new map: MegaGlest also got updated recently ( Version 3.5.1 ), bringing various fixes and performance improvements. Furthermore I can report that both the sable and the development version of Battle for Wesnoth have been updated, and I strongly recommend everyone (who has not played this game for a while) to retry this classic in the newest development version. EvolutionRTS , a nice looking (but sadly CC-by-NC-ND licensed) game based on the SpringRTS engine also saw an update to version 1.3 this month ( check out this gameplay video ). Hmmm, what else? Ahh, UFO:AI was ported to Android , and and the change of Warzone2100 from SDL to qt (which is not exactly a game framework) raised some eyebrows, but will probably make the game more easily portable and better integrated into your favorite deskto...

Long time no see! Before you look at the pictures: I can only recommend following the FGD Game Planet and Dev Planet . That is all ;). Games CONS CONS is a NOOB FRIENDLY!!! roguelike written in Lisp. It is 'friendly' because the amount of possible actions is low and they are all tooltip-explained in the main window. I also like the color scheme and simple look. Follow the developer on his blog . I know I do. Xenowar Xenowar is a simple-gfx squad tactics game and it runs on Windows and Android. Didn't try it yet. skunks is a "3D game with cars, stunts and software rendering, based on Open Dynamics Engine" by Matei Petrescu, who also brought us simple3d/simcar . Contests SDLTutorials.com is hosting a little top-down car racing game contest (runs until 31. Dec) Game On 2010 is an open web game contest started by Mozilla Labs. Deadline: January 11, 2011. [ Rules ] Assets OpenGameArt is getting bigger and bigger and nicer and nicer and their forums cover more an...

Ok, today I have quite a lot of stuff, and its all Quake2 related :p Believe it or not Quake2 is alive and kicking... and its engine is featuring some of the very best open-source games! For those who might have missed it: AlienArena 7.45 has been released recently and the release makes an already solid game even more awesome ;) Further more the UFO:AI team is making some great progress after their highly acclaimed 2.3 release two months ago. Besides a a lot smaller changes, various new sounds have been added since then and the rockets got a nice new explosion effect: Kaaaboom! Oh and maybe this is of interest for some of you (personally I never really understood the need for it though): War§ow can now be played in a browser window via a Firefox plugin! Check out their development blog for more details. Yet another 3D adventure game A rather interesting Project I was unaware of until recently is Ya3Dag . It has quite a lot of rather unique features not found in any of the other Qua...

A long awaited update of one of the flagship FOSS games has just been released: UFO:AI ! UFO:AI (for those not in the loop) is a turn based strategy game very similar to the classic X-COM . The improvements of the new version are multi fold; Besides big improvements to the render engine, game-play was also overhauled, but head over to their full change log to get the full picture. Speaking of pictures , here a nice one showing the new glow effects on the world map: (Maybe qudobup will be so nice and make a video of it too *hint*) A3P 1.0 A3P ( we mentioned it before ) was also updated to its first non beta release today. You can check it out directly in your browser (a feature of the Panda3D engine used) or download it as a normal version (currently Windows only). A3P Gameplay

The development structure of FOSS game projects can be a one-man show, it can be semi-closed by having a fixed team and little web presence, it can have lots of tasks without anybody knowing what needs to be done, or it can be plain frozen until a developer decides to pick it up. Today, I will try to pick some of the open development ones that provide some kind of ordered task list and provide instructions in the case of media creation being the job. Programming Rocket Race in Syntensity [ more ] Syntensity has some open tasks (having played the game helps understanding :) ), which involve tinkering with the Sauerbraten-based engine and JavaScript. latest UFO:AI world view I just found out on #ufoait that UFO:AI is soon to release the first version that allows you to win the game. This will make the squad tactics game be eligible to a line on our list of complete foss games ! There are still a few tasks to complete before 2.3, a humble list compared to all the open issues . PARPG ...

There's another monthly overview of developments for UFO:AI , the 3D turn based tactics game where you see off an alien invasion of sorts. Development is happening at an impressive pace, with a lot of new minor features and improvements to existing features. The changes affect many aspects of the project, and as such I won't summarize them here. Read it for yourself on their website. (No permanent link to the update, sorry.) Speaking of UFO games, I do wish UFO2000 development would return. I have an affinity for the original game and I really hoped UFO2000 would emerge as a playable single-player game. It hasn't yet, and looks like it never will, which is a shame. They have a gorgeous website though. FIFE world seems to have taken off a bit lately. FIFE is a 2D isometric game engine. It was originally created for the purposes of being a Fallout engine but evolved. Shortly after stepping down from management duties from FIFE, project manager MvBarracuda announced...

It's something-am, I have overdue work, and a Freshmeat announcement put a bee in my bonnet about posting. LinCity 2.0 LinCity-NG 2.0 is out in the wild, and boy is it starting to look like a nice game. There are only two things that look a bit weak these days - the name (NG? Linux-only?) and the UI (a bit scrappy). For those who don't know, LinCity-NG is a GotM fork of Lincity which brings it into this century with much nicer graphics and a more informative user interface. Plenty of nice new graphics (notably vegetation, grass, trees) make the game look aesthetically smooth. New resource management (water) adds to the depth of gameplay. There's a load of other new aspects too but there's no official announcement and I'm too busy procrastinating to go digging. Glest (the 3D RTS) is dead, long live Glest! No, really. Mainline Glest development has ended and Glest Advanced Engine ( information ), a community-born enhancement, is to officially become the new ...

Happy festive season to all those who are celebrating, and commiserations to those who are missing out or have not been blessed with a nice Christmas period. Many thanks to Q for being a custodian of the blog. It would surely have died long ago but for his endeavour and I deeply appreciate his ongoing efforts. NYC in Sauer I have a queue of interesting things... like this lovely screenshot of a NYC map for Sauerbraten that pushes the engine's performance. There was a Christmas release of SuperTuxKart and it's full of goodies. Verison 0.6rc1 (an rc, thusly YMMV) offers (among a lot of new tracks and other improvements) improved physics with skidding, nitro, a better AI, and positional sound effects. Sounds super. Gearhead2 is now completable as of the latest release, version 0.530, meaning that it is no longer a tech demo but a real live game. It's a futuristic / mech-based graphical roguelike and a very nice one too by all accounts. UFO:AI Starchaser I really liked ...

Solitaire Settlers of Catan Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Ca-Tan Ca-Tan Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Ca-Ca-Ca-Ca-Tan Nettlers So we have now at least five working games 'inspired' by the board game "Die Siedler von Catan" hosted on SourceForge.net : Solitaire Settlers of Catan 1.0 (new release), Pioneers 0.12.2 (new release), Settlers3D , Nettlers (Win only at the moment) and jCatano . No problem really, it's a great game and the projects have something individual in each of them. I enjoyed test-playing Nettlers via Wine . I was surprised by a well self-explaining interface. (Other candidates on the list are rather unclear about how to do what.) Yes, these are the controls. No kidding. Stephen M. Cameron released Word War vi 0.08 , a retro-looking, good-sounding (98% self-made, CC-BY-SA 2.0/3.0 sounds/music) Sopwith-ish/Side...

Quite a lot to cover, simply because there's a lot of small items that have backed up in my little "FG updates" list which I've been waiting to pool together. Firstly, the "big" news in that UFO:AI 2.2 got released. There's plenty to write home about , tons of new features, and it's an awesome game. I'm not a great fan of some of the micro-management although it's part of the original X-COM games so understandably part of UFO:AI - I would like to see some automation aids (auto-assign ammo etc) - but that aside this is a really, really good game. If it was released as a commercial game it'd be respected, and because it's Free Software it's only going to get better. Here's a video: So, the Apricot project is gaining pace. They have still to decide on what type of game they are making. I hope they make, out of their choices, a platform game. I must say, I really disagree with some of their assertions. If a platform gam...

Want to know what's worse than a dog breaking wind? 2 dogs doing so... the Free Gamer hounds are gassing the place and making it very difficult to... oh god... no... not again! ARGH! I will try my best not to faint but I can't promise I will survive the nauseating stench that keeps filling the room whilst the two hounds sit quietly satisfied under my desk. I gave UFO:AI a try, the SVN version. It's really rather good - spiffy graphics, lovely sound, and very well presented. The music especially is excellent. Support for my laptop resolution of 1440x900 made me happy and is only the second Free/freeware game I know to do that - the other being Astro Menace . Whilst some people reported the beta as a bit unstable, the SVN verson has been as steady as a rock for me although I have only played it perhaps an hour in total so YMMV. Overall it is shaping up nicely and is definitely one of the best Free games around. However, there were a few things that bothered me. There...

Time flies when you're forgetting to do things, like update this blog. Damn, I make a post, have a nap, get distracted, and 6 days later I remember I was supposed to be posting again. I have umpteen drafts of half-finished opinions; games get released and I don't know about it. I need to invent an army of workers that will mine the web and report for me. The Free Gamer forums got a facelift thanks to Qudobup, the guy also behind the look for Free Gamer. It looks really cool and since the forum supports RSS you'll see a few forum-related things going into this site in the nearish future. Scourge 0.19 got released! Yay! No changelog on the site? Boo. Seems like binaries will eventually be available for all major platforms and will appear on Sourceforge . Despite the lack of information about this release on the site, having monitored Scourge development for a while, I can say 0.19 contains some really cool new features - outdoor environments and more storyline - an...

UFO:AI There's beta installers for Linux and Windows for the popular open source game UFO:AI . The changelog for version 2.2 is impressive. The download link is a bit hard to get to - a ploy to stop too many players mistakenly downloading the beta when they didn't realise it might have bugs. Anyway, grab it here , and help them make UFO:AI 2.2 a great release. :-) There was an interesting comment on the observation I made regarding the version number of LordsAWar : 0.0.3 for the lordsawar version doesn't mean 3% done. The game has most aspects of Warlords 2 implemented, where as freelords only has a few. Well why version 0.0.3 then? Ok, I admit, version numbers are probably one of the least important aspects of game design. But, come on, really, if your game has lots of features and close to what you consider "1.0" for your game, then label is as such. People who are casually looking for a game to play will see 0.0.3 and think, "not even alpha." T...

There's a couple of newish irrlamb gameplay videos . Worth watching if you want to see what the game is like and how devious some of the gameplay can be. For me, irrlamb is definitely one of the most exciting open source game projects around at the moment, being both innovative and challenging in it's gameplay. Expect some really nice graphics in the next UFO:AI release. A few modelling maniacs seem to have gotten very interested in contributing, which is always good for an open source game project. OpenTTD Hi-res As of some time last week, an interesting major change landed in the OpenTTD development trunk - loading of 32bpp graphics and levels of zoom . It's one of the big steps along the road to getting high resolution graphics into OpenTTD. Also it provides a platform for the artwork contributors to see their art in game rather than have to paste it together to showcase it. A completely Free (no TTD required) and beautiful OpenTTD just got one step closer to r...

Sometimes I finish a post feeling apprehensive about being able to find more information to populate the next days ramble on open source gaming matters. However, just earlier I was explaining to a friend the difference between open source games and commercial ones, and realise just why there always is something more to talk about - Free games are not just an end product for a player; they are a process, a community oriented process, with visible progress along the way. There really are so many high quality open source game projects around, it's a joy to see them all evolving. :-) Danger from the Deep Just to emphasise what I mean, Danger from the Deep 0.3.0 just popped up on Freshmeat . This rather awesome project simulating WWII submarine combat gains 4 more U-boats, shader support i.e. eye candy, and better sound support amongst other improvements. It really does look so good. I remember playing some submarine game when I was younger and just loving the immersion, stalking e...

UFO:AI 2.1 was released ( changelog , download ) yesterday. This is turning into an incredible game. It takes the best elements of the original UFO games and builds on them with contemporary technologies to produce what really has to be one of the leading - if not the best - open source games available. If you want to see how cool it looks, just go over to their screenshot gallery . Importantly this version adds the foundations for a storyline. So subsequent releases will include a story to compliment the gameplay. Awesome! :-) 3D RPG game Scourge has seen quite a lot of development since it's last version. Notably, the game has been localized and translated to Italian, and the UI is being overhauled with a completely new inventory screen that is more traditional i.e. similar to games like Diablo. With those new features and lots of bugs fixed, hopefully a new release will follow soon. The 3D post-apocolyptic RTS Warzone 2100 Resurrection team snook out a 2.0.6 release ( c...