Gaming Daily A-Z

Stunt Rally 2.6 has been released , with new features including pacenotes (i.e. corner speed/severity hints) and a rewritten sound system with reverberation ( changelog ). Stunt Rally is a sandbox racing game with a huge number of tracks (172 in 2.6) and lots of cars. It was originally forked from VDrift and features Ogre3D as a graphics engine instead of the custom (and less sophisticated) graphics engine in VDrift. A video is worth a thousand pictures and a picture a thousand words so, instead of me writing a million of those, I invite you to check out the gameplay in the video that accompanied the release: Also recently updated is Irrlamb . Those with incredibly good memories will recall this physics-based game originally appearing many years ago. I originally wrote about Irrlamb over 8 years ago on Free Gamer, and the previous release (0.1.1) is over 5 years old if I'm not mistaken (it is hard to check since things have moved on since then i.e. Google Code where its developm...

The joys of programming - hours spent scratching one's head whilst trying to figure out why the seemingly correct code does not produce correct results. Hi, Charlie here. I used to post often. Where was I? Ah, yes, this nugget of brain fudgery from the VDrift forums posted by NaN: So I've spent some time today try to figure out why cars are still flying off in random directions when hitting curbs sometimes. It turns out it is a bug in Bullet, to be more specific in the SIMD_DEGS_PER_RAD macro. Code: #define SIMD_PI           btScalar(3.1415926535897932384626433832795029) #define SIMD_2_PI         btScalar(2.0) * SIMD_PI #define SIMD_HALF_PI      (SIMD_PI * btScalar(0.5)) #define SIMD_RADS_PER_DEG (SIMD_2_PI / btScalar(360.0)) #define SIMD_DEGS_PER_RAD  (btScalar(360.0) / SIMD_2_PI) The first one to spot it gets a virtual cookie. For the answer visit the thr...

Beware traveller. I am here to slay your computer. Unstable fun awaits, betas with bits that may break your bit cruncher. That's what open source is about. Blowing up people's PCs with untested, untried, untrustworthy alpha and beta amateur programmer software! Well, perhaps some of the programmers are not amateurs... Good news, settlers of the new world! (Or those who feel like settling new worlds but were born in the wrong period of history.) FreeCol 0.10-alpha has been released. Get it from the unstable version download area of their website (the current stable version is 0.9.5). Speaking of Free* games, did the latest FreeCiv beta get a mention? FreeCiv 2.3.0-beta1 supports gigantic maps and over a hundred simultaneous players. Development of VDrift is, as ever, ongoing. You can test out build 3030 put together on the 25th Jan. After a period of suffering regressions, some changes have been sidelined to bring the main development branch back to a more stabl...

Has it really been that long since the last post here? I'd better contribute before tumble weed hits the front page. Egoboo 2.8.0 has been released ( download + changelog ). The Egoboo team stress this is an unstable release, that it hasn't yet seen the kind of testing they would like it to have, but it is "biggest release Egoboo has ever had" so it is good news for the project. Which got me thinking of the successor to Egoboo, SoulFu . Now, this project has had a rocky history. The author released it as "niceware" (some silly 'you agree to be nice to dogs' license) to prevent forks, but that just meant nobody really got involved. Amazed at the lack of help, along with some criticisms he didn't approve of, he threw his arms up and left the project in a huff. Some years passed by. Keen people started to get involved (screenshots!) and it seems it is moving again, albeit hampered by the loss of a domain name and forced to move to a new (crap...

Go Ollie An open source platformer I missed yesterday is Go Ollie . It's easy to overlook, I mean, worms are not exactly a glamorous topic. Whilst I'm not sure about the license (somebody care to check? I'm busy!) the game itself is polished and fun. The controls are different to your typical platformer, where instead of moving and jumping your character directly, you select where he moves to with the mouse. Places that can be reached are highlighted, so it's about picking the right path and having the reflexes to do it quickly enough, which can be tricky on scrolling levels. It seems to be a gift to the Linux community from game makers Tweeler. The graphics and presentation look professional. It's a great game for kids as well as a fun time waster for adults. <update> Actually Go Ollie is by Charlie Dog Games , but Tweeler acts as a download host for the Mac/Linux version. Also, it is definitely open source - code is GPLv3 and artwork CC-by-sa with ex...

Scorched 3D version 42 is out ( full changelog ). New features include: Scorched3D Optimized graphics rendering to take better advantage of hardware Scripting language support for weapons and server scripts Much larger landscapes supported Added multi-lingual support for chatting and player names Added localization support for dialogs and messages Some gameplay adjustments Better LAN/Internet communications for less timeouts Some new maps For those who don't know, it's a 3D artillery game with destructible terrain and sumptuous graphics. One thing I always think when I look at Scorched3D; why hasn't somebody re-used the engine in a different type of game? Nice effects, destructible terrain, there's plenty of possibilities there. VDrift has emerged from the other side of a ground up refactor/rewrite with release 2-15-09 . This is quite good news as projects as big as VDrift rarely survive a rewrite. Author Joe Venzon describes the highlights of the release: I thi...

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...

Scourge 0.21 is out . It's been optimized and stabilized considerably and now has a full 12 chapter storyline. Each release of Scourge gets closer to being a really good game - there are still a few issues that need addressing such as the character models - and that is reflected in the increasing activity of contributors. Until a year or so ago, Scourge development was mainly a 1 man effort, but 4 people put a lot of work into this release. A new model format (they are looking at [the unfortunately named] assimp for 0.22) and some better character models (think Glestimals , some JCRPG models, and a few of their own) and Scourge will offer some real immersion as well as a platform for creating new Free Software 3D isometric RPGs. Talking about optimizations , VDrift is getting back on track after a ground-up rewrite to address key weaknesses in the codebase. Most features are now back and working better than before. I'm going to give the SVN version a go, but the vdrif...

Toying with Hero of Allacrost 0.2.2's Editor(HD) Hero of Allacrost 0.2.2 has been released and now needs a new home ! It is house-trained and can be picked up 24/7 from it's SourceForge shelter . One can now enter buildings (in a pleasant no-transition way) and an editor is now included. I gave the editor a try. My first thought was: "What a waste of energy! Why did they not incorporate Tiled , as for example Battle Tanks did?" But then I remembered that my last encounter with the general purpose Java editor. It showed me that instead of being able to completely rely on Tiled, a team would have to create an extra tool for tasks that go beyond map editing. At least a team of non-Java programmers (Allacrost is in C++ and Lua). Allacrost's editor will go beyond tiles. When it's finished, it will also be a character, skills and inventory editor and will support integration of music/sounds. Greg Cannon blocking the view on STK ;) GamePwned is a freeware a...

Conquest (OpenGL) I think I found the oldest open source game out. It's called Conquest . In development since 1982 . That's kinda awesome. It is a real-time, multi-player space warfare game. Both curses and OpenGL clients are provided. It looks a bit like 2D Star Trek ship battles (not stereotyping there, it just does). So, want to be brainier? Well, Brain Workshop might just be the answer. Brain Workshop is a free open-source Python implementation of the Dual N-Back mental exercise. This exercise is the only mental activity that is scientifically proven to improve your short-term memory and fluid intelligence (IQ). The game involves remembering a sequence of spoken letters and a sequence of positions of a square at the same time. O_o Remember Portalized? I kicked up a bit of a fuss over it several months ago. Well, it has it's own website and forums now, and seems to be coming on a bit. It's not yet open source :'( but a bit of positive encouragement m...

Well, well, it's 2008. Happy birthday time! Thanks to Qubodup for posting, and I'm sure he'll be doing so regularly this year. I'll just catch up with a few of the other game releases over the festive period that snook under the general radar, and suprisingly so too. Simutrans 128 Simutrans 0.99.17 got released on December 20th. It's a "stable candidate" due to the increasingly few major bug reports the developers are receiving. The game has improved immeasurably over the last year. Given that Simutrans is now Free Software, it's a bit of a shame that it doesn't get as much publicity as OpenTTD which (people forget) still requires proprietary data. They also have a new website at simutrans.sourceforge.net in addition to the community site www.simutrans.com . And, whilst OpenTTD engages in a still far-away effort to create a hi-res version of the game, Simutrans is already playable in 128x128 tile textures and looks fantastic. And you can ...

The FG forums seem to be experiencing more downtime, which sucks a little. Oh well, such is the risk ya take when using a free service. There's an interesting article on the state of Linux gaming (parts 1 , 2 , 3 online with more to come) and, although it covers both commerical and open source games, since the majority of good games on Linux are open source games (ok, that's flamebait, but still...) most of the games in the article are open source. ;-) Apparently Ubuntu is brilliant for gaming . Good to see people impressed by Free Software, even it's it is running proprietry stuff. Ok, back to Free game matters, and a 3rd release of irrlamb is out. It's cool to see regular updates to this new and innovative 3D game where you control a sphere and use physics to overcome obstacles and puzzles. I tried it out on my Linux laptop and it both ran well and was fun to play. The graphics are never going to be earth shatteringly great but they don't need to be - th...

VDrift effects Firstly a quick mention about the progress of VDrift development. It continues at an impressive pace. To improve performance, amongst other things, they have been implementing their own scenegraph and refactoring the drawing code. Also implemented in this branch are shader-based effects (bloom & motion blur) and it looks sumptuous . All it needs is a few really nice tracks and the commercial racing games will be getting a run for their money from VDrift. Honestly, I played Ridge Racer 7 on the PS3 the other day and I was underwhelmed. Given the ubiquity of cars, the general appeal of racing games, and the ability for lots of people to contribute content easily, I would go as far as saying that for once the open source model is potentially better than a commercial approach for developing this kind of game. I can't think of any other genre for which that might be true. Anyway, there's a few loose ends to tidy up. Many thanks to the commenters who contri...

I had these grand plans for today, but instead I slept through two alarms and got to work 2 hours late, and forgot what my plans were. *groan* Eat the Whistle ActionCube Anyhow, onto relevant matters, that previously-imminent VDrift release is now official . Go get it, honestly it is a good experience. And it looks great too. :-) I played Eat the Whistle for the first time yesterday. Any attempts to run it on Linux had failed even though it has been ported, but I thought I'd have a crack on my Windows laptop and (despite a few graphical glitches) it worked! It's good fun although whenever the other team had the ball I struggled to locate the player I was in control of. However in terms of gameplay feel, it's quite nice to play and a little reminiscent of Sensible Soccer although more dynamic but not quite as sharp. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, so I'll mention it now... ActionCube looks fun. I might have a bash at it later in the week. Think Count...

Egoboo 2.3.6 is released! This is a major development in what was a dead game. Egoboo used to be a darling of open source gaming, so I'm hopeful it will rise like a phoenix and restore it's reputation. Somebody has joined the FreeTrain localization effort! Daniel Markstedt, who also contributes to FreeCiv under the handles dmarks/hima, has started translating the game into English and posting patches to the mailing list (soon to be in SVN). The VDrift team are gearing up for a release. I downloaded the latest test autopackage and, I must say, I was impressed. Aside from a clunky menu, this felt like playing a commercial racing game. Nice graphics, nice car handling, nice tracks. It took me a while to work out how to get started [you need to press 'w' to shift up a gear to start a race, even with autoshift enabled] but it was a lot of fun after that. :-) I believe this will be a landmark release for VDrift that will see it rise to the challenge of being a via...

[UPDATE] Doing this redesign meant I had to upgrade the blogger template. As I feared I could not just go for the redesign behind-the-scenes. I had to upgrade the template to get the new blogger structure stuff. So no games list for a bit but I have backups so it'll be back online ASAP . Thanks for your patience. Complaints can be sent to this_is_free@be_happy.com and will not get responded too! ;-) [/UPDATE] Ok I'm finally taking the plunge. I have created new graphics (some of which are really cool, even if I say so myself), planned a new layout, and now the only remaining (and biggest) task is to migrate the games list (which you currently see on every page) into it's own page. I'm going to be pressing ahead with the template redesign today and putting up a bunch of new pages. Please bear with me whilst I mess up your RSS readers and generally create havoc. >:-) Back to the important stuff... FREE GAMES! VDrift A VDrift release is imminent although prob...

Another game whose development appeared to have stagnated was Glest . This 3D RTS was widely acclaimed as a leading open source game when it came out, with high quality graphics and solid gameplay. Although it lacked features, it seemed like the ideal platform to build a game that had depth as well as eye candy. Sadly development just seemed to stop but it looks like it's restarting, with the release of Glest 2.1-rc1 . Don't expect anything spectacular with this release but hopefully it's the start of a return of Glest development. However a game that has shown very nice steady development activity (something that always makes me happy) is VDrift . And a new release is imminent . With a host of new features that really add to the gameplay, this release... well, I'll let their lead developer 'thelusiv' explain: I'm pretty excited about the release...this will be our first in almost five months, and not only fixes a ton of problems but also adds lots of ...

The driving game FOSS scene is quite healthy. With actively developed games like VDrift , SuperTuxKart and Ultmiate Stunts , and relatively complete games like ManiaDrive , Stunt Playground , and Torcs , there's quite a decent choice. But there is always room for more! :-) Motorsport aims to become the most "realistic simulation of wheeled vehicles". It's been going since 2003 so there's a lot of development history and it looks like it's got a bright future with several consistent developers moving it forward. It is unclear whether this will end up as a racing game or a stunts game or maybe just a generic driving game, but it looks fascinating and has lofty goals. Stunts 2005 is a fan remake of the classic Stunts game from yester-year. To be fair, a lot of the FOSS driving games seem to take inspiration from Stunts aka 4D Sports Driving. Anyway, Stunts 2005 comes with it's own level editor but development seems to have halted after the initial r...

VDrift continues to improve at a rapid rate, with somebody contributing rudimentary AI drivers . The next release should, therefore, be a little bit more fun to play as you get to race the computer as well as yourself! Ecksdee 0.0.9 was released. This includes a large city track. For those people who doubt that open source games don't often look very good, take a look at this video . Impressive graphics, I think. I look forward to more major releases. A few more tracks and some tweaked gameplay and Ecksdee should be a very good game.

Free Gamer has been on hiatus. Sorry! Sometimes these things happen... VDrift made a new release yesterday. Hero of Allocrost released their first tech demo . Thanks to Roots for notifying me and apologies to him for taking a week to say something. Sauerbraten got forked, the new game is called Extended Death Match (or just EDM). I don't know if it is a cooperative fork. All I know is you can leave sticky notes around the maps. There's tons of other things I could mention from the last 2 weeks but for now I'll just push you in the direction of the Linux Game Tome which covers most of the them in one way or another. *Goes back to his corner to work slowly on updating the Free Gamer games list*