Great news for the FOSS enthusiasts: after many years of constant nagging the latest release of the great parcour/arena FPS Warsow has now most of it's artistic content under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 license (with a few remaining but clearly marked ones under CC-by-ND).
You can find more screen-shots in the above link and the full changelog here.
Rendering speed was also increased (claimed to be 30-50% faster) and a movement tutorial is now included.
So far I always recommended Xonotic over Warsow as the coolest (=most competitive; Red Eclipse is also cool, but much more casual) open-source arena FPS, but I think I might reconsider this now...
Happy fragging :p
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| Also updated particle effects in Warsow 2.0 |
Rendering speed was also increased (claimed to be 30-50% faster) and a movement tutorial is now included.
So far I always recommended Xonotic over Warsow as the coolest (=most competitive; Red Eclipse is also cool, but much more casual) open-source arena FPS, but I think I might reconsider this now...
Happy fragging :p
For those that are not keeping up to the latest development branch (via the autobuilds), the Xonotic developers have released a new version with various smaller changes and new official maps.
From the user "Antibody" (known for his duel commentary videos) comes this nice video overview of the new features:
(please note that due to video capture performance reasons the graphic settings are pretty low, and the game can look much nicer with different settings)
On the longer term horizon of Xonotic development, there is the very exiting news that they are currently porting their game to run on the same engine that Unvanquished uses. With this the future of Xonotic is indeed much brighter, as their current engine has not seem much development lately. See more details in this thread.
Oh and while we are talking about FOSS arena FPS: A short while ago Red Eclipse also released a new version. Changes include updated to the AI Bots and a build in universal updater to easily follow the latest releases.
From the user "Antibody" (known for his duel commentary videos) comes this nice video overview of the new features:
(please note that due to video capture performance reasons the graphic settings are pretty low, and the game can look much nicer with different settings)
On the longer term horizon of Xonotic development, there is the very exiting news that they are currently porting their game to run on the same engine that Unvanquished uses. With this the future of Xonotic is indeed much brighter, as their current engine has not seem much development lately. See more details in this thread.
Oh and while we are talking about FOSS arena FPS: A short while ago Red Eclipse also released a new version. Changes include updated to the AI Bots and a build in universal updater to easily follow the latest releases.
I have outed myself previously as not a big Minecraft fan, so take everything in this post with a grain of salt (as I obviously don't really understand that genre).
Anyways... recently this sub-reddit for open-source games was pointed out in our forums, and while it isn't really as lively as others (for example the Linux gaming one) it pointed out an new project called Iceball:
Seemingly made by people not happy with the recent commercialization of Ace of Spades, it's an all FOSS remake, those early development you can follow here (or on their Github page).
Now maybe the graphics are lacking on purpose (see disclaimer above), but I couldn't help to think: why for f***'s sake did they have to reinvent the wheel with their own engine instead of using for example Terasology:
Or Minetest, or the Ardorcraft API for that matter???
Ahh well, at least it made me aware that Terasology is still very much under development, and with its focus on DungeonKeeper & Dwarf-Fortress elements, it might actually become a game I would play (and doesn't make my eyes bleed :p ).
Speaking of which... the guy behind AgentKeeper released yet another nice video and graphics are constantly further improved as seen here.
Anyways... recently this sub-reddit for open-source games was pointed out in our forums, and while it isn't really as lively as others (for example the Linux gaming one) it pointed out an new project called Iceball:
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| Pre-alpha Iceball screenshot |
Now maybe the graphics are lacking on purpose (see disclaimer above), but I couldn't help to think: why for f***'s sake did they have to reinvent the wheel with their own engine instead of using for example Terasology:
Or Minetest, or the Ardorcraft API for that matter???
Ahh well, at least it made me aware that Terasology is still very much under development, and with its focus on DungeonKeeper & Dwarf-Fortress elements, it might actually become a game I would play (and doesn't make my eyes bleed :p ).
Speaking of which... the guy behind AgentKeeper released yet another nice video and graphics are constantly further improved as seen here.
OpenArena 0.8.8 - hover for info - more images here
On a related note: OA's lead dev recently uploaded a Sorceress 3d model that did not make it into the game under GPL2 and CCBY(SA)3:
This is a rejected mystical elf sorceress for my game project OpenArena 3.x. It's rejected due to technical (2 surfaces, and too low poly) and anatomical reasons (regarding the hands and feet). The skin is muddy and low quality is well. This was done in 2009-2010.
Comes weighted to a standard rigify mesh. She has no actual fingers, her hands are mittens!
Might be suitable for a low poly distant camera dungeon crawl. Could even be suitable to produce other characters with in that dungeon crawl.
An alternative worse skin is also included. It's on the second UV Texture layer.
Just a small reminder:
Don't miss today's (at 8:00pm CET = UTC/GTM+1 e.g. central European time) grand final of the Xonotic 1v1 tourney!
Check out videos of the semi finals here, and I will probably update this post with the video of the grand final once it is available.
Edit2: Congrats to Fisume, who won 3:1 in a pretty exiting match (especially the last two matches were great to watch). Watch this spot for a video of this match.
Edit3: Here are the videos.
Don't miss today's (at 8:00pm CET = UTC/GTM+1 e.g. central European time) grand final of the Xonotic 1v1 tourney!
Check out videos of the semi finals here, and I will probably update this post with the video of the grand final once it is available.
Edit2: Congrats to Fisume, who won 3:1 in a pretty exiting match (especially the last two matches were great to watch). Watch this spot for a video of this match.
Edit3: Here are the videos.
Scenes from Flesh Snatcher
Flesh Snatcher is a bloody jME2 fps with fast movement and dodge-bullets gameplay that is low poly and low-tech enough to run smoothly on a netbook (tested: Asus EeePC 1000H).
Most models were made by the author, Arbaro was used for tree generation, FSRad (shared source, noncommercial) was used for lightmap generation. FOSS-incompatible textures from CGTextures were used.
The code license is not all that clear, I seem only to be able to find the jME license in the archive.
This active thread reveals more info and gives an opportunity to talk to the developer.
Trepidation is an open source first person shooter based on the IOQuake3 engine. It was originally conceived on April 9, 2006 with the intent to build a free first person shooter with a sci-fi theme. The idea was initially developed by members of the Star Trek Elite Force gaming community.Yesterday, the first development release since 2007 was released. It's mostly fixes but gameplay is affected. For example the sniper scope is more reactive and missing sounds are now in place.
There are 141 MB downloads for 32bit Linux and Windows. For 64bit Linux and other systems there's svn:
svn co https://trepidation.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/trepidation trepidation
I haven't had the time to figure out whether or not I need Quake 3 or OpenArena for Trepidation to work. Besides the project page there is a blog and a forum.
Unknown Horizons Player Scores...
libtcod's project browser filter
libtcod, an advanced toolkit for roguelikes now has an online browser for projects using it that allows to apply filters.
Tactical battle in Hale
I stumbled over Hale, an RPG described as having "deep tactical combat system and storyline".
The project seems to use freely licensed assets, which is a great. I hope that the GUI will receive a makeover (using a pastel background color and killing the 1995'ish 3d button/border look does wonders).
Example sound visualization at Freesound 2.0
Freesound went 2.0! CC-BY and CC0 as license options! (Unfortunately CC-BY-NC as well). Sampling+ remains for legacy sounds where authors have not switched to a modern license. Read the announcement here.
Six-legged vehicle in Xonotic
Xonotic 0.5 brings new maps, vehicles and multi-language support. Many more details can be found in their annoucnement post.
BZFlag
There will be a tournament of the CTF game BZFlag.
When: September 30th, at 5pm EST
Where: Online(?)
How: Visit ohava.com/gametourney for sign-up.
Prize: An Ohava OpenBook BE awarded to the MVP of the winning team. More prizes will be given to all of the winning team's members.
Today we have a small biology lesson ;)
Have a look at this screenshot:
TeamFortress2, right? Well WRONG ;) It is actually a screenshot from one of the maps from the upcoming War§ow 0.55 release!
War§ow is a open-source game based on the updated Quake2 engine QFusion, and has already seen some quite successful previous releases. They focus on a fast, e-sports style game play and their general art direction is a pretty nice cell-shaded comic world.
Lately their their style has been for sure party influenced by TeamFortress2 however, which at least in my opinion is not a bad thing :) For a whole bunch of other screenshots and an update on what else you can expect from the new version, check out their newest blog post here. Overall there will be some pretty nice improvements, and probably a significant performance increase with VBO integration into the engine.
But maybe most interestingly, they will also include a new game play mode, Capture the Flag: Tactics. And guess what? It will be a class based team CTF, with turrets and ammo dispensers. Sounds familiar right? :p
Sadly I have to mention though that the art content of War§ow is completely unfree, and its development team shows a general lack of interest in the idea of FOSS... Yes the engine source code is available, but probably only because it is GPL and therefore has to be.
Second lesson for today, kids: GPL is good, mkay?
Have a look at this screenshot:
A nice warehouse
TeamFortress2, right? Well WRONG ;) It is actually a screenshot from one of the maps from the upcoming War§ow 0.55 release!
War§ow is a open-source game based on the updated Quake2 engine QFusion, and has already seen some quite successful previous releases. They focus on a fast, e-sports style game play and their general art direction is a pretty nice cell-shaded comic world.
Lately their their style has been for sure party influenced by TeamFortress2 however, which at least in my opinion is not a bad thing :) For a whole bunch of other screenshots and an update on what else you can expect from the new version, check out their newest blog post here. Overall there will be some pretty nice improvements, and probably a significant performance increase with VBO integration into the engine.
But maybe most interestingly, they will also include a new game play mode, Capture the Flag: Tactics. And guess what? It will be a class based team CTF, with turrets and ammo dispensers. Sounds familiar right? :p
Say Hello to Mr. Turret
Sadly I have to mention though that the art content of War§ow is completely unfree, and its development team shows a general lack of interest in the idea of FOSS... Yes the engine source code is available, but probably only because it is GPL and therefore has to be.
Second lesson for today, kids: GPL is good, mkay?
