Act 1
In case you've been hiding under a rock or you rely on Free Gamer for your open source game updates (and we love you if you do), there has been another release of 0AD (announcement) the 3D historical RTS game.
Lots of improvements, including an all-new and unique Carthaginian civilization, a new main menu that moves, new music, new sound effects, new maps, and likely (although not mentioned) a lot of development and the fixes and subtle improvements to go with it.
This is going to be one of the marquee open source games soon. It has the potential for mainstream appeal that is missing from a Battle for Wesnoth, no matter how polished it becomes (and it is very, very polished these days).
Since becoming open source to help save the project from an ignominious end, development seems to have gone from strength to strength with a series of alpha releases each bringing the game one step closer to being a playable title.
Act 2
Also big news coming out of the Dungeonhack Godhead project - a new release! This is the first since a tech demo over 2 years ago. This release marks the beginning of a different direction for the project. They now use the Lips of Suna engine. It is early days but the new engine already has a lot of what a now-defunct rewrite was trying to achieve in that it is server-client based, and it is 3D and the world is deformable, and there is now a workflow to get ideas straight in to a game world, giving writers and artists more possibilities to see their work immediately applied. Still, early days, it was just a black screen for me (but this was Windows 7 x64 - boo) so we'll see if this can reverse the fortunes of a project that has struggled to maintain momentum from one release to the next.
Free Gamer approves of inter-project cooperation. Huzzah!
Act 3
Finally, lady and gentlemen, for your entertainment, a fun ninja platformer!
Shinobi Densetsu is created using the OpenSNC engine, proving it is not just limited to hedgehog-based games.
I used to leave a plate of milk out for hedgehogs when I was a kid. I also had to shift through mucky half-rotten piles of leaves to make sure none were hibernating in the base of a bonfire-to-be. True stories! I digress...
Video!
Huzzah!
Should the demo not be finished by that time, the development team will commit Seppuku.
Just kidding. :)
It's refreshing to see an open project put some pressure on itself. I'm looking forward to the results of this.
So where to start today? Ahh yes:
The puzzle type game Berusky 2 was recently FOSSified (code and art GPL) as pointed out in our forums (but I have to admit I saw it first on LGDB). And as out great founder was quick to point out, it follows the great tradition of the first part with was also released under the terms of the GPL.
In totally unrelated news, Lips of Suna version 0.5 got released last week, with a bunch of nice graphical and game-play improvements (change log and discussion here).
For those living behind a rock, Lips of Suna is a crazy mix of Minecraft, slightly adult themed anime and a more classic RPG. Definitly worth a try, even though still under heavy development!
Hmm and now a quick run-down of other (I'd say less important) news:
Q3 Rally (now stand alone with the ioQuake3 engine) is nearing another release and OpenXcom is making good progress in the "battlescape" AI. In WarZone2100 land, you can now test the cool new models with a test mod (is supposed to work with the latest snapshot release). The fork of the W:ET, OpenWolf is also progressing with a fix of the Mod support (while the more ambitious ET:Xreal seems to have gone in a hiatus again), and while talking about id software source-code, I have started this small anticipatory id tech 4 project which needs contributors ;)
The end.
Oh wait, did we ever mention the source release of Cities3D (a Setters of Catan like game)?
- Lots of sound effects.
- Master server and server browser.
- Climbing over obstacles.
- Merchants and trading.
- Attacks can be charged by holding the attack button.
- Projectiles and sword swings have speed lines.
- Controls can be customized in-game.
- Basic blood effects and beheading.
- More flexible map generation algorithm.
- Improved aer female, android female and kraken models.
- New items: crossbow, musket, revolver, barrel, bookcase, dewspring leaf, fruit.
- New spells: berserk, dig, firewall, light, travel.
- New quests: Brigands, Mining Guild, Sword on the Stone.
Search and Rescue II - 2.3.0
- Copyrighted Guadarrama scenery textures replaced with public domain ones in order to avoid licensing problems
- Small bugixes
- OpenSuse packages have been updated as well
Hero of Allacrost - June 2011 Unstable Release
- Two brand new maps with many scripted events that develop the beginning plot of the main story
- Enter/exit sequences in battle to smooth the transition from map exploration to battle execution
- Better display of battle damage and status indicator text and images
- Receiving damage causes a brief stun on the stamina bar, allowing you to delay opponents actions slightly
- New skills available to use, some of which can target an entire party
- Attack points have specific stat modifiers (for defense and evasion)
- Targeting certain attack points may invoke status effects. For example, targeting legs to reduce agility
- Enemy's are no longer "leveled up" to match the party's strength
- If the player loses a battle, they have the option to restart the battle from the beginning, taking a penalty on XP/drunes earned upon victory
- Two new enemies to fight, one of which is a boss-type
Nikki and the Robots - 0.3 + 0.3.1
- Prettier on-screen display elements
- Editor bug fixed
- Slowdown bug fixed on many systems
Todays date is 07/08/09 if you're not a silly yank (m/d/y wha'?) and it made me think about how long the blog has been going. 379 posts... quite a lot! It's been a while since I started doing this blog. Who knows how far it'll go before life moves on, eh?
I originally started out to make a place that documented all the worthwhile Free software game projects. I stumbled a bit along the way - the original version of the blog (for those who don't remember) had a nice list down the side. Now we just have this broken old page that is too much of a PITA to edit and update. Hopefully one day I'll find the time and energy to sort it out properly.
Without a good central resource* of worthwhile projects, it can be easy for things to get lost in the Internet haze. People complain about a lack of polished FOSS games but there's more out there than you realise, even if some are still in active development. Then there's those that probably fell by the wayside because they just failed to penetrate the public view.
Update: as commentor Bram points out, Libregamewiki is a pretty decent resource, although not ideal - it misses comments, ratings, tagging, features to make it easier to get straight to the content you are looking for.
Update2: there is also the list of Complete open source games on the FreeGameDev wiki, but this omits many projects that are very promising and playable.
Shotgun Debugger is a fun, polished, top down GTA-style action game. It's well done, although I didn't get too far, because I'm a busy bee y'know.
People often lament the lack of FOSS single player 3D RPGs. Arbarlith II happens to be one of those although I haven't played it so have no idea how well done or how deep or how long the game is. It looks interesting though!
Lips of Suna is a very ambitious MORPG (not typo). If beautiful graphics and destructible voxel terrain don't appeal to you, then the developer focusing on gameplay must be applauded.
Grumbel's Mech
Linwarrior 3D is a mech warrior game that's been in slow and steady development since 1999. The mech models are a bit low detail, but it is a playable game. The website is one ad-ridden atrocity with no recent information on it, and no screenshots of the later versions other than some mosaic.
Qubodup put together a video of it.
I wonder if they know of and could make use of Grumbel's mech model and his other FreeMech concepts?
Speaking of long running projects, the Combat Simulator Project seems quite active at the moment (look at the project page and forums). Love planes? Love fighter planes? Get involved.
Knights (or Amiga Knights if happypenguin.org is to be believed) is a 2 player action/quest game. It looks fun, I might try to play it with my son some time.
Crimson Space
Crimson Space is a very interesting looking Elite-style 3D space trading game. Sadly development seems to have ceased circa 2002, but not before the developer implemented the ability to enter the atmosphere of planets and skim the oceans. This is the first time I encountered this game and purely by chance (linked as a 'similar project' on a Sourceforge project of mine). It's a shame development stopped and you have to wonder, if it had the kind of buzz Vega Strike has enjoyed, where it might be now had development been ongoing.
If I ever do a sequel to the Top 10 Projects To Revive (I'm collecting another list) then Crimson Space is sure to be in it.
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 exceptions for logos. </update>
VDrift
There's a new release of VDrift, the open source drift racing game. Version 2009-06-15 is a significant release for the project which sees it re-emerge from a massive refactor as a better game than before the refactoring began. Here's a list of the major changes since the last release, which was after the refactored code stabilized:
- cars collide with each other in Single Race mode now
- AI is capable of much faster driving now, so added a difficulty slider
- off-road tire spin sound support (thanks to slowdan!)
- support for H-gate shifters
- improved performance
- lots of huge bugs fixed, especially car physics bugs
TORCS
In other racing game news, the TORCS Endurance World Championship 2009 was recently held. The full report found on a participants blog. From what I can gather, it's a long distance race (500km) where people enter their own robot drivers to see how they fare.
Base Command is a fully finished OGRE mini-game. It's a straightforward 3D protect-your-base game, where you shoot down incoming planes. What is interesting is the author has provided an analysis of the game code which would help people who are learning how to program.
Scourge map
My favourite Free software game Scourge enjoys continued progress. There's now an artistic map of the large island that is the game world. There's more information to be found in the 28th "Scourge Weekly" that tracks major developers on an almost-weekly basis. They are still looking for contributors.
There's also more juicy updates on PARPG progress. That project is looking very promising and they are working their way towards their first demo release. Given the coordination and generally high activity of that project, I'm optimistic there'll be something solidly playable before the end of the year. Our own Q put together a video showing where they are currently up to:
Other interesting updates are:
- Lips of Suna's second release, version 0.0.2, which introduces destructible voxel terrain. Lips of Suna aims to be an innovative 3D online dungeon crawl.
- The first beta of Leges Motus, a kind of gravityless 2D multiplayer shoot-em-up.
- A new Palomino release, a lovely looking 3D flight simulator - see this Free Gamer article for more flight sims.
There's probably more... feel free to add updates in the comments below!
