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. :-)
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 enemy boats before blowing them out of the water. I just wish I had the hardware to recreate that experience with DftD - maybe by the time it's "complete" I will. ;-)
And another awesome game is looming on the horizon. As seen on /., the Blender Foundation have announced a project to create a high quality open source game in conjunction with Crystal Space project. For those who don't know, Blender does have a game engine but it does not scale very well and is notoriously difficult to debug games made with it.
The previous open effort by the Blender community was Project Orange (aka Elehpants Dream), so that is a benchmark for the quality we can expect to see. High, high quality. :-D
A few other miscellaneous things...
I was quite impressed by this glossary of Oolite ships. I really should play and review that game.
I really like seeing the new artwork going into games, such as this and this going into the next version of UFO:AI - another of those awesome open source game projects.
I managed to come across a resource I once had bookmarked but lost many years ago - Amit's game programming. I can't find the specific pages that interested me (there's a ton of information there to sift through) but I'm happy I found it nonetheless.
Running out of stuff to talk about? My posts seem to get longer by the day...
2 comments:
I was going to say "Why does blender have to make another game and why can't they just contribute to an existing project".
Then I realised that the whole point of the project is to simulate being a game company and the kind of problems one would run into using blender in that environment.
Speaking of commercial games, I have always took the meaning of Free Gamer using FSF's definition of Free, as in freedom. Can we agree that Free Games can be commercial, such as Second Life, for example? Taking it further, can't proprietary, closed source, commercial games help Free Gamers by helping improve or by helping mature a Free operating system? Don't closed-source software projects, targeted for Linux operating systems, end up improving the Free Software community? Just some thoughts, because I'd hate to think these interesting articles are coming from someone who just wants no-cost games! :)
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