Monday, July 14, 2008

Game & engine news cluster

Nebula from FreeOrion


So let's see... what's going on in the open source gaming world today?



On the forum of FreeOrion are a bunch of awesome looking nebulae. Nice desktop backgrounds and even nicer galaxy view backgrounds!



I started a small smiley making competition for LÖVE. You can win a copy of a print version of my favorite web comic!





OpenDungeons (to be renamed) has been started and a forum was created on the FreeGameDev.net forums. "Another Dungeon Keeper clone!" you say? Well, the thing is that Dungeon Digger's development kind of stagnated... And the other thing is that Dungeon Keeper is/was pretty awesome...



So far, the game features a simple level editor (which I slightly fell in love with already - just think of the possibilities!) and some neat monsters are preparing for their way into the project's CVS!



There have been multiple (mostly bugfixing) releases of the action platform game Blob Wars : Blob And Conquer. But I have two problems with the game: 1. The controls are explosively sensitive and I was so far unable to overcome the first platform sequence in the first level. 2. The turning speed of my character is depending on the distance between bob and the camera, so when bob is standing back to a wall, it will be impossible to aim because the turning speed will be 40 degrees per 1 point mouse movement...



This apparently will not change:

Please note: the camera is not going to get much better than this. Minor niggles, etc. can be ironed out, but a full blown, intelligent and dynamic camera, as found in many multi million dollar budget games is not going to happen.

You can take a look at the first level of the game and at my issues with it in this gameplay video.



Also let me tell you that I appreciate very much, how Parallel Realities gave Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid a nice story and setting, and made it a fun to play game. So I'm not giving up on the 3d platform/shooter just yet!



I just found out that ja2-stracciatella, is based on the unfree (although open) Jagged Alliance 2 source code. :( Thanks to Lightkey of Holarse (de) for giving me the license link!



FIFE's map editor


FIFE 2008.1 has been released! The flexible, isometric 2d game engine has seen many changes: It is now licensed under the LGPL (GPL before), dependencies have been removed (no more tinyxml), it features a small example game and muuuuuuch moooooooore.




What *really* makes me interested in this release, is the inclusion of a map editor! I unfortunately haven't been able to compile FIFE (apparently due to an error in the unstable Debian sid distribution), so as soon as I install Arch Linux, I'll be bombarding you with mapping videos again!



FIFE Is no Fallout Emulator btw!



Nice render for OpenAnno
Speaking of FIFE: OpenAnno 2008.0 was completed (the game uses FIFE as an engine.) There have been some art and code and documentation additions. And new teammates also! :) OpenAnno will be represented at a german indy game dev meeting that I'll be visiting this weekend.



This just in: Simutrans 100.0 (r1867) has been released! Last time I checked it, the game was a Transport Tycoon Deluxe clone with pretty graphics and a deadly/unfair AI.

10 comments:

Andrew said...

With regards to the Blobwars camera problems perhaps some code could be taken from the apricot project that has taken time to implement a good camera and movement system.

http://apricot.blender.org/?p=187

ThatJerk said...

IS it just I who seem to miss the last part of the blog? last line: "I find their", their what?

qubodup said...

whoopsie, and forgot a < / p > too..

KIAaze said...

Aaah, so that's where your avatar comes from, qubodup.
(At least it looks quite similar...)
http://www.blastwavecomic.com/index.php?p=comic&nro=1
:)

Unknown said...

also what will not change with blob wars is the use of non-Free media as "gpl"

qubodup said...

Hsien: Details plz

rogerdv said...

Dependencies removed in FIFE? They included a new weird one: openal_soft!

Anonymous said...

Oooh. Look at what's up over at Dungeon Hack.

http://dungeonhack.uesp.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1364#1364

Anonymous said...

Ooh. hosed the link. Lemme try that again.
Link
Okay.

Martin V. said...

Tinyxml was no real dependency; you're right in this case roger. However openal-soft is no new dependency either as it simply replaces openal on Linux.

Furthermore openal-soft is built from source so it's not a dependency that you need to take care of installing yourself.

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