News snippets & Big Buck Bunny aka Peach DVD released!

Apricot

The Apricot open game project is going to open their code/media repository. Packagers are needed to help the project:

if you know something about packaging and bug tracking/solving write to us ! Apply to: res[-a-t-]crystalspace3d.org

OpenFrag 0.5.2 has been released on the project's fifth anniversary. You can get it here and read about the features in this thread.

Ardentryst

Ardentryst by Jordan Trudgett is a side-scrolling fantasy rpg that focuses on story and character development. It's python-based and I was able to run it just like that! (it's only one level though.) It even has voices!! (well, ok - only in the intro.)

BBB box

The open movie project Big Buck Bunny (BBB) DVD lay in my mailbox (the real one) today! The movie is what I expected it to be: cute, pretty, shallow, a bit funny. It runs for eight minutes and contains fifteen seconds of grotesque post-credits 'outtake' which some of you might find offensive. O_o

BBB - A graphical glitch!

I'm disappointed about one thing though: The movie lacks sounds! Many scenes feel incomplete with no ear-feed. This problem would probably not exist, if Freesound, which recently reached a sound file count of fifty thousand, finally would support the use of the cc-by license and the public domain.

Watch BBB in Free Gamer neTV now:

I'm sorry, this isn't very open source games related, is it? A bit maybe. Anyways, you can download a 720p version here.

Writers Block (or should I say LOADS OF NEWS)

Well, no blog in a while so I'll pitch in.

The big release was Scourge 0.20 which is really turning into a nice game. It's one of my favourite projects, not least because of the regular releases and the RPG theme and it's a complete game (12 chapters of storyline). It's surely worthy of being listed on the FreeGameDev complete games page! Version 0.20 was probably the biggest feature packed release yet, and the game now has numerous active contributors.

Open City 0.06dev1 got released in April, which I didn't see mentioned anywhere. Nice to see the project continuing at a steady pace. Grab it from the project downloads on Sourceforge (the website does not link it directly) and see what new features are going into Open City on the project's development page.

Howitzer Skirmish now has a website. It's the tank game with full physics simulation of the tracks:

In the physics simulation, a motor drives the sprocket, which in turn collides with all the links in the track. Each link in the tracks, is a fully simulated rigid body.

Blocks is a fun and free software 3D Jump n' Run for Linux and Windows. A youtube is worth a (frames*1000) words.

Looks very cool although perhaps a bit floaty for my liking. Definitely a great addition to the open source game scene though and it's complete and playable. Download and enjoy.

Not so complete and playable is Dungeon Hack (project page). It started out as an effort to bring Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall into the 21st century but due to copyright concerns has become a game in it's own right merely inspired by Daggerfall. The original releases were only targeting Windows but now it's getting ported to Linux. Definitely one for the future and it has been in development for some years - some nice screenshots - now so looks like it shouldn't be disappearing.

Oh noes, there's more news... too much for one post? Nah... let's get on with it...

Update: Corrected PureBasic reference - it said FreeBasic before, and that is Free Software!

Lost Labyrinth is an awesome graphical roguelike. It's really a cool game and a great time-waster. The only problem? It needs PureBasic which isn't free and as such it can't be included in your favourite Linux distributions. Well, that's about to change:

Yes Lost Labyrinth can be packaged for Fedora/Debian now, as a Free purebasic compiler has been written named elice.

Great news for lazy sods everywhere!

If you like maths and cricket, try this! Ta ta!

SMC & internal affairs

SMC 1.5: New particle effects and enemies

You can now download version 1.5 of Secret Maryo Chronicles (smc). Lots of improvements found their way in:

New World, many new sprites, replaced enemies, particle emitter, ambient sound, many fixes and more!

The project is moving the game's visual style further away from it's Mario inspiration - I applaud to that. There still is a bunch of tasks for audio and 2D graphics artists though.

A bit of a while ago, the platform game scored first place on yet another genuine top open source games list™.

Okay. The update on smc was actually just a cover up. You and I, dear reader, we have to talk. Text browser folks and RSS users can leave now.

This is what Free Gamer will look like... maybe

This blog will get a new look soon. If you care about the style of the text you read here, please take a look at the current work in progress and comment on it. Let me help you help me help you (help me?)

Egofoo with Egoboo and a Tank Pledge

Egoboo 2.6.1 (stable) is ready for consumption (go there for download links). Go kick some ego ass with this revived classic. For braver souls there's also the development version but the Linux effort lags a bit behind the Windows effort with that one.

There's also a great overview of the upcoming Scourge 0.20 release. The features for version 0.21 sound very promising. Scourge is very close to having enough features and contributors to make it a very, very nice game and if support for the Worldforge model format gets done, I can see some nice new models making it into the game and it finally getting some credit.

Here's pictures of Project Football, an exciting project to create a soccer management game. The site is mostly in Spanish though the author posted a thread in the FGD forum.

Finally, the author Stormbaan Coureur of has posted the following request for pledges towards a game he has been creating that fully simulates a tank with tracks. If he gets enough pledges, he'll make it open source, and it's certainly a very cool prospect. He's going for $1000 which, when you think about the megatons of money some rather rubbish commercial games make, is very little given how cool it is. How cool is it? Have a look at the video below. Here is the the pledge page.

Settler spam and nifty geekiness

Solitaire Settlers of Catan

Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Ca-Tan Ca-Tan Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Ca-Ca-Ca-Ca-Tan

Nettlers

So we have now at least five working games 'inspired' by the board game "Die Siedler von Catan" hosted on SourceForge.net: Solitaire Settlers of Catan 1.0 (new release), Pioneers 0.12.2 (new release), Settlers3D, Nettlers (Win only at the moment) and jCatano.

No problem really, it's a great game and the projects have something individual in each of them. I enjoyed test-playing Nettlers via Wine. I was surprised by a well self-explaining interface. (Other candidates on the list are rather unclear about how to do what.)

Yes, these are the controls. No kidding.

Stephen M. Cameron released Word War vi 0.08, a retro-looking, good-sounding (98% self-made, CC-BY-SA 2.0/3.0 sounds/music) Sopwith-ish/Side-scroller game. It's slightly geeky nerdy, just look at the 'intro':

In the beginning, there was ed.
Ed is the standard text editor.
Then there was vi, and it was good.
Then came emacs, and disharmony.
Your mission is to traverse core memory and rid the host of emacs.
It will not be an easy mission, as there are many emacs friendly processes.

Word of warning: the controls are horrible... I also unfortunately was only able to compile it without sound. But it is pretty cool!

World War vi

Also, UFO: AI 2.2.1 has been released:

• Bug fixes. (d'oh)


• Improved in-game IRC client.


• Added UFO Theory to Tech Tree.


• Removed civilian death limit. Instead you will lose if you make too many nations unhappy.

This makes me feel a little warm, as I remember, that there was a forum discussion about the the unfairness of the condition to never loose more than a specific amount of civilians' lives. Ah Open Sourcia, land of the free. ^^

OpenArena 0.7.6

OpenArena likes furries

OpenArena 0.7.6 is out. (direct link to Win+Lin+Mac zip archive) More maps, more models/skins, more game modes and a new tagline!

OpenArena is a violent, sexy, multiplayer first person shooter

For 0.8.0 also planned: more music! (There isn't any right now.)

If you're hosting an OA server, you might want to upgrade. And if you know someone who hosts a server, tell them to upgrade, will ya? The general tendency seems to not know about the new release. O_o

Robot-looking stuffs are cool

The site has a new look (you might want to keep your eyes closed though.) Also, there seem to be some troubles with the new version. I didn't experience any problems, except for the low amount of up-to-date servers.

Nexuiz on the other hand, behaved badly, when I tried the then-fresh 2.4 release for the first time. Fortunately an emergency hotfix thread was opened and patched versions posted. If you encountered problems with the game and didn't bother to try to find a cure, simply download the most recent patch.

Turrets. Yepp.

Tremulous 1.2 will never be released. Or maybe it will. Whatever. Does it read like I don't bother too much? Yes. Why? Because I recently discovered that some servers had configurations, which allow a very different gameplay. For example: PornServ. The teams get many many building points, build buildings faster and more frequently, which allows for totally new strategies. For example: The tower rush, a tactic usually known from Real time strategy games.