New IRC channel / network

Not too much happening here on our blog, but in light of the recent changes in freenode ownership we decided to host our own IRC server. 

You can access the #general channel on irc.freegamedev.net (SSL only, port 6697). For now it still bridges back to the old #freegamer on freenode. 

Other already available channels are: #opengameart, #libregamewiki, #libregamenight, #supertuxkart, #hedgewars, #flarerpg and some others. Feel free to add your own and we can also bridge it. 

The easiest way to access it is via our very nice webchat at https://freegamedev.net/irc/ (even supports channel history, so just pass by from time to time). 

For the XMPP users there is als a gateway to all channels, for example just use #general@irc.freegamedev.net as the MUC address. 

See you on IRC :)

Stuck at home looking for some Free 4x space strategy game?

Hi and welcome back to another rare post from your favorite open-source games blog :) Oh and yes I am also in quarantine due to Covid-19... stay save and stay at home!

So these days I had *some* time to check out recent developments in the probably most "just another turn" time wasting genre: 4x space strategy games.

Hot off the press is a first beta release of faithful modernization of the grand-daddy of this genre (Masters of Orion) called Remnants of the Precursors:


(Click here to watch the above video on Invidio.us instead)

Those sweet graphics come in at a hefty 1GB download and you will need Java to run it. The full GPL3 licensed source-code is available, but sadly the art assets are all under various non-libre Creative Commons licenses. The author is also asking for feedback on the beta via Reddit.

But did I say "faithful"? Yes, this is game-play wise a pretty much exact copy on the 1993 classic. Not your cup of tea? Then maybe it is time to revisit FreeOrion.

This might not be as new or flashy, but it is the real fully libre deal!
What is more? There is now a community run multiplayer matchmaking server with XMPP turn notification support for your multi-week play sessions. Our friends at #libregamenight on Freenode IRC have already organized some nice games with it.

Any other similar games to play during these difficult times? Let us know on the FreeGameDev.net forums :)

Stay save and keep those around you safe as well 😷

Looks like battleMETAL will fill some Mechwarrior 2 nostalgia

Just came across this cool video and project which aims to implement a Mecha game and SDK on the Quake1 engine (Darkplaces specifically):



You can find more details on their website and the Github repository.

Art assets are apparently not available yet due to some non-free placeholders, but I hope this will be changed soon. Also no multiplayer, but that might be possible to fix.

Also really cool would be a Occulus Quest VR port via the already available and quite awesome Darkplaces VR port called QuakeQuest.

Leave a comment on our forums.

Don't miss Sealed Bite, the Game Off 2019 winner!

You might remember end of last year's Game Off game jam sponsored by Github. The winners have been annouced a while ago, and while again quite a few submissions were using closed source game engines, the overall winner isn't.

So make sure you don't miss Sealed Bite, a fun little/short jump and run:

Obvious inspiration comes from the very popular Celeste game.

You can find the source code here, and not all that surprising it utilizes everyone's favorite Godot Engine :) Sadly the graphic assets are quite a bit less free (CC-by-NC-ND).

Let us know if you enjoyed this gem of a game on our forums!

Watch out! Hedgewars releases long-awaited v1.0.0

Have you heard of Hedgewars? What began as a simple attempt to clone Team 17's Worms Armageddon has evolved into one of the most polished and community driven libre game projects on the scene. After more than ten years of continuous development the project is finally celebrating the release of version 1.0.0.

Yorg 0.11 released, now with split-screen multiplayer!

Yorg, the Panda3D based arcade racer has been updated to version 0.11 which includes some long awaited features. Most notably split-screen multiplayer:

Really cool is also the new controller support and awesome particle effects (a pet-peeve of mine in previous versions ;) ).

10 Best Open Source FPS Games

Top ten FPS that are FOSS

Time for another overweening list - the SEO godesses demand it!

Warsow is now Warfork and on Steam

Warfork Gameplay (livestream - skip ahead 1m20s)

Last updated 2019-08-22 (see bottom of this article).

The title says it all. Warfork is the revival of Warsow. Warsow is cool (and super hard to master) but does not have servers running and no development ongoing.

Warfork is an ironically-named fork of Warsow, has CC0 art assets and is for now only released on Steam. The source supposedly is mostly based on qfusion, the source code is supposed to be available as a DLC.