Monday, July 09, 2007

Simutrans and Open Arena and Irrlamb

Open Arena

now with bloom


Simutrans, one of the major open source rail games, gets an update with version 0.99.13 - bug fixes and optimizations are the topic of the day here and with large speed ups for vehicle routing and map scrolling the game should have a nicer feel.



Open Arena ends an 8 month barren spell of releases with 0.7.0 which comes with 10 new player models and 26 new maps. Open Arena looked like a struggling project a year ago but now it is thriving and a worthy Free replacement for the proprietary Quake 3 content.



Irrlamb 0.0.4 is now available, with a bunch of new features for this 3D abstract action / puzzle game. There are binaries for Linux and Windows. I love the regular updatse to this project. :-)



Rumour mill... Angels Fall First demo may be out soon. Check out the trailer. Sumptuous. FG Note: I should try and interview that guy!



Regular readers may know that I'm not big on posting web games (this is an open source games blog after all) but I found this one rather stylish. I bizzarely encountered it on a blog about room escape games that I found whilst cleaning up my bookmarks. I don't think there's a worse genre of game than room escape games. Every time I play one I end up feeling suicidal. Well, ok, not that bad but I can't see how somebody can enjoy just clicking randomly until something lands in your inventory and eventually you can leave a room - it's like focusing the worst aspect of adventure games. Who would repeatedly subject themselves to such torture?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

open arena is decent.
aff has some mod downloads allready, doesn't it? http://mods.moddb.com/3009/angels-fall-first-total-conversion/downloads/

I'm missing ship explosions in the video..

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, the old "Hunt the Pixel" problem, analogous to the venerable "Guess the Word" problem in interactive fiction. In both cases, it's an frustrating failure on the part of the creators to [make important objects distinctive/implement synonyms], though in the graphical world you actually get some people who think it makes a clever "puzzle." Those people need to be staked out in the sun near a red anthill, IMO. Try that 'puzzle,' dammit!

My favorite one-room IF game is basically a "room escape" though. It's called "Enlightenment" and the idea is that you've just completed some old-school grab-everything-that-isn't-nailed-down treasure hunt and you're on your way out when the door slams behind you, trapping you on one side of a bridge over a chasm. There's a troll chained to the bridge who's eager to eat you. You've got a crapload of shiny, glowing magical treasures and things, and one can of grue repellent. You need to find a way to cover, hide, extinguish, or otherwise put out all the sources of light in your possession and around the ledge, so the troll will be eaten by a grue and you can cross safely. It was awesome. Here's the entry for it at Baf's: http://wurb.com/if/game/250

Oh, and that Angels Fall First trailer is pretty cool, but "burocracy?" They need a proofreader! And fiery explosions with no atmosphere? Silly.

Anonymous said...

Is that Angels-Falls still a Homeworld2 Mod?

Anonymous said...

I was looking at the latest Simutrans release a few days ago and couldn't find the source code.

Anyone know if it is available - optimally a Version Control URL?

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Ok, I found an unofficial SVN server and made a page about at http://en.wiki.simutrans.com/index.php/Source_Code

Anonymous said...

When I install irrlamb with the win binary, it just crashes :(

Provide feedback:

Due to SPAM issues we have disabled public commenting here.

But feel free to join our forums or easily chat via IRC with us.