Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Limit Load, new arcade combat flight simulator

Stealth development might not be very "open-sourceish", but it sometimes makes for some nice surprises in our project showcase forum.

This time it was the completely new open-source game Limit Load, self described as:
A cockpit flight game that is more of an arcade than a sim. The game is built on the Panda3D game engine. It is similar to the ancient games like the classic Wings or the very good Strike Commander. The story and the atmosphere are important elements of the game, so a lot of focus is placed on that too.
Here is some in-game action and it seems quite polished already for such a new game:


Licensing of assets is still a bit of a grey area it seems, but they are fully aware of it:
The game code is licensed under GPL 3, and custom-made game assets under CC-by-SA 4.0. Some of the assets were taken from "free" (as in "not sure in which way") sources on the Internet, so their licensing situation is unclear. Eventually these should be cleared for use or replaced.
So where is my VR kit? :D

Thursday, May 07, 2015

Old school 2D RTS Wyrmsun is looking to be greenlit

We were kindly made aware by the main developer of the 2D RTS Wyrmsun that he is currently looking for support to get this game on the Steam platform (link includes a game-play video).

Here is a description of the game we got from him:
In Wyrmsun, humans, elves and dwarves all seek to carve a place for themselves on their different homeworlds, with humans living on Earth, dwarves dwelling on Nidavellir, and elves inhabiting Alfheim. In the game's missions, each world follows separate storylines, but the various civilizations can be mixed and matched in custom games.

Wyrmsun features:
  • Retro-style graphics
  • 2 playable civilizations, and a number of non-playable ones
  • 18 quests to play, earning technology points which can be used to obtain new units, buildings and technologies
  • 38 units, 30 buildings and 14 technologies
  • Units that can earn experience, being able to upgrade to new unit types or acquire new abilities upon level-up
  • Persistent heroes, who carry over their level and abilities throughout scenarios
  • Personal names and traits for units
  • Cave, Conifer Forest, Dungeon, Fairlimbed Forest and Swamp tilesets
  • 33 maps of real and fictional locations to choose from, as well as random maps
  • Living environment, with fauna reproduction and predation
  • Very moddable game, with mod-loading capability built in
  • Grand strategy mode, where production is resolved on the strategic (world map) level, while battles are resolved on the tactical level
  • In-game encyclopedia, allowing players to learn more about the units, buildings and other elements of the game, as well as their historical and mythological sources of inspiration.
For those more inclined to help out with the code, there are two code repositories: one for the game and one for the modified Stratagus engine.

P.S.: Yes FOSS games can be on Steam as long as they don't integrate with closed source steam integration libraries; And it can be a great way to attract more users to your game and maybe even collect some donations or sell add-ons (preferably in a "release freely when sufficient funds are gathered" style). See this game for an successful example.