Allo Allo with Allacrost

Ok, I've been slacking. I could make excuses (please somebody tell me a cheat so I can complete level 50 of Kobo Deluxe) but I won't.

Another Hero of Allacrost release is up for grabs on their website. This version does bring a few new features to the current tech demo status of the project, but it's a major rewrite of several parts so versions will hopefully be coming thicker and faster in the next few months.

I tried it out and it's impressive, although not very expansive yet. If they can keep up the production quality and go on to make a full game, it's going to be an amazing game indeed.

Fortress WIP

There has been plenty of work on the project that was started here earlier this year - Fortress. Check out the castle components courteousy of our very own povray magician, Rushhour. There'll be a playable tech demo soon so I'll post news of that when it arrives!

Sun Dog Resurrection is a project to make a Free Software successor to the classic game Sun Dog for the Apple II (now that's going back a ways). What makes this project interesting is that it's the original Sun Dog game author who instigated it. They had been a bit stagnant but there's activity on the sf.net project page.

Project Apricot got it's blog going. It's syndicated on the FreeGameDev planet, as are many other Free Software game project / developer blogs, so if you enjoy this blog then the planet is a good place for you to go as well.

I'm baaaaaaaaack!

Whenever I have an extended FG absence (nearly 4 days this time!) it always makes me feel like shouting "I'm back" in the style of that guy from Independence Day. Maybe in a past life I had my dignity taken away from me by rectally-fascinated aliens? Who knows, but now it's out of my system I doubt I'll think it again.

So... since it's "tomorrow" now, I'll point people in the direction of a comment by FIFE developer mvbaracuda who corrects my "commercial quality techdemo" description of the upcoming joint venture between FIFE and Zero Projekt. So if you are interested in making adventure games then investigate further.

Paintown

Paintown is an old school beat-em-up like Double Dragon. It's been in development all year and has an installer for Windows and source download for other platforms (Linux only, I think, but not checked it thoroughly) and looks like a fun game.

I tried out Vega Strike which looks nice although I think these kind of space exploration games need a storyline to get people involved. Since it doesn't have one, there's no initial purpose to the game (other than make money I guess) so I didn't spend too long playing. The latest VS is only available from subversion but it's shaping up nicely so a release should come soon - before the end of the month, I reckon. The big news is the addition of shader support so it's going to look very pretty, in addition to tons of gameplay balancing and bug fixes.

I also tried out JCRPG which is turning into a very nice little game engine. The graphics are great and if the same determination and attention to detail is paid to the rest of the JCRPG goals then we will have something really special on our hands. There is a download available if you want to check it out - it's Java so you can, er, run it anywhere. That's what they say. ;-)

Fortress may be a long way away from anything releasable but, well, castles are cool. So check out the development blog for pictures of two contributed castles. I'm personally involved in the project so it's exciting for me and if those artistic efforts are a measure of what the game will look like, it's going to look absolutely awesome.

Beep... please leave a message after the tone

Lugaid has Stand Alone in the FG forums. An RTS game for Windows, although I'm not sure if it is open source and able to download and play it yet. He says:

RTS game inspired by defence games. Project is almost finished, it needs more maps and graphic sets, maybe some more units. At first Interface is quite cumbersome, but not after you get used to it.

Fortress Logo

I will also note that we have started making progress with Fortress, inspired by the classic DOS game Castles. We have a logo, a very early prototype, and a wiki. Yesterday I compiled this list of gameplay elements that basically describe the key concepts of the game. Somebody has started working on models for the game too.

If you are interested, check out what we are doing and throw in your own thoughts in the Fortress forum. It will be an entirely open source project. A skilled artist or two would be really helpful. :-)

Despite my involvement (at the moment it looks like I'll be the main programmer) I have resisted bringing it up here since I don't want to abuse FG as a platform for pimping my own projects. However we have reached a point where there's a bit of momentum and it would be a good opportunity for people to provide some input before project direction becomes harder to influence.

Anyway, I'm actually away right now (back Sunday) so it's a short one today... *vanishes*