CivCool, TremFuture, WineOne, WarzoneFree

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FreeCiv, it's sooo pretty (you knew that already, I know...)

I recently learned to enjoy FreeCiv very much. It's pretty and fun. It also has a (fairly) new release called Mr. 2.1.5.

FreeCol 0.7.4 has been released.

Tremulous 1.2? Visit this page to read how you can help making the next release a reality. By playing!

The latest version of LÖVE is now 0.3.1 and a bugfix is coming soon. I can now say with complete confidence that this yet another project is an awesome one. It has style. Check out their forum community. These guys are cool. As you easily can tell, I'm still blinded by LÖVE's stylishness. Oh. And here is a terrible video of some engine demos!

OpenFracas (0.5) now has music and sound.

After 15 years of development, Wine reached version 1.0. Wine is not a windows emulator.

Remember Mars - Land of No Mercy? I at least twice mourned it's death. It seems that the game likes to revive a lot. Animations seem to be the aim at the moment.

Little video showing off what the engine can do right now

PS!!!: Warzone 2100's music and videos are now licensed under the GPL! I am so excited! Warzone 2100 is a great game that long ago was a proprietary one. The real-time strategy game is much fun, though I felt that long gameplay was dull without music and that the story wasn't very touchable without videos. Joy!!! I also discovered the Warzone 2200 project. It appears to be aiming for improving the game engine.

Wesnoth Battling Onwards

Battle for Wesnoth

Well the big release of the weekend is Battle for Wesnoth 1.4 (changelog). Not too much to say about this game that hasn't been said hundreds of times before. It's simply the best open source game project going. Hundreds of contributors, graphics rivalling contemporary commercial 2D games. Over version 1.2, Battle for Wesnoth 1.4 brings 7 new campaigns, major UI improvements, major multiplayer improvements, many improved graphics (the portraits are stunning) and many bug and balance fixes.

Wesnoth is so popular that the response to this release seems to have overwhelmed parts of their website. The wiki and forums are unable to cope.

I'm wondering where they will draw the line with this project though. The main developer has since moved on to SilverTreeRPG. Obviously they could keep adding campaigns, refining the graphics etc, but surely at some point you want to say "this is it, this is the final v1 of Wesnoth" and look at making v2 which is a significantly different game (be it improved or different storyline or whatever). They surely just can't keep on evolving this version because then, well, it seems to be a bit of a waste of resources that could be used to create a different version. Once a game is complete, development is of diminishing returns. Sure, you can make it a bit shinier, but it's of much less value to the game playing community who [I think] would rather see major strides made on a new game rather than the same game have relatively small improvements.

OpenFracas 0.4 (currently just for Linux and Windows), "a free, open-source game that is similar to Risk." There's more gameplay features than in standard Risk, and it's also well done, so check it out if you like that kind of strategy game.

SuperTuxKart 0.4 is now up for download. No screenshots of 0.4 on the website, although it looks the same as 0.3 for the most part.

Space Exploration v5 - a fun little 2D space exploration and trading game. This version greatly enhances the UI, but I think the Java detractors will love this version because it's very very slow. I suspect the author isn't too experienced on Java graphics programming and as he learns more it will speed up greatly. Anybody who believes Java is slow should try out the rather spiffilicous JCRPG which not only looks beautiful but is very fast too. A bit of perseverance and Java "force" is all that's needed.

Tactics with lasers and lite space

Laser Tactics is the new name for Nuclear Graveyard. It's a turn based 3D squad tactics game, originally a remake of Laser Squad in 3D that has since transcended the initial goal of being a remake. The author is fairly frustrated at the lack of interest in the game because it doesn't fit the standard mold. If you want to try something a bit tactical and a bit different to the usual FPS or strategy style of game.

There were quite a few links in the last post with little description of them.

OpenFracas

Pathman

Asteroid Wars

OpenFracas is like an advanced version of Risk. What it actually is, is a rebirth of the game Fracas which was open sourced but is writtin in VB6, which is frankly a bit of a rubbish language for anything other than win32 forms.

There's a new development release of Oolite (announcement + Mac, Linux, Windows), the 3D space flight adventure game. I'd seen in many places concern that Oolite development was dead, so this is a delightful reminder that it is still going. It's definitely an underrated game, given the stature of Elite in gaming history and how much Oolite improves upon the original concept. The 1.70 release was actually at the start of December 2007 but, as is the case with many open source projects, it went beneath the radar for a while.

The OpenTTD community are putting together a basic free release for the low-res verison of OpenTTD so it can be included in Linux distros etc. Good to know that the game will no longer require non-free media. Anyhow, anybody interested in getting involved can find all the relevant info in the Graphics Replacement wiki page.

And finally two cool looking new Free games.

Pathman is, "a 3D first/third person re-interpretation of Namco's popular 1980's arcade hit Pac-Man, arguably the most popular computer game of all time." Not much more to say other than check it out if that sounds like your cup of tea.

Also cool looking, but unfortunately missing any kind of project page or cross-platform availability (Windows only) is Asteroid Wars, a snazzy take on another classic game. Perhaps somebody can convince the author to register over at Sourceforge and maybe somebody can make it run in Linux.