Developing Games Takes Time

Zero Projekt

FIFE is starting to come of age. Although their tech-demo collaboration ended after a dispute between the two parties, Zero Project have continued their efforts and have settled on FIFE for their game project which has so far been two years in the making. To celebrate their second birthday they've put up an array of WIP screenshots. FIFE got a nice new layout for it's wiki too.

The Castle 0.8.1 has been released. "The Castle is a first-person shooter game in a dark fantasy setting. Your main weapon is a sword, so the fight is mostly short-range. Three main levels are included, packed with creatures, items, and sounds. The game engine is based on VRML, OpenGL, OpenAL, and all shadows are done by the shadow volumes approach." Interesting but not quite there yet.

Remember the classic game Theme Park (it started off the whole dang 'Theme X' genre)? Followed by the Rollercoaster Tycoon series (1-3)? Well these guys do and they are aiming to recreate, in open source glory, the ultimate theme park game. Theme Park Builder 3D just got it's inaugural source release.

Speaking of projects to create 'the ultimate of their genre', Transport Empire has come back to life. Started by members of the Transport Tycoon community, it had languished for years in the depths of design documents and decision making. Well last year somebody decided enough was enough, grabbed the bull by the horns and started coding - basically throwing the overbearing bureaucracy out of the window. Code is available from SVN and can now be compiled on Linux (for the brave only at the moment). It'll be interesting to see where that one goes in 2008.

Last but not least, one of my favourite projects GemRB released a new version, 0.3.0 and now you can [mostly] play through a bunch of Infinity Engine games (i.e. the Baldur's Gate series). Hopefully somebody will start creating a Free game that uses GemRB. :-)

On to a freeware game, The Silver Lining (a massive fan effort to make a top quality freeware game based on the King's Quest series) have a journal update where they show how they build up the 3D scenes used in the game. It's both pretty and interesting and shows just how much effort is involved for just a single aspect of the game. It's a Windows only game but I guess that's becoming less of a problem these days.

King's Quest

I'm not a big fan of just repeating what I see on the Linux Game Tome so I'll be brief about these two: Warzone 2100 version 2.0.7 and X-Moto 0.3.0 got released. The former is a bugfix release (which was sorely needed) and the latter quite a lot of new features (notably hotseat multiplayer) and a new maintainer.

A few days ago I lamented about Adventure Game Studio not being available for Linux. I really should do my research before making such assertions... it is. Not only that, there's this groovy project to take all the hassle out of finding and installing AGS games - the Adventure Game Goddess.

Forget about boring hand tasks and enjoy the games ... One click: the game is downloaded, installed and set up. One click: you are playing

How cool is that? You can even run Kings Quest VGA I using the AGS Linux version, with a few tricks. How cool is that as well? I wonder if the same process works with KQ VGA II? So many questions...

For those unfamiliar with the King's Quest series of games, it is probably the most promininent series of the genre. There's a lot of history and a lot of hardcore fans, many of whom were disappointed when Sierra was consumed by Vivendi Universal which eventually caused a rift with the lead author and the demise of the series after 8 games.

The Silver Lining

Some fans felt so strongly that they went on to create the The Silver Lining, a spectacular looking fan-made project to create a 3-game (or 3-chapter) continuation of the series. It was formerly entitled King's Quest IX before Vivendi Universal made them ditch the official affiliation. Sadly, The Silver Lining is closed source (but freeware) and Windows-only. I did lobby a while back to make them open source it and use OpenGL instead of DirectX but it fell on deaf ears. I must say, I was not enamoured by The Silver Lining tech demo either, whilst the stills look great the animation and scene transition was shakey at best, and there was a lot of aimless wandering around with very little to interact with. Still, it's just a tech demo, so I shouldn't be too harsh.

There's even a remake of KQ III (complete but Windows only and freeware) and KQ IV (in progress - although I'm not in the mood to read up on it but I bet Windows only and freeware). Project X looks interesting - produced by the same people behind the KQ III remake, Infamous Adventures.

I would do a KQ article with more information on and screenshots of each game, but it's too much freeware and not enough open source for my liking, so this little ramble will suffice and you'll just have to take my word for it that everything I mentioned looks at least ok or possibly even rather lovely. I reckon there are enough links to keep keen adventure gamers happy. ;-)

The Silver Lining Demo

There is a demo of The Silver Lining (formely known as King's Quest IX) available for download!

For those who don't know, King's Quest is a long running series from Sierra. Back in the good old days of 16 colours, this game combined the best possible graphics, fantastic landscapes, puzzles, and great stories. In fact, I don't think I enjoyed many adventure games more than King's Quest V. (Then again I stopped buying games after that.)

There's a good overview of the King's Quest series on everybody's favourite resource. There's a quick overview & screenshots of each of the KQ titles on vintage-sierra.com. There's also freeware VGA remakes of KQ1 and KQ2 availabe from ADG Interactive.

Enough background information... onto the game in question.

The Silver Lining

The Silver Lining is a 3D adventure game with breathtaking scenery and superbly animated characters. It is a fan-made game so it should combine, refine, and outshine the qualities of the original King's Quest titles. The visuals are stunning and if the gameplay is half as good, this will be an unmissable piece of freeware.

There's a trailer on Google Video, as well as a making-of.

The bad news, it's Windows only. And my laptop is too crap to run it.

I did try to talk them into open sourcing the engine a while back, but it fell on deaf ears. That is, "We don't want people to steal or ruin our game!" deaf ears. Ignorance is bliss.

I would be interested to know how well it works with WINE or Cedega.

Dark Days

I came across Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstars the other day. It's a GPL cross-plaform fan-made sequel to Zak McKracken, a Lucasarts game. Whilst browsing for information on Zak1, I came across another ZM sequel, Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space. It looks even better than ZMAR, but is Windows only and seemingly only freeware. There's a rather impressive trailer available. It reminds me a little of the also-impressive The Silver Lining project (formerly known as King's Quest 9).

Simutrans

In other freeware news, Simutrans version 0.89 is now available. It's a preview release but this game is constantly moving forward and seems to update every few weeks, a practise I approve of. There's also a rather funky hand drawn "sketch" graphics set for Simutrans, shown in the screenshot here.

A topic I would like to cover more in the future is the sharing of content between Free game developers. Since volunteer resources are predictably limited, a way of getting more quality into Free games is to share good art between projects. People will disagree with the concept, thinking that it makes game content less unique and hence the game less individual, but I think that's an asinine perspective to take when game media should compliment gameplay rather than define it.

I came across Low Poly Co-operative, an initiative to create quality low-poly models for use in open source games. If you really need models then you can request them in their forum.

Recently due to job commitments I have been forced to return to the dark forests of Dr Demon. Fortunately there are friends in this forsaken place. I have come across Notepad++, a Scintilla-based editor that really makes modifying web pages a joy rather than a chore. I heartily recommend it.

It will be worthwhile, at some point, doing a special on various editors and compilers that power the Free game creator.