Free, libre games and development news
Showing posts with label warsow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label warsow. Show all posts
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Warsow is now Warfork and on Steam
Warfork Gameplay (livestream - skip ahead 1m20s)
Last updated 2019-08-22 (see bottom of this article).
The title says it all. Warfork is the revival of Warsow. Warsow is cool (and super hard to master) but does not have servers running
Warfork is an ironically-named fork of Warsow, has CC0 art assets and is for now only released on Steam. The source supposedly is mostly based on qfusion, the source code is supposed to be available as a DLC.
Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Warsow 2.0 is now almost fully FOSS!
Great news for the FOSS enthusiasts: after many years of constant nagging the latest release of the great parcour/arena FPS Warsow has now most of it's artistic content under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 license (with a few remaining but clearly marked ones under CC-by-ND).
You can find more screen-shots in the above link and the full changelog here.
Rendering speed was also increased (claimed to be 30-50% faster) and a movement tutorial is now included.
So far I always recommended Xonotic over Warsow as the coolest (=most competitive; Red Eclipse is also cool, but much more casual) open-source arena FPS, but I think I might reconsider this now...
Happy fragging :p
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| Also updated particle effects in Warsow 2.0 |
Rendering speed was also increased (claimed to be 30-50% faster) and a movement tutorial is now included.
So far I always recommended Xonotic over Warsow as the coolest (=most competitive; Red Eclipse is also cool, but much more casual) open-source arena FPS, but I think I might reconsider this now...
Happy fragging :p
Monday, June 17, 2013
DevCorner: Underapprechiated game engines
In my never ending search for a FOSS game engine that is usable for game modding with out having to reinvent the wheel (nor requiring to be a C++ code master) & having decent tools for content creation (because I am spoiled and think that is a minimum requirement for a game engine) I have become quite disillusioned lately. That is because *spoiler alert* sadly there is none so far... but a few are close luckily.
The usual contenders for 3D action games are your mixed assortment of idTech based engines, most notably ioQuake3. There are a few upcoming contenders like Unvanquished's Daemon engine (which is a mix of ET:Wolf, ioQuake3 and Xreal) and a yet to emerge idTech4 based champion (my uninformed guess is that it will be dhewm3). But all of them lack a decent game-play scripting function.
On the other side of the idTech spectrum, there is the idTech1 based granddaddy DarkPlaces, which while having advanced to an quite impressive feature set, suffers a quite a bit from its nut-bolted & mostly undocumented client side add-on on the already a bit arcane script language QuakeC.
Interestingly the idTech2 based engines get little attention though. I have highlighted a few nice game projects based in it in the past, but it is probably due to the fact that each project is hacking on their own engine fork, that none has gained prominence as a game engine on it's own. But feature wise the engines behind AlienArena, Overdose and Warsow are probably the most advanced.
The last one of these, has been probably the most overlooked, with the game itself not exactly open-source friendly and the engine being developed more or less behind closed doors. It seems however that this has changed now, although given recent project news it is unclear what made them change their approach. But an all new version of it is now on Github with the main developer mentioning a few really nice changes here. Let's hope it isn't just a "source-drop" of a dying project, as after digging into it a bit (the documentation is really fragmented and lacking) I have to say that it includes a few really awesome features not commonly seen in other FOSS engines:
Besides being really performant, it is fully scriptable and has some quite unique multiplayer features like awards, friendlists and persistent game statistics. It also seems to make good process in having easy to edit GLSL shaders, which I have realized is a much rarer feature than I originally thought. Last but not least it has a really modern looking and fully scriptable menu and HUD.
Ah and before I move on to non-idTech based engines I should mention Engoo for those looking for a modernized software rendering engine based on idTech1 (there was some controversy over it, so I am trying to show some support for its further development here).
Ok, that covered, what are some maybe under appreciated non-idTech 3D engines?
First of all I should probably mention the well known ones for the sake of completeness: Cube2, Ogre3D and the new big player Torque3D. All of which are IMHO still failing to provide a good platform for easy game creation (mainly due, following the same order: in-fexibility & lack of scripting; huge mess of independent parts & bad toolchain; lack of Linux port & buggy and overly complicated toolchain).
One of the shining but lesser known examples of trying to improve the status quo is the jMoneky3 engine. Even though it is still a bit bare-bone (e.g. lacking game frameworks) the nicely integrated SDK and the great new node based GLSL shader editor keeps on attracting my attention. Similary the BlenderGameEngine sure has a few great advantages due to its tight integration. Sadly it seems to be the unliked stepchild of the Blender3D project though, which some quite serious limitations and awesome additions like the candy branch never reaching the the main release.
Then there are the still very much alive big names of the past: Irrlicht and Crystal Space. I am not exactly sure why those never quite reached the required mass to become the engines of choice, but I guess the license mess around Irrklang (and other non free but more or less required addons) and the CS Yo Frankie disaster might have to do with it. But at least Crystal Space was accepted as a hosting organization for this year's GSoC again, so they must be doing something right.
Last but not least, I would like to give a mention to a relatively new contender: Octaforge, which has supplied a steady stream of updated betas lately. The interesting things about Octaforge is that it takes all the good things from Cube2 and combines it with a much updated renderer (Tesseract) and full lua script support. But sadly it isn't quite there yet, and the move to a scripting language required the removal of all the nice game-code that it inherited from Cube2.
As closing remarks I have to admit that this article was rather lopsided towards FPS game engines (and more general purpose ones). Of course there are many great other game engines in the FOSS sphere that focus on RTS or (MMO)RPG games etc. I do however feel that many of the grievances voiced here probably apply there too, but maybe it isn't quite as frustrating there as in the FPS genre.
But if you have some better insights into those type of engines feel free to comment below!
tl;dr: the author (as an old school modder) is frustrated that after all these years there still isn't an FOSS FPS engine that can be modded as comfortably as the Half-Life2 engine or UDK. Don't miss the new qfusion stuff though.
The usual contenders for 3D action games are your mixed assortment of idTech based engines, most notably ioQuake3. There are a few upcoming contenders like Unvanquished's Daemon engine (which is a mix of ET:Wolf, ioQuake3 and Xreal) and a yet to emerge idTech4 based champion (my uninformed guess is that it will be dhewm3). But all of them lack a decent game-play scripting function.
On the other side of the idTech spectrum, there is the idTech1 based granddaddy DarkPlaces, which while having advanced to an quite impressive feature set, suffers a quite a bit from its nut-bolted & mostly undocumented client side add-on on the already a bit arcane script language QuakeC.
Interestingly the idTech2 based engines get little attention though. I have highlighted a few nice game projects based in it in the past, but it is probably due to the fact that each project is hacking on their own engine fork, that none has gained prominence as a game engine on it's own. But feature wise the engines behind AlienArena, Overdose and Warsow are probably the most advanced.
The last one of these, has been probably the most overlooked, with the game itself not exactly open-source friendly and the engine being developed more or less behind closed doors. It seems however that this has changed now, although given recent project news it is unclear what made them change their approach. But an all new version of it is now on Github with the main developer mentioning a few really nice changes here. Let's hope it isn't just a "source-drop" of a dying project, as after digging into it a bit (the documentation is really fragmented and lacking) I have to say that it includes a few really awesome features not commonly seen in other FOSS engines:
Besides being really performant, it is fully scriptable and has some quite unique multiplayer features like awards, friendlists and persistent game statistics. It also seems to make good process in having easy to edit GLSL shaders, which I have realized is a much rarer feature than I originally thought. Last but not least it has a really modern looking and fully scriptable menu and HUD.
Ah and before I move on to non-idTech based engines I should mention Engoo for those looking for a modernized software rendering engine based on idTech1 (there was some controversy over it, so I am trying to show some support for its further development here).
Ok, that covered, what are some maybe under appreciated non-idTech 3D engines?
First of all I should probably mention the well known ones for the sake of completeness: Cube2, Ogre3D and the new big player Torque3D. All of which are IMHO still failing to provide a good platform for easy game creation (mainly due, following the same order: in-fexibility & lack of scripting; huge mess of independent parts & bad toolchain; lack of Linux port & buggy and overly complicated toolchain).
One of the shining but lesser known examples of trying to improve the status quo is the jMoneky3 engine. Even though it is still a bit bare-bone (e.g. lacking game frameworks) the nicely integrated SDK and the great new node based GLSL shader editor keeps on attracting my attention. Similary the BlenderGameEngine sure has a few great advantages due to its tight integration. Sadly it seems to be the unliked stepchild of the Blender3D project though, which some quite serious limitations and awesome additions like the candy branch never reaching the the main release.
Then there are the still very much alive big names of the past: Irrlicht and Crystal Space. I am not exactly sure why those never quite reached the required mass to become the engines of choice, but I guess the license mess around Irrklang (and other non free but more or less required addons) and the CS Yo Frankie disaster might have to do with it. But at least Crystal Space was accepted as a hosting organization for this year's GSoC again, so they must be doing something right.
Last but not least, I would like to give a mention to a relatively new contender: Octaforge, which has supplied a steady stream of updated betas lately. The interesting things about Octaforge is that it takes all the good things from Cube2 and combines it with a much updated renderer (Tesseract) and full lua script support. But sadly it isn't quite there yet, and the move to a scripting language required the removal of all the nice game-code that it inherited from Cube2.
As closing remarks I have to admit that this article was rather lopsided towards FPS game engines (and more general purpose ones). Of course there are many great other game engines in the FOSS sphere that focus on RTS or (MMO)RPG games etc. I do however feel that many of the grievances voiced here probably apply there too, but maybe it isn't quite as frustrating there as in the FPS genre.
But if you have some better insights into those type of engines feel free to comment below!
tl;dr: the author (as an old school modder) is frustrated that after all these years there still isn't an FOSS FPS engine that can be modded as comfortably as the Half-Life2 engine or UDK. Don't miss the new qfusion stuff though.
Saturday, February 09, 2013
Various follow-ups
First off as a rather fast follow up on the last post:
Their 3D game engine also saw some nice updates lately, however sadly their crowd funding push to port Torque3D to Linux fell (not totally unsurprisingly) short of their 30,000$ mark (with about 10,000$ pledged).
- New version of Alien Arena out, boasting a 300% increase in render speed
- Small, bugfix release of War§ow out now
Their 3D game engine also saw some nice updates lately, however sadly their crowd funding push to port Torque3D to Linux fell (not totally unsurprisingly) short of their 30,000$ mark (with about 10,000$ pledged).
Sunday, July 29, 2012
War§ow 1.0 released
Yesterday the long awaited version 0.7 1.0 was released and thus after 7 years of development War§ow has gone out of beta.
For those out of the loop, here is a short description of it by the developers:
They also made a nice release trailer:
For those wondering, there is some discussion here with War§ow developers trying to justify their decision to keep the art assets non-free and why there isn't a open source-code repository.
Personally I am not convinced, but at least they release their engine code and promise to keep the overall game always freeware...
However besides that, it's a fun FPS! So try some crazy parcour-like moves yourself ;)
For those out of the loop, here is a short description of it by the developers:
Warsow is a fast paced, deathmatch game. It has your classic things like bunny hopping, rocket jumping, and general mayhem. There's many game modes, including, Bomb & Defuse, CTF, Instagib, and the classic 1v1 Duel.You can see the full changelog (including many nice screenshots) here, and if you want to give it a try, head over to their download page.
They also made a nice release trailer:
For those wondering, there is some discussion here with War§ow developers trying to justify their decision to keep the art assets non-free and why there isn't a open source-code repository.
Personally I am not convinced, but at least they release their engine code and promise to keep the overall game always freeware...
However besides that, it's a fun FPS! So try some crazy parcour-like moves yourself ;)
Friday, July 06, 2012
AlienArena reloaded edition
The PR machine behind AlienArena seems to have found out by rigorous focus-group testing and public surveying, that a re-branding of the idtech2 based arena FPS, was in order...
But here on the uncompromising last resort of free and unbiased game journalism we call it what it is: a nice new release, bumping the version number to 7.60; because as you should know... a higher number is always better :p
Obviously it wasn't just the number that changed, and the list of engine, art and gameplay improvements is actually quite impressive for this release.
Another thing they updated is their website (the old one was quite horrible), and while this is a open-source game only by its engine code and sadly not media, I really like their new slogan:
Speaking of PR efforts, there is now a dedicated PR team for War§ow and the long awaited 0.7 release is slowly moving forward and you can see (incl. many nice screenshots) what kind of changes you can expect here.
There is also an BETA release of the version 0.7 (which according to standard version naming schemes should be a beta itself I guess ;) ) which can be downloaded here.
But here on the uncompromising last resort of free and unbiased game journalism we call it what it is: a nice new release, bumping the version number to 7.60; because as you should know... a higher number is always better :p
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| New alien spider bots! |
Another thing they updated is their website (the old one was quite horrible), and while this is a open-source game only by its engine code and sadly not media, I really like their new slogan:
Open Sourced. Ever Evolving.Which has a certain ring to it ;)
Speaking of PR efforts, there is now a dedicated PR team for War§ow and the long awaited 0.7 release is slowly moving forward and you can see (incl. many nice screenshots) what kind of changes you can expect here.
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| Screenshot from the War§ow 0.7 changelog thread |
Thursday, April 05, 2012
The Big idTech 2 round-up post
Hello fans ;) Today we get back to the main business of this blog: gaming news!
And of course my favorite genre: FPS (forevar!)... specifically everything related to the Quake2 engine (idTech2).
The reason is that we got a nice mail from the developers of Quake2World, which I had not really on my radar as still under development. But now they released a public beta, which I have not tried yet as there isn't a Linux download (yet).
But judging from the pictures and videos, I am was quite sure that DFSG standards are not fulfilled... and they know and don't care (very short sighted... but well).
So that is why I decided that they don't deserve a news post all by themselves :p
Low and behold... an update on all Q2 based games that *are* on my radar:
AlienArena is preparing for a new release with a reloaded trailer and some update one engine improvements:
Ya3dag, also released a new version recently and I still think its cool in-game editing features should be picked up by some other idTech2 engines. Can't be that hard to port...
Especially for UFO:AI it might be a nice way to modify missions. Speaking of which... they are also preparing a new version 2.4 and released an RC (changelog) recently. Again no Linux download, so I am skipping it for now. They have however almost reached full FOSS status of their sound-effects... at least that is what they say, the graphic they posted says CC-sampling plus though, which is AFAIK not FOSS compatible :(
Now to the games that don't show any real visible progress: War§ow is just postingstupid stuff interesting trivia on their blog. However I don't consider the long awaited 0.7 release vapourware yet.
Another matter in the vapourware category is OverDose though... in development since what feels like at least a decade, and still no release anywhere near (which is also their excuse why they don't share their nice engine improvements or for that matter any source-code all together >:( ). However they recently posted a lengthy news on Moddb in what seems to be an attempt to jump on the current "Kickstarter" bandwagon. Think what you want of that... but they are for sure not getting any of my cash before there isn't a engine-source release...
And of course my favorite genre: FPS (forevar!)... specifically everything related to the Quake2 engine (idTech2).
The reason is that we got a nice mail from the developers of Quake2World, which I had not really on my radar as still under development. But now they released a public beta, which I have not tried yet as there isn't a Linux download (yet).
But judging from the pictures and videos, I am was quite sure that DFSG standards are not fulfilled... and they know and don't care (very short sighted... but well).
So that is why I decided that they don't deserve a news post all by themselves :p
Low and behold... an update on all Q2 based games that *are* on my radar:
AlienArena is preparing for a new release with a reloaded trailer and some update one engine improvements:
Ya3dag, also released a new version recently and I still think its cool in-game editing features should be picked up by some other idTech2 engines. Can't be that hard to port...
Especially for UFO:AI it might be a nice way to modify missions. Speaking of which... they are also preparing a new version 2.4 and released an RC (changelog) recently. Again no Linux download, so I am skipping it for now. They have however almost reached full FOSS status of their sound-effects... at least that is what they say, the graphic they posted says CC-sampling plus though, which is AFAIK not FOSS compatible :(
Now to the games that don't show any real visible progress: War§ow is just posting
Another matter in the vapourware category is OverDose though... in development since what feels like at least a decade, and still no release anywhere near (which is also their excuse why they don't share their nice engine improvements or for that matter any source-code all together >:( ). However they recently posted a lengthy news on Moddb in what seems to be an attempt to jump on the current "Kickstarter" bandwagon. Think what you want of that... but they are for sure not getting any of my cash before there isn't a engine-source release...
Saturday, January 07, 2012
New FPS updates
As the FPS resident gamer here at FreeGamer (I am playing usually under the nick poVoq btw ;) ) I am keeping you up to date to the newest FPS updates:
Hot of the press: the cosmic edition (1.2) of Red Eclipse was just released; Lots of new maps and feature additions (and they toned down that annoying hit-sound a bit). Sadly their trailer-contest has not resulted in a cool video yet that I could post here, so take this opportunity to make a cool one ;)
Another new release (7.53) comes from the AlienArena guys, which seem to have made some nice updates to their engine to speed up the performance on higher settings.
Quick rundown of other news:
War§ow got a new website, and there is a nice teaser webpage up for TremZ (no surprise to me btw, that they pushed back their release date by 2 months). But the engine (OpenWolf) they are using is making nice progress also as you can see here (and here in a video: integration of Newton Physics and more).
Hot of the press: the cosmic edition (1.2) of Red Eclipse was just released; Lots of new maps and feature additions (and they toned down that annoying hit-sound a bit). Sadly their trailer-contest has not resulted in a cool video yet that I could post here, so take this opportunity to make a cool one ;)
Another new release (7.53) comes from the AlienArena guys, which seem to have made some nice updates to their engine to speed up the performance on higher settings.
 |
| Alien Arena 7.53 |
War§ow got a new website, and there is a nice teaser webpage up for TremZ (no surprise to me btw, that they pushed back their release date by 2 months). But the engine (OpenWolf) they are using is making nice progress also as you can see here (and here in a video: integration of Newton Physics and more).
Monday, December 20, 2010
An early Xmas?
Not very X-mas like at my current place of residence, but there are just so many good things coming to the FreeGamer enthusiast right now! But I am short on time and on a crappy internet connection... so only text for you guys tonight :p
Their donation drive is also still running, so if you have some money to spare, head over here. They are still a long way from the target, so don't be shy :)
So why is there an early X-mas? Well I just got the hot news that there has been a 2.0 release of the ZeroBallistics FOSS game!!! Definity some nice new features, but have a look at their release announcement yourself here.
So, as a follow up the the recently mentioned Alpha 0.3 release of 0AD and their donation drive, UbuntuGamer has now published a pretty nice interview with one of the 0AD contributors.
Their donation drive is also still running, so if you have some money to spare, head over here. They are still a long way from the target, so don't be shy :)
ZeroBallistics 2.0
So why is there an early X-mas? Well I just got the hot news that there has been a 2.0 release of the ZeroBallistics FOSS game!!! Definity some nice new features, but have a look at their release announcement yourself here.
War§ow 0.6 and AlienArena2011
Two pretty big releases also, but since I always get snubbed a bit for mentioning these games with non-FOSS media around here I will make it short: War§ow 0.6 (BIG and very nice release) and AlienArena2011 (now with ODE physics for rag-dolls).Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Quake2 engine day ;)
Ok, today I have quite a lot of stuff, and its all Quake2 related :p Believe it or not Quake2 is alive and kicking... and its engine is featuring some of the very best open-source games!
A rather interesting Project I was unaware of until recently is Ya3Dag. It has quite a lot of rather unique features not found in any of the other Quake2 engine enhancements, like a in-game level editor (!), advanced terrain rendering, day and night cycles and maybe most interestingly a full Bullet physics integration! The developer of AlienArena showed some interest in the latter already, and I think the level editor and the day and night cycles would make a perfect fit for the Ufo:AI game!
Overdose was a more controversial title in the past (un-free media and plans to keep the code closed), but at least the source code is available now (or at least should be soon *scratches head* as I was unable to actually locate a download link) and IMHO it is the most advanced Quake2 based engine by the looks:
Ok this is something I just happened to stumble across in the Overdose forum. It's a pretty young project called "Axis Revenge" (name subject to change) currently working with the Xreal Quake3 Engine, but due to various problems with it might change to the Overdose engine (or the UDK, nooooo :( ).
For those who might have missed it: AlienArena 7.45 has been released recently and the release makes an already solid game even more awesome ;)
Further more the UFO:AI team is making some great progress after their highly acclaimed 2.3 release two months ago. Besides a a lot smaller changes, various new sounds have been added since then and the rockets got a nice new explosion effect:
Kaaaboom!
Oh and maybe this is of interest for some of you (personally I never really understood the need for it though): War§ow can now be played in a browser window via a Firefox plugin! Check out their development blog for more details.
Yet another 3D adventure game
A rather interesting Project I was unaware of until recently is Ya3Dag. It has quite a lot of rather unique features not found in any of the other Quake2 engine enhancements, like a in-game level editor (!), advanced terrain rendering, day and night cycles and maybe most interestingly a full Bullet physics integration! The developer of AlienArena showed some interest in the latter already, and I think the level editor and the day and night cycles would make a perfect fit for the Ufo:AI game!
Screenshot from Ya3Dag
Check out more screenshots and some videos here!
But lets talk about the actual game. Ya3Dag is aiming to become a single player adventure game (engine) where you play a poor legless pirate ;) It is already playable to a certain extent, but currently there is only a Windows version available (it works well with WINE though).
I quickly send an email to the developer to ask him about this and some other things regarding the media license and future development: Currently he does not have any plans for porting the game to other platforms, but he is open to other contributors. So, if some people are interested in collaboration it might make sense to set up a proper source repository and such (e.g. a sf.net site). Furthermore he does have plans about replacing all artworks with really free/FOSS ones (Yay!), but currently the project is still far from reaching this goal.
Overdose is looking for help
Overdose was a more controversial title in the past (un-free media and plans to keep the code closed), but at least the source code is available now (or at least should be soon *scratches head* as I was unable to actually locate a download link) and IMHO it is the most advanced Quake2 based engine by the looks:
Recently they have put out a call for help (especially for artists) so maybe you feel like contributing to a really ambitious project? They specifically state that you don't need to be perfect in modeling etc... someone with a good base knowledge and willingness to improve is very welcome! Check out their FAQ if you want to know more about the project.
A small treat at the end!
Ok this is something I just happened to stumble across in the Overdose forum. It's a pretty young project called "Axis Revenge" (name subject to change) currently working with the Xreal Quake3 Engine, but due to various problems with it might change to the Overdose engine (or the UDK, nooooo :( ).
Awesome player model WIP
The rest of the project description sounds awesome too: Alternative history (after WW2) and game-play similar to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory? Sign me up! But check out their website, and this thread for more awesome pictures! Oh and did I mention that they are looking for help too?
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Convergent evolution?
Today we have a small biology lesson ;)
Have a look at this screenshot:
TeamFortress2, right? Well WRONG ;) It is actually a screenshot from one of the maps from the upcoming War§ow 0.55 release!
War§ow is a open-source game based on the updated Quake2 engine QFusion, and has already seen some quite successful previous releases. They focus on a fast, e-sports style game play and their general art direction is a pretty nice cell-shaded comic world.
Lately their their style has been for sure party influenced by TeamFortress2 however, which at least in my opinion is not a bad thing :) For a whole bunch of other screenshots and an update on what else you can expect from the new version, check out their newest blog post here. Overall there will be some pretty nice improvements, and probably a significant performance increase with VBO integration into the engine.
But maybe most interestingly, they will also include a new game play mode, Capture the Flag: Tactics. And guess what? It will be a class based team CTF, with turrets and ammo dispensers. Sounds familiar right? :p
Sadly I have to mention though that the art content of War§ow is completely unfree, and its development team shows a general lack of interest in the idea of FOSS... Yes the engine source code is available, but probably only because it is GPL and therefore has to be.
Second lesson for today, kids: GPL is good, mkay?
Have a look at this screenshot:
A nice warehouse
TeamFortress2, right? Well WRONG ;) It is actually a screenshot from one of the maps from the upcoming War§ow 0.55 release!
War§ow is a open-source game based on the updated Quake2 engine QFusion, and has already seen some quite successful previous releases. They focus on a fast, e-sports style game play and their general art direction is a pretty nice cell-shaded comic world.
Lately their their style has been for sure party influenced by TeamFortress2 however, which at least in my opinion is not a bad thing :) For a whole bunch of other screenshots and an update on what else you can expect from the new version, check out their newest blog post here. Overall there will be some pretty nice improvements, and probably a significant performance increase with VBO integration into the engine.
But maybe most interestingly, they will also include a new game play mode, Capture the Flag: Tactics. And guess what? It will be a class based team CTF, with turrets and ammo dispensers. Sounds familiar right? :p
Say Hello to Mr. Turret
Sadly I have to mention though that the art content of War§ow is completely unfree, and its development team shows a general lack of interest in the idea of FOSS... Yes the engine source code is available, but probably only because it is GPL and therefore has to be.
Second lesson for today, kids: GPL is good, mkay?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Apricot ripens, NO just is and Warsow wants $
Winning a game of NONO is a fun little puzzle game [video]. It is built on top of LÖVE, which is fairly easy to have for Win and Lin users. Mac builders wanted!
I found a list of open source games for the Mobile Edition of Java. About 25 puzzle/arcade titles, mostly GPL'ed.
The Apricot project is ripening with great speed! Further additions to blender have been made and videos of a playable prototype recorded and uploaded. The plan to unleash "real Open Source power" by opening Apricot's code repository has unfortunately not been fulfilled yet.
The opinion exists, that a game will be less fun for people who were able to play a development version of it. I don't think this problem is a big one and believe that simply because of the necessity for compiling, most people will wait for an official release.
An example of a story-based single-player game with an open Subversion repository is Rastullahs Lockenpracht, a TDE-based 3D RPG. I haven't tried it so far because the last time it caught my attention, compiling code was a large burden for me. Now I won't try it as it appears to be depending on non-free Nvidia and Fmod libraries.
It seems that the Apricot team has the same problems that I have when recording with recordMyDesktop: The recorded field doesn't fit the selected window, which results in capturing of unwanted space above and below the targeted window.
Warsow's developers started accepting donations. They want to use it for making participation in an own LAN party cheaper. I'm becoming more and more uncertain about the ultimate goal of the project. Is it profit? A fun game? An elitist community? Being popular? PS: What I'm talking about here is the "ultimate master plan" - which I'm certain every open source project secretly has. ;)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Bedtime
Tired today. Sorry for lack of details.
Daimonin (2D MMORPG) got a new website. Spiffy.
Warsow 0.42. It's a fast multiplayer FPS.
Ace video on Nexuiz, looks fancy FPS.
There's an RC out for VDrift release 2008-02-23, the "next gen" car game. (I don't quite get the notion of an RC for dated releases.
Vega Strike needs nvidia users to test before release due to an unknown number of cards affected by a buggy driver (boo for closed source).
I'm... Zzzzzz...
Friday, February 22, 2008
The Best Way To Play
Here's a good tip on how to get extra performance in Linux. It's on the Ubuntu forums but is essentially an X.org trick.
Battle for Wesnoth 1.4rc1 (aka 1.3.18) is out - good preview of what is close to becoming the next stable release.
FreeOrion 0.3.8 is out. Another steady iteration that lays the groundwork for easier AI development.
NERO 2.0 released. This is currently freeware however the next version will be open source (2.0 uses Torque) which will make it a very interesting Free Software project indeed. "Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives, or NERO for short, is a unique computer game that lets you play with adapting intelligent agents hands-on. Evolve your own robot army by tuning their artificial brains for challenging tasks, then pit them against your friends' teams in online competitions!"
Project TTNA is a project, "to create a free (as in open source), crossplatform 3d game." What a delightfully simple goal. They are writing their own game engine, which seems a little superfluous given the myriad of Freely available game engines. Anyway, there's a long way to go with TTNA but the goal was so endearing, I just had to mention it.
Open Source representatives in mod-of-the-year awards 2007 on MODDB. It's one of those annoying pages that tries to make you watch a video you probably don't want to watch. Press 'next' (beneath the video) a couple of times to get to the results. Tremulous (#5), World of Padman (#4), and Warsow (#4) are the open source representatives while BSG: Beyond the Red Line (#1) is a standalone freeware game that uses the freespace2 source code project. Quite a domination and vindication that open source engines make a big difference to mods that would otherwise struggle to survive the changing times.
Two popular open source games that have gone a while without a release are close to release - Vega Strike 0.5.0 and Scourge 0.20 are imminent.
A quick thanks to everybody who submitted information for todays post, in comments and emails and the forum. This is probably the first time that most of the information was provided by others and I'm just putting it in a post. Perhaps one day Free Gamer can be evolved to be more community-driven but for now it's good to have people feed information because it means I can post even if I don't have much time to look things up.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Nuxified and Cluenet FOSS Game Tournament
The forums are NOT down, they are still up here:
http://freegamer.schattenkind.net/
I'm moving admin of the freegamedev.net domain over to tuxfamily.org so it can be more useful than a simple redirect. [watch this space!]
On top of that, if your Free Software game project includes non-Free art then you need to be careful. Why? Because this could happen to you. Sure it's a setback that the Warsow team will recover from, but by using an appopriate license or agreeing terms this situation could be avoided.
For instance I'm accepting some non-Free contributions to a project of mine but I made sure the author agreed the graphics had irrevocable usage rights for the project. So he can't rip his graphics out if he has a change of heart.
Anyway, the whole purpose of creating games is to play them, right? Well, Nuxified and Cluesoft have come together to put together a tournament using solely Free Software games. They haven't yet chosen the exact games for the tournament so contribute your opinion if you want to be playing your favourite game if you want to take part.
Monday, July 02, 2007
The return of Freedroid RPG
Good morning to open source game enthusiasts and any normal people reading. I feel a bit refreshed after getting back to the Internet having spent nearly 48 hours offline. I know, I nearly died, the withdrawl symptoms were horrendous, but it's ok as I am back online now and have been for nearly 12 hours.
So a few things today. Freedroid RPG development has become really active and a string of new releases has occurred in the last couple of weeks. It is a cross platform isometric RPG game similar to Baldur's Gate Diablo only, instead of swords and scantily clad heroines, you have cattle prods and robotic penguins. It's good to see development pick up and they are focusing on making development easier and fixing bugs, so it's looking like a bright future for the game. The latest release is available for Linux and Windows.
Another game that shows off some of the originality that you can find in indie and open source game projects is Which Way Is Up. A platform game with cute-but-not-bad retro graphics, you have to reach a lever which, when activated, rotates the game world. It's quite an intriguing concept and I'm interested in how much mileage can be gotten out of it. There's lots of interesting touches, like enemies that jump when you jump, making for some tough gameplay. It's a lot of fun and development is ongoing. Written using PyGame, it's available for basically any OS that can run Python.
Project Diaspora is a 2D MMORPG space game. I haven't researched it much but it looks like it used to be a commercial game that was shut down a couple of years ago and some fans (or the original developers?) have gotten the (deceased?) company to release the game code under the GPL and set up their own server. Anyway, most game information and screenshots can be found on the Nightsoft.net forums that seem to be especially for Project Diaspora. You can play it on both Linux and Windows.
Busy day today since I was AFK all weekend! Warsow 0.31 is out. I like the project description on Freshmeat:
Warsow is a standalone, eSports-oriented FPS game. It is based on Qfusion, an advanced modification of the Quake 2 engine. It features fast-paced gameplay focused on trix (trick jumps) and art of movement. War§ow features a complete power-up system, including weak and strong fire mode for each weapon in all "normal" gametypes as well as Warshell (battle shield) and Warshock (quad damage) for team-based gametypes. Its cartoonish graphics use cel shading with a style that is similar but not identical to Manga.
I haven't been able to load happypenguin.org since I got back. That site has been up and down like a yo yo lately. Oh well, people have Free Gamer to read so that's ok. ;-)
Seriously though, I'm thinking of procuring a domain name (as suggested in the FG forums) and then possibly migrating the lists to a host outside of Blogger - probably a sourceforge.net project. I'm wary that having the lists on Blogger will mess up RSS and that maintaining the lists in HTML is just not scaling. If I move the lists (not the blog, the blog stays) to Sourceforge, then I can use a proper database and have user ratings and comments etc. Saying that, all this talk of game lists is a bit weak when I've left them in a mess for the last couple of months but, hey, I'm a busy guy. :-)
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Like a Phoenix!
No, Free Gamer has not met a premature demise! I am merely temporarily really, really busy.
Still, there were a few notable releases in the last week. ScummVM hit version 0.9.0 which brings GUI enhancements and support for [at least] two [new] games.
Legends jumped 0.0.0.1 versions to 0.4.1.40, and you should see the changelog. I've already ranted about discussed versioning debacles issues.
Warsow bumped out another release and really seems to be picking up momentum both as a game and a community. They have started up a development blog. This is a great idea and it would be cool for every major Free game to have one; then we can have Free Game Planet!
I spotted yet another 3d engine on Freshmeat: Nelit2. Information is sparse but the screenshots show off some fancy features. It has a long way to go to compete with the heavyweights of this division like OGRE and Crystal Space.
I also saw Carworld as well. It looks like it could be a very cool driving simulator if the author got a bit more motivation (or a bit of help).
Speaking of driving games, VDrift looks to be gearing up for another release. Improved GUI, car handling, graphics, and more cars and tracks are part of what seems to be emerging as the leading Free Software driving game.
There's great news for Mario fans with updates to Mega Mario and Secret Maryo Chronicles.
Finally, a couple of updates sourced from the Game Tome - SEAR and Runescape have been updated. The former is a major component of the ambitious Worldforge project and the latter a popular Java-based MMORPG.
I hope I didn't miss much and I'm in too much of a rush to plagiarise organise screenshots. Next week normal service should be resumed, as well as the forthcoming layout update that will build on the current list. Enjoy your games in the meantime!
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