Quick & Dirty FLOSS Game Updates

== Insert introductory text here ==

Strategy games

Civitas city

Civitas is a project of a colaborative educational game, where children from schools can cooperate in a network for the construction of cities.

This sounds/looks like a multiplayer OpenCity. Civitas is a GPLed project written in Java.

Thumbs up to kid/education-related game projects whose creators are brave enough to use standard free licenses!

Clippers

Clippers is a board game designed by Alan R Moon that is an abstract island connection game based on clipper ships and the south pacific. This computer version is written in Java 1.5 and includes AI players.

Just like Civitas, I wasn't able to give it a spin. Sorry, Java issues. :(

The Spring Engine has a nice new homepage and a pleasantly clear list of games. (This is probably very old news but kind of new to me.) I was told that Kernel Panic is a 100% open source game for Spring, but unfortunately I am either too stupid or too lazy to make it work. :|

Role-playing games

FreedroidRPG 0.12.1 has been released [download]. The main game map has been re-organized to make more plot-sense. It does, but too many gameplay-useless rooms full of stasis chambers have been added. To my feel, the game is now a lot harder too. However, the controls feel slightly better compared to the last time I tried it. Unfortunately I experienced annoying laggy map-loading and a few crashes from playing too many sounds at once (might have to do with my sofware mixer though). Check out the full changelog for more details.

Rigged FreedroidRPG armor

I noticed that FreedroidRPG's image sources (.blend and .svg files) have been uploaded. an unsorted heap of everything visual that is used in the game [archive tree]. I must say that I like the graphics much better in high resolution. 3D game developers eying this pack will be glad to hear that everything that needs rigging is rigged. For 2D game devs, there is a rendering guide.

Cheese Boys [remember?] is still in development - and still looking for artist help... though maybe someone to scout OpenGameArt would even be enough?..

Ardentryst is being constantly developed - the 1.7 release was added three weeks ago.

Eating daggers in Radakan

Radakan 0.0.1, which can be currently described as "young Qt GUI-driven text RPG", was released. Future plans include graphical clients and such. Creating a system to allow writing the story/gameplay before starting work on a graphical engine is a playing-it-safe decision. IMHO a good idea.

The WorldForge client Ember now has real-time shadows [announcement].

Worldforge Ember, real time shadows

By the way, WorldForge is in the Google Summer of Code 2009. [GSOC page] as are some other game or gamedev-related projects, as seen in this list.

Game makers/tools

Dungeon Mapper

Dungeon Mapper is yet another tile map editor.

Mokoi Gaming 0.4 was released. It now supports OSX and contains a Tetris variant [changelog].

Development on Opensource Game Studio has started. Features: 3D, Qt, Lua. It contains a small glxgears-like demo [video]. Nothing to see here yet. :)

The rest

The two-day game programming competition Ludum Dare #14 has ended a while ago. Unfortunately nobody except arcticum's and Flood of Air's authors cared to release their game as open source software (or I couldn't find them).

Armagetron Advanced 0.2.8.3_rc2 [download] fixes color filters and crashes. [changelog].

Nexuiz 2.5 (taking my time)

Nexuiz 2.5 has been released 6 11 15 days ago. (I *am* taking my time! O_o) You might have spotted the announcement on Phoronix.

Here is the 666 MB heavy download. In case you care about traffic more than graphics and sounds or have a weak system: An Arch Linux user created a ~60MB version for 32-bit Linux systems.

So what are the big selling points of 2.5 from the player side of view? According to the changelog: New HUD, new weapons, new racing game mode, improved look & sound, better bots. Nex is also supposed to be faster regarding processor and network utilization, I did not try to test this though.

Head-up display

Nexuiz 2.5 - more screenshots

I did not notice any revolutionary changes in the user interface - besides the better score board and noob-friendlier map voting system. Unfortunately the game menu part of the GUI is still slightly weird with its microscopic quit button.

Racing mode

Futuristic "Racetrack"

"Race" is a game mode, in which the player has to move as fast as possible using weapons and jumping techniques. As I understand it, this old concept developed from Quake elitists having too much fun with the game's movement 'physics'. It's an important mode in Warsow gameplay and I don't like it. However, I do appreciate that Nexuiz makes itself interesting for a wider audience of course.

I was very annoyed by the racetrack being in the new single-player campaign and wanted to record a video showing how I struggle with it but when I recorded the demo, I surprisingly won! I still think it should be kept out of the campaign or at least it should be possible to skip it - many Nexuiz players will want to finish the campaign but not even know about the advanced movement techniques it requires.

New weapons

I can't help but being overly subjective here (again): Nexuiz has more than enough weapons! Then again, the new weapons are optional (at least I think so) and that makes them okay. The grappling hook was already in the last version (just not as a weapon) and I don't like it, but I know a lot of people do. The portal gun is fun, but not interesting for long if you ever played Portal.

The rifle, however, makes my eyes twitch. It needs to be reloaded! Reloading weapons in a Quake/UT-like game. This is so stupid. No further comments.

Take a look at the weapon models: Grappling Hook, Port-O-Launch, T.A.G. Seeker, Heavy Laser Assault Cannon, Rifle.

Improved look and sound

Sharp new flag model

My favorite part of this review! This is where the 2.5 release shines. The new map desert factory [video] looks great! Even though it seems too large, it plays well and is a nice alternative to the mostly narrow Nexuiz in-door maps.

The new organic-style weapon models fit unexpectedly well. Especially the good look of the shotgun is important, as it's the default weapon.

Smoke

One issue though: the rocket explosion smoke is so dark, I can't see through it. This means that each explosion animation serves as a visual shield for the enemy. It's so sad and funny when one has to disable effects to be able to play better for other reasons but processing speed...

I wrote a poem about how the rocket explosion smoke annoys me:

Rocket smoke

So dark I can not see!

Why do you torture me?

Ain't I grand? Next up: voices. I love the new voices! Not only there are more different tracks but now teammates verbally protesting against friendly fire. Yay for audio improvements! (Oh, speaking of audio.. pdsounds.org is dead [backup])

As mentioned above, there is a new single-player campaign, which introduces new weapons, maps and game modes. It is rather chaotic though. Two capture the flag rounds in it are meant as 'tutorials' (endlessly boring plus bots suck). I hope in the future the Unreal Tournament approach will be chosen: campaigns should be separated by genre and tutorials should be optional.

Portals: still ugly

I have few complaints about the visual quality: portals and player models need better textures also the machine gun looks weak compared to the other weapons. This will hopefully be improved in the future. (If you're a 3d artist, you know what to do ;) .)

Better bots

I red the changelog only after I tested Nexuiz 2.5 for a while. I was confused by the "bots are better" claim. They stand around, walk against walls and fail to capture flags/domination points next to them. Increasing their difficulty seems to only make their aim annoyingly good, but they are not getting any smarter.

Conclusion

All is well, nothing is perfect. Since a lot new things were added, 2.5 might even be fun to those that did not like previous versions. Nexuiz players that don't care for new stuff will enjoy the updated graphics and voices. Single-player mode players will like the new campaign, even though it does have its faults. Now it's time for you to enjoy the video(s) below!

Nexuiz 2.5 wannabe-promo - OGV download

Note: If the HD YouTube version slows down your computer, I recommend downloading the OGV video and watching it with VLC.

I created above video using Nexuiz' awesome video recording tools, Cinelerra and this helpful thread. On the game's homepage you will see a video that concentrates on the new features more.

Commerce & Open Source Games: Libre Music, Tremulous Shirts

Here is some commercial free software gaming news, which I partially failed to deliver on time.

Paul's Music Liberation Experiment is a product of jClassicRPG's lead developer following his passion for composing music. He releases music tracks under the gratis but non-free BY-SA-NC license and visitors can donate to specific tracks, which in return will be released under the free BY-SA license.

The money earned from this will be covered to cover Paul's expensive music software purchases and hopefully a proof that at least small bucks can be made with freely licensed media. It's called "experiment" after all. :)

I am a big fan of this project! I detest the non-free Creative Commons licenses, but this method is perfect to illustrate just how many people think that being free is more important for media rather than just being gratis.

Tremulous T-Shirt Logo

Ministry of Frag (MoFrag) sells a Tremulous T-Shirt and 25% go to the Tremulous team. That's the short story.

The long story is that the project was first thought of 2006 and finally realized in December 2008. It started on the wish to «find some way to support open source games». Most of the people behind MoFrag are from the Tremulous scene.

Powered by the visual awesomeness of Plutocracy's [remember?] lead developer Garoth, it's sure to make you feel sexy about supporting the open source game development.

The MoFrag definition of "open source" is slightly loose: «If your game "feels" open source to us, that is pretty much the only requirement» I was told on IRC. Also I feel a tiny bit insecure about supporting Tremulous, as there might be issues regarding the legality of some of its assets.

LÖVE mousepad

Never minding that, I hope that it will thrive and get involved with lots of cool projects (qubodup's list of cool open source game projects still pending). Do you have any suggestions? My instant thoughts are "LÖVE" (Which by the way has a Merchandise discussion going on) and "SuperTuxKart" (by the way, did you know that the project has an awesome new homepage look?) although last time I checked out STK, this little bit |___| of polish was missing for me to call it "polished enough for merchandise".

EDIT: Supposedly, the Blender Game Engine (BGE) will receive development support from a company using it to develop a commercial title.

I was super skeptic at first, due to Entertainment Arts Research Inc.'s flash page and its subsidiary Twilight 22 Studio's empty page. I Couldn't find anything online but the same press release and compared it to the EVO console scam. Now I'm just confused. Time will tell.

BGE looking awesome

So this turned out to not be a commercial blender update, eh? Aaanyways, about the Blender Game Engine (BGE).. I always thought the BGE was a weak, slow placeholder. I appear to be wrong: its power has recently been shown off in this sunrise thread. Note that this is not a Blender render, it's real-time Blender Game Engine action! Though I bet it's real slow. But hey, I haven't checked it out live yet. ;P

Thanks to Lamoot for the heads up!

Scott's satellite dish model

Newfound Room is Scott's continuation of the Low Poly Cooperative blog.

part of the intention of this blog will be to make some money for me and my family. I’ll be trying out any number of different ways of doing this, but the core of what I am doing here is providing you all with free stuff. The more I make off of it, the more time I can devote to making more.

So far, no sight of any revenue-gaining measures and no post for three months. Ads would make some sense, though not create much profit. Paul's "release-gratis, pay-to-free" method could be used. Although it does have an unfortunate non-free element in it.

Good night! And remember to brush your vaporware-sensors boys and girls!

Tank-game, 3D game educational system, text-mode-pacman, wing update

Diamond Fighters

Товарищи, Diamond Fighters is a tank arcade game that can be played alone or in two-player mode against computer-controlled enemies in a progression-based level system. I find it quite fun (it has upgrades & destroyable walls!) and good-looking (yay for pretty explosions!). Its source code is GPLed (no idea about art.)

iamar [home page, project page] is a project for teaching students how to make 3d games. It covers 3D modelling in blender and 3D game programming. The project consists of video material and the "iamar browser" which uses an in-house scripting engine called "semblis".

I have not tried to run it yet, but it is rather relevant to my interests, even though the "we made our own scripting language" deal does sound rather lame.

iamar has one huge advantage over Alice and Platinum Arts Sandbox: A 100% free software license (the GPL). (I'm especially confused about Sandbox' license.)

MyMan

Geek game news time! MyMan (yo!) is a Pac-Man clone for the command line interface. Despite being a text-mode game, it doesn't look like crap! No horrible Nethack-like symbol clutter! (Yes, you're reading the words of an ASCII-hater right now! :P) It also supposedly has sound, although I have not tried to build it with it enabled.

Wing (the pre-alpha landcape generator, remember?) has now five more team members and aims for being cross-platfrom (formerly dx-only). Best of luck to their efforts.

PS: This blog will be shut down due to copyright infringement on April the 21st, Charles has decided to live computer-free from now on, raising sheep in the Highlands and I'm Steve Ballmer.

Open source Artillery / Worms clones

So it seems that Scorched 3D, Wormux, Hedgewars, and Atomic Tanks are all clones of inspired by... Worms? No. Scorched Earth? Nah. Gorillas? Nope. Tank Wars? No. That's right, their roots go all the way back to a 1980 on the Apple II under the name Artillery. Even earlier ascii versions from as early as 1976 are reported. Now that's real history - all other games (pong and chess excepted) are modern upstarts. ;-)

Atomic Tanks

home • screenshots • download

One of the older and more mature open source Artillery clones, with version 0.5 first available in January of 2003, Atomic Tanks doesn't seem to have the online presence of it's contemporaries. This is probably because it doesn't look that nice, with garish colours, coarse widgets, and almost badly drawn sprites.

Update: Markus comments, "I am sure that the graphics and such in Atomic Tanks are intentional. It is a fairly faithful reproduction of the original Scorched Earth, and for those of us who grew up playing that game quite a bit, that is where the real appeal lies." I'm not sure I can agree with you there [on the intentionality of the bad graphics] after inspecting the original graphics.

What it lacks in the graphics department, it makes up for in features. The sheer range of weapons is overwhelming. You earn money, which you can use upgrade features and improve your tanks, making the game a much more appealing single player experience. Also the land behaves differently, falling to fill and holes created by explosions.

The latest release was 20th March 2009, which gives it a spot at the top of the article. :-)

Scorched 3D

home • screenshots • download

Scorched 3D has been in development since 2001 with build 1 released on 29th April of that year.

The first thing to note about Scorched 3D is that it looks beautiful. It is the only 3D game in the article, but it is especially well done. The islands deform as they get pounded by missiles. Battleships stay moored offshore, the waves lap against the beaches, and jet fighters fly overhead the tanks. It looks as good as a commercial game.

Scorched 3D build 42.1 arrived on 3rd March 2009.

Hedgewars

home • screenshots • download

Hedgewars is the youngest of the four projects, in development since 2004 and first released on 13th November 2006.

If I had to sum up Hedgewars in 3 words, I would say, "Worms II with hedgehogs." (Hey, II is a number!) With it's yelps and ows, and faithful recreation of many of the popular Worms weapons, it makes for a very similar gaming experience, arguably even better.

Hedgewars 0.9.9 was released 19th January 2009 and version 0.9.10 is imminent. I think the video successfully gets across just how Worms-like Hedgewars is:

Wormux

home • screenshots • download

Wormux looks very nice, and gameplay deviates a bit more than Hedgewars from the original worms experience, but is still very heavily inspired by it. It includes all the popular Free software mascots, so there's plenty of characters that you should recognise or should learn to recognise - making it almost educational! ;-)

The last few years have seen the developers work towards a new engine that will massively enhance the game with features like integrated physics (they created whysics engine just for this). I expect Wormux will continue to depart in a good way - by adding new interesting features that enhance gameplay - from it's Worms foundations whilst retaining the spirit that inspired the project originally.

Version 0.8.3 was released on 5th March 2009 and included some backported enhancements from the development version.

Incoming!

Looking to the future, there is also the iteam project, inspired by Gunbound. It seems like it could combine the graphical panache of Wormux with the upgrading fun of Atomic Tanks, but development has been very slow despite a wave of initial enthusiasm.

OpenLieroX

Teeworlds

Alternatives

If you like things to look Worms-like, but be more frantic, you should check out the games OpenLieroX or Gusanos - both inspired by a freeware game Liero(X). It has the character of old-school Worms but plays like 2D Quake. Gusanos (based on the classic Liero) development is inactive, last release occuring on 31st January 2006, whereas OpenLieroX (based on LeiroX) development is ongoing at a slow pace, with version 0.57_beta8 released 9th October 2008.

(My Liero-foo history may be out there, I'm not 100% sure how the different projects relate to eachother.)

Similar in gameplay style, but more modern and less retro-pixel, perhaps Teeworlds is your cup of tea. At version 0.5.1, the game is already solid, polished, and playable and has an enthusiastic, growing player base with many regular players. Development is very active and the last release was 25th January 2009.

Conclusion

The Artillery genre of open source games is possibly the healthiest genre of open source games with 4 very good, polished, playable, and actively developed projects, as well as other similar games, inspired by the classics. With 2D games increasingly neglected by the commercial sector, this genre is arguably one where a few of the open source projects have surpassed their commercial counterparts.

So, which (if any) of the Artillery-inspired open source games do you prefer to play? What's best about it? Or are you hardcore and only accept real clones and none of this contemporary rubbish? :-)

Foooooooooooooo Egoboo

Update: brain malfunction. I first posted 2.7.0, then 2.7.7b, but the correct _stable_ version of Egoboo is 2.7.0b and the development version is 2.7.7, got it? =/ Thanks for the pointer, maststef

A new stable Egoboo 2.7.0 2.7.7b 2.7.0 wraps up several months of development and bug fixing. This project has really come back to life over the course of 2008. It is very well tested with a lengthy changelog. If I had make a criticism, it would be that Egoboo really looks dated these days and perhaps they could renew focus on nicer textures and more detailed models - perhaps aspiring to be a bit closer to SoulFu in quality - but graphics do not a good game make. It's great to see the project successfully revived from a lifeless piece of bitrot that it had become a few years go.

Now it's a pretty smooth looking experience. Check out this (slightly rambly) video review:

Unknown Horizons 2009.1 was released several days ago. It now resembles a game, you can build a city, although it's still a few features short of being fun. They are changing their release policy to monthly updates / snapshots with stable releases less often (i.e. when they are ready) instead of a stable release every 6 months. Sounds like a wise plan to me.

Battery is a browser based 2D top scrolling game written in Java. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view and shoots down enemies. The game is free and freely distributable. The game can be played inside the browser window, if you have Java.

The Legend of Mazzeroth aims to be a new 2D MMORPG, I think in the style of The Mana World or Stendhal. In fact, I thought it was a fork or inspired by one of those two, but I can't easily find the reference nor do I have the time to search for it. Update: it was originally a fork of The Mana World but now is written from scratch although probably uses TMW graphics. Thanks for finding that out Crush.

Extreme Tux Racer 0.5 beta is supposed to be pretty nice and a big improvement over the 0.4 release.

Dammit I had at least two more project updates but I forgot them. Perhaps Freedroid RPG 0.12? Maybe. What about Vacuum Magic 0.10? Possibly. Who can remember... oh, check out this musicy web thingy. Your browser is the next Flash platform, it seems.

Top 10 Projects To Revive

The great thing about open source is a project can never become extinct - there is always a chance of it being brought back to life either by the original authors who re-find their motivation, by new contributors who see the potential, or a mixture of both.

Here are the top 10 games, complete with cliches, I'd like to see return to the development scene and back on the road to completion.

1. Bloodmasters

home • project

This gorgeous 3D top-down action game was released as open source last year after indie developer Pascal "CodeImp" vd Heiden found he'd lost motivation to continue with the project. It's a complete game with great graphics and needs a good C# developer to pick it up, port it to Mono, and help restore the community.

2. Project Citadel

home • project

A very nice looking turn based strategy game set in World War II.

The game reached a playable state before it's development team ByteWare stopped playing the development game.

3. Windstille

home • project

This project isn't technically dead - lead developer Grumbel occasionally bumps it with more concept work - but it's definitely in hibernation and progress is frustratingly slow.

Grumbel is actively seeking writers and developers so the prospects of reviving the project are quite good - no organizational work required.

4. Emilia Pinball

home • project

Come on, who wouldn't love a great Free pinball game? Emilia Pinball is a fairly solid 3D pinball game that is playable, if a little "bare bones" in it's current form. A better table editor, some more tables, and a bit of love to the user interface and ball physics and this game would be a corker.

Hopefully one day a pinball wizard will resume improving this game and add another table or two as well as a few more features.

5. Labyrinth of Worlds

home • project

Ultimate Underworld is my favourite ever game, and this is a project to create a new game based on it the 2nd instalment of the popular series. Since these days the world of Ultima is somewhat abandoned by it's foster parent company EA, I hoped projects like this and Underworld Adventures would have gained more support.

6. Boson

home • project

The promising 3D RTS came a long way but never quite snowballed despite having nice graphics, original gameplay, and most of the hard work already done. I think the dependency on KDE libs was hurtful to attracting contributors.

It is original, playable, has a full set of units for two sides, nice graphics. It has everything going for it except momentum. Oh but to borrow a bit of enthusiasm from the Spring project, and Boson could spring back into life.

7. MyLink / MyNet

home • source

MyLink is inspired by the rather cool game UpLink. After encountering difficulties the author started from scratch with the name MyNet, but after hitting difficulties again (with motivation this time) the project got abandoned. The author is waiting for a new maintainer to step up to the plate. Until that happens, consider this project disconnected.

8. Civil

home • project

Civil is a cross-platform, turn-based, networked strategy game, which allows players to take part in scenarios set in historical battle theatres. The U.S. Civil war was the primary focus before they started losing the battle and development stopped in 2005. Written purely in Python/Pygame, there should be plenty of people able to help out.

Battle simulations, how could that fail to be fun? When development dies, that's how!

9. Slickworm

home • project

An innovative FPS where the terrain was deformable. It went through a few rewrites before the lead developer went silent. He was obviously talented and probably snapped up by a commercial company - a shame for the open source game community as it blows a big hole in the future for Slickworm; this potentially brilliant game looks like it'll never be more than a tech demo.

10. Battle for Antargis

home • project

An original game that mixes elements of strategy and role play, this project enjoyed sustained development for several years and looked very promising before development tailed off as 2008 began. Hopefully somebody will pick things up again as this is one of those projects that counters the 'open source can only copy' popular criticism.

It had another original edge to it, it was probably the first significant Ruby game project, which probably doesn't help when it comes to attracting developers.

Honorable Mentions

Here's a few that I thought also had potential:

• SilverTree RPG
  
  The lead developer of Battle for Wesnoth started to make an RPG! There was joyous celebrations and wide eyed expectation as SilverTree was unleashed on the public. Then he moved on to another project and the with it so went the development activity of the RPG.


• Mars: Land of No Mercy
  
  A 2D mech strategy game that could be nice if development had no slowed to a near stand still. Every now and again something seems to happen that nearly equates to activity, so it didn't quite make the list.


• GalaxyMage
  
  It once looked like a great new strategy game but the developers and the website went AWOL. Enthusiasts resumed development under the moniker Galaxy Mage Redux but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere other than the archives.


• 
  FreePop
  
  This was an attempt to recreate and improve upon the iconic Populous games of the early nineties. It never quite got to a playable state before the developer declared the project dead and moved on.


• Legacy of Magic
  
  Another very promising war strategy game with very nice 3D graphics that never managed to emerge from abyss of alpha releases.


• Fuzzy Adventure
  
  It came about at a time when the only platform games on Linux were SuperTux and XEvil. A quick burst of activity was never turned into long term development. I suspect that Fuzzy Adventure was just SuperTux with different graphics (gameplay was nearly identical) but that's never been confirmed.


• Reaper3D
  
  A space shoot-em-up, this game was neary completed before it stalled.


• OpenParsec
  
  This 3D space combat game was the darling of its time but very dated now. The developers declined to open source it for several years, and by the time they did the times, and with it the community, had long since moved on.

Another games you wished were still going?

Update: some more games that would be cool to revive:

• Dark Oberon is an original 2D isometric RTS whose graphics are created by taking images of melded plasticine models.


• Cspop, a Crystal Space populus-inspired game (svn, no homepage) previously mentioned (twice) on Free Gamer and announced on the happypenguin forums.


• Zugspiel, a 3D train tycoon game (forum) which never quite made it after the author became inactive.


• FreeTrain, a 2D isometric city & rail network building game. It needs an enthusiastic C# developer (contact me directly or post in the FreeGameDev Help Offered forum if you are interested).

Quantum and PyDays

Quantum

Quantum is a simple, minimalist-look rts game in which you try to control a network of planets. It can be played in multiplayer mode against human players and provides a Java Webstart package for a one-click start (works for me). It is a clone of Dyson.

The game reminds me of qonk a lot. Both share a similar look, are about conquering planets with the help of dots and the computer enemy can be hard to overcome. Quantum is more complex, as unit creation has to be managed but also provides an automatic waypoints mechanic. Qonk's planets are moving, which make the game a bit more fast-paced.

KGB Training Simulator, PyDay 6 entry

PyDay #6 just finished. The 24 hour python game development competition's topic was "surveillance", which mostly resulted in "move around and avoid triangular fields of view" games.

To rate all nine games, you will have to register and open the projects' pages.

Caterpillar Fever Dream, PyDay 5 winner

Two weeks ago, PyDay #5 ended. The theme was "lettuce" and it produced eight entries. The winner of that competition was Caterpillar Fever Dream (uppercase removed o_O), a snake-dig-asteroids salad bowl.