LanPower's FOSS Games USB Stick

The following is a guest post by the president of the French language gaming community LanPower [fr-en translation] which distributes game compilations.

Gamekey 2 games

The LanPower association is a French group of network game players. We contribute to Free Open Source ("libre") games by producing CD/USB compilations of games: "LanPower Games CDs" and "Gamekey".

The Gamekeys are composed of portables games. These compilations are for Windows but all the games also exist under Linux.

The last series are compatible with Linux thanks to Wine. Thus the Gamekey light serie 2 is the first compilation of portable and free open source games to be compatible with both Windows and Linux (as well as MacOS X and Solaris).

Links:

• Our web site
• Description of the Gamekey Light Series 2 (english)

We intend to translate the Gamekey and the other compilations in several languages if we find the time or get translation help or donations.
An international (5 languages) version is in progress, and should be out in May.

Enjoy

contact : asso [dot] lanpower [at] free [dot] fr

What do you think of such downloadable game packages? Ever used one? Ever wished for one so you don't have to research/download games individually?

FreeGameDev Wiki phpBB integration, propaganda & contributions

 

FGD Forum + Wiki

As an anti-spam and pro-convenience measure, you can now log into the FGD Wiki using your FGD Forum phpBB account!

Please test this and comment on this post or start a thread if there are any inconveniences. :)

We're interested in a major re-structuring of the wiki by the way, suggestions are welcome.

Have you found the Free Gamer Blogger in you yet?

Join us...

By the way, you might not have noticed it but we also welcome guest posts! See this thread for information.

Propaganda time!

And if you feel like spreading the word about our community a little, you're welcome to use these gfx/templates.

PonySiege

It isn't nearly fluffy enough... missing that horn on its forehead... and it's not riding on rainbows... This should be fixed

-lenir



What I'm trying to say there is (obviously) that FreeSiege (git repo here | screens here) is looking for help updating the assets (and they're looking for an awesome horse I think).

So if you know any freely licensed one.. can and want to model one yourself.. or perhaps want to improve the pony (see quote above).. here's the thread to go to. :)



In other news: GameKit 2 is now available on the Blender wiki.

Xenowar: Minimalist Squad Tactics (Android/Windows)

Xenowar

Xenowar is simple turn-based squad tactics. It had one or two recent releases. Gameplay is not at all as deep as UFO:AI goes but quicker to get started with and fun too.

I tested it on a friend's HTC Wildfire [spec]: it was quite laggy and either the screen is too small or my fingers are too big. :) Or maybe I just lack touch-screen-experience.

Please excuse this laggy and kind-of-broken recording..

Open Web Games, GameOn and Construct 2

(edit: Construct 2 is going Closed Source, I'll either edit out this part or keep it for reference, but don't get your hopes up when reading this)

Scirra Construct is one of the few FOSS competitors to the proprietary GameMaker 2D game development suite (Gluon, Enigma and Game-Editor being the others). Unfortunately, the system has been limited to Windows since its inception due to relying on DirectX fiddlies, however, that has all changed...

Construct 0.x Showreel

Yesterday the long awaited Construct 2 project released a public alpha. No longer are Construct games chained to Windows; instead, games can be exported to HTML (5) which is pretty much on the opposite spectrum of platform-lockin.

Construct 0.x Interface

Now, one significant problem is that the editor isn't cross platform, and relies on a Windows GUI lib. However, seeing as the games are now cross platform, maybe the FOSS gaming community can show their appreciation by helping with the porting process? "Game Maker" like software is something that really lowers the bar of entry into game development, and Construct 2 fits that bill.

Jump on their forums if you're interested!

Why HTML (5)?

So, some people might ask why Scirra is targeting this rather new platform. I'm most probably mistaken, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Construct 2 is the first "HTML 5 Game IDE", and definitely the only Open Source one. Among the Free Gamer blog team, we have a couple of writers who don't approve of the web being used as a game platform (you know who you are), personally I find it rather promising. The fact that open web tech is immensely cross platform, and has an ease-of-delivery that is second to none, I can only see benefits to developing and embracing it further.

Mozilla seems to have gone that route; they recently hosted the "Game On" competition where developers entered games that utilize open web tech; and FOSS web games won 2 of the categories ("Best Webbiness" and "Most Fun")!

Don't write HTML 5 games off to 2 dimensions either, someone recently posted a rather simple but fun 3D RPG game utilizing WebGL on OpenGameArt the other day,  it's rather cool :) Also don't forget about the Quake 2 WebGL port! (remember, these require a WebGL enabled browser, such as Chrome/ium and Firefox 4)

OpenDungeons Progress

OpenDungeons, a long-time Freegamedev project has been through a lot of changes since it started on the Freegamedev forums, going through a lead-dev swap and a major re-write. In the years since we last mentioned them, they've actually produced something playable: lots of new code and artwork has been contributed by a small but dedicated team of contributors and it has been shaping up to be an exemplary FOSS game.

There's still lots of work that needs doing though: loads of creatures that need concept art, models and scripting, room tiles that need textures and models, and game design work that needs finalizing. There's a lot of ideas floating around on the forums that need art and implementation

With all the work that's gone into the project, they're busy readying up another release. Unfortunately they've had a bit of trouble with ubuntu/debian packaging (and linux packaging in general), so if anyone out there would like to give them a hand, it would really be a boost to the foss gaming world :)

RTS: The Romans VS. the Greek (+Chinese)

I take it my comments regarding the Spring RTS engine were not taken so well... so I will present some (in my opinion) much better and less messy to setup RTS games ;)

One, I really like to come back to is Glest! The previously featured version/fork of that game, Megaglest (Edit: Now links to their awesome new webpage, how did I miss this ;) ), just released another version (3.4.0) with quite a lot of new features.

Newest Megaglest gameplay

It now got a new build-in IRC client for multiplayer chatting, can transfer missing files from the server (useful for all those custom maps you can find ;) ), some performance and stability improvements as well as the usual assortment of new maps and map-themes. Ah and to come back to the headline: A new faction, the Romans were added ;)

The Contestant

Of course, adding Romans to the game is poaching in an other's territory... that of the Greeks ;) So lets have a look at the recent developments in 0 A.D.:

New 0 A.D. gameplay

They are progressing quickly, and the game is surprisingly playable already, given it's early beta status. But you can still help them out even if you are not a real artist or a programmer:
Their previously mentioned donation drive is still running, and they are also having some sort of competition for creating a nice video trailer of the game.

The support crew

So who is going to win the battle about the Mediterranean? Well I fear the Greeks just got support by the fleet of the Chinese Emperor:

A mod team going by the name of Scion Development is making great progress in implementing a Chinese faction into 0 A.D.; Check out their development thread here. Oh and no worries, after some initial license confusion, they seem to have decided to go for a fully FOSS compatible media license :) Edit: Well it seems like they are still not quite sure, so I can't guarantee that they will go completely FOSS... lets hope they don't go for one of those atrocious CC-ND/NC licenses.

Contact: Tactical Squad RTS

Another game from the well of innovation that is the SpringRTS community, Contact aims to be an Open-Source squad based RTS. It uses models from the DOTA-like attempt "Engines of War" which unfortunately never really got anywhere, other than a couple of nice mechs.

The Contact team released a beta on the 25 Dec last year, so it's not exactly breaking news, but the project is still moving forward and could use a couple of eyes if anyone is interested in it.

Forum Thread with more screenies