OpenMW reaches next milestone, reboots, recruits

OpenMW has released 0.9.0!

For those that don't know, OpenMW is a project to write an entire 3d rpg engine from scratch, made compatible with Morrowind data formats (other formats can be added later) with the noble intention of setting the first target at being feature complete with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
And after that's achieved?

"Ideas include multiplayer, improved graphics and animation, improved scripting and more flexible modding, a new editor, or moving on to Oblivion and other games" 

 sayeth their roadmap making them one of the most potential brimming opensource projects around.



Basically at 1.0:

• All Morrowind mods will be compatible

• Total conversions that do not use Bethesda art or recreate them, will be totally FOSS, (0$ for people who've never brought Morrowind). Non-total conversions need the retail copy.

• Modder rage inducing technical restrictions/bugs removed, improved modability/interface (of the type that caused Tolkien based AME project on Oblivion to give up after a heightmap issue)

1.0+:

Continuing development(see here), driven by a community, and not made casually obsolete once every 5 years when the next utterly incompatible game gets released



Why is it promising, and liable to deliver rapidly once a strong core is established?

These factors:

• Lots, and lots and lots of lots of total conversions for morrowind, and post v1.0, oblivion.

• Unlike other projects the modderbase, recognition and interest is there and widespread

• Morrowind rebirth project, Nehrim at fate's edge (moddb 2010 winner) for oblivion, Enormous Tolkien based MERP mod for oblivion, or the stunning Betrayal of Jarvall all are proof of the dedicated community required to energise and drive a project, even with engines more than half a decade old.

• Total conversions are often recreations of literary/television franchises. Suited for ongoing/iterative development..rather than reaching a completion point, or becoming completely boring conveniently in time for a new engine and different art

• Modders tired with 10s of thousands of modder-hours being gradually faded away by game obsolescense post-release dev halting

• Free->lower investment risk->wider audience

• After Morrowind/Oblivion waypoints, large community means attracting contributors, leading to real development a marquee status of OpenMW and opensource RPGs:)

Download from the OpenMW website.

How much left to do, you ask? 6-7 months, calculated when team was a handful of coders, apparently.

Latest:

The project has been rebooted, after the lead dev went MIA for a while.

They are conducting an extensive recruiting campaign after the reboot, so Ogre/Bullet/general c++ coders, python scripters, PR people, ideas people and moral support welcome:)

One option for them to disseminate the scale of what has been achieved (3d RPG engine from scratch) might be to retitle the project as OpenRPG and:

• Release a Morrowind compatible branch, Morrowind
• Maintain a branch that ports new compatibility breaking features, Morrowind+
• Release a Oblivion compatible branch, Oblivion
• Maintain a branch that ports new compatibility breaking features, Oblivion+
• Do the same for other games, but I suspect they will have enough of a following to just work on OpenRPG branch by then.
• Create a small test bed game using available foss art work, so everyone can try it

• Associate themselves with a few open ended total conversion projects, like Morrowind Rebirth (small team, but right spirit), and start working with an Oblivion total conversion team towards a free for public release by the time the mod is finished. The Tolkien based MERP Mod (large team/mod) would be released in about 3 years  which is ideal and given the Tolkien fan forums (not to mention game forums) with 50-100 thousand+ users a public FOSS release would be welcomed. (What ever project the Nehrim's sureAI team would want to work on next is an option, too)

• +s: Administrative and PR manpower that has been largely lacking, buzz, actual project requirements and practically tested feedback needed to drive design. Modders will benefit from not having to persuade users to buy an old/obsolete engine just for their mod.

Anouncements thread, twitter,moddb, online PR appear to be up:)

Gallium3d: Directx 10/11 recreated, opensourced, and now on Linux

Directx 10/11 now has a completely FOSS implementation, made possible via Gallium3d, for applications to plug into, and has been implemented in Linux recently.

Phoronix.com has the (4 months old) scoop:

Sep 21,2010 phoronix.com:

"In fact, today a new Gallium3D state tracker was pushed into Mesa and it's perhaps the most interesting state tracker for this open-source graphics driver architecture yet. It's a state tracker that exposes Microsoft's DirectX 10/11 API on Linux! And it's already working and can be hooked into Wine!"

Directx 10/11 has been reimplemented, using clean room reverse-engineering, by the gallium 3d project. That is no Microsoft code was used, just a completely different implementation that behaves exactly the same to applications requesting functionality through the application programming interface.

liquidat.wordpress.com has technical info in simple terms:

"Currently Mesa3D implements the specifications of the OpenGL API on Linux. Mesa3D has backends for each hardware driver type, so implementing parts of the API again and again for each driver.
Gallium3D will now hop in by being the only backend Mesa3D needs to focus on. At the same time Gallium3D will also provide a single API to the driver developers: they only need to produce one driver, no matter if DirectX, OpenGL or OpenVG is used (yes, Gallium3D could even help on Windows). This makes developing drivers for new device classes (OpenVZ is interesting for example for mobile phones) much easier."

José Fonseca's Tech blog has a bit more on the architecture.

Choice of DirectX or OpenGl would no longer be a platform consideration.

Of course, games have a lot of windows only dependencies, such as .net, that will need developers to avoid, or use re-implementations that are open and function on 'nix. Mono is the opensource .net project incidentally.



Saurbaten powered by Gallium3d, using OpenGl, from youtube.

First steps: Arx Fatalis OpenGL port!

A user named Black Mage decided to port Arx Fatalis to OpenGL and started a thread on our forums. Everybody interested in working on the game is welcome to join. Currently the developer is interested in getting the code to compile at all.

Should you have problems registering at our forums, please contact me: qubodup@gmail.com

Open Imperium Galactica

A very interesting development that I picked up thanks to LGDB is the Open Imperium Galactica project. 

Another open source clone of a proprietary game, Open-IG doesn't require external datafiles to be played; it comes with a launcher which downloads all necessary files for you. It has a rather wide variety of gameplay, from 4x galaxy management, to city-building, to rts battles in space and on land. A very cool game and definitely a project to watch.

Screenkey and Open Source Gifts of the Indies: Bikez II and Unknown World's Icons

Bikez II

After the amazing Arx Fatalis engine open-sourcing, I noticed the source/asset release of Bikez II, which is a city-driving-fighting game built on DirectX. 3D models are in the 3dw format (no idea what that is).

 Unknown Worlds' icons

I mentioned the developer of Bikez II in a talk on open game development marketing last week (not directly related to open *source*). One of the other developers I was talking about, Unknown Worlds (working on proprietary Natural Selection 2) have released some of their tools under BSD license: an updater library and an icon set.

I wonder what other freely licensed gifts lie around in indie developer's archives and wikis.

Screenkey

Somehow I found Screenkey, which shows key presses and could be used for making asset video tutorials and such.

Arx Fatalis Open Sourced!

Good news everyone! Arx Fatalis, an awesome first-person RPG from 2003's source code was recently released under the GPL.Their dev team, Arkane, was acquired (thanks Sindwiller) by Zenimax last year which is interesting because id, the legends whose open source patronage we have to thank for almost all of our FPSes, where also aquired by Zenimax in 2009; I can only hope it becomes tradition for the rest of Zenimax's subsidiaries

.

Arx wasn't your run-of-the-mill generic fantasy RPG either: it has a rather unique setting (a frozen, lifeless planet where everything living has retreated to underground tunnels) and a bunch of interesting game mechanics (gesture/rune based magic casting, multiple factions to interact with, and a bunch of other interesting tidbits). It was a bit overlooked due to the Elderscrolls 3: Morrowind having been released the previous year, but this underdog is still definitely worth a play (the game is still available on Steam and Good Old Games)

So, the code needs quite a bit of cleaning up before we see it running on Linux or anything the like, but it would really be a nice inclusion to one of the slightly less-represented genres in foss gaming, so get coding! 

Stunt Rally 1.0 plus Pioneer and LambdaRogue

I thought I'd come out of the desert back to this oasis of fun for the evening. Some emails to the freegamerblog gmail account (yes - I check it, sporadically) prompted this post. I do try to respond to everybody, even if sometimes I leave it a few weeks *cough* or months *cough* between logging in to the account.

Stunt Rally

Stunt Rally is a modification of VDrift which takes the VDrift physics engine and adapts it to the Ogre3D graphics engine. Add in a few really nifty Ogre3D-based components (terrain etc) and you have a very cool FOSS rally game! Since it was originally mentioned on the blog a few months ago, progress has continued unabated and the game has improved a lot.

In fact, the 10th public version - Stunt Rally 1.0 - just got released! 35 tracks to drive on, in 6 sceneries, and 7 cars to choose from. There is also a fully functional Track Editor to create your own tracks or modify the existing ones.

Above is a gameplay video of Stunt Rally. There's also a track editing tutorial (part 1, part 2) and more videos on the authors YouTube page.

Rigs of Rods

Another cool driving/flying/anything game is Rigs of Rods and development activity continues with the project more than ever since it became open source. Here is the 2010 RoR tech demo video:

Another cool, if less exciting Rigs of Rods video is this showcase for a hill climbing map. It does include some dodgy physics and trees, but the damage to the overturning cars is impressive and some of the views are spectacular.

I do wonder, so very publicly, if RoR suffers from being a bit too flexible. I mean, I don't see much 'game' in there. Lots of simulation, but the idea of loading crates or driving articulated lorries over hilly terrain... it just doesn't appeal to me. Racing on Stunt Rally does. Perhaps that's a challenge for the RoR team in 2011 - to present a more fun side to the game in addition to the simulating nature of it. Then again, simulating is fun for some.

...this post is turning out a bit longer than I planned. Let's be a little less ponderous.

LambdaRogue

LambdaRogue 1.6 just came out. This graphical rogue like looks fun. If you like RPGs but can't get into the ASCII nature of most rogue-likes (i.e. like me) then this is worth a download. It comes with both hi-res and lo-res tilesets.

LambdaRogue

Pioneer Space Sim

Pioneer. This is wicked. Dynamic planets. Check out these gorgeous screenshots (lifted from this thread). 'Nuff said.

Pioneer Space Sim

I'm off before I start to write an essay on the latest Free Software games...

Political Space Warfare

Political Space Warfare is an ambitious, multi faceted space based strategy in-progress game. Still far from achieving it's full vision, PSW wants to offer gameplay ranging from long-term strategy gameplay as seen in browser based empire building games such as Travian all the way down to a RPG where you play as a single unit in the greater picture.

Unfortunately, its Windows only at the moment, but the team are planning to port it to Linux/other platforms as soon as possible, which will be a lot sooner if there are any of you willing to help :)

PARPG

In a quick aside, PARPG is looking for a Lead Writer/ So if any of you are in the mood for writing some Post Apocaliptic fiction, be sure to have a look