Long time no update from...

...FreeGamer? No not this time :p It's rather that the Spring RTS engine ran into some trouble with their long overdue 0.83 version and now decided to release 0.84 instead ;)

Along with it comes also a new Zero-K release (0.9), which prompted one of their players to make a nice new trailer in anticipation:

Zero-K fan trailer

So...that's it for today ;)

P.S.: Check out Zero-K's Planetwars metagame too.

P.P.S.: Also Spring related... someone on their boards is looking for people to take over the development of another quite nice RTS game: Conflict Terra.

OGA challenge: Mobile, Become WTactics a Character, Illes' Game Music Album

First 'mobile devices' contest submission by Mumu

The current OpenGameArt challenge is 'mobile devices' and ends on Monday, December 5, 2011. The contest before that was low on participants and a survey was started to figure out how to get more people involved.

Becoming a WTactics character

Taken from OGA: WTactics is currently offering a chance to have your likeness on a WTactics card in order to raise funds for the continued development of thier project.  From their website:

Give our artists a picture of you or your beloved one and become a part of the game! The artist will create a nice portrait with your chosen class, clothing and equipment, making it an everlasting part of our game and the open source communities, turning it into an immortal memory.

This reminds me of the Fantasy Portrait Kickstarter project, which produced some pretty portraits but unfortunately still istn't finished yet.

pzi's album cover

Pal Zoltan Illes of jClassicRPG fame released the game music album A Mantle Of Games under CC-BY-SA. Feel free to use and leave a comment here.

Open Source RPG News, Freedroid and IrrRPG builder

The wayward Goat strikes again!


Freedroid 0.15 rc 1:

The plucky, 'puter punching penguin hack 'n slash RPG stalwart has had a new release recently, reaching the 0.15 rc milestone (how many years will it take them to get to 1.0, I wonder?)

It adds lots of things, new quests, new guns, new abilities, UI fixes, editor tweaks... Lots of development happening there, so check it out!

EDIT: Thanks to shirish for pointing out that it's still at rc 1 stage, and thus not a final release.


IrrRPG Builder Alpha 2

A project that looked promising, and that I almost forgot about, is the RPG game IDE, IrrRPG Builder. Finally, a basic battle system is implemented, and the scripting system was improved as well, so it's getting pretty close to being feature complete.

BREAKING NEWS: Doom3 source code released!

Ha, you probably read it here first, since it is just an hour ago that it was uploaded!

https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gpl

Have fun tinkering with it!

P.S.: A good dev forum for it is Doom3world.

Fan made trailer contests and other FPS news

So it seems Red Eclipse is having a "contest" for creating an official trailer for their upcoming 1.2 release. Nothing to win (except fame), but the guys from Sauerbraten (also Cube2 engine based, like Red Eclipse) recently did the same with a quite nice result:

 

New official Sauerbraten trailer

So if you want to participate, have a look at their rules and check out these nice open-source tools for video capturing:  GLC (short tutorial by our qudobup) and editing: PiTiVi or KDEnlive (sorry for being Linux centric here :p ).

In other news I can report that the Xonotic team is following up on their promise to report more news and developments on their Blog :) Check out the latest entry for a log read and many nice pictures.
Personally I am currently most excited about the mod "Overkill" with tries to take some features of the well loved instagib mode (sadly so much that it is sometimes hard to find anything but instagib games :( ) like right click laser jump etc. while keeping a variety of weapons that are a bit more appealing to non-instagib players.
Well, check out the more detailed description and pictures at the bottom of the post linked above! Oh and you can already play the mod by joining the test server with a vanilla Xonotic version (all needed files will be auto-downloaded).

P.S.: Here is a small video to show how it currently looks:

Xonotic Overkill mod (early WIP)

jMonkeyEngine Official Beta Contest Announced

We're a week into what has been an absolutely thrilling experience so far. What was more of an experiment to see what some developers might pull off with the new Beta release has far exceeded our expectations.

Prizes include a free copy of the upcoming "jMonkeyEngine 3 Beginner's Guide" and a free theme from the WooThemes shop. Additional prizes might be added.

If you want to get caught up you should read the following articles:
Brief Announcement
Exhaustive Contest Rules
Contest Prizes

Even if you've never used jMonkeyEngine before, 1 and 1/2 months could be enough time to put a game together if you have some experience in Java programming and game development already. We highly encourage developers to download the jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK as the recommended route to a quick start. From there the wiki and community forum are mere clicks away.

We hope this contest will bring some new blood into our lively community, and we trust you'll find it worth your while.

Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Changes and Videolog

Unknown Horizons 2011.3 is out! Features are:

• Complete settlement AI (details here)
• Combat and diplomacy system
• Increase in performance (partially thanks to FIFE)
• Support for internationalized voices (right now available: de, en, fr)
• Nine new buildings, one new ship (here are some)
• New statistic widgets
• Usability and interface improvements (for example the in-game menu)
• New maps and a parameters-based map generator

The original announcement is here and some more details about the new features here.

[video: Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Changes (voiced)]

Development is active and they are on the lookout for people to help out or even join:

• 2D/3D/Animation artists can find some tasks here
• Naval public domain painting lovers can help by finding some background art
• Interested in mechanics/story? Share your ideas for catastrophes!
• Interesting screenshots and videos should be posted here
• Feedback is needed for this release. It can be shared on the forums or IRC room.

Translators, sound artists, programmers, game designers, writers and voice artists can also help. The get involved  page will let you know how to get started.

Pioneer and settler buildings



Shooting pirates



Translucent environment

[ More screenshots]

New websites, releases and competitions etc

Couldn't really think of a fitting headline, but here is the bunch of randomly collected news from the FOSS gaming realm:

First of all, OpenDungeons finally got a nice website and a blog (as mentioned previously). And in collaboration with OpenGameArt, the kicked off their art competitions again.

SummoningWars also got a new website recently, and they have also released version 0.55 a few days ago.

New Summoning Wars GUI

Last but not least, the pledgie donation drive for 0 A.D. seemed to have payed off to some extend, so one of the main developers is now working full time on the game for one month. See here for his first report on things newly implemented (most notable a save-game feature). But... you can still donate to keep him motivated longer ;)