Lips of Suna 0.6 and other RPG news

So my recent rant resulted in a lively discussion about ARPGs, but sadly not really in any contributions or new contributors for Summoning Wars so far... but maybe that was too much to hope for ;)

Anyways, another project I mentioned was just recently updated:

Lips of Suna is now available as Version 0.6 (release notes on our forums) and this release marks the first official release with OGRE3D as the rendering engine. In my rant I dissed that rendering engine a bit due to the lack of good content creation tools (yes I know, not their focus or intention), but at least here it seems to have been put to a good use.

In somewhat unrelated news, there is also a new version of OpenMW, which is continuing at their current fast pace to reimplement that well known RPG. Change-log can be also found in our forums.

Dev-corner: JUICE up your game

I just happened to come across this nice presentation, and I guess a lot of FOSS games could also take this as a valuable advise:

Juice it or lose it

The "game" they are presenting is playable in your browser by the way, try it here (hit esc for the menu).
Oh and believe it or not, source-code is available too ;)

So don't forget to JUICE it real good!

DNT 0.9: Map Editor, Art Asset/Game Content Re-Use and Open Source Game Project Infrastructure

images: DNT 0.9 scenes and editor shots

Video: DNTMapEditor - Using skorpio cave tileset [download]

DccNiTghtmare (DNT) is a 3D single-player RPG "in a satirical post-apocalyptical world", which encourages suggestions to be posted on their forum.

Version 0.9 has been released not long ago, which on the gameplay-side appears to mainly bring new models and audio. We have missed quite a few versions here on Free Gamer though. See the changelog for a complete list of versions and features.

As you can see in the video above, third party art assets were used. They were originally created for OpenDungeons and shared on OpenGameArt end of March 2012.

Project infrastructure includes translations on Launchpad, doxygen code documentation, a wiki with instructions for contributors and a roadmap (which is lacking the next version though).

PS: I'm having lots of fun translating the game right now. Join me in the thread!

Video: DNT 0.9 long gameplay

Node Reviver: Open Source Ludum Dare Puzzle Prototype (GPLv3/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

image: Node Reviver main screen 

video: Node Reviver 1.0 Gameplay Video 

Game development jams bring many lines of usually dirty code that power often innovative new implementations of various mechanics and rules. Ludum Dare requires source to be visible but neither code nor art has to be freely licensed.

I believe that the histories of TuxKart/SuperTuxKart, Warzone 2100 and OpenArena show that maintenance can be one of the strengths of the open source game development scene. Having more gamejam-made working prototypes available under "safe" free licenses would enable this community to pick up promising projects and slowly build upon them.

Anyways, one of the games that has more than proper licensing information and is both free, open source code and art is Node Reviver. A short description:

• Game mechanics and level designs intersecting with Pac-Man's PipeWalker's.
• Light neon colors on black background visuals.
• Bfxr sound effects (with sound sources included, nice!)

Links:

• GitHub project page
• Developers' blog
• Node Reviver on PyGame.org

OpenGOO and Using Inkscape or Blender for Editing Maps/Levels

Building bridges in OpenGOO

video: New Physics in OpenGOO

You may remember that in the first Humble Indie Bundle, World of Goo was not open-sourced. Well, there is an active open source clone called OpenGOO being developed. It uses OpenGL, Box2D and is GPLv3-licensed.

Basic layers of level creation in OpenGOO

A Shotgun Debugger level viewed in Inkscape

There are instructions available for creating levels. Inkscape is used for that purpose, just like in Shotgun Debugger! A method I would love to see being widely used in games that allow for user-generated content in general.

SuperTuxKart level editor (hint: it's Blender!)

Speaking of not-re-inventing-wheels: the team behind SuperTuxKart recently posted an article about using Blender as a level editor, rather than writing and maintaining an own content creation tool, which I highly recommend to all developers of 3D games with 'traditional' engines.