Weaver: Magic FPS, OpenArena 0.8.5, Evidyon, Code Summers and web findings

Weaver

Weaver [introduction] is an objective-based ("invade checkpoints") team fps with a simple gesture sequence spell casting system. It uses the XreaL engine and is currently in an early development stage. Maps are under construction and a few spells are in place. Code is GPL-licensed, "Media will aim to use Creative Commons licenses."

Weaver concept art

Weaver's current spellcasting interface (Goethe's color wheel [1] ;) )

The level work I was able to witness is impressive. TRaK is the designer, which explains it.

Strolling in bow_block of Weaver - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5NQ1iT3Gg

Weaver's introduction includes a simple game design document. Compilation instructions are located here, communication happens over forum and IRC.

OpenArena 0.8.5

OpenArena has a new website look and a new patch release. It provides new or improved weapon effects, player skins, menu UI (video, compare to old), icons...

OA 0.8.1 icons

OA 0.8.5 icons

...and maps. For example:

OA 0.8.5 Botmatch DM on am_underworks2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrzGKL3zcg

Even though OpenArena is supposed to be a freely licensed Quake3 clone (with an anime theme) it also adds new weapons and game modes. I recently tested some of them, for example the Overload game mode, in which you have to destroy the enemy's base crystal:

OA 0.8.5 Overload on ps9ctf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Cpfldgsso

Evidyon

The Evidyon MMORPG's developer expressed their interest for making the game run on Linux and finds it to be relatively simple task. More info in this thread.

Don't have much to add to that. I'm glad to hear that it's possible and I hope that somebody will want to take such a programming job. Here's the latest gameplay video of the game to make completing this task more desirable: :)

Evidyon Town Guards - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWcCH6Td0Q

Google and Ruby Summers of Code

Battle for Wesnoth, Blender, Crystal Space, FreedroidRPG, Thousand Parsec, Tux4Kids and WorldForge take part in GoogleStudentsOpenCash.

EDIT: I was just informed, that NeL will share WorldForge's GSoC permission.

By accident (I wanted to get on the Rigs of Rods IRC channel but found myself on a ruby one) I discovered the existence of the RubyStudentsOpenCash. Any FOSS game projects besides Rubygame that could benefit from this? :)

And.. some websites

Blendswap, the new blender file sharing site will probably use CC0, BY and BY-SA as available licenses [2] and that makes me glad..

I discovered SampleSwap (via this post), which has a CC-licensed music category. It is impossible to filter by license (non-free CC flavors are supported), but at least it is easy to identify it, if you care about the terms. It uses yahoo's handy proprietary flash audio player and lists individual tracks instead of the ancient album-model that Jamendo chose. This makes it much nicer to browse for me.

Last bit of info: GameBoom is a site that wants to bring foss games to the people. It tries to do so not by covering only foss games but by allowing gratis games, while promoting the free as in freedom ones.

They are looking for bloggers/game reviewers, so if you are not on a strict foss diet, maybe there's a game you would like to introduce over there? Always remember though, that guest posts are welcome on this blog as well. ;) Just contact us via forum, irc or email (I'm sure you'll be able to find the links up there :) ).

EDIT: Remember GameJolt, another games-thing, where open source games are given attention.

LordsAWar! 0.1.3, OpenArena 0.8.1, Commander Stalin 0.9.3

LordsAWar! 0.1.3

LordsAWar! reached an (unstable) 0.1.3 release. After installing some game-uncommon libraries and compiling for half an hour, I expected to move some units around for some turns and stop playing from being bored. But actually, I enjoyed the simple game rules.

LordsAWar! has decent graphics and good music. I like very much that the game cares about the player by providing a 'restore crashed game' button. The game did crash once, but think I shouldn't have started it together with an other app from the same command line and then moved the game window while it was generating a level... :) Actually LordsAWar! makes a stable impression.

The only thing that confused me in some situations is the path finding. Units would walk in a zig-zag pattern instead of straight lines. I think this might be because vertical/horizontal and diagonal movement is equally expensive and that the behavior is not a bug.

LordsAWar! 0.1.3 [direct download]

After the absence of an official OpenArena release for a while, 0.8.1 was recently uploaded. It weights one map more (+3-2) compared to 0.8.0 and features a new hit sound (one of the most important parts of any Quake-related game).

Commander Stalin 0.9.3

Commander Stalin's latest version, 0.9.3, was released for Windows and Linux systems. It's a RTS that appears to just replace most of Bos Wars' media. There is no single-player campaign unfortunately.

Today I understood what the game's Stalin-theme might be all about: a parody of Red Alert! However, I feel discomfort with the media of the game: for Charles II's sake, half of this CD's audio tracks is distributed with the game! (Yes, someone owns the exclusive copyright on these re-mastered communist songs.)

I agree that the music fits the theme, but such practice is not legal. Nor is it very original.

OpenArena, CG Textures and BurningWell.Org

OpenArena 0.8.0 recently got unreleased, because the project administrator decided that some included textures by TRaK were not legally GPL-licensed.

Free as in freedom CG Textures? No. :(

So why do the CG Textures-based textures seem GPL-incompatible? Well, Marcel, CG Textures' administrator, wrote at least twice, that the textures on his website cannot be re-licensed under a free content license. Also the CG Textures license clearly states, that re-distribution of the textures and of derivate versions in texture form is prohibited.

The right to re-distribute is one of the pillars, on which free software, open source and free works stand. But it is not simple dogmatism which makes me agree with these definitions. When I create a piece of media for use in games, then I want to give others the ability to change it as easily as possible, so it fits their need. Because of this, it is vital that I am allowed to provide the source (the most raw/least edited form of the media) to them. This is not possible in the case of CG Textures. :(

However, TRaK has a permission to release his resulting textures under the GPL if he follows some conditions in creating these textures (which he did). These conditions only apply to TRaK, so the resulting textures are indeed free. Still his work is not to be included in OpenArena. I don't understand why.

A new community member named titi recently asked for a free texture reference image host and some of us recommended the public domain image gallery BurningWell.Org to him. He started uploading lots of files to it and even got permission to re-structure the gallery to optimize it for textures!

Hagish decided to set up a torrent tracker and to create a torrent of BurningWells' textures for easier downloading and for backup.

Although gallery, the system used by BurningWell.Org, might not be optimal for textures and although torrents are not perfect for sharing data that gets new additions frequently: there seems to be a bright future for free as in fancy pants freedom textures. :)

Ludum Dare 12 and jClassicRPG updates

Ludum Dare 12 starts in three hours. There are three lists of hints for python game programmers who are going to join the competition: SolHSA’s, mrfun's and GBGames'. Hints that help you be resourceful, constructive and alive before, during and after the contest.

jClassicRPG is getting bigger, prettier and cooler.

By the way: Orbit-Hopper does work on my machine. Only the 1.16 build creates segfaults. 1.15 works fine. (Though suffers from extreme slowdown when I try to record it.)

OpenArena 0.8.0

Post Scriptum: OpenArena 0.8.0 has arrived in a bigger than 300 MB archive. It contains some new media and "mission packs"

Missionpack is basically the trademarkless codename of Quake III Team Arena game code and since we've completed the minimal essential assets for it in this version it's 'playable' to the extent where you can score points in Harvester, Overload and One Flag CTF nicely. Among the game types is the 'annoying voice system' where you press a key and it says stuff audibly.

I don't really understand, but will check it out in 2.5 minutes.

Post Scriptum 2: The Uzebox will apparently be completely free as in freedom. As this note appeared yesterday on the project's homepage:

Following many requests, all sources and schematics will be published by August 24th '08. That's pretty soon so stay tuned! And everything will be released under fully free, open source licenses...open software, open hardware...hope you enjoy!

Playing the first Apricot demo

The first playable demo of Apricot has been released! I am able to play it! (with low low low quality settings - Hint: disable shaders.) You have to get a recent "Apricot" Blender build from GraphicAll, then download this .blend file, open it with said Blender build and press "p". That's it! Sorry for spamming the blog with news related to that project lately, I think it's interesting... :)

Apricot, first demo

Edit: An unofficial OpenArena 0.8.0 pre-release was posted. Testing it is encouraged, so that the official release can become a great one. I must admit that two months ago I thought that OA was probably the ugliest of the interesting games with QuakeI/II/III-engine roots. Now I know that it's getting prettier and prettier every now and then with new maps and models.

The GearHead 1/2 homepage has been updated a while ago. It now looks pretty pretty and has a sexy RSS feed. The GearHead games are Roguelike titles (which I find not that cool) involving Mechs (which I find cool) of the Japanese kind (meh). Totally unrelated: a webcomic based on the games' setting has started.

PS: In case you are interested in using glc as a game recording tool on GNU/Linux systems, this Arch Linux newsletter contains some usage hints for the cool application.

News salad

In case you're one of those who use youtube as a music player, now you can use it to listen to Wesnoth music.

The one-year-old, made-for-university, one-man game project Heroes of Wesnoth has a new release. There's not much to see yet and it's not the first and certainly not the last HoMM clone but I wish it the best of luck. Whatever it will turn out to be, at least it will have great Battle for Wesnoth art. :)

Last post I told you about Ardentryst. There's a mute gameplay video, I recommend you to take a look at what the game is like as I see some freshness in it.

Bear Factory

A new version of the young platform game Plee The Bear has been released. The code has been cleaned and some images were added. It also features the new level editor called "Bear Factory". The next release has been promised for end of June. I think the level editor will make this project much more interesting, especially for game developers of other platform games.

l-echo, an open source clone of the abstract puzzle game Echochrome, is now 0.1.0 versions old. I haven't given it a try yet. I will. Because it does look very nifty.

tank simulator game

The 1000 USD expensive tank simulator game is stuck at 52.8% of it's financial goal. I think sooner or later some generous comrades will throw their pennies in.

No sign of apricot opening it's repository yet, but in a recent video some features of apricot's blender branch are shown off: object snapping and shadow map baking. These improvements are supposed to ease game/level-design and are likely to find their way into the main blender branch sooner or later. You can get pre-built blender builds of all kinds and colors on GraphicAll.

There's also this YA2DGE LÖVE. What is impressive about it is the homepage's look and it's realistic roadmap. A clean look and decent sense of humor sure are a good way to catch my attention. LÖVE made me find Face Me and Scream. Thanks, LÖVE.

Oh by the way, have you noticed the blog's new look? :) Let us know what you think.

"We already got headless lizards"

PS: (How could I forget?) jClassicalRPG has had it's first birthday! Paul aka Timong delivered a grand speech! (Worth reading!) The project is in "urgent need of 3d Mythic Monsters!!" though!

I also want to thank everyone posting to our game announcements forum! I wasn't expecting to provide news for more than 3-5 games today but then took a second look in said location..

PPS: OpenArena 0.7.7 for hardcore bug fixing is in the house!

PeeEss: Charlie just mentioned that I forgot to serve the news of Glest's new website and new 3.2 alpha 1 patch, which finally features scripted maps aka missions! Yehaw!

OpenArena 0.7.6

OpenArena likes furries

OpenArena 0.7.6 is out. (direct link to Win+Lin+Mac zip archive) More maps, more models/skins, more game modes and a new tagline!

OpenArena is a violent, sexy, multiplayer first person shooter

For 0.8.0 also planned: more music! (There isn't any right now.)

If you're hosting an OA server, you might want to upgrade. And if you know someone who hosts a server, tell them to upgrade, will ya? The general tendency seems to not know about the new release. O_o

Robot-looking stuffs are cool

The site has a new look (you might want to keep your eyes closed though.) Also, there seem to be some troubles with the new version. I didn't experience any problems, except for the low amount of up-to-date servers.

Nexuiz on the other hand, behaved badly, when I tried the then-fresh 2.4 release for the first time. Fortunately an emergency hotfix thread was opened and patched versions posted. If you encountered problems with the game and didn't bother to try to find a cure, simply download the most recent patch.

Turrets. Yepp.

Tremulous 1.2 will never be released. Or maybe it will. Whatever. Does it read like I don't bother too much? Yes. Why? Because I recently discovered that some servers had configurations, which allow a very different gameplay. For example: PornServ. The teams get many many building points, build buildings faster and more frequently, which allows for totally new strategies. For example: The tower rush, a tactic usually known from Real time strategy games.

Simutrans and Open Arena and Irrlamb

Open Arena

now with bloom

Simutrans, one of the major open source rail games, gets an update with version 0.99.13 - bug fixes and optimizations are the topic of the day here and with large speed ups for vehicle routing and map scrolling the game should have a nicer feel.

Open Arena ends an 8 month barren spell of releases with 0.7.0 which comes with 10 new player models and 26 new maps. Open Arena looked like a struggling project a year ago but now it is thriving and a worthy Free replacement for the proprietary Quake 3 content.

Irrlamb 0.0.4 is now available, with a bunch of new features for this 3D abstract action / puzzle game. There are binaries for Linux and Windows. I love the regular updatse to this project. :-)

Rumour mill... Angels Fall First demo may be out soon. Check out the trailer. Sumptuous. FG Note: I should try and interview that guy!

Regular readers may know that I'm not big on posting web games (this is an open source games blog after all) but I found this one rather stylish. I bizzarely encountered it on a blog about room escape games that I found whilst cleaning up my bookmarks. I don't think there's a worse genre of game than room escape games. Every time I play one I end up feeling suicidal. Well, ok, not that bad but I can't see how somebody can enjoy just clicking randomly until something lands in your inventory and eventually you can leave a room - it's like focusing the worst aspect of adventure games. Who would repeatedly subject themselves to such torture?