Fellow adventurer, turn back while you can!

Crikey, it's been a while. What can I say, life gets busy, and games sometimes just can't be a priority. I know, it's crazy talk. I meditated long and hard, facing many demons, moments of utter despair, but I couldn't get past the conclusion that sometimes Free Gamer won't be on my list of things to do. Fortunately Q has been on top of things so it's not silent when I'm off the radar.

Today is a temporary reprieve, brought on somewhat by enjoying the current development pace of the Scourge project. Timong, of JCRPG fame, has been taking a break from Java coding to indulge in his new found passion for music composition. You can listen to the new main theme music he has composed for Scourge, one of many he has contributed lately. I think it sounds pretty damn good. Meanwhile you can now roam around a massive persistent outdoor world in Scourge, with generated villages and NPCs as well as varying climate and weather conditions. It all sounds quite impressive.

IVAN

On another dungeoneering frontier, Iter Vehemens ad Necem (aka IVAN) is probably the most challenging and addictive nethack variant I ever played. (Although I only ever played a couple.) It has surprisingly good 2d graphics, which aren't done justice by the screenshot, but alas development stalled after 2005. The IVAN community seems to be filling the void left by the developers who[se motivation] seem[s] to have met some kind of gruesome demise - perhaps their brains turned into banana flesh by a vindictive god.

There is the IVANX project which seems to pull together a lot of the popular community contributions, and should be more likely to compile on Linux. There's also LIVAN which stands for Linux IVAN, thus should compile on Linux. Neither compiled for my Fedora laptop, somewhat thankfully as it means I can't play it and thusly be more productive! \o/

IVAN 3D

Of extra interest is IVAN 3D which turns it into a bit of a funky pixelated adventure. There's obviously quite a few challenges to overcome when transposing a totally 2D described game into a 3D world without it looking a bit other-worldly. Still, I don't think pixels are a bad thing. After all, it's a game, not a life simulation!

OWS

Hey look, Open World Soccer is moving steadily towards being a modern Sensible Soccer clone. Impressive looking! However the AI doesn't do too much yet, just keeping the two teams level with the ball.

Raidem is one of those vertical scrolling shooters, a nice classic pixel explosion fest. It is surprisingly well done, but it's also bloody hard - I never survived more than 20-30s. From the intro screen, it looks like the author needs an additional graphic designer but other than that it's a very nice looking game. No development since 2006 though so I guess it's to be taken as-is.

Another game that is surprisingly well done is Abe's Amazing Adventure. It looks weird, really weird. However the animations are very smooth and the game plays pretty well, far better than it looks. Still, I couldn't quite get over the game's oddness.

Foobar

iSoccer Concept

Open World Soccer

iSoccer ist und... wait... I'm English, why am I sprechen sie Deutsch? Must be Q's influence...

iSoccer is a promising project to create an arcade football game in the vein of Sensible Soccer and Football Glory. It was started in April by members of the iTeam project. It's early days but the concept (right) looks beautiful. I hope they can pull it off.

The "other" Sensi-like project is Open World Soccer (by the creators of the now discontinued Yoda Soccer project).

Fans of the genre should check out both projects and fans-with-skills (aka programmers) should contribute because an awesome little soccer game is sorely missed on the FOSS game scene.

On a more ambitious front, Open Football is alive and kicking and had a steady stream of commits over the summer. It's still in concept phase but it's not far from having the foundation to become a playable game. Trying out the SVN version is already quite interesting with quite a few different tests of the engine, although only 1 shows the signs of being a football game (you can run a player around and dribble with the ball).

Who is up for a solving a mystery? There's this game, Race Racer. It's a supposedly open source game, definitely exists, but any links of any use are dead (the forums, wiki, www.openracer.org, www.raceracer.org all down). Videos (eg1, eg2) were posted as late as October 2007. It's this promising open source game... just there's no source about? I'll donate a packet of chocolate chip cookies to whomever can get to the bottom of it.

Oooo almost forgot. There's a new Allacrost release. All the juicy gossip is on the website, hopefully this signals a recovery for the project that had somewhat stalled over the summer season.

Match of the Day

Open Football

Open World Soccer

Open Football development has resumed lately. I downloaded from svn and compiled, and whilst it's not a game yet, it looks very nice and the author clearly knows his stuff if you see the planning and structure that is going into e.g. the animation side of things. Still, if you are a soccer fan and want an ace 3D football game then get in touch the project.

Open World Soccer, a Sensible Soccer inspired game and the successor to Yoda Soccer (which required the proprietary Blitz Basic), is also starting to take shape. Whilst not yet playable, it's not far away from a playable demo release according to the developer.

JCRPG has a new "contributionary release" which introduces a very nice UI as well as a few other world features. What has been, up until now, just a framework is now starting to morph into a game.

Not to be outdone by Teewars which has recently exploded onto the 2D deathmatch scene, the OpenLierox team have been hacking away and released 0.57_beta5. Looks like a large changelog from 0.56 so you'll have to look yourself (on the homepage), but better bot AI, lots of new smaller features, POSIX compatability and a large number of bug fixes and gameplay enhancements.

Freeware Wing Commander fan game WC Pioneer has some mouthwatering models. Free Software purists should check out Privateer Universe which is a nicer community and very active at the moment.

Dreaming of a Sensi Xmas

Yoda Soccer

Yoda Soccer 0.73 came out at the start of November - looks like that one slipped past most of the open source community. However it looks like 0.73 will be the last release for this Sensible Soccer clone. Whilst they have gone most of the way to recreating the classic game, the limitations of the platform used to create it (the proprietary BlitzMax) means the authors have created a new project, Open World Soccer, which will be a Sensi clone in C++. There is already an alpha release (very alpha) which shows off higher res graphics although not much more. For those people pining for a bit of Sensi nostalgia, try out Yoda Soccer which is relatively complete.

The Castle 0.8 is available for download. It's still a bit of a tech demo, but the initial level looks promising. It's nice to see somebody making progress with a single player FPS game, although there is still a long way to go with this one.

Dream Chess

Dream Chess 0.2 is pretty amazing as far as chess games go. I can't wait for them to add FICS [Free Internet Chess Server] support although that could spell doom for this blog as I'm short on time as it is! ;-)

I tried out Secret Maryo Chronicles the other day, checking it out as a potential game for my son. I couldn't believe how good it has become. Just 6 months ago gameplay was dodgy, sprites and sounds were ripped. It was a mess. Now, it makes Super Tux look like ordinary Tux. It takes a classic and gives it high res graphics and a cute facelift and everything just seems to be better done than Super Tux. At least SMC doesn't pretend to not be a Mario clone and just indulges in it's heritage. I hope the Super Tux developers see it and use it as a cue to make Super Tux not so Super Mario.