Flightgear 2.4 plus something cuddly and something fishy

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's... wait, yes, it's a plane. The quintessential FOSS flight simulator gets updated, Flightgear 2.4 (announcement) has been released.

The FlightGear development team is proud to announce the release of version 2.4.0 of its free open source flight simulation program. FlightGear 2.4.0 reflects over one and a half years of development and incorporates several new and exciting features, as well as numerous bug fixes.

The feature list in the announcement is impressive. A summary won't do the release announcement justice (although in parts it is a bit dumbed down, but that's OK, not all of us are au fait with regards to computer game development). Still, here's an attempt:

• Realistic weather simulation, phenomena includes are fog layers that are limited in altitude, cold fronts, thermals, cloud formation in updraft winds along mountain ridges, and many, many more.


• Enhanced graphics including highly realistic mountain surfaces, 3-dimensional cityscapes, water moves realistically and sunlight is reflected from its surface.


• Many improved planes/models and additional cockpit systems - a choice of nearly 500 different aircraft, from historical to bleeding edge, from ultra-lights to the ultimate flying heavy metal.

Still no combat (see open source flight combat article) but I think that's probably a bit off topic for Flightgear.

The Flightgear project has reached what I call "critical mass" in that it no longer depends on a few active developers to maintain progress. A thriving contributor community outgrows the original development crew and it becomes owned by the community. Usually when a project attains critical mass, development accelerates massively. There are more people contributing to Flightgear than has ever been the case, it is flying. Pun intended.

In fact I can't think of many other FOSS games that have attained "critical mass" status. Battle for Wesnoth of course. Possibly Freeciv and OpenTTD (I wish they'd rename that). Some projects got close but never quite made it, such as Glest and Vega Strike. Others are knocking on the door, such as Pioneer, Speed Dreams, 0AD. (If I am being dozy and missing any such projects, point out in the comments!) The vast majority of projects never get close and usually only are actively developed as long as their originators / principle supporters are motivated.

What could be cuddly? Plee the Bear 0.6 has been released (announcement, forum thread). It features the first big boss. It is a very nice looking game with a lot of potential, and seems great for a younger player.

And the something fishy? Avid readers, those worth their salt, people who are true followers of the blog, those who will enter through the gates of St Peter before all others, they will know I am a big fan of Fish Fillets NG. Somebody has made a clone called, imaginatively, Fish Fillets Clone (screenshots). Whilst I don't like that it is an outright clone, I do like that it uses vector graphics. I think there's promise there.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Oh, yeah, hiiii to my Cuban female fanbase!

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!