Self-built fort in WorldForge
The trend of environment shaping has reached WorldForge. The building seen above is one static model piece though.
This video makes me dream of an open source Populous3-like. :)
Terrain Editing in WorldForge
The trend of environment shaping has reached WorldForge. The building seen above is one static model piece though.
This video makes me dream of an open source Populous3-like. :)
Techne, Aviation & Airrace slash community-funded game development
Billiards, a Techne game
Techne is a simple real-time physics engine.
Aviation
Aviation is a simple flight sim framework.
Airrace
And then there's Airrace.
Airrace is a proof-of-concept Application written on top of Aviation implementing an air race game where the player has to pilot a light-weight aircraft through a track consisting of pylons or air gates. Although its written as a test of Aviation and in order to promote its development, it's still a full-fledged game. Currently there are 7 training courses and 5 race-tracks but adding more is a piece of cake.We seem to be talking much about funding lately on this blog.. Well here's another one: the developer of all these wrote "an idea about a community-funded game development project but as this probably sounds like a cheap scheme to profit out of free software please consider reading the full text for the rationale behind it."
The author speaks of open source games and their origins, of game production methods and the dilemma of game dev versus engine dev (milk vs. cow).
I think I should quote the (quite long) core message:
I'm therefore proposing the following: I'm starting a fund-raising campaign with the purpose of allowing me to work on this project full-time. The original idea was to quit my job if enough funds could be raised to sustain me for a certain period of time, say a year although the game should take far less that that time to become playable. Still the devil is in the details which include documentation, thorough debugging and different game modes and these take time as well. Anyway I'm currently unemployed now so the plan can be simplified. If enough funds can be raised I'll continue working for as much time as possible on the game full-time. The goal will be networked gameplay and various modes such as duels, dogfights and bomber escort missions. I'm very open to suggestions of course, these are just some preliminary thoughts. If funding goes better than expected everything apart from the minimum I need for myself will be directed towards hiring other people fore side tasks. This may include artists and web-developers for the game GUI and pages. If funding fails I'll just create the core technology as I've done until now and move on to the next project. This is the only alternative if Techne is to be developed further. I just hope temporal restrictions will allow at least that.I like the idea. But it lacks a progress bar. A.. donation widget.. wait, let me run Inkscape..
A donation widget idea (source)
Inside a Star-Filled Sky (Public Domain For-Pay) + Video Review + Jason Rohrer on open source
Inside a Star-Filled Sky (IaSFS? InaStFiSk?) is a game. And art. [You want a game?=art discussion? Go to page 9! ;)] This art runs on OSX, Linux and Windows.
So you move around in procedurally generated mazes in real-time, shoot enemies, pick up stuff and change between levels. Sounds like.. GoblinHack so far (the graphics are softer though).
But.
The mazes are people.
Or pixelated monsters for that matter. Or upgrades.
You control a thing inside another thing. the thing is a maze.
The game costs at least $1.75 because it's pay what you want + fees.
I was lucky to get Jason to answer two of my questions.
IMHO Jason is a very interesting guy to listen to [video search "Jason Rohrer"].
About public domain: There is no PD statement in Jason's code as far as I can tell and the game code contains (depends on?) the non-free fortify.
I could upload the game and share the link. It'd be legal. I would feel guilty though. So instead I offer you my help at buying the game if you can't use the payment method available. If you can transfer to a German bank account or are located in/near Berlin, Germany, contact me and I'll buy the game for you if you somehow give me the money you want to pay.
I guess we need screens...
I guess a video can't hurt (I'm probably wrong)...
After making the video, I realized that playing on higher (lower?) levels (levels?) is amazing fun and reminds me of Meritous. Meritous is a hard punisher though. In (In a) Star-Filled Sky is is awesome getting destroyed in all these amazing ways just to get destroyed in even more amazing ways few seconds afterwards and sometimes even get to destroy something in amazing ways by chance or even skill! Awesome.
I really need to hear people's opinion about 1. this game 2. this payment model.
So you move around in procedurally generated mazes in real-time, shoot enemies, pick up stuff and change between levels. Sounds like.. GoblinHack so far (the graphics are softer though). But.
The mazes are people.
Or pixelated monsters for that matter. Or upgrades.
You control a thing inside another thing. the thing is a maze.
The game costs at least $1.75 because it's pay what you want + fees.I was lucky to get Jason to answer two of my questions.
Q: Is IaSFS in the public domain?
Jason Rohrer: Yes, it's all in the public domain (which is why no license file is included).
Q: Why do you release your games as open source? Why does open source matter (to you)?
Jason Rohrer: I release all of my work as open source because there's no reason not to. People mostly "hide" their source code out of fear, but I think that fear is unfounded. In the game world, releasing source code is almost unheard of, except for decades-old abandonware projects. Long ago, I used to harbor the romantic hope that some other coder would benefit from reusing or at least studying my source code. But over 12 years of releasing all of my source code, that has happened only rarely. Instead, the main benefit has come from making my work as portable and as long-lived as possible. Binaries break eventually as platforms change, and they cannot be repaired. A source distribution can survive and remain functional much longer. My passion for open source has transitioned from idealistic to pragmatic over the years.
IMHO Jason is a very interesting guy to listen to [video search "Jason Rohrer"].
About public domain: There is no PD statement in Jason's code as far as I can tell and the game code contains (depends on?) the non-free fortify.
I could upload the game and share the link. It'd be legal. I would feel guilty though. So instead I offer you my help at buying the game if you can't use the payment method available. If you can transfer to a German bank account or are located in/near Berlin, Germany, contact me and I'll buy the game for you if you somehow give me the money you want to pay.I guess we need screens...
Enjoy! It's from the official gallery!
I guess a video can't hurt (I'm probably wrong)...
Enjoy the video! (F-Word Warning!) +1 and I commented it! (Here's another by me, without comments but boring gameplay)
If you have problems with video/flash/youtube... youtube-dl!
After making the video, I realized that playing on higher (lower?) levels (levels?) is amazing fun and reminds me of Meritous. Meritous is a hard punisher though. In (In a) Star-Filled Sky is is awesome getting destroyed in all these amazing ways just to get destroyed in even more amazing ways few seconds afterwards and sometimes even get to destroy something in amazing ways by chance or even skill! Awesome.I really need to hear people's opinion about 1. this game 2. this payment model.