Ain't Fate A Funny Thing

So here I am lamenting the lack of free (well, open source, but free is good enough) single player FPS games, and up pops this on Freshmeat; Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge:

EMR 3.0 is a unique scenario based upon the Aleph One (Marathon) engine. It is a first-person action adventure game, featuring an epic and in-depth story line.

The Aleph One engine is hardly cutting edge (originally powering the Marathon trilogy of games, circa 1996-1998) as you can tell from the EMR screenshots, but it takes a long time to produce a fully fledged single player FPS. EMR boasts 42 SP levels and a decent storyline. The game works on all 3 major platforms (Lin, Win, Mac) and is downloadable from their Sourceforge project page. I don't have time to verify how open source this game is but the source code is listed amongst the downloads.

Another free single player game based on the same engine is Tempus Irae, which is based in the Marathon universe but adds a lot of new content. The original Marathon games are freely downloadable too according to this page. So if the slightly retro graphics (sprites instead of models for NPCs) does not phase you, then there is plenty of content to work through there.

Eternal Lands

There's also an update to Eternal Lands, the MMORPG that once had a rather wierd license to it's source code although I believe it is properly open source these days. Version 1.4.0 of the client brings new effects, maps, and monsters. I always found the game to be plodding whenever I tried it but these days I'm quite fussy and I know a lot of people who have lost a lot of time to EL by becoming quite immersed in it. It is more graphically rich than Daimonin and more complete a game than Planeshift, the other two main open source MMORPG games.

A plumbing game called Vodovod showed up as well on Freshmeat. Taking inspiration from the Pipemania style of games, it reminded me of FlowFlowMania. Checking out the FlowFlowMania website, there was a sobering news update to be found. From the website:

Just a little news to inform you that FlowFlowMania is slowing down a little due to the fact that I'm hospitalized since May 02 2007 for a leukemia at Paris.

I think I'm going to have a lot of time during next weeks to continue FlowFlowMania, but the poor network of the hospital does not allow me to use FlowFlowMania SVN ...

So don't be affraid by the SVN inactivity. The things will go better when I'll be back home ;o)

Well, I hope you get well Bobsky. Isn't that something to remind us of our mortality and how important Free Software games really are? To some people, they represent a passion and a dream.

Some Classic Game Remakes

I came across the Hardwar project the other day, a contemporary remake of the classic game. No visible progress but plenty of ambition and a cute website. We shall see if it gets anywhere.

A remake that has made some good progress is Game of Bases, putting a modern spin on a Commodore 64 classic Flash Attack. Control 4 tanks, protect your base, and take out your opponents.

I mentioned FlowFlowMania the other day, a Pipe Mania remake. Since then there have been a few updates - 0.5 was announced on Freshmeat although not on the FlowFlowMania site at the time of writing.

Gno3dtet

Blockout was the original 3D tetris. Gno3Dtet (aka 3D Tetris) is a remake that looks very similar to the original in terms of the tile graphics.

Beware, for I have known more than one person be addicted to that game to the point it adversely affected their degrees!

Not a remake, nor open source, but the Flash adventure game "The Terrific Menace of the Invaders from Audio Galaxy" (I'm not typing that again!) is reminiscent of the Lucasarts classic Day of the Tentacle (these days playable using ScummVM). It is, of course, free to play.

Shadow of the Beast 3D

Remember Shadow of the Beast? I loved that game, and the follow up (Shadow of the Beast II, of course). Somebody started remaking it in 3D! Sadly it doesn't seem to be headed anywhere (last updated 2 years ago) but I live in hope.

(Y'know, I swear I'd mentioned that last one before but Google says I haven't and I'm not reading 100 posts to see if I did!)

I'll finish off with a Super Mario remake. Since the Secret Maryo developers only provide source packages for Linux, I created some Secret Maryo 0.99.5 packages for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (might work on Dapper Drake). Enjoy!

Music tip:

Franke, Neumann - Criss Source (Titan Remix)

Go With The Flow

Firstly a quick update on FreeTrain. The main game has now been translated, so should compile and run on Windows. At the moment, though, there are a few things to be addressed before it can be officially released and also it probably needs porting to SDL to run on Linux as - although Mono is implementing WinForms - it makes a few DirectX calls. That and I'm too lame (in combination with VS2005) to even make it compile on Windows.

FlowFlowMania, a Pipe Mania clone, showed up on Freshmeat today. Sadly there's only 2 playable levels and graphics for a resolution of 320x240 but it's early days yet so hopefully development will continue. I loved Pipe Mania when it came out on my ZX48+.

Since I was commenting on FLOSS platform games (or lack of) the other day, "Steve" brought to my attention his game - Danger Man. I gotta say, although it's early days for this game (don't expect much), it was a fun to play for a few minutes. It's only v0.1 and there's no real animation but the essential gameplay elements are there. Danger Man reminded me a bit of Abuse [SDL] (Freshmeat link due to homepage not working) with the mouse/keyboard combination, although it has a long way to go before it reaches a similar level of polish.

SuperTux

Continuing the platformer theme, I played SuperTux 0.3.0 for the first time yesterday. It felt sluggish and generally not-as-fun (on my 1Ghz laptop) compared to SuperTux 0.2.0. Maybe I'm just getting old or something? It is labelled a "preview" release so I also had a look at their progress towards a full Milestone 2 release (v0.4.0 I presume) and noted a complaint about a penguin that can't swim. Does anybody else see an opportunity for a Mario meets Ecco the Dolphin clone? Now that would be something special. :-)

Of course to do that well, you might want 3D characters instead of 2D sprites. Perhaps an adaption of the Windstille engine? I'm an idea-a-minute at the moment!

I love Fish Fillets. If you haven't played it, go to that link IMMEDIATELY. I like it that much, that I'm going to mention it's commercial follow up - Fish Fillets II. The graphics are, as usual, much improved. Anyway, I mention it only to see if people can bug Altar Games to either make a Linux port or perhaps GPL the engine so people can do it themselves aka Fish Fillets NG.

There's a rumour that UFO:AI 2.1 will get released before the end of the month. They got bored backporting changes from SVN trunk to the 2.0 branch so skipped an official 2.0 release altogether (after 6 RCs). I've no complaints with that - at the end of the day open source developers have limitted time. If something is actually detracting from development then sometimes it is better to forget about it. At the end of the day players want the latest, greatest stuff so generally will prefer a quick 2.1 release to a 2.0 release that delays v2.1 of the game. Besides, the developers can just argue that 2.0 was just a preview of 2.1 anyway! ;-)

Music tip:

Conamore - I've Got This Feeling (Ben Macklin Mix)