Hero of Allacrost 0.2.2, Teeworlds 0.4.3, GamePwned

Toying with Hero of Allacrost 0.2.2's Editor(HD)

Hero of Allacrost 0.2.2 has been released and now needs a new home! It is house-trained and can be picked up 24/7 from it's SourceForge shelter.

One can now enter buildings (in a pleasant no-transition way) and an editor is now included. I gave the editor a try.

My first thought was: "What a waste of energy! Why did they not incorporate Tiled, as for example Battle Tanks did?" But then I remembered that my last encounter with the general purpose Java editor. It showed me that instead of being able to completely rely on Tiled, a team would have to create an extra tool for tasks that go beyond map editing. At least a team of non-Java programmers (Allacrost is in C++ and Lua).

Allacrost's editor will go beyond tiles. When it's finished, it will also be a character, skills and inventory editor and will support integration of music/sounds.

Greg Cannon blocking the view on STK ;)

GamePwned is a freeware and open source games blog. A video-review of VDrift and SuperTuxKart was recently posted on it. (The third one, HoverRace, has a weird license). Reminds me of the time when freeware titles were often mentioned on Free Gamer. Mid-1980s IIRC.

I wonder if Sauce The Game is ever going to happen again...

Teewars Teeworlds 0.4.3

Teewars Teeworlds 0.4.3 is out and some of the changes indicate a wide player base: auto team balance and anti-spam fixes. I gave the game a try a minute ago and the fun and prettiness and cuteness are there! Unfortunately I'm no fan of grapple hooks.

Teewars' Teeworlds' license is a bugger though. Instead of "please don't sell this game" is says "you have to include a hello world app if you want to sell this game".

On the other hand, ladies and gentlemen: the bikeshed.

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.

Four New Free Games

Of course, when I say new, I mean new to me. New to me means, generally, a bit off the radar in the Free Software game community. So, with the post title qualified, let's start...

Top10 is a realistic kart racing game for Windows and Linux. It reminds me of Karting Race, which is fairly inevitable since they are both kart racing simulations, but Top10 is GPL (yay!) whereas Karting Race is freeware (not-so-yay!) so it already has that going for it over Karting Race. (See, I believe that being open source is a significant strength for a freely-available game.) It's quite playable already although still undergoing heavy development. Less words, more video:

Opposite Lock is a racing game for J2ME platforms, originally written for mobile phones. The author has released the engine under a GPL license with 3 free tracks, and is planning to release the game tools including a tile-based track editor, as open source too, and eventually his game tracks under a CC license. It looks like a really fun game, is a complete game, and could be great for the GP2X or maybe OLPC or similar platforms. It's a bit like the original MarioKart but with cars. See the video:

Thanks to Andrew for bringing that one up in the forums.

Teewars is a cute 2D deathmatch game. It's a bit of a cross between something like Quake and Metal Blob Solid. It's very similar in scope to the Liero-style of game, an open source version being OpenLieroX. It looks full of potential although it's probably going to be multiplayer only. However, there is a caveat. It's under a rather strange open source license.

How am I doing? That's 3 so far. I've got one more. OpenClou! is an effort to keep the genre of the burglary simulations alive. It's 3D, it's open source, beyond that and the following video, and the obvious ethical debate on whether we should promote or glorify theft, I can't really say much more!

That's it for today. Very video laden! :-)