Stunt Playground Source Released

I'll start with the exciting news that the source to Stunt Playground was released at the end of May. This is a really cool looking game written using the OGRE 3D engine. It really highlights the spreading understanding of the importance of Free Software when reading the reasons behind the decision:

I have decided to release the entire source code for Stunt Playground 2.0, to aid those interested in Ogre / OgreNewt / Newton Game Dynamics programming. The source is available under a free license, and might be of particular interest to people using the Newton Game Dynamics vehicle constraint, as it was used for the vehicle physics in the game.

How could I forget two of the classic Free games - Liquid War and Jump n Bump, both frollicking fun. It seems that Liquid War 6 is under development. Whilst not expected before 2008, it is always good to see the ongoing development of original Free games. I hope it brings a nice update to the rather garish graphics of it's predecessors. Still, if you haven't heard of the Liquid War games before, I highly recommend trying Liquid War 5. It is a worthy fill of a few minutes of your time.

I also spotted FreeSCI, on linuxgames.com, which is looking active. For those who don't remember what SCI is, it is the engine Sierra used to implement their original adventure titles before things got ugly. This harks back to the time when adventure games ruled the PC game market. With SCI Studio, a tool for creating SCI-based adventure games, being released as Free Software, hopefully we'll be seeing some good Free adventure games in the future.

On Freshmeat I saw an update to Rescue! Max, an action adventure space game written in Java. I haven't yet played the game but it looks interesting. Has anybody else tried it yet? If so, please comment on your experience.

Finally (for today - I have so many backed-up games to mention and link) I have added a digg.com entry for Free Gamer, so please support your favourite Free gaming resource (I mean this website) and digg FG!

One Point Nought

I added a few more titles to the list: Runescape (online only), FreeCNC (game over), and Karting Race (freeware).

Those readers who are Game Tome regulars may already be aware of an update to Armagetron AD. It's reached version number 0.2.8.2 which is something I want to talk about.

To me, version 1.0 of a project represents a stable release of the original concept. Not the perfection of that concept, but the playable implementation of it's core features. Armagetron passed this mark a long, long time ago. Also, the popular X.Y.Z versioning usually has respective major, minor, and bugfix connotations. For brown-paper-bag releases there is an occasional 4th digit version number.

Strikingly, this update (0.2.8.1 to 0.2.8.2) implemented new features. I just can not grasp such a minor version increment for a feature-based release. It's nonsensical. It almost reduces the significance of the new features.

Armagetron AD should ditch the 0, putting the version at 2.8.2 - more representative of the maturity of the codebase. Versions with new features should bump up the Y number, not the Z, so that people could better differentiate between more advanced versions of the game.

Another sinner in this regard is TORCS whose changes between Z increments can be very significant. Yet people who tried 1.2.1 don't bother to try 1.2.4 because they'll think nothing much has changed when that's not the case. The players miss out, the project misses out on players, and all because the developers thought it'd be better to be frugal with version numbers.

The moral of this rant is that if you want people to really notice the improvements between versions in your Free game, then treat versions numbers properly. Don't abuse them but do not be too respectful either. A developing game naturally should have a corresponding version number but it should represent the state of the game and not the state of mind of the programmer. 1.0 is not perfection. You'll never reach it if it is.

Football Focus

There was an update for the only well-developed Free football management simulation I know of, Bygfoot 2 was released. Sadly the lead developer is moving on so it may be the last release if nobody takes over maintainership. Saying that, open source project addiction may bring him back.

Bygfoot is fun but the user interface can be fairly non-intuitive and the game lacks depth when it comes to player management and information - e.g. there's no indication of a player's performance in the game. Outside of the players, there are plenty of features. With some UI love and elaboration on the player management it could be a very competent footy manager.

There was also an update to Alien Arena 2006; another mod-turned-standalone freeware deathmatch game. Since Q3A now is available under a Free license, I wish these mods would adopt a similar approach. Still, that is their perrogative.

Today I received a laptop with Windows installed, so if you know any Windows-only Free Software games then please let me know. I'm going to have to make the games list a little more refined (add a platform indicator of some sort) but I'd like to promote all Free games, regardless of their platform.

Campaign - FreeTrain Localization

[UPDATE 2009] FreeTrain was translated quite sometime ago, thanks to people who saw this campaign and helped out! It still only runs on Windows but there is hope of a port to Linux - contact the team via the mailing list if you think you can help. There is a project, website, forum. [/UPDATE 2009]

FreeTrain is a clone of A-Train. I can't find much information right now (please comment if you know where to look) but it's a long-running series developed by ArtDink and is primarily marketed to the Japanese. I remember playing A-Train 3 about 10-12 years ago and quite liking it.

The problem with FreeTrain is that it's only availabe in Japanese. The game needs localizing and translating. I have spoken to the author before and he's open to contributors. From the website:

I wanted to do a proper localization of FreeTrain to English at some point, but the game just doesn't have enough interest outside Japan to justify the effort to myself.

The lack of interest probably stems from the fact all the game material is in Japanese!

There is a mailing list linked on the game page. However, if you are really serious, I suggest contacting the author Kohsuke Kawaguchi directly - email also on the FreeTrain website.

So the first Free Gamer campaign is to get FreeTrain properly localized and translated into English. I don't even know if it runs on Linux. Not the most organised of campaigns but hopefully somebody will check it out anyway!

Update: Ok, I can confirm this is currently a Windows-only game. So the campaign is extended to porting it to Linux as well.

Introduction to Wing Commander

Thanks to those out there who pointed out the broken Wing Commander Universe link in the exciting prospects section. The link is fixed, now pointing to the WCU section of the Vega Strike wiki (WCU is a VS mod). The original project page currently serves as the homepage for Privateer Remake which has, as far as I'm aware, been superceeded by Privateer Gemini Gold. PR was created from the WCU codebase and PGG was a fork of PR. It does make sense, I promise.

Privateer is a classic PC game from the mid-90s and was an off-shoot of the Wing Commander series. You play the role of a space merchant and/or mercenary who fights his way across the galaxy in a game where you travel without limits, sometimes following the storyline if you were so inclined.

PGG and WCU development is still very active and there are more WC games expected to be created out of the WCU project. The next PGG release has high-res base backgrounds, more graphics, more balancing, and lots of bug fixes so look out for it.

Those interested in Wing Commander may be interested in Wing Commander Pioneer, a freeware game still in development by some of the prominent modellers of the WC fan community. It won't be released any time soon but the models and teaser screenshots are very nice.

Privateer was revolutionary and one of the best gaming experiences I ever had. Origin (now defunct) had a habit of doing this - think of the long-running Ultima games. I will do a Free Software perspective on them some day.

Another Large Update

Well I just did another large update, including adding another 30+ games to the list - even I'm beginning to get surprised at the quantity of quality Free games out there.

I also tweaked the layout further, added an FAQ, and a 'Jump To' quick-nav for the sidebar. Hopefully this will be the last major update for a while meaning all subsequent updates will be properly described so in the future the list won't change radically overnight like it has done every night since it's inception.

Deadly Soccer in a Warzone

A rather topical title has just been released, Slam Soccer 2006 (a.k.a. Bolzplatz 2006), a 3D soccer game with cartoon-style players. It requires Java 1.5 but don't let that put you off. With some half-decent hardware, it looks like fun. It did not perform well enough on my machine to be playable - however I blame my GeForce2, so do not let the Java tag put you off. Quite a few decent games are appearing in Java recently. There's even a Java port of Quake 2 - Jake2.

Warzone 2100

The not-so-well-known Free game Warzone 2100 continues to be updated. Importantly, for me, it looks good and runs good on older hardware.

It is a 3D RTS game that was originally a commercial title. One of the contributors is an Ubuntu user and, over in the forums, gave an overview of the state of Warzone. It looks like it's coming together nicely. Even though a bit of the original game content still isn't working in the Free version (notably the cut-scenes), it still feels like a very complete game and is definitely worth trying. There is a very dedicated community and such dedication only forms behind decent games.

DROD

Thanks to Evil Mr Henry for pointing out where to find the freeware version of DROD v1. It's DROD v2 that's not freeware, although the DROD engine is released under the MPL.

A bit of a short one today; I must do some work before I turn into a blog-junkie and lose everything dear to me.

Edit: Uploaded the screenshots to blogger to stop the berlios.de pestering for https confirmation. Apologies for any inconvenience.