Cereal Monopoly

I'm the Microsoft of my kitchen. Nobody gets in on my cereal without there being trouble - I invoke my landlord status. But if my cereal is out, I'm having some of yours if you live here. So today I ate some of my housemates shredded wheat. That stuff tastes like paper - who in their right mind would like the taste of that? This, of course, is why we have such a variety of games. To some people, some games are boring and pointless, but to others they are the ultimate form of fun.

One of the things I love about Sauerbraten is that it empowers people to create really amazing looking maps like this without that much effort. Instead of spending hours trying to manipulate abstract file contents or fighting map editors, you can just build it as you see it rapidly. It's like the IDE of map making tools and games.

I overly built up one Dungeon Master inspired FOSS game, but another that is very actively developed and looking very, very promising is the Java Classic RPG project. The development blog makes for an interesting read as well as a good way of updating the community on the progress of the game and I encourage other FOSS game developers to indulge in a similar practise.

The Privateer Gemini Gold 1.02 final release is out. Improved ship models, higher resolution base graphics, and improved game balance are the highlights of over a year's worth of development since the 1.01 release. It really is a good game, and it's Free and Open Sourec Software and available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. So, download it already! :-D

That game should be very popular. I'm hoping as a consequence of this, Vega Strike will get more attention. Actually there has been some excellent work by a new developer who took on the task of cleaning up the VS codebase. Today his branch got merged into SVN head. The two threads tracking his work (here and here) make for interesting reading if you like following development. The benefits should be a more stable and memory efficient VS release in the future, plus quicker compile times and better usage of common libraries which were previously being manually maintained in SVN by the VS developers.

I probably don't need to talk about the latest Alien Arena release, so I won't.

High Contrast

Gamma Low is an interesting new multiplayer RTS project. Players act in teams in some kind of light oriented battle. It is very early in the project and the only worthwhile information seems to be in their roadmap, but it's an intriguing concept nonetheless.

Hex-a-pop is an original and well implemented puzzle game with cute graphics. Once you get your head around the basic techniques used to consume common hex patterns, it's pretty easy, but I think it's a good game for spatially challenging a younger audience. And it's open source and available for most operating systems.

Open City

There's a new Open City screenshot, seen here on the right. How cool is that starting to look, eh? New release soon? Fingers crossed.

I mentioned the space sim Stress Free Zone for the first time a few weeks ago, a space combat game which aims to have cooperative multiplayer gameplay (e.g. defending space stations) as well as modular ships among other features. They are making good progress too, which can be seen on their development blog.

And last but not least Windstille 0.3.0 is out in the wild. A platform game in the style of the classic Turrican series, the game now boasts 3D characters running around an artistic 2D world. Currently it is only distributed in source format but is still only more of a tech demo than a game. It is hard to find any screenshots but I have seen it in action and it looks really nice.

I'm sure there's more but my brain is in "off mode". I still did not get Privateer Gemini Gold 1.02rc1 running (well, it runs, just without sound) on my Ubuntu Feisty Fawn laptop although I did help one of the main developers fix a few setup issues. Did anybody else have more success?

Castle Pascal

The Castle is a rather intriguing looking fantasy FPS where your main weapon is a sword, so combat is generally very short range. Currently this open source game only comes with 3 levels and 5 types of enemy, but is very well documented for prospective contributors. The game engine is a custom one written using Pascal and compiled with FreePascal. The game runs on Linux, BSD, MacOSX, and Windows (LBMW). :-)

Whilst originally created for one of the Pascal Game Development (PGD) annual competitions with the current [realistic] scope as the game focus, the author's long term ambitions make for interesting reading:

Basically the game is intended to be like FPS but with some nice storyline. This also means that it should feel more like RPG (in more-or-less fantasy setting) — large world, many items, weapons, some character stats and levels etc. Also I want to utilize my engine to make levels more "interactive" — some objects on the level are able to move etc. There are many such games, some very old, some quite new. I'm just going to do this once again, in the way I want, and make it really good :)

The game engine behind The Castle looks pretty decent considering it's homebrewed and the author has created a few other games (well, demos really) to show it off - malfunction (where you blow up alien space ships) and let's take a walk (where you, er, walk around) which are both available for LBMW.

There are also a few interesting links from The Castle website. The game uses textures from the Golgotha Collection which is a massive collection all in the public domain (I think).

Going back to the PGD website and there seems to be a lot of information on creating games with Pascal as well as lots of entries in the game competitions - 18 this year - which last 3-4 months. Perhaps a few more open source jewels to be found there. ;-)

There are now Linux and Mac OS X binaries available for Privateer Gemini Gold 1.02 rc1 if you want to try that before they release 1.02 final. I ran into a few problems - related to the Vega Strike engine that PGG uses - getting it to run on my rather recently setup Ubuntu Feisty Fawn laptop.

Still, more cool models for VS continue to be made. I hope they focus on a new VS release after PGG 1.02 because there's just so much change since the old 0.4.3 which was years ago.

Just Keep Them Coming

Sometimes I finish a post feeling apprehensive about being able to find more information to populate the next days ramble on open source gaming matters. However, just earlier I was explaining to a friend the difference between open source games and commercial ones, and realise just why there always is something more to talk about - Free games are not just an end product for a player; they are a process, a community oriented process, with visible progress along the way.

There really are so many high quality open source game projects around, it's a joy to see them all evolving. :-)

Danger from the Deep

Just to emphasise what I mean, Danger from the Deep 0.3.0 just popped up on Freshmeat. This rather awesome project simulating WWII submarine combat gains 4 more U-boats, shader support i.e. eye candy, and better sound support amongst other improvements.

It really does look so good. I remember playing some submarine game when I was younger and just loving the immersion, stalking enemy boats before blowing them out of the water. I just wish I had the hardware to recreate that experience with DftD - maybe by the time it's "complete" I will. ;-)

And another awesome game is looming on the horizon. As seen on /., the Blender Foundation have announced a project to create a high quality open source game in conjunction with Crystal Space project. For those who don't know, Blender does have a game engine but it does not scale very well and is notoriously difficult to debug games made with it.

The previous open effort by the Blender community was Project Orange (aka Elehpants Dream), so that is a benchmark for the quality we can expect to see. High, high quality. :-D

A few other miscellaneous things...

I was quite impressed by this glossary of Oolite ships. I really should play and review that game.

I really like seeing the new artwork going into games, such as this and this going into the next version of UFO:AI - another of those awesome open source game projects.

I managed to come across a resource I once had bookmarked but lost many years ago - Amit's game programming. I can't find the specific pages that interested me (there's a ton of information there to sift through) but I'm happy I found it nonetheless.

Running out of stuff to talk about? My posts seem to get longer by the day...

Buy Me A Centurion

Privateer Gemini Gold 1.02 rc1 - the game bringing the classic commercial title Privateer kicking and screaming into the modern era - is ready and they require testers. They only provide a Windows binary, however the game is based on the cross-platform Vega Strike game engine and previous versions have had Linux and Mac binaries too.

PGG is just one of the variants to spring from the original Privateer Remake. Another one, Privateer Universe, seems to be gaining a bit of popularity - it adds to the gameplay whereas PGG strives to remain true to the original. It's a 3D space combat RPG, for the very few that don't already know.

Freeciv Tileset updates - Freeciv 2.1 imminent? Hmm, rumour mill, speculation, and sensationalism, all in one. ;-)

Er, "A Sauer Mod"

The so-titled Unnamed Sauer Mod is looking promising as the developer continues to make progress - now with zombies. In case you didn't read about it previously here on FG (I did mention it, right?) it is a single player FPS game where you take on a zombie infested habitation on Mars. It looks like it'll be a cross between Doom and House of the Dead in terms of gameplay although obviously it's a small team (one man?) effort so perhaps comparing it to commercial titles is a little unfair - but you know what I mean. Sauer allows for rapid map creation so it seems to be making the job a bit easier, as was the original intention of the Sauer authors!

Trophy development has resumed. Trophy is a Free Software top-down 3D-ish racing game. The new development brings the game up to date with the latest clanlib release and hopefully a new Trophy release will reinvigourate the project. :-)

I came across another top-down-ish 3D-ish racing game, - GeneRally although it is only freeware and only available for Windows. :-(

It looks cute. There's loads of user-created tracks to play and it seems to have a very active playing community. If only it was open source though, I'm sure it would be even better. Hmm, I moaned quite a bit about Simutrans not being open source and lo and behold yesterday things changed. Perhaps I should do the same with GeneRally? Then somebody can port it away from the monstrousity that is Direct-puke-X and educated people can play it as well as those 'dozey peons. :-D

Just because I can, here's another [this time 2D] racing game - Road Fighter, a remake of a classic game from the 80s which I'm too lazy to find information on. The source version is compatabile with Lin, Mac, Win but I think only a Windows binary is available to download. Retro but looks O.K. Enjoy!

Allacrost Update, Simutrans Source

Two major pieces of open source game news today. :-D

Hero of Allacrost 0.2.0 is now available, with easy installation on Windows, Linux (Ubunto/Debian packages), MacOSX, and FreeBSD. Additional platform support seems planned too, an impressive effort to get the game readily available for people to play. This version celebrates the 3rd anniversary of the inception of the project and it is great to see the vision of the original developer(s) being realised. The highlights of their second major release are:

• Free-range movement replacing tile-based movement


• Two excellent new maps to explore


• No more random encounters


• You can now buy and sell wares from shop keepers


• A newly added stamina bar in the battle interface


• The ability to gain experience levels and make your character grow stronger


• Plenty of additional music to enjoy

After what seems like a millenia as a freeware game, the source code for Simutrans is now available for download. :-)

The source is licensed under the artistic license, whatever that is. Anyway, it is included in the source download (available for the latest release 0.99.12) so read it if you are interested. I don't think they have opened up the development process completely (i.e. their tools such as their subversion server) but it's a start and there are now support forums for compiling and submitting patches, which should turn Simutrans into more of a community project.

The game has come on a lot in the last few years, and this move should IMHO only improve the development situation. Already a few good patches have been submitted to fix some crashes. Many eyes and all.

Hi, my name's Charlie, and I'm addicted to Desktop Tower Defense. Well, not completely, but it does eat up time quickly if you are not careful. Anyway, compare your scores to mine if you think you are good enough. ;-)

VDrift + Sonic Robo Blast 2 + RG Pro Hockey

VDrift effects

Firstly a quick mention about the progress of VDrift development. It continues at an impressive pace. To improve performance, amongst other things, they have been implementing their own scenegraph and refactoring the drawing code. Also implemented in this branch are shader-based effects (bloom & motion blur) and it looks sumptuous. All it needs is a few really nice tracks and the commercial racing games will be getting a run for their money from VDrift. Honestly, I played Ridge Racer 7 on the PS3 the other day and I was underwhelmed.

Given the ubiquity of cars, the general appeal of racing games, and the ability for lots of people to contribute content easily, I would go as far as saying that for once the open source model is potentially better than a commercial approach for developing this kind of game. I can't think of any other genre for which that might be true.

Anyway, there's a few loose ends to tidy up. Many thanks to the commenters who contributed the following valuable pieces of information... (and I promise to eventually go back and correct the posts.)

RG Pro Hockey does still exist online, as a Sourceforge project. And there has been commits since the last release, although development is currently inactive. Still, it means it's not lost, and thanks anyway to the other comment pointing to an alternative download site. Anyway, project page for the game is here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rg-pro-hockey

Sonic Robo Blast 2 is actually cross-platform. Very cross-platform. It turns out the game code is based on the open source Doom engine Doom Legacy. It even has been ported to the Dreamcast. However I think the SRB2 team needs to rethink it's distribution policy - they only link to a .exe which is a self-extracting archive. I had little luck finding information on any Linux binaries of the game, although admittedly I did not look too hard. I think there's some here (lsdlsrb2 or lsdlsrb2beta) but I have not properly investigated.

I typo'd the Street Rod 3 game name and website. Although development seems dead, apologies to the developers and thanks to the reader who did what I should have done; verified the link. The actual site is here:

http://www.streetrod3.com/

And finally for today there's a relatively new site where you can find several open source multiplayer games being hosted, called Network Games. It's a nice idea to promote a community around playing a few of the better free games around.