Dark Days

I came across Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstars the other day. It's a GPL cross-plaform fan-made sequel to Zak McKracken, a Lucasarts game. Whilst browsing for information on Zak1, I came across another ZM sequel, Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space. It looks even better than ZMAR, but is Windows only and seemingly only freeware. There's a rather impressive trailer available. It reminds me a little of the also-impressive The Silver Lining project (formerly known as King's Quest 9).

Simutrans

In other freeware news, Simutrans version 0.89 is now available. It's a preview release but this game is constantly moving forward and seems to update every few weeks, a practise I approve of. There's also a rather funky hand drawn "sketch" graphics set for Simutrans, shown in the screenshot here.

A topic I would like to cover more in the future is the sharing of content between Free game developers. Since volunteer resources are predictably limited, a way of getting more quality into Free games is to share good art between projects. People will disagree with the concept, thinking that it makes game content less unique and hence the game less individual, but I think that's an asinine perspective to take when game media should compliment gameplay rather than define it.

I came across Low Poly Co-operative, an initiative to create quality low-poly models for use in open source games. If you really need models then you can request them in their forum.

Recently due to job commitments I have been forced to return to the dark forests of Dr Demon. Fortunately there are friends in this forsaken place. I have come across Notepad++, a Scintilla-based editor that really makes modifying web pages a joy rather than a chore. I heartily recommend it.

It will be worthwhile, at some point, doing a special on various editors and compilers that power the Free game creator.

Like a Phoenix!

No, Free Gamer has not met a premature demise! I am merely temporarily really, really busy.

Still, there were a few notable releases in the last week. ScummVM hit version 0.9.0 which brings GUI enhancements and support for [at least] two [new] games.

Legends jumped 0.0.0.1 versions to 0.4.1.40, and you should see the changelog. I've already ranted about discussed versioning debacles issues.

Warsow bumped out another release and really seems to be picking up momentum both as a game and a community. They have started up a development blog. This is a great idea and it would be cool for every major Free game to have one; then we can have Free Game Planet!

I spotted yet another 3d engine on Freshmeat: Nelit2. Information is sparse but the screenshots show off some fancy features. It has a long way to go to compete with the heavyweights of this division like OGRE and Crystal Space.

I also saw Carworld as well. It looks like it could be a very cool driving simulator if the author got a bit more motivation (or a bit of help).

Speaking of driving games, VDrift looks to be gearing up for another release. Improved GUI, car handling, graphics, and more cars and tracks are part of what seems to be emerging as the leading Free Software driving game.

There's great news for Mario fans with updates to Mega Mario and Secret Maryo Chronicles.

Finally, a couple of updates sourced from the Game Tome - SEAR and Runescape have been updated. The former is a major component of the ambitious Worldforge project and the latter a popular Java-based MMORPG.

I hope I didn't miss much and I'm in too much of a rush to plagiarise organise screenshots. Next week normal service should be resumed, as well as the forthcoming layout update that will build on the current list. Enjoy your games in the meantime!

Know your market - OPTIMISE!

Going back to Yoda Soccer, I had earlier talked about performance issues on my 1ghz laptop. Upon reporting the problem, I had this response:

This is likely because the game requires a graphics card with 64MB of video ram.

Let me get this straight. A remake of Sensible Soccer - a game that ran on the Amiga 500, an Atari ST, the SEGA Mega Drive, and a 486 PC - requires a 64mb graphics card? That is ludicrous.

If you are making an open source game, know your market. Your market is typically not people with high-end graphics cards. If anything, it's people with older PCs who have less cash who do not want to invest in an uber-PC to play games. Of course, you have the ideological few who purchase a Cray to play Supertux, but they are the minority.

So, with your market in mind, and knowing the kind of graphical and computing intensity your game requires, an open source developer should not be satisfied with something that performs badly.

Optimise, and optimise early.

Why optimise early?

• Your game will be respected more by players if it performs well, regardless of how complete it is
  
• More people will come to play your game and spread the word about it
  
• You will understand the underlying architecture of your codebase better if you focus on refining it
  
• Your codebase will become cleaner as you work on optimising it
  
• You will naturally eradicate bugs and improve user experience during the course of optimisation
• You'll become a better programmer through learning while optimising code
  
• Future development of your game, by yourself or by attracting new developers, will be easier because of the above reasons
  

Is your game slower than it should be? Why are you waiting? Stop feature creeping and start making it faster and smoother. A simple game that plays well is better than a complex game that barely works. Of course, the pragmatic position lies somewhere between those two extremes but err on the side of the former because that is what will impress people the most. It will also help keep you motivated because of the reasons I have mentioned.

Certainly, requiring a 64mb video card for a game that was written on 15 year old hardware is outrageous. Perhaps it is because they use BlitzMax, but surely BlitzMax can't be that inefficient. Hopefully in the future the Yoda Soccer developers will consider porting away from BlitzMax so this game can be enjoyed by those of us who are not using fast machines.

Oo the Madness

To any regular readers, apologies for the lapse in posting - I did, though, have a valid reason. It tooks 2 weeks to get infected and 2 days to get out of it! I blame myself for not using protection, especially when it's freely available.

Balazar Brothers

Arkhart

There was an update to Balazar Brothers over the weekend. This fun 3D platformer has great visuals for a Free Software game and is a little brother to Balazar. It comes from the same stable that produced Slune and Arkhart, the French setup Nekeme Prod[uctions?].

Delving deeper into Nekeme I found out that Arkhart is still being developed with a release (0.2.0) scheduled for Christmas. Whether this sees the light of day is yet to be seen, given the 3 years that has passed since the last Arkhart release, but it's good to know that the project is not dead. It's one of those open source games that you look at the website and screenshots and your jaw drops, only to close it with a sigh when you see how [in]complete it is.

Also of note whilst browsing Nekeme Prod was Bankiz!, a worms-like inspired by Liero. It's not available yet (at least, not released) but the [French] news was updated just a few days ago.

Open Source Game Engines

ScummVM



FIFE



OpenTTD

Today is a game engine special on Free Gamer. These are the projects that take your favourite [old school] titles and provide not only a native port but also fix all the nasties that had you saving and loading or even resetting your PC in the past. I remember the days of autoexec.bat and making every byte of that 640k count. Well these won't give you that fun but at least you get to play your old games!

Let's start with the exciting FIFE: Flexible Isometric Fallout-like Engine. Started as an attempt to make a Fallout engine, it is becoming more ambitious and there are even rumours of a FIFE-based game in development. It should be able to run fan-made Fallout mods like the aptly named Fan Made Fallout.

I have a pet favourite among RPG engines - GemRB. (I respect the steady progress on a difficult project.) This Infinity Engine emulator aims to be able to run the Baldur's Gate titles and even improve the experience they offer. The development version is advancing nicely and hopefully the next release will give BG fans something to clamour about even if it still won't be quite capable of playing a full game.

Let's not forget ScummVM, one of the grand daddies of Free Software engines. This enables a host of old-school adventure games to be playable in a modern environment. Since it's inception, some of these adventure games have even been made freely available by their publishers, notably Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen. Sadly they show their age. As fickle as it is, the low resolution makes it harder to enjoy the game when we live in an increasingly detailed and beautiful digital world.

FreeSCI is another adventure game engine for the many old Sierra titles out there. Like ScummVM, it boasts an impressive list of supported games with more added each arbitrary period of time that goes by.

Moving on to RTS games, we start with the evergreen TA Spring. I gave it column inches yesterday and it's thriving community doesn't need the publicity so I move swiftly on.

The classic project of the open source RTS engines is Stratagus. Once named FreeCraft, it has survived a blizzard and been made stronger for it. The available games, not counting Warcraft support through Wargus, are still a little rough around the edges but the future looks good.

Speaking of snow stormy games, we come across SCSharp, a C# adaptation of Starcraft. It's not yet capable of much more than loading a few game objects but it's worth watching out for.

Of course no RTS-related round-up is complete without a mention of something C&C (or should I say Dune 2 reincarnate). The main effort here is FreeCNC. Or should I say FreeRA, as it appears FreeCNC development has ceased so somebody has taken on the codebase under another moniker.

We finish with OpenTTD. This has breathed life into an excellent old-school game. Transport Tycoon is addictive and OpenTTD (partially inspired by TTDPatch) fixes the old problems such as vehicle limitations and then adds even more features to the game. However they are still working on the crazy railroads the AI tends to create! They are working on a hires replacement graphics set which will make OpenTTD a game in it's own right, hopefully by the end of the year.

I can only mention so much so left out the various engines ID have open sourced. However, if I missed any other cracking open source engines please comment below!

Sauerbraten and TA Spring

Sauerbraten

There is an updated release for Sauerbraten. This innovative open source 3D FPS is an evolution of the popular game Cube. For those who don't know, Cube and Sauer are not just FPS games but live map modding tools as well where you can manipulate the game world in real time. The game maps are combinations of deformable cubes giving map creators massive control with minimum complexity. There are already some jaw dropping maps available for Sauer which is adding new eye candy all the time.

The developers are designing a roaming action RPG using Sauerbraten engine called Eisenstern. The entire game world will be in one massive level which the player will have to battle around. It seems to be more in a proof-of-concept stage whilst Sauer matures but is definitely one worth looking out for.

TA Spring

In other news, playing TA Spring just got a whole lot easier for Ubuntu (Dapper) and Debian (Sarge+) users. There's an entire guide to getting it up and running over at the DebSpring project.

TA Spring really does look beautiful lately. There are some incredible screenshots on the website. This game, more than anything else, makes me want to upgrade my PC. When I do you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be a 7-page review up on Free Gamer.

Set Your Games Free

I'll start by acknowledging I've been mentioning games I've not yet added to the list. I'm redesigning the layout to be tri-columnar - 3 columns - so they are going into that design and not the current one. The new design should make browsing the list even easier.

I'm busy putting together a special on game engines. So for today I'll just make a note inspired by the fate of Parsec in the hope it will encourage freeware developers to publish their games under a proper open source license.

It is a lesson for all freeware developers to heed; just because you have glorious plans and motivation now, know that the future is known to no-one. It is as easy to lose the desire as it was to initially dream. By keeping your project closed you exclude the world from it's development. Should life take you in another direction nobody will be there to pick up your project. Your efforts will be wasted and that is a tragedy only the Freedom of software can avoid.

Do you have any more freeware come rotware stories to share?