Freedom is Fun

Happy festive season to all those who are celebrating, and commiserations to those who are missing out or have not been blessed with a nice Christmas period.Many thanks to Q for being a custodian of the blog. It would surely have died long ago but for his endeavour and I deeply appreciate his ongoing efforts.NYC in SauerI have a queue of interesting things... like this lovely screenshot of a NYC map for Sauerbraten that pushes the engine's performance.There...

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Plutocracy, Cheese Boys and Goblin Hack 1.16

Cheese Boys breaking the fourth wallCheese Boys is a humorous post-apocalyptic action adventure. The current two-level implementation, that features dialog and fighting already contains a lot of strange fourth wall breaking humor (although it is quite different to Fallout's.)Goblin Hack 1.16Goblin Hack (GH) 1.16 is now out with new features, including music by Pascal Provost and new level kinds. Apparently there even is an end game level now, which...

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DccNiTghtmare 0.3, ASC 2.20

DNT: inspiration source in the shelfDNT: post-apocalyptic santaDccNiTghtmare (DNT), the RPG with a dyslexical title, a post-apocalyptic setting and The Sims-like graphics, is 0.3 Versions old (download here).To my great joy, there are already three solvable quests and a bunch of collectable items. The main thing, however: humor. In your journes you can either choose the light path and install GNU/Linux on the computers you pass by or infect it with...

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Late nights and leftovers - Scourge 0.21

Scourge 0.21 is out. It's been optimized and stabilized considerably and now has a full 12 chapter storyline. Each release of Scourge gets closer to being a really good game - there are still a few issues that need addressing such as the character models - and that is reflected in the increasing activity of contributors. Until a year or so ago, Scourge development was mainly a 1 man effort, but 4 people put a lot of work into this release. A new model format (they are looking at [the unfortunately named] assimp for 0.22) and some better character...

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Word War vi 0.24, Daggerwind Scrolls, jClassicRPG music, Yo Frankie! download

Word War vi 0.24Word War vi is now downloadable as version 0.24. I'm having an awfully great time playing it (even if it took me some months to finally get over myself and resolve some dependency problems at first). I especially like how I can use my xbox 360 controller for playing and how it's rumble function is used. Word War vi is the most high-tech retro arcade shooter you can get your hands on right now.One super thing about it is that development...

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Warzone 2100 Liberation Day 2008 & Interview

Happy Warzone 2100 Liberation Day! Four years ago Eidos released Warzone 2100 under the GPL (see this announcement).Warzone 2100 GUI proposalThere has been more progress with the new texturing system, but also a GUI system is in the works (both a library called betawidget and an interface proposal) which looks quite impressive compared to the current look. And hopefully the feel will improve too - there are some small unergonomicalities with how...

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OpenTTD, Simutrans, and Egoboo

OpenTTD OpenGFXOpenTTD moved a step closer to being a Free Software game with alpha releases of OpenGFX, the "[8bpp] Graphics Replacement Project". There's still a few black boxes ("features") where yet-to-be-replaced buildings should be, but it looks fairly good other than that.OpenTTD 32bit extra zoomOf course, this is just the low-resolution replacement that makes OpenTTD fully free, and is not to be confused with the high-resolution graphics...

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Dungeon crawler action-adventure: Meritous

Meritous: lots of projectiles and no shieldsThrough Libregamewiki, I found a game that was new for me: Meritous, a real-time dungeon crawler (like Goblin Hack) with strong arcade tendencies.Meritous's map viewIn the game you walk through rooms and fight monsters. These enemies sometimes have multiple forms (and thus need to be killed more than once). You try to avoid the projectiles they shoot at you, while charging your psi circuit, to release a...

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Warzone 2100's new terrain

Warzone 2100's new lookDevelopment of new, experimental terrain renderer for Warzone 2100 has started. It blends textures depending on terrain and it looks freaking awesome. For comparison: an example of the old terrain.Four CGTextures-textures (at 1024x1024 pixels) were kindly permitted to be used under GPL terms. But more are needed. If you happen to have some mad texturing skillz up your sleeves: Warzone 2100 needs you! You can see the current...

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RPGs, Blood and Puzzles!

Fall of Imiryn r792Annchienta is an isometric RPG engine. It is being used by the console-style RPG Fall of Imiryn (FoI), created by the same developer. The terrain is kind of 3D while everything else is good old pixel-ish sprites.So how playable is the game? Well, it has NPCs and enemies, it has end bosses and maps and character levels and skills and spells. There is grinding and there are savepoints. Sounds complete? Oh right, story! It has story...

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Open Source Game Engines Updates

OGRE 1.6.0 aka Shoggoth is the newest version of the acclaimed 3D engine. I don't understand anything that's on the changelog, but it obviously goes beyond bugfixing and tweaking. :)There are no recent pre-compiled packages available, so the source way is the way to go, for now.The Infinity Engine's clone GemRB had some DONEs added to it's TODO, when version 0.3.1 was released a month ago.OpenMW, an OGRE-based engine for TES3's game data, is now 0.5-versioned. Considering that the project started in this year's june, this number is quite impressive!...

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Eye of the Tiger

I shall be brief, for I am in my briefs, and briefly available to briefly brief you.Warzone2100 2.1rc1 - the first release to include the original game sound track. Read the announcement and the changelog for more details.It's like Command and Conquer. Except it's good. See video:Rising up... mmmmm mmmm... took my time took my chances... aaaah ooo... just a man and his will to survive... nmmmm mmmmm... its the Eye of the Tiger!" Gotta love that track.There's a new development release of Oolite, the elite-inspired game. Version 1.72 (announcement,...

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LordsAWar! 0.1.3, OpenArena 0.8.1, Commander Stalin 0.9.3

LordsAWar! 0.1.3LordsAWar! reached an (unstable) 0.1.3 release. After installing some game-uncommon libraries and compiling for half an hour, I expected to move some units around for some turns and stop playing from being bored. But actually, I enjoyed the simple game rules.LordsAWar! has decent graphics and good music. I like very much that the game cares about the player by providing a 'restore crashed game' button. The game did crash once, but...

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On Scourge AI and Widelands

WidelandsA quick one today. Firstly, I forgot to mention Widelands yesterday. A new version, a release candidate for build13, is available for download. The changelog is immense, so it should be large improvement over build12 which, for me, felt a little unpolished. Some of the highlights of build13 are:More stable multiplayerFPS regulation for less CPU usageImproved economy routingMany new soundsMany new graphics and animations especially for...

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The Morning After The Night Before

Something important happened last night. Something transformational. Qubodup designed a new forum logo.:-)For those that don't follow the planet, which is titled "news" in the link bars ^^, there have been some great game updates lately.Vega Strike ship: MK32This update on Vega Strike is a great read with some screenshots of the many gorgeous new models that have gone into the game. They also have a new gallery system since the old one was fairy...

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Shared open source game media

Free Art Search shared media mapFree Art Search, the svn/cvs/git media tracking application developed by hagish and ghoulsblade, now has an overview over the data that is shared between different projects.I find this tool very exciting! It shows how open sourcing media does help projects and if it was more detailed, one could see what media-demand exis...

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Brain Workshop 4.1, Epoch and an 'Open Source' vaporware console

Release 4.1 of Brain Workshop introduces some GUI tweaks and a new sound theme (piano notes instead of spoken letters). I finally gave it a try and was able to record sound via recordmydesktop with the help of this config guide.The rules of the game are: watch and listen and press one button if the same field becomes active as it was n (a number) rounds before or if the same sound appears as it was n rounds before. I'll definitely 'play' this brain-trainer some more. :)Brain Workshop 4.1Are you into web-based strategy games? Epoch is an sci-fi/space...

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Names, Games, and 150k Wardrobes

Unnamed GameThis as-yet-unnamed side scrolling game project looks awesome. It's open source, art and all, up on Sourceforge in SVN. You can see how beautiful it looks. I guess somebody (what, me?) should encourage them to package up a playable release. For now, it's labelled 'sawk' here on FG - the acronym for it's SF.net listing "Sidescrolling Action With Kid".Theme Park Builder 3D is an ambitious effort to make a detailed Free Software theme...

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Eying Eisenstern And Eye Candy

I had a few links collecting that I wanted to get off my chest. Nothing is worse than having a folder full of old links that would have been interesting, but are now out of date. That's a lie, I accidentally drank off-milk this morning - that was worse. Still, I'm digressing!EisensternSignificantly better than off-milk, is the activity burst on the new Eisenstern development effort. Basically the lead Sauer devs, who had been creating Eisenstern...

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Open Source Survives Financial Meltdown

There's a few juicy updates to several great Free Software game projects over the last few days. I'm feeling too lazy to grab screenshots though. You'll just have to peruse yourself if you find something interesting.We'll start with TA:Spring 0.77b3 - Linux and Windows binaries are up for download - with the comment, "After some people have stated that we should release more early and often*, we give you 0.77b3 here." I downloaded and installed it using the generic Linux installer - worked without a hitch - and it looks fan-bloody-tastic. Still,...

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Introducing: Quake2World

Quake2World skeleton pointing grenade launcher at youRecently, I became friends with an open source first-person shooter: Quake2World (q2w). As the name indicates, it uses an idTech2-based engine and currently aims to have Quake 2's mechanics.Although development seems to be centered around graphical features at the moment, the game is sexy and fun. There are no bots so far and only a minimal selection of servers, so you'll have to ask for some company...

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jClassicRPG's and Howitzer Skirmish's donation histories

While the the tank simulator game Howitzer Skirmish is 300 USD (222 EUR) away from being GPLed, jClassicRPG's developer is getting a donation-funded 42 USD ATi card to fix some ATi-specific problems.I made a pretty graphic of the donations sum for Howitzer Skirmish over time.The diagram definitely contains wrong data because of the following two reasons:Some modern websites have the fetish of using "5 months ago" dates (only some elite sites provide...

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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...

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Lavirinto 3D 0.6.0, Balazar 3 0.1, OpenAnno 2008.1, Pandora 2008 ordering deadline

Lavirinto 3D 0.6.0Lavirinto 3D brings Zen wisdom, Pipes and Pac-Man together. It's a 3D version of the game Zenji [video].The colorful levels and friendly music made me quite enjoy the stay and I even finished all campaigns. I noticed only one rudeness of the game: if you loose all your lives, you have to re-play all the levels of the campaign. :|The game is written in Java (using lwjgl) and thus runs on every machine with a Java runtime environment...

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OpenArena, CG Textures and BurningWell.Org

OpenArena 0.8.0 recently got unreleased, because the project administrator decided that some included textures by TRaK were not legally GPL-licensed.Free as in freedom CG Textures? No. :(So why do the CG Textures-based textures seem GPL-incompatible? Well, Marcel, CG Textures' administrator, wrote at least twice, that the textures on his website cannot be re-licensed under a free content license. Also the CG Textures license clearly states, that...

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Colonel Mustard with the pipe in the study

Mystery semi-solved. Whilst the domain appears gone, the Open Racer forum and wiki are still online although just a bit (a really big bit) harder to find. Oh and it's still not open source, which is kinda lame.Meanwhile check out a racing game that is good and exists and Free Software. Like TORCS (solid game, upcoming 1.3.1 release), or Ultimate Stunts (freeform driving fun), or VDrift (potential amazing). There are a few others, but I'd recommend...

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