RTS updates (slightly older)

You probably heard about it already, but for the sake of updating this blog and in case you might have missed it over the holiday stress:0 A.D. got a pretty massive update to version 0.8 "Haxamani�"!0AD 0.8 videoThe release news have all the details including the possibility to listen to the very nice soundtrack of the game. Oh and the developers are requesting to mention that they are still looking for contributors!Otherwise? Well there are some even older news regarding the Megaglest project:First of all, we didn't mention their new release...

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4 hours left to apply: Talk in Brussels about your FOSSGame

When: February 5th, 2012, 09:00 - 17:00Where: Brussels, Belgium, Europe, EarthMore info h...

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Modern retro-graphics: RetroBlazer

Short call for help: Awesome looking retro-graphics game is looking for a Darkplaces QC programmer.So far only two screen-shots have been released (and no word on the license of the media):I am loving the style... so here is the other:So if you know your way around Quake's QC scripting language try to get into contact with them :) Otherwise you can still follow the progress of this game over at QuakeOne's forums.Oh and taking about Darkplaces......

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Crowd-Sourced Portraits ETA: February 2012!

New fantasy portraits by Justin Nichol [more here]Remember Justin Nichol's crowd-sourced fantasy portrait commission?In a recent announcement the artists reports, that the collection of 35 portraits will be finished by February 2012, as they will be exhibited some day that month somewhere in California, U...

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Why we need a stronger copyleft for artists, and how this might be accomplished.

Currently, art copylefts are weak with respect to code. If I'm a programmer and I want to write code that's specifically for use in libre software, all I have to do is slap the GPL on it and I'm done. If someone uses my code in their program, they either have to GPL their program or I can force them to stop distributing it.Artists don't receive the same protection. If I want to make a piece of art (be it an image, model, sound file, etc) for use...

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Trepidation 2011-12-20

999 ammo in TrepidationTrepidation is an open source first person shooter based on the IOQuake3 engine. It was originally conceived on April 9, 2006 with the intent to build a free first person shooter with a sci-fi theme. The idea was initially developed by members of the Star Trek Elite Force gaming community.Yesterday, the first development release since 2007 was released. It's mostly fixes but gameplay is affected. For example the sniper scope...

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Open-Sourcing Canabalt was a Success

Adam Saltsman, developer of the bsd-code, closed-assets, one-button reaction game Canabalt wrote about the effects of Open-Sourcing Your Game While It's Still Popular to their game.The results of this decision, though not what we expected, have been very positive.Let's hope the discussion doesn't turn into a hairsplitting war about "free"/"open" and "game"/"engine". :)By the way, I found this news via reddit.com/r/gamedev in this comment...

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Ludum Dare, Game Jams and Licenses

Olofson's LD22 gameFree, open source licenses are underrepresented at game jams and contests.This weekend's Ludum Dare ends in a few hours and it already counts 754 entries. The following authors mentioned open source licenses in the context of the compo/jam:roschdal plans on "releasing the game as open source on Github"Riley Adams's project is already there (GPL3)Agon's code is as well ("LICENSE: TODO")mcc released LD code as open...

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Hale Review & Flare 0.15 Video

Hale RPGA very fine read is this review of the TBS/RPG Hale. Its first comment was written by the sole developer.Video: Flare 0.15Flare 0.15 introduces outdoor areas. Translation submissions are welcome now as well. Look for instructions and examples in this post.Freedroid RPG recently released the second candidate for 0.15. Soon it will be ten years since registration of the freedroid project on SourceFroge.net.Checking on Scourge...

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Whats happening in OpenDungeons?

Hello, I am one of the OpenDungeons (OD) developers and I wrote this blog post for FreeGamer.I bet you're all very excited about whats been going on lately, and I can assure you that a lot of stuff have been made for OD. We have new music for you to enjoy while annihilating your foes, we've got new concept art for the Human and Undead faction, a new forge and a completely new tile set. We have also begun working on the AI and a XML specification...

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Minimal puzzles: Search for Smodrick 1.3.1 and Black Obelisk

Search for Smodrick 1.3.1, a simple ncurses-based game, was recently uploaded to SourceForge.Nearly dead in Search for Smodrick 1.3.1The gameplay consists of finding an optimal path to get to the next level and avoiding/deflecting enemy androids. Game turns appear to be mixed-real/turn-basedNo monsters yet in this match of Black Obelisk 0.2I was reminded of the JavaScript game Black Obelisk by Starinfidel, in which your task is to destroy hidden...

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Aleph One 1.0 released

Hard to believe, but after 12 years of community development, the guys from the open-source engine based on Bungie's Marathon trilogy Aleph One have finally released a version called 1.0!If you are lazy, you can watch this first part of a long set of "let's play" videos to get run through this FPS classic: Let's play Aleph One (Part 1)But honestly? This thing even runs on your cell phone (unless you have a talking brick like me :p ), so no reason not to play it yourself.Edit: *hust* that was shoddy investigative journalism by me again :( In...

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Long time no update from...

...FreeGamer? No not this time :p It's rather that the Spring RTS engine ran into some trouble with their long overdue 0.83 version and now decided to release 0.84 instead ;)Along with it comes also a new Zero-K release (0.9), which prompted one of their players to make a nice new trailer in anticipation: Zero-K fan trailerSo...that's it for today ;)P.S.: Check out Zero-K's Planetwars metagame too.P.P.S.: Also Spring related... someone on their boards is looking for people to take over the development of another quite nice RTS game: Conflict...

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OGA challenge: Mobile, Become WTactics a Character, Illes' Game Music Album

First 'mobile devices' contest submission by MumuThe current OpenGameArt challenge is 'mobile devices' and ends on Monday, December 5, 2011. The contest before that was low on participants and a survey was started to figure out how to get more people involved.Becoming a WTactics characterTaken from OGA: WTactics is currently offering a chance to have your likeness on a WTactics card in order to raise...

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Open Source RPG News, Freedroid and IrrRPG builder

The wayward Goat strikes again!Freedroid 0.15 rc 1:The plucky, 'puter punching penguin hack 'n slash RPG stalwart has had a new release recently, reaching the 0.15 rc milestone (how many years will it take them to get to 1.0, I wonder?)It adds lots of things, new quests, new guns, new abilities, UI fixes, editor tweaks... Lots of development happening there, so check it out!EDIT: Thanks to shirish for pointing out that it's still at rc 1 stage, and...

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BREAKING NEWS: Doom3 source code released!

Ha, you probably read it here first, since it is just an hour ago that it was uploaded!https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gplHave fun tinkering with it!P.S.: A good dev forum for it is Doom3wor...

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DAFTAR ...

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Fan made trailer contests and other FPS news

So it seems Red Eclipse is having a "contest" for creating an official trailer for their upcoming 1.2 release. Nothing to win (except fame), but the guys from Sauerbraten (also Cube2 engine based, like Red Eclipse) recently did the same with a quite nice result: New official Sauerbraten trailer So if you want to participate, have a look at their rules and check out these nice open-source tools for video capturing:  GLC (short tutorial by our qudobup) and editing: PiTiVi or KDEnlive (sorry for being Linux centric here :p ).In other news...

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jMonkeyEngine Official Beta Contest Announced

We're a week into what has been an absolutely thrilling experience so far. What was more of an experiment to see what some developers might pull off with the new Beta release has far exceeded our expectations.Prizes include a free copy of the upcoming "jMonkeyEngine 3 Beginner's Guide" and a free theme from the WooThemes shop. Additional prizes might be added.If you want to get caught up you should read the following articles:Brief AnnouncementExhaustive...

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Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Changes and Videolog

Unknown Horizons 2011.3 is out! Features are:Complete settlement AI (details here)Combat and diplomacy systemIncrease in performance (partially thanks to FIFE)Support for internationalized voices (right now available: de, en, fr)Nine new buildings, one new ship (here are some)New statistic widgetsUsability and interface improvements (for example the in-game menu)New maps and a parameters-based map generatorThe original announcement...

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New websites, releases and competitions etc

Couldn't really think of a fitting headline, but here is the bunch of randomly collected news from the FOSS gaming realm:First of all, OpenDungeons finally got a nice website and a blog (as mentioned previously). And in collaboration with OpenGameArt, the kicked off their art competitions again.SummoningWars also got a new website recently, and they have also released version 0.55 a few days ago.New Summoning Wars GUILast but not least, the pledgie...

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Settlers of Catan Rules in Open Source Games (aka Clones, Remakes, Implementations)

Settlers of Catan is a popular board game. In today's terms it can be described as very 'social' thanks to its trade mechanic, which can lead to exploitation, corruption, deception... all that fun stuff.There are a few open source implementations of the game rules, some of which I mentioned years ago and with two of them being updated recently, I decided to revisit them.First, a few fun facts in comparable table form, further below you'll find screenshots,...

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