OpenDarkEngine

OpenDarkEngine is a FOSS replacement for + improvement on the DarkEngine system used in the Thief game series by LookingGlass Studios as well as SystemShock 2 by LookingGlass and Irrational Games.They managed to get some things clicking, but the project kind of fell flat a couple of months back. Maybe with all the interest in Arx, someone fans of this (rather similar) game series would like to jump on this project and help o...

Read More

Dev-corner: Primer to modelling with Wings3D

Today I would like to start a new regular (?) feature here on FreeGamer: The Dev-corner!As you should know by now FreeGamer is all about FOSS games, and of course the most important part of the FOSS development model is participation! So, yes that also means you! Yes you... don't think I am not seeing you... and don't switch to that other browser tab to hide from me ;)So with the new dev-corner we will try give you some easy introductions how to...

Read More

MTP Target Back Online!

MTP Target has had a bit of a turbulent life; the game was designed to be monetized by a pay-for-features/content system and the lead developer closed the server code's source in order to "protect" this model. A couple of years later, the lead developer took down the servers due to conflict with players, effectively killing the game (a cautionary tale for all, I think). Tux-Target tried to implement an updated FOSS server from the 2005 sources but...

Read More

All about the beta!

Beware traveller. I am here to slay your computer. Unstable fun awaits, betas with bits that may break your bit cruncher. That's what open source is about. Blowing up people's PCs with untested, untried, untrustworthy alpha and beta amateur programmer software! Well, perhaps some of the programmers are not amateurs...Good news, settlers of the new world! (Or those who feel like settling new worlds but were born in the wrong period of history.) FreeCol 0.10-alpha has been released. Get it from the unstable version download area of their...

Read More

Developer Interview: Lips of Suna: What do you get when you mix Rogue with a dash of Minecraft, Steampunk, Cooperative gameplay, and a generous helping of tongue-in-cheek humour?

According to FOSS game developer and Lips of Suna project lead Ari Mustonen (aka Nekotaku, amuzen) the answer is the perfect, intelligent, witty, dungeon crawler. As luck would have it he, along with the Lips of Suna dev team and supporters, have set about the monumental task of realising this vision, reaching a major milestone yesterday with their 0.2.0 release.For players, Lips of Suna, or LoS as it's known, is a cooperative online, persistent dungeon crawler/RPG, with deformable terrain, procedurally generated dungeons,seamless gameworld, actual...

Read More

Arx Fatalis Linux Port Progress

The Arx Fatalis porting effort has been going full steam ahead; a lot of developments on that project. They recieved a Wiki sponsored by the PARPG guys, made subreddit to post updates to and have quite a few repositories where the different team members are working on the seperate goals of the project.Development wise, they recently achieved ingame rendering on linux using Winelibs. This is not the ideal solution for the project,...

Read More

Oh my God-it's full of stars!: Free and Open Source procedural space sim round up (a la Infinity or Elite)

"The thing's hollow..it goes on forever..-and--Oh my God--it's full of stars!"Bowman's memorable utterance in 2001 A Space Odyssey encapsulates perfectly the way the space and its' exploration resonates with the imagination and nothing encapsulates the experience of stepping out and living amongst the stars as well as David Braben's immense procedural opus, the Frontier Elite/Elite series of games.The Elite and Frontier Elite series left a long shadow,...

Read More

Sintel The Game

LinkEver since the announcement of Project Durian, with its press release stating the aim of making a dark fantasy film aimed at young adults, I've been dreaming of the game they'll make using the assets and setting. The more the project developed, the more I drooled over the potential; it had all the necessary prerequisites for a fantasy action game/rpg: an epic quest, awesome fighting scenes, dragons...Screen from the Sintel...

Read More

AncientBeast and FreezingMoon

Now, on the opposite side of the adver-spectrum, I present AncientBeast, a Norse-mythology inspired multiplayer strategy game with roleplaying elements that has been in development for quite a while.It has a huge web presence, with a Facebook group, Twitter  account (hiss use identi.ca), Miro video group (nice!), DeviantArt group with tonnes of awesome art... We'll have to see what license they fall under in the...

Read More

FOSS party games

*%&�$! Get of my lawn, err blog you crazy machine-gun style bloggers ;) You are making my "one post a month" style look very bad! And I can't even find a day to fit my blog-posts in...Ok anyways... today I have a more sensitive topic... yes FOSS gamers have lives too. Hard to believe I know, but out there (yes, outside of your parents basement... the place where yo go for geo-caching) people have real parties (without the LAN- suffix) and they use FOSS games during those occasions! At least some do ;)Some of these strange species can be seen...

Read More

Weaver Updates

Everyone's favourite (read: only) open-source spell-slinging fps, Weaver, has been crunching away with art and code over the past few months. We've given them a shout out a couple of times, mainly when XReal is mentioned; in case you've forgotten: Weaver aims to be a competitive shooter with an elemental spell casting system.They've taken a rather minimalistic approach to publicity: they don't have a introductory website, feed or any real...

Read More

FaceTrackNoIR and FreeTrack: FOSS head-tracking (like TrackIR) - use any webcam to link to freelook /movement in games

FaceTrackNoIR (download) enables a user to use any webcam,by moving their head very slightly, to control the free-look/xyz movement of any game, through joystick emulation via PPjoy for Windows or directly when the game developer has included support. Very popular with space/flight simulation community, this technology can be used with FPSs/3rd person RPGs as well. FaceTrackNoir uses the protocol developed for FreeTrack, among others, including FlightGear's own.Webcams known to work well with FaceTrackNoIR.Normally this type of control through...

Read More

How to Advertise your FOSS game

Have a nice new FOSS game that no one knows about? Make it known through these (rather obvious) tried and tested ( not really ;) ) methods:ForumsA Delicate BalanceMake a nice generic post with a couple (not too many!) screenshots, relevant links etc. Also, remember to stick around and answer questions and generally contribute to the forums you are posting to, you don't want to be a spam bot ;)Post on the FreeGameDev forums! Fastest way to get...

Read More