Intergalactic news (new Red Eclipse version)

Somewhat related to the previous blog post (don't forget to vote to give a VR kit to the Cube2 developers), I can bring you the news that you can now download a new release (1.3 Galactic Edition) of Red Eclipse. By the words of the developers this is mostly a bugfix release:

This release sees a semi-stabilisation of the gameplay in favour of implementing a variety of bugfixes and user requests. We've removed some old cruft and implemented a few new game types to replace them, like coop (humans fight high powered bots), and king-of-the-hill (control and defend one flag). Due to the popularity of the impulse/parkour system we have introduced a new "impulse vaulting", where you can hold down your parkour key to "vault" over low obstacles, making it that much easier to navigate around busy levels.

But you can read up on the full changelog in the release thread on our forums. Oh and maybe you can help them out and create a new teaser video for their website?

On our forums I was also recently reminded of a Red Eclipse based mod called MekArcade (see more infos on their Moddb site), which as you can guess adds Mechs to the game.

Some MekArcade mechs

Information is otherwise relatively sparse (I couldn't find any word on their media license for example... but given RE's CC-By-SA licensing scheme I hope they sticked to the same), but they plan to release a first version relatively soon (Maybe they waited for the RE 1.3 release?).
The screenshots released so far look quite nice also and first released video gives off a Mechwarrior like vibe too, so I guess I am looking forward to their first release ;)

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New FPS updates

As the FPS resident gamer here at FreeGamer (I am playing usually under the nick poVoq btw ;) ) I am keeping you up to date to the newest FPS updates:

Hot of the press: the cosmic edition (1.2) of Red Eclipse was just released; Lots of new maps and feature additions (and they toned down that annoying hit-sound a bit). Sadly their trailer-contest has not resulted in a cool video yet that I could post here, so take this opportunity to make a cool one ;)

Another new release (7.53) comes from the AlienArena guys, which seem to have made some nice updates to their engine to speed up the performance on higher settings.

Alien Arena 7.53

Quick rundown of other news:
War�ow got a new website, and there is a nice teaser webpage up for TremZ (no surprise to me btw, that they pushed back their release date by 2 months). But the engine (OpenWolf) they are using is making nice progress also as you can see here (and here in a video: integration of Newton Physics and more).

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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 I can report that the Xonotic team is following up on their promise to report more news and developments on their Blog :) Check out the latest entry for a log read and many nice pictures.
Personally I am currently most excited about the mod "Overkill" with tries to take some features of the well loved instagib mode (sadly so much that it is sometimes hard to find anything but instagib games :( ) like right click laser jump etc. while keeping a variety of weapons that are a bit more appealing to non-instagib players.
Well, check out the more detailed description and pictures at the bottom of the post linked above! Oh and you can already play the mod by joining the test server with a vanilla Xonotic version (all needed files will be auto-downloaded).

P.S.: Here is a small video to show how it currently looks:

Xonotic Overkill mod (early WIP)

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Some random FPS engine news

Fast games for slow summer news weeks... but actually some of these news are a bit older already also :p

To start out... yes RedEclipse got a (smaller) new release a few days ago, codenamed Supernova (Version 1.1). The release notes can be found in our/their forums, but it plays as great as before (except for the annoying hit sound :p ). Edit: game-play video from one of our forum users.

Noteworthy news related to that (albeit not strictly FOSS related): RedEclipse also got included into Desura now (Moddb's indie friendly answer to Steam, even with an upcoming Linux port). To avoid complains in the comments... I mention this here even though it is a closed source game distribution platform, simply because it can be a great way to promote (and maybe even sell?) FOSS games, and if we would finally be able to attract the modding community (which is largely represented on Moddb) to work with FOSS engines instead, it would be win-win for everyone involved.

Despite its unfree content War�ow is also worth a look now and then. According to their somewhat recent blog entries they have made great progress in speeding up the Quake2 based renderer, and plan to include a matchmaking and statistics system in the maybe not so distant 0.7 release. It's actually a pity that the engine isn't used for other projects, and given that it is Quake2 based, it could probably be ported to mobile platforms like Android rather quickly (since there is a full and fast Quake2 Java port).

Talking about mobile platforms... the engine behind Xonotic (formerly Nexuiz) Darkplaces, seems to have gotten an iOS port judging by a quick look at the very recent new source release. No news post about the most recent changes, but slightly older news tell us about a much higher frame rate then before :) Would be nice if Xonotic would see another Beta release soon also ;)

Oh and I know I will get flamed for this again (e.g. for mentioning a commercial game on this blog; but I stand by my opinion that commercial isn't != FOSS), but the Darkplaces based and GPLed source-code containing SteelStorm: Burning Retribution, has been added as a free bonus to the latest HumbleBundle (at the time of writing this, with still 5 days remaining to get this "pay what you want" indie-game-bundle including some really nice games all running on Linux). Just to quickly mention... no news about source releases from that source this time (but they added all of the games from the 2nd bundle if you pay above average)... but given the somewhat lukewarm source releases last time (not really FOSS) I guess that is not a big loss :-/

Hmm what else? World of Padman was somewhat recently updated, and its engine ioQuake3 is moving to a modularized renderer.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST (hot news coming in while I am writing this)... John Carmack just confirmed in his keynote on this year's QuakeCon, that the Doom3 source code will be released this year (probably shortly after the Rage release scheduled early October)... which will be a really nice addition to the FOSS engine pool (finally a somewhat modern single player FPS engine). I am especially looking forward to see some of the existing high quality Doom3 mods to go stand alone, and maybe even FOSS!

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Some random news from our forums etc

Yes, big summer hole here in FG... luckily we get at least some guest posts from Bart (aka the OpenGameArt founder).

So, maybe today we just make a small summery of recent news that popped up in our Freegamedev forums (boring for the forum regulars I know :p ):

First of all (as we mention that project way to little), find a release candidate of the latest SuperTuxKart version in this thread.

In our showcase forum you can also find a nice (but low-fi) turn based strategy game called Strategic Initiative, which is made by the same guy who was also behind the classic Empire (well I didn't know it before ;) ). Also don't miss the updates on The Legend of Edgar.

Back in the section of out hosted projects, the user Skorpio has been showcasing some nice Mechs for Linwarrior3D lately, which are now being integrated into the game:



At the Red Eclipse forums an interesting collaboration project to make a mod loosely based on Team Fortress (classic?) recently showed up, with the user John_III making a lot of progress on the first map (and a very recent small WIP by me too ;) ):



Oh and the work that is currently done to redesign the look of OpenDungeons as seen in this thread, is looking rather fantastic too.

In other words, don't miss the action in our forums (and on the FG planet), during this time of little blog updates ;)

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Red Eclipse 1.0

The Red Eclipse project, forked from the now-defunct Blood Frontier project, has made it's first release - Red Eclipse 1.0: Ides Edition. It has been continuous under heavy development, as was BF before it, but the RE team took their time over a release opting to "Get Things Right" first*. Thus, the '1.0' should be an accurate reflection; solid gameplay, stable game, and embodies the majority of the game design the developers first envisaged.

It claims to have both single- and multi-player modes. At time of writing, the website has no about page, no details on the game other than the very basics (genre, platforms, etc). I am told that, in the single player game, you lead a squad through a series of zombie-infested maps. Who doesn't love zombies?!

Gameplay is described as 'agile' so it's frantic and fast-paced with acrobatics and super powered weaponry.

Red Eclipse is based on the Cube 2: Sauerbraten engine, so comes with a very powerful built-in map editing and the stability and graphical capabilities of one of the most mature Free Software FPS engines.

EDIT - updated to a better trailer. If you want to see the previous trailer, go here, but it's naff so just watch the one below.

Also Red Eclipse has applied for a forum on FreeGameDev.net which is another boost for the community.

* Note that I am a big believer in 'release early, release often' but the Red Eclipse team had the activity levels and situation to be able to be successful by holding off, partly because Red Eclipse SVN was nearly always playable and partly because a lot of the work had been done in the guise of Sauerbraten and the play testing, tweaking, and feedback from Blood Frontier.

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FPS release weekend?

As the self proclaimed FPS expert here on FreeGamer (who doesn't have a PC to play any FPS right now :( ), I have to keep you updated on the newest released and developments of course!

So what is the big news for this weekend? Well looks like the Cube2 engine powered Red Eclipse is finally getting an official release tomorrow :)

Red Eclipse release teaser

Head over to their IRC chat to not miss the release, which is expected for Sunday 13th of March, 2am GTM! Oh and they are also having a small donation drive to fund their new player-model which will be released as all art assets of the game under a FOSS compatible creative commons license (170 Australian $ still needed at this time) AFAIK.

Alien Arena 7.51 released

A smaller release comes from the Alien Arena team today. Not much changes in version 7.51 in regards to gameplay or media, but under the hood the engine got some serious performance upgrade (full change log).

Enemy Territory Xreal development picked up again

To my surprise it stayed really quiet after the Enemy Territory source release last year, with ioET never getting even seriously started, and no other interesting releases showing up :( The only exception was the Xreal renderer partially ported to ET, but development stalled and their website recently went down, with no further signs of development.
Now however someone else seems to have taken up the source code and released a updated developers version. Let's hope for the best and I am really looking forward to play an updated version of that multiplayer classic again!

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An update out of nowhere!

Quite literally, as I am posting this via a satellite connection from the other side of the world ;) But if those lazy co-authors spend all their time playing games instead of bringing you the latest FreeGaming news, then I have to come to the rescue no matter what!

For those that are disappointed that the blog isn't updated more regularly... well tough luck :p There is our planet feed though, and you can also hang out on the forums... or *gasp* try to get involved in a project yourself!

Mission X, side scrolling action

This pretty nice, old school, side scrolling shooter (written in Java) can be found here. Check out the video below:

Mission X

Lots of eye-candy over at the 0 A.D. webpage

Amazing amount of nice looking stuff, and progress updates (f.e. implementation of the "shadow of war" feature) has been recently added to the 0 A.D. website. I know you are probably following that game anyways... but a quick reminder can hurt ;)

0 A.D. landscape

Red Eclipse

Sadly I can't make a video or post screens of it from this PC I have here, but only a short while ago I checked out the latest version of Red Eclipse, and it is really starting to be a quite fun game. It's even includes real player models now, and quite good looking weapon models are currently added.

It's rather easy to compile on Linux (automatic script), so don't shy away just because it is not released as a binary yet. There are even quite a few people online playing it already.

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Deep Adventure GPLed, Pretty HTML5 Pong, Red Eclipse Status

Feeling random! Bullets! Colors! (Sun does that to you! Don't go outside! Stay inside and make open source games!)

• Country of Origin is now GPLed
  

  You are in a computer game in which you have to find the essence of time and space.
  You could be tempted to think this quest is in vain, because you think that questions are more important than answers. But you are in a computer game.
  Games have solutions for they consist of puzzles. And as Thomas Kuhn says, although intrinsic value is no prerequisite for a puzzle, the assured existence of a solution is!

  
  Country of Origin
• Web Mega Pong is GPLed, non-forgiving and pretty to look at!
  
  
  Web Mega Pong
• I like Red Eclipse a_lot. I recorded a_lot of gameplay videos. The levels look great!
  Last time I asked, they were aiming for "Sportsy Sci-Fi" and BY-SA-compatible licensed art. Currently the (player/weapon model) style is retro-simple and there are a few non-free licensed assets in the repository. The map style is: cool. :)
  In my humble opinion, the simple/retro look of the players makes me tolerate/not notice the bot's occasional failures. Something about uncanny valley.
  One amazing thing about Red Eclipse is, that each time a new SVN commit gets committed, the official server updates automatically and you can only play using the latest SVN!
  
  
  Red Eclipse

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