Summer of Code: Earn Money Developing Open Source Games

Matt Raykowski, aka sfb, is a community herder for the Ryzom Core project and Summer of Code mentor.

Some people may not be familiar with Google's Summer of Code. Annually Google hosts two programs: Summer of Code and Code In. Google Code In (aka GCI) is a contest for 13-18 year olds to engage them in open source that features a variety of tasks and projects for them to complete for points. Google Summer of Code (aka SoC or GSoC) is a program to encourage college students to participate in open source development. It is a 3 month long project that pays USD$2500 per evaluation period - there is a mid-term and final evaluation. You can find a detailed timeline on their site and a complete list of organizations. The student application period begins on March 26th, 2012 and ends on April 6th, 2012. The actual programming portion of the project is between May 21st, 2012 and August 20th, 2012.

In years past Google hasn't given a lot of love to open source games in its Summer of Code program. There have been a small handful of projects which have participated year after year but the selection was pretty limited. Beginning last year they opened the proverbial flood games for participating projects and we saw a number of new open source game and game-related projects become accepted which is very exciting.

Listed below are open source games, game engines or tools frequently used by game projects that have been accepted into Google Summer of Code 2012. If you are a college student looking to "flip bits not burgers" this summer and are interested in game development now is your chance to contribute to an open source game-related project and get paid (USD$5000) for doing so!

Open Source Games

• Battle for Wesnoth
• Hedge Wars
• Unknown Horizons (includes FIFE)

Open Source Engines

• Crystal Space (includes DAMN)
• OGRE3D
• ScummVM
• WorldForge, CEGUI and Ryzom Core
• PySoy (under the Python Software Foundation)

Open Source Tools

• Blender Foundation
• Inkscape
• Outercurve Foundation (see CoApp)
• GIMP

If I missed a project you think should be on this list just let me know!

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Complete List of Fosdem Game Dev Resources

A link to some Fosdem Resouces has been already posted here before, but now we have a complete list of available slides and audio and video recordings from the event:

Event	Slides	Audio	Video	Speaker
Xonotic: The road to 1.0	Yes	No	No	Merlijn Hofstra
FreedroidRPG: Anatomy of a RPG	Yes	Yes	Yes	Arthur Huillet
Unknown Horizons: Data-Driven and Component-Based Game-Entities	Yes	Yes	No	Thomas Kinnen
WorldForge: The Dynamic Data Driven Worlds	Yes	Yes	No	Alistair Riddoch
Pandora: Mobile Linux Computer with Gaming Gontrols	No	No	No	Michael Mrozek
Wesnoth: Balancing a Game the Open Source Way	Yes	Yes	No	Jeremy Rosen
Ogre3d: Getting Started with Game Development	Yes	Yes	No	Erik Ogenvik
Gluon: Game Creation and Distribution	Yes	Yes	No	Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen
The Future of Open Web Gaming	Yes	No	No	Rob Hawkes

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Battle for Wesnoth Architecture

The popular open source game Battle for Wesnoth has been featured in the new free online book The Architecture of Open Source Applications.

We believe that the beauty of the Battle for Wesnoth as a program is how it made coding accessible to a wide variety of individuals. To achieve this aim, the project often made compromises that do not look elegant whatsoever in the code. It should be noted that many of the project's more talented programmers frown upon WML for its inefficient syntax. Yet this compromise enabled one of the project's greatest successes. Today Wesnoth can boast of hundreds of user-made campaigns and eras, created mostly by users with little or no programming experience.

Read the full section online for further insight into the design and design decisions of Battle for Wesnoth.

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Assorted strategy game news

Quick Sunday afternoon rundown of recent strategy game updated...
0AD got a new beta 5 release, which improvements in rendering & AI code, a completely new faction (Iberians), and a new map:


MegaGlest also got updated recently (Version 3.5.1), bringing various fixes and performance improvements. Furthermore I can report that both the sable and the development version of Battle for Wesnoth have been updated, and I strongly recommend everyone (who has not played this game for a while) to retry this classic in the newest development version.

EvolutionRTS, a nice looking (but sadly CC-by-NC-ND licensed) game based on the SpringRTS engine also saw an update to version 1.3 this month (check out this gameplay video).

Hmmm, what else? Ahh, UFO:AI was ported to Android, and and the change of Warzone2100 from SDL to qt (which is not exactly a game framework) raised some eyebrows, but will probably make the game more easily portable and better integrated into your favorite desktop.

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Non RTS strategy games

An update so quickly? Behold the Free Gamer world is coming to an end. :p


So, we mentioned some promising RTS games in the last update. OK, I forgot to mention Spring1944, but I am also a bit reluctant to mention Spring and its mods since it is such a pain in the backside to get it running correctly. :(


Back on topic... there a quite a few really great non RTS FOSS strategy games. I guess I don't really need to mention the classics to the typical reader of this blog, but Wesnoth, FreeCiv, FreeCol and UFO:AI are all very playable and good looking games! However there are others that get less attention and also some that show great promise!

Advanced strategic command

Advanced strategic command is one of those that gets relatively little news coverage, even though it is a really playable game. Granted, its graphics are pretty much the same as its big inspiration, the classic Battle Isle series, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad, right?

A new version was just released a few days ago, which finally also includes a tutorial for those new to this type of game.

Also interesting is the (German) Project: Battle Planets, which could be described as a MMOTBS based on ASC. It is not quite what you would expect from this description as most of the MMO part is done manually by human game moderators, which exchange ASC games states between players (sorry, it is a bit hard to explain exactly ;) ).

A similar game to ASC is Crimson Fields by the way, which has found its way to many mobile platforms.

Widelands

Another often neglected game is Widelands, which is obviously based on the classic game the Settlers (no not the Settlers of Catan, check Pioneers for that).

Widelands game play

The graphics could still be improved a bit, but it is shaping up to be a very faithful and fun re-implementation of that great classic game.

Unknown Horizons

While we are at FOSS re-implementations of great games... Unknown Horizons is continuing to become a Anno1602 clone of epic proportions. ;)

UH game play

It is not quite at the point where it could be described as a fully playable game yet, but you can expect it to become one relatively soon, I guess! (Another not quite playable but really promising game worth surely mentioning is FreeOrion by the way).

8Kingdoms

Last but not least, there is 8Kingdoms, which really is one of those games people don't even try after having a short glance at the screenshots. Yes, it's programmers art, albeit one that at least tried to hide it by having a plastic-like style for the figures. ;)

But if you actually try it, you will realize that even though it is a bit rough around the edges (why can't I set a custom wide-screen resolution :( ), the game play and the engine is already quite advanced.

What this game clearly needs is an artist taking over the graphical matters, and then this could quite quickly become one of those true FOSS strategy game gems!

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What planet are you on?

Wesnoth Knight

Battle for Wesnoth continues to get stupendously good art contributions such as this series of Loyalist portraits.

Hot on the heels of Extreme Tux Racer 0.5beta, contributor and original Tux Racer developer Erin has introduced his rewrite to the world. Tentatively named Bunny Hill, the rewrite has a better design resulting in better performance, nicer graphics (in some ways, lesser in others) and more features. It looks like it will probably become ETR 0.6 once the dust has settled.

PARPG Weapons

PARPG is back from the dead. 3 weeks not blogging being 'dead' apparently. The project itself is thriving, with plenty of graphical creativeness whilst the coders assess their options for developing the game.

Unknown Horizons will have a new release very soon!

Widelands is getting randomly generated maps.

Simutrans Subways

It looks like Simutrans is getting subways, at least pak96.comic is anyway. Subterranean!

There'll be loads more updates to your favourite Free games but I don't have my finger on the pulse as much as I used to, so...

...so...

...post them in the comments!

Update: the FreeOrion project released version 0.3.13 and it has a huge changelog.

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Some things on my radar

"Damn Free Gamer is popular." So says the L-echo developer, as well as posting graphic illustration on the project home page. L-Echo is a free and open source clone of the game Echochrome (aka Mugen Kairou). Version 0.4.3 arrived in early February, although performance was unplayable on my non-hardware-accelerated laptop.

Freedroid RPG version 0.12rc1 - a 2D isometric RPG, a bit like Diablo, but not like it at all. There's lots of bug fixes, a new tutorial, a new starting level, lua scripting, and more! Help them playtest it so that version 0.12 is solid.

"Tesliz", a 3D turn based strategy game, inspired by Wesnoth, written in Python on top of OGRE. Early days here.

Speaking of Wesnoth had lots of updates over the Christmas period, building up to a stable 1.6 release. That game has some amazing artwork these days, like these wizard portaits. They have lots of playtesters already. If you don't know what Wesnoth is, crikey, just click the link already.

Globulation 2 version 0.9.4 (changelog) which is a lot of balancing, bug fixing and enhancement of existing features, from what I can tell. Globulation 2 is an innovative 2D RTS where you lead autonomous blobs into battle. Innovative, yah. Blobs, meh.

Java Classic RPG version 2009-02-28 (announcement) which has a rather large amount of changes since the previous release. Highlights include moving to jMonkeyEngine 2.0, new monsters, area dependent music playback, new portraits, and optimizations. I hope to see this project become a completable game this year.

Freelords tech release 0.03 is out. Freelords is a Warlords-inspired 2D strategy game written in Java. This release introduces simultaneous movement and improves the graphics and dialogs. Freelords was originally a C++ project - the C++ codebase lives on in LordsAWar. Recently the developer posted a video of a city history report (ogg) on the LordsAWar homepage, which I thought was quite neat. It's the kind of feature usually missing from Free games.

Tennix 1.0 is available. Tennix is a very simple pong-like Tennis game, but the amount of polish going into it shows how nice a simple game can become. All it takes is a little passion.

Gearhead2 version 0.540 (announcement) continues the spate of game rule adjustments. I like it that there's a lot of thought going into giving the game depth.

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Extreme Tux Racer, Smokin Guns, etc

The somewhat stop-start development of the various Tux Racer projects continues, but it looks hopeful that the latest incarnation of the iconic downhill penguin racer will not disappear like its predecessors. Extreme Tux Racer has finally released an updated 0.5 beta (Windows, Ubuntu, source for other Linuxi) after several months of inactivity. It's getting a bit of optimization love after I (yes, me, important mega me) unleashed my wrath helped a new developer by putting him in his place realise that ETR is not too detailed, as he incorrectly surmised, but ratyher suffers from some poorly implemented features that could be done a lot more quickly. Amazingly, I was right. :-)

I'm always right and I will rule the universe soon! At least, once I've been to the doctor about this over-active procrastination gland of mine.

Smokin' Guns, a total conversion of Quake 3 to recreate the feel of the Wild West is probably undermentioned here, although the graphics are starting to look very dated. Features:

� A full arsenal of weapons with historically correct design. Check the weapons page for more information.

� A variety of western styled maps and player models.

� A realistic damage system with different locations (head, chest, neck, etc) and height-dependant falling damage.

� New western styled gametypes for more fun: Bank Robbery and Duel Modes.

� A money system allowing for equipment purchase with money from rewards & pickups.

� Easy to use graphical user interface and HUD.

� Other small improvements for better gameplay and enhanced fun.

Lemming Ball Z

Another undermentioned and very cool project is Lemming Ball Z. Features include:

� Destructable 3d terrain

� Ability to add your own levels/characters/moves to the game

� Multiplayer with 2-4 players online or local

� Good old-fashion HotSeat play

� Slowmotion, like in "The Matrix"

� Fancy graphics, like cellshading and stuff

� Netplay, without configuring or hamachi

� Stupid AI to practice with

� Blood! lots of it! :)

I used to wonder where the FreeCol project got some of its fancy artwork - now I know, you can grab CC licensed (by-nc-sa) from David Rumsey's collection of ye olde maps.

VDrift

VDrift gets closer to a new release after a massive refactoring and lots of enhancements. Starting to look really, really cool. Still, not as playable as TORCS so if you want a quick fix I recommend you go the TORCS route for now, but VDrift looks set to eclipse TORCS as a spectacle in the course of 2009.

Scourge gets nicer towns, with houses created by combining sections to create more intricate villages. See the latest Scourge Weekly (volume 17, on the website frontpage) for more details and a humorous explanation of why developers should work rather than work on open source, should the choice be forced upon them. :-)

Hrm, other new releases like Teeworlds (0.5.1), Battle for Wesnoth (1.6 beta1) bleh too much blog stuff must go KTHXBYE.

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Tumbleweed

Well there was some, but let's tidy it up for a bit.

These days following Free Software game news is much easier, since we have planet.freegamedev.net. That place is ace but it means that the motivation to post here has dwindled. Still, for addicts, I suggest you tune in to there. I know I do.

For instance, if you did, you'd know that there's an updated version of Yo Frankie! (of Apricot project fame) available for download. Funnily enough, the post is no longer up as there was a problem with it (at least there was for me). Still, here is the download URL, and it uses 0launch which I'm afraid to say I really dislike.

You can also check out FreeCol 0.8-alpha2. I like that they are releasing early, releasing often. Future maintainers pay attention!

Another project that adopts that practise is Battle for Wesnoth. 1.4.x and 1.5.x updates are out with lots of polish. One wonders how much polish will go into that game before it loses momentum. There was hope that some of the community energy that goes into Wesnoth may move into the Silvertree project but at the moment it's somewhat stalled that did not happen and the lead developer is busy with some Frog-platform-like game called Frogatto (googlecode).

JCRPG

JCRPG looks ace these days. Lots of updates on the planet for that one. I love the pixelization on this shot :lookright: which enhances the "classic" (old-school) nature of the game experience. It's one of either a magic monkey brush or a depth of field shader. With loads of optimization lately as well means JCRPG won't need a mean machine to run.

Penultimately, why not take TORCS 1.3.1-test1 out for a test drive? There's a lot of momentum with TORCS development lately and to be honest I was pleasantly surprised how fun it was the last time I played it. It's a good game.

Finally, project admins, did you know that now Sourceforge offers a service called Hosted Apps - that is, they host MediaWiki and phpBB for you, all integrated with SF.net logins. Check out the announcement. Damn, all that effort of mine for nothing.

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