Gaming Zone

Great news for the FOSS enthusiasts: after many years of constant nagging the latest release of the great parcour/arena FPS Warsow has now most of it's artistic content under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 license (with a few remaining but clearly marked ones under CC-by-ND).

Also updated particle effects in Warsow 2.0

You can find more screen-shots in the above link and the full changelog here.

Rendering speed was also increased (claimed to be 30-50% faster) and a movement tutorial is now included.

So far I always recommended Xonotic over Warsow as the coolest (=most competitive; Red Eclipse is also cool, but much more casual) open-source arena FPS, but I think I might reconsider this now...

Happy fragging :p

For those that are not keeping up to the latest development branch (via the autobuilds), the Xonotic developers have released a new version with various smaller changes and new official maps.

From the user "Antibody" (known for his duel commentary videos) comes this nice video overview of the new features:

(please note that due to video capture performance reasons the graphic settings are pretty low, and the game can look much nicer with different settings)

On the longer term horizon of Xonotic development, there is the very exiting news that they are currently porting their game to run on the same engine that Unvanquished uses. With this the future of Xonotic is indeed much brighter, as their current engine has not seem much development lately. See more details in this thread.

Oh and while we are talking about FOSS arena FPS: A short while ago Red Eclipse also released a new version. Changes include updated to the AI Bots and a build in universal updater to easily follow the latest releases.

Very nice new movie from the Xonotic community:


It gives a pretty good idea about the vanilla game mode, although the very popular (some say too popular) "Minstagib" (one shot kills) and the total conversion mod Overkill (All new player-models and weapons, with team-spawn etc.) are also shortly shown.
Not shown are the popular vehicle mod and the recently added lightning gun (still WIP), but you can try everything yourself easily by getting the auto-downloader of the latest development build here.

As with most FOSS games, they are looking for more developers (& players) and if you have some cash to spare you can currently also pledge for the creation of some NPC characters for a single-player or COOP-mode here.

Speaking of FOSS crowd-funding, another great FOSS arena shooter, Red Eclipse this currently preparing a campaign for porting their somewhat aging Cube2 engine to the much nicer Tesseract (which is technically something like Cube3).
Oh and a new version (1.5) but still with the old engine should be out very soon ;)

Happy fragging!

You might remember the crowd-sourcing campaign from the beginning of this year to make a fully FOSS remake of a rather unique game.

Well, a bit later than promised, but really awesome never the less:


Note that this is a really early alpha and most of the art still has placeholder quality. It is quite playable multiplayer game already though, and there is a Linux and a Windows version for download on their website.

Please don't forget to give feedback on our forums (also if you are interested in helping out).

This is by the way to my knowledge the first FOSS game utilizing the open-sourced version of the Torque3D engine and also the only one that uses the work in progress Linux port so far.

The creator of the nice, but pretty niche, freeware game (but with Creative Commons licensed assets) Revenge of the Cats: Ethernet has just informed us that he started a Indiegogo campaign (target US$ 1500) to liberate the game.

All I need is about a month's time and some cash to make it happen.

So lets give him the help he needs ;)

The only not so great part of it is that the Linux port of the Torque3D MIT engine is not yet available. Several people are slowly working on it, but after a failed attempt to crowd-fund it, there seems to have been some setbacks.
But optimistically speaking, this could give it the needed push to also motivate the finalization of a working Linux port.

One of the newer engine/game projects I have been following closely is Octaforge. It is basically a fork of Tesseract, which in turn is an graphic improvement project by the makers of the well known Cube2 engine.

The main difference with Octaforge is that aims to become a game SDK and platform for easy creation of mods; And one of its prime new features for this is full scriptability with Lua.

Read about their progress on the latest beta here, which also includes this nice video showcasing the new player model and an test map:

I guess quite a few people were waiting for this to finally happen :)

Have a look at the release announcement here and the full change-log here.

They also did a nice introduction video a few months ago:



Haven't got the chance to try it myself yet, but this is high on my list of open-source games to play!

Yes, it looks like the developers behind the long running idTech2 based AlienArena are going make a more slower paced & 'tactical' spin-off and try to sell it. As before the engine will stay open-source (GPLv2), but the assets for the spin-off will stop being free-as-in-beer.

Here is the official launch-trailer of the new update and the alpha demo:


Beside the new game-play mode, they have also finally updated the menu, and the new version of it is rather spiffy. You can see it in action and more of the regular game-play in this recently uploaded random YouTube vid (warning: goofy British accents and profanity). GamingOnLinux also recently had a small preview-article.

Last but not least (while we are on the topic of idTech2 based games), a small game-developer's advertisement of a new project currently unfolding in our forums. If you know your way around Quake(2) based engines and/or pixelish art, please join the effort ;)

Or something like that... because as much as I think FOSS games should cater to the other ermm... 2nd out of three(?) gender, I am not sure if this is meant ironic or not (description of the game Glamour):

You are Maddeline, a young princess just turned 16. Now you're old enough to attend the royal balls and your fairy godmother will help you get ready for the most exciting dances.

Watch out your way while walking around this amazing city full of filthy foes. They may harm your look. You wouldn't like to reach the ball all covered with dirt.

Visit the Make-up, Shoe, Dress and Accessory Castle to find the most beautiful outfits and win the Prince Charming heart.

At least I see relatively little pink on that screen-shot...

Source-code is available here for those that wonder...

*stalkes slowly away*

But -BAM-... here is something clearly more manly:

Unvanquished Alpha 19

-BAM- check the alpha 19 changelog -BAM- Oh and the soon to released AlienArena Tactical also sound like a game for -BAM- real men!

Hmm BAM?

I'm a bit hesitant to cover this game, as media licensing is a complete mess, but well some might enjoy playing it and the source-code is there ;)

Here is a longish game-play video of Assault Cube Reloaded:



You can follow the latest development and see the change-log here.

P.S.: Funny to see some of the Red Eclipse artwork and Xonotic sounds (I think) reused, but I wouldn't want to open the can of worms in regards to them being copy-left licensed...

Given the often quite small online communities around FOSS games, one has to become creative on how to keep players and attract new ones. Regular tournaments are one of those good ideas, albeit one that is a lot of work organizing.
One of the games that is still struggling to attract a stable player base is Unvanquished, even though the game is based on Tremulous and thus quite well developed game-play wise.

Don't hide from the Aliens

However for those complaining about it being the "same old" just with fancy graphics, they have implemented an all new resource and base building system, which will be also used in the tournament! To quote them:

Your tactics may need to change to compensate for this, but you can always test out the new gameplay on our development server beforehand, as well as by attending and observing our weekly development games on Saturdays. An explanation of the differences between our gameplay and the classic Tremulous variety will be explained in a helpful guide that we will provide to you shortly. Most notably, camping is no longer a desirable tactic, and map control is the new focus.

They said "no more camping" !"�$%&/!!!

So where can you learn more about this tournament? Well follow the previous link ;) The event will begin in the middle of July, with the first matches held on the weekend of Friday, July 19th through Sunday, July 21st.But if you manage to pass those rounds, you will have to plan for some matches on the following weekend too.
Registration starts on the 1st of July and you will need at least 3 other people on your team. I would naturally suggest a FreeGamer team, however due to my current bad internet connection, it is sadly not possible for me to join. But I hope some of the matches will be recored so that we can cover them here on the blog too :)

After an agonizingly long wait, I am happy to report that a new official release of the premier FOSS arena FPS Xonotic is available to the masses.

Here is a nice (but slightly older) game-play video for those not having played Xonotic yet:



Changes are quite extensive compared to the last official release... most notably an extensive update the the CTF mode, some neat additional features for competitive gaming and an assortment of great new maps.

New maps in Xonotic 0.7

On the technical side of things, the engine DarkPlaces got quite a few performance improvements (mainly due to the fact that the creator now works at Valve software and thus has direct access to Nvidia's and AMD's graphics hardware divisions) and that an all new script compiler is now in use. That it runs on SDL 2.0 might also increase it's usability a lot for some.
There are also finally an animation bending feature for the player-models and creation of new characters has never been easier now that the iqm format is used.

You can comment on this release over at the Xonotic forum release announcement thread (or of course here in our comment section).

Also check out these two still under heavy development mods for xonotic:

• Overkill is a mod that attempts to combine the best of minsta gameplay and TDM/CTF. It also has some nice vector shaded new weapons and player models.
• DotC is an DOTA like but in 1st person view type of mod.

Last but not least, the awesome all new level editor for quake based games, Trenchbroom is making great advances and should soon allow easy mapping for Xonotic out of the box.

P.S.: If you have a really fast Android device, you can also try to run Xonotic on it via this newly fixed DarkPlaces port. Just don't expect to be able to compete online with touchscreen input :p

Here is another post about a project I found in the far ends of the internet ("here be dragons"), but which seems really promising never the less.

But first of all a disclamer by the original creator:

The screenshots you are about to see are not yet an eye candy, they're rather to be seen as a 'proof of concept' with lots of crappy placeholders. Work so far has mainly been done on the internal mechanics of game handling such as object interaction (player can carry gun which again can 'carry' a mag and the like), realistic calculation of trajectories, hit testing etc.

So what am I talking about? A (most likely) open-source Operation Flashpoint type of game running on the Irrlicht engine with the current working title OpenFlashpoint:


All there is so far is a thread on the Irrlich forums (with a few more details and development screenshots) and sadly the main developer seems to be bogged down by "real-life" ATM. But it seems like a worthwhile project to support.

Oh and get this: it is developed primarily for Linux :D

Today I bring you news of yet another rather low profile Darkplaces engine game (e.g. the same engine that runs Xonotic), called Dead Morning:



As you can see in these other, more game-play oriented videos (1, 2, 3), it seems to be quite heavily influenced by another recent 1st person horror game...

The website mentions a fully open-source release at the end of this year, so I am rather intrigued what they will come up by then!

(Yes, that is a rather thin common ground to combine these two news in one post ;) ).

Anyways, today there is one for the "FreeGamers", aka those that are looking for more or less playable games:
There is a new release (2.0) of StuntRally, and I guess I can quote Twain here too:

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!

Because it looks like development was not only resumed after the earlier announcement of a project hold, but even increased in pace :)

Anyways, here is a great video:


And the other one is for "FreeGameDevs":
And as they say: good things come to those that wait, and things are better late then never... so I am happy to also report about the Octaforge 0.2.0 beta1 release.

This friendly fork of the Cube2 engine, brings an impressive list of new features on the table, and should once it becomes more "production ready" be a strong contender for the easiest to mod FPS engine out there!

Good news is that the long awaited Red Eclipse version 1.4 was released yesterday.
Read the announcement (with full change-log) here. Besides general polish the most notable features are:

• Vanity items and improved colours: dress up and frag with style.
• Visible legs in first person: know where you are kicking and parkouring.
• New and revamped maps: bringing you even more variety.
• Better viewing: level flythroughs, improved third and first person cameras.
• Better menus and other HUD elements: easier to see and read at a glance.
• New weapon: Mines add a new dimension to the existing gameplay.
• New mode: attack and defend in Gauntlet, competing for the most laps.
• Automatic demo recording: for those times you just have to watch it again.
• User Accounts: donate or contribute, and wear the in-game supporter badge.
• Improved weapon balance and gameplay rules, bugs fixed, and much more.

Especially the visible legs in 1st person view add to the parcour movements and overall the game feels much more "complete" now. Here are some impressions of a bot-match I had earlier on:


The bad news is  that we missed Xonotic's third birthday, but you can still congratulate here (where you can also read about some pretty cool updates to the game). To celebrate it, kojin made a nice frag movie:


Enjoy!

I have outed myself previously as not a big Minecraft fan, so take everything in this post with a grain of salt (as I obviously don't really understand that genre).

Anyways... recently this sub-reddit for open-source games was pointed out in our forums, and while it isn't really as lively as others (for example the Linux gaming one) it pointed out an new project called Iceball:

Pre-alpha Iceball screenshot

Seemingly made by people not happy with the recent commercialization of Ace of Spades, it's an all FOSS remake, those early development you can follow here (or on their Github page).

Now maybe the graphics are lacking on purpose (see disclaimer above), but I couldn't help to think: why for f***'s sake did they have to reinvent the wheel with their own engine instead of using for example Terasology:



Or Minetest, or the Ardorcraft API for that matter???

Ahh well, at least it made me aware that Terasology is still very much under development, and with its focus on DungeonKeeper & Dwarf-Fortress elements, it might actually become a game I would play (and doesn't make my eyes bleed :p ).

Speaking of which... the guy behind AgentKeeper released yet another nice video and graphics are constantly further improved as seen here.