My Games Design

The Godot Engine ("the open-source answer to Unity3D") continues to make exciting progress with the recent stable release of version 2.1 . Besides lots of small usability improvements to the GUI, the main new feature is a asset sharing store build right into the editor: This should hopefully result in a lot of extremely easy to use assets, and I am looking forward to seeing a lot high quality assets from OpenGameArt.org transferred into it ;) In related news, it was recently announced that there is work going on to allow C# (a extremely popular game scripting language also used in Unity3D) scripting in Godot besides the current Python based custom language. So this should lower the entry barrier for indie developers significantly, and maybe we will even see a conversion utility for open-sourcing simple Unity3D games? Furthermore they are also working on a visual scripting system akin to Unreal's Blueprint or what you can use in the Blender Game Engine. Yeah, visual pro...

Check out this interesting (somewhat recently GPLv3 re-licensed) game Blackvoxel : As you can see it has some interesting mechanic which they call " Molecular Voxel Interaction Engine ". As seen in the trailer above, it basically allows you to automate crafting, resulting in interesting "programmable" factory setups. Of course this might sound a bit too much like actual work and not fun... but given the big fan scene for the closed source game Factorio , I would say it can be more fun that it looks at first ;) Blackvoxel itself probably needs to be a bit more of a game instead of "just" a sandbox, but there is big promise in the overall concept, so give it a try :)

Great news for HTML5 game developers: a few days ago Superpowers was released under the ISC license . What is Superpowers? A game development platform (an integrated editor but you can collaborate in realtime online; how cool is that! :D ) for making HTML5 games using TypeScript (a superset of Javascript) . But you will also be able to work with other languages, so far support for the well known L�VE2D is available . Learn more in this video: The source is available here and there is also an repository with a few sample games . If you like what they are doing, please consider becoming a supporter . Looking forward to your new HTML5 games!

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 fo...

F-Zero and Wipeout set the standard for the futuristic sci-fi racing games genre and inspire many game developers. Over the years, four projects of that genre were started and developed to a playable state that are now open source code: H-Craft by Irrgheist is a free sci-fi racer with IAP on Android. It is built with the Irrlicht engine and was recently released as free software  with freeware data. While gameplay is simple without pickups, boosts or weapons, the campaign keeps it interesting. The 180�-Turns used in H-Craft level design are very refreshing to the genre. CoreBreach is a commercial anti-gravity racing game with combat gameplay. There is a freeware dataset that allows compiling and playing a simpler-looking version. Being an Objective C project, it was unusual to compile for me on latest Arch Linux but possible . Campaign mode, weapons and split-screen multiplayer make it cover many bases. Racer  is the only project with 100% free as in freedom data, yet unfort...

Godot winter icon A game dev jam to create a winter-themed open source game was community-initiated at the Godot forums . The (vote-determined) winner will get a budget of USD 50 to have donated to an open source project of their choice. What is Godot? Godot editor Godot  is a game engine. No wait, it's actually a game development IDE with its own Lua-based scripting language. As far as I can tell, it's a promising project that is a bit buggy, especially when it comes to mobile exports. It has some UI flaws  (subjectivity warning) but still, open source Godot is more appealing than proprietary Unity 3D. If you want to try making a game in Godot, I recommend this official tutorial as a starting point. Good luck & great success to you! What else? Another way to support Godot: "like" it as a Unity 3D alternative on alternativeTo .

The very innovative and awesome looking (+ fully FOSS) multiplayer FPS Terminal-Overload got a new release today . Edit: By now there is actually already a 0.4.0 release, get it here . Charged x-jump on the new ETH5 map (3rd person camera turned on) One of the new features is a charged jump that lets one take big leaps to reach good sniping spots or evade an enemy etc. Other changes for this release: - New map: ETH5 - Prettier GUI - Replace re-jumping with instant & charged x-jump. - Tweak CAT movement speeds. - Simplify disc controls. - ETH mode: Each class only has one type of offensive disc. - SMG changes: Increase firing rate, decrease damage, shorter range. - MGL changes: Remove recoil, decrease firing rate, fire only one projectile. - MG changes: Projectiles are affected by gravity. ...

The MegaGlest based RTS Annex: Conquer The World is very close to a major update as version 4.0. Strait from the developer's mouth : Yes! We are so close we can almost taste it. He also posted a game-play video of the current development version: He also recently stated that the new release will be fully FOSS, i.e. not only GPL source-code but also all artwork under a FOSS compatible creative-commons license (most likely CC-by-SA). It's just a pity that the new much improved GUI code from MegaGlest seems to be not yet ready for the release. P.S.: Also check out this Tower Defense mod for MegaGlest.

Stunt Rally 2.4 ... talk about feature creep, but I am not complaining ;) See more pictures of the release here , and don't forget to give some feedback on our forums . Oh and you can now browse cars and tracks online.

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.

Not exactly hot of the press, but the developer behind the MegaGlest based RTS Annex: Conquer the world has started a new project: In a lonely planet circulating a distant star, a war of survival rages on. There a sentient race, the Valkyries struggle to protect their world and themselves against the parasitic organisms Devourers. Explore large maps for resources, treasure, and other advantages to fight back the relentless horde of Devourers. Terra Centauri: The Last Stand is a new unique MG based game. While game shares a similar art style to Annex, this game has radically different gameplay and much higher quality models. He is also running a funding campaign on Patreon and you can give feedback on the Megaglest forums . Speaking of Megaglest: while development has slowed down a bit lately, the work on the CE-GUI based new menu and HUD is looking great .

This week saw finally saw the official release of version 3.0 of FlightGear . Notable changes: Highlights in this release include integration of the FGCom voice communications client within the simulator, improved terrain rendering, faster scenery loading, and improved usability. This release also coincides with the release of FlightGear World Scenery 2.0 � massively improved scenery data covering the entirety of the planet and incorporating OpenStreetMap roads and detailed terrain information from a variety of sources. Also interesting is the " Bombable " add-on, which adds combat mechanics:

Came across this seemingly fun little game over here , too bad I don't have a Occulus Rift (yet): Check their page for the Win32 and browser server/client download.

Following the release of the Torque3D engine under the MIT license ( latest release 3.5 here ), there was a lot of back and forth regarding a port to Linux (the engine actually used to have a good Linux port, but that one was dropped a few years back). At some point there was even an official Kickstarter crowed-funding attempt, which however failed to reach the estimated funds (but nether the less more than US$10k were pledged). After that things quited down, but several people continued developing a OpenGL renderer and Linux port. Now it seems like all these efforts seem to be near a somewhat usable Linux port or at least that's what I understand by following this forum thread . Torque3D running on Xubuntu 12.10 In the short term the most interesting application of this Linux port is probably that the creator of RotC has announced on his currently running indigogo campaign to liberate (and update) the game, that now there will also be a Linux port. Great news if you ask me, so d...

Merry Christmas from FreeGamer! As a nice present from the 0 A.D. team, the new Alpha 15 Osiris was released today: Lots of great new features and especially multiplayer games should be now much easier to do with hosting improvements and a lobby for browsing available games. Another open-source RTS engine (using Mono/C# though) has also released a new version: OpenRA . Currently it is still geared toward running an assortment of older Command & Conquer based games, so you need to own these for the data. But this release adds lua scripting for the creation of custom missions, so maybe someone will come up with a libre game to run on this engine. Last but not least, a new version of Warzone2100 was released about a week ago. This one actually includes some higher resolution textures, which is hopefully the first step to officially integrate all the awesome new art assets from the art revolution project . Speaking of WZ mods: There is also an interesting new tower-defense mod cur...

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. The current version still runs on an old closed source build of the Torque3D engine, but with the somewhat recent move to MIT licensing, it has now become possible to go fully open-source. According to the author: 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:

Obviously someone is having a hard time with the winter in the northern hemisphere right now: More awesome screenshots of Stunt Rally 2.2 here , and don't miss the details of the new version in the full change log . Last but not least, discuss it on our forums :)

And another great new release :) Our favorite work in progress & not quite serious anime RPG Lips of Suna bumps its release number to 0.8 ( change-log ). I know what you are thinking... Most notable changes: New player model and animations contributed by gruntunbur. Lots of sound effects contributed by qubodup. More powerful animation blending. Performance improvements. Better eye, face and hair color customization. Fixed the AI not being able to use many kind of weapons correctly. Procedural map area placement and planning system. Procedural dungeon generation with corridors, rooms, treasures and monsters. Balanced the movement speed and physics behavior of player characters. Terrain chunks close to the player character load much faster. Comment away below or in our forums . Addition (2013-11-21): Now there are also windows binaries available .