Multitouch RTS gaming

Back from holidays... and no new post on the blog in the mean time??? qudobup is getting lazy :p

So before we lose all our loyal readers (e.g. the blog authors themselves *chirp* *chirp*), here a quick update:

Zero-K, the Spring-Engine using RTS game, got a bunch uf new releases lately... all the way up to version 0.8.13.1 by the time of writing this. Try it out if you liked Total Annihilation back in the days :D

However, the main reason for me writing about this is the cool multi-touch (tablet) interface someone coded for the spring engine and showcased with Zero-K:

Zero-K multitouch

Still a bit rough around the edges as you can see... but this shows that RTS games might have a bright future on tablet-pcs!

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A Garden of colorful projects

Found this nice abstract shooter over at LGDB a few days ago:

Garden of coloured lights gameplay

As you can see, a nice piece of bullet-hell... just the music isn't as catchy as the one from Aleste (*sneeks in old-school gaming reference*).

In totally unrelated news, the guys (and gals?) from the open-source MMORPG Planeshift have started a small PR project called "Free Game Alliance" to promote theirs and other high profile open-source games. You can read some comments from our forums about it here... but all the nagging aside, I sure hope something good comes out of this!
Oh and Planeshift itself seems to be coming along quite nicely also... hadn't checked their progress in ages...

Another project whose developers show some serious long term commitment, is AlienArena, which just got a major update to version 7.52 and is now also easily available via the Desura Linux beta ;) Check out the change-log here.

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Double 0.7.4: Pingus and M.A.R.S.

No screenshot of Pingus 0.7.4

Version 0.7.4 of Pingus introduces an array of changes:

Content:

• New levelsets, "Desert" and "Factory Campaign" (27 new levels in total)
• This is the first use of the desert and factory graphics in official levels

Gameplay:

• Deadly fall height increased
• Digger/Miner/Basher paths cleanup

Features:

• Demo recordings/playback re-implemented (32bit/64bit not compatible)
• --usedir parameter added (useful for portable play)
• Unicode support added
• Option menu added

Usability:

• Window can be resized in-game
• Soundcard dependancy removed
• Man page added

Look:

• Level dimensions now suit 1920x1200 resolution
• Anti-aliasing added to bitmap fonts

Performance:

• Software rendering improved
• OpenGL rendering option added

Other:

• Editor enhancements
• Fixes

Good Old Colorful M.A.R.S. (0.7.4)

0.7.3 and then 0.7.4 of M.A.R.S. were relesed:

• New speacial
• New weapon
• Dutch, Mongolian and Norwegian languages added
• In-game speed settings

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GunFu Deadlands 1.01: Performance Up!

GunFu Deadlands title screen

GunFu Deadlands, a quick, atmospheric retro keys+mouse top-down shooter for Win/Osx/Lin has been updated (1.01) to run with LÖVE 0.7.2 and the development codebase moved from Subversion to Git.

The game plays perfectly fine on a ASUS EeePC 1000H netbook running Arch Linux 32bit. A previous version (don't remember which) was extremely slowly. I can't tell whether the playable speed is thanks to improvements of GFD, love2d or perhaps the drivers for my netbook but if you've had performance trouble with the game in the past, try again!

Note: if you get shot in the title screen and start the game before respawning, you will be able to walk through walls.

This is the first update of GunFu Deadlands since the 1.0 release 22 months ago.

Video: GunFu Deadlands 1.01 gameplay

By the way, did you know that GunFu Deadlands is one of the 250 Indie Games You Must Play?

PS: I got word from the developer about the performance increase:

Just for your interest, I made some measurements and it seems that the speed increase is indeed dramatic: 55% faster.

I computed the mean FPS rate by measuring the time it takes to render 1000 frames in-game and dividing 1000 by this number. The formula (FPS_faster_version - FPS_slower_version) / FPS_slower_version is what produced this 55%.

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Summer Shorts #3

"Summer?" you ask? Well.. I'ts warm in Berlin.*
Also a warning: this article is 80% development, 31.5% art and 18% games.

Cross-language forums so far

FreeGameDev Forums now have Spanish and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian subforums. Should we add some more? Read this then write here.

OpenClonk old and new terrain rendering

The 2.0 OpenClonk release brings higher resolution for the terrain, which makes the game look a lot better. Read the full changelog here.

Blendswap entries. Amazing.

Check out the Blendswap Military Vehicles Contest entries:

I'm amazed. But that's just me. I have a thing for mechs. Alot even.

WebGL lessons. Freely licensed too.

Did anybody know of these CC-BY-SA-licensed WebGL tutorials? This dog told me about them.

"Hacking" 8-hour prototypes: Hubwar and Nodehack

* Speaking of Berlin, Germany. There was a little game dev jam in Berlin . Two of the prototypes are open source! (Hubwar and Nodehack)

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