Frogatto & Friends looking to be "greenlit" on Steam

We have mentioned in the past a few times that it is a common misconception that FOSS games need to be also "freeware", and in fact the opposite can be quite beneficial to the overall development of a game or the engine it is build on.

The 2D jump & run  Frogatto & Friends has been for sale on mobile platforms for a while now, and its really high quality game-play and graphics are definitely a notch above most other open-source games:



All of it is possible through the use of their awesome open-source engine Anura.

Now they are looking to sell their game also on desktop computers through the very popular Steam digital distribution platform. You can vote for inclusion here.

As far as I am aware this is the first open-source game that actually aims to be sold through this channel, but recently another one, Warsow, was actually approved for inclusion as a freeware title.

As a launch of their "greenlight" campaign, the creators of Frogatto & Friends have started a Q&A session on reddit, where you can learn more about them and their awesome game(s).

Unrelated to that: please also check out our own "sub-reddit" about open-source gaming :)

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Fundraising for GPL game Plee the Bear

This is a guest post by Julien Jorge, developer, artist and musician behind the open source indie games Plee the Bear and Andy's Super Great Park, here to present the fundraising campaign he launched for the former.

Some years ago, with the help of three of my friends and anonymous people on the web, I have created Plee the Bear, a great platformer in which you play an angry bear whose son has been kidnapped by god. Here is a guy hard to brave! You sure will jump in this amazing journey to find and rescue your son. Because you want to rescue him, don't you? Or to slap him? Maybe both….

The game was a spare time project for a long time, then we recently decided to create a real, full, complete, fun and original version out of the prototype. We have thus created our company, Stuffomatic, published a first game and now we are launching a fundraising campaign for Plee the Bear!

The prototypes of the game have always been released for Windows and Linux as free software, available under the terms of the GNU GPL and the CC by-sa licenses. The latest version contains three levels of the storyline and four mini-games; and has already generated very positive criticisms (e.g. on The Linux Game Tome). Players loved the fun, the graphics and the music; other indie developers were pleasantly surprised by the technical skills and the details of the game; and people in the free software movement appreciated the overall process and the quality of the resources, remarkable for a free game.

All these feedbacks motivated us to complete the game and to launch a fundraising campaign to help the development. The campaign is organized in order to implement the new contents of the game one after the other, each time with a new fundraiser. So, for the initial one, the feature you are welcome to support is a complete refresh of the existing work. You can see the details on the project's page on OpenFunding but let me show you how the game will look:

To be compared with the current release:

(The screen is larger in the new version, it's not just Plee who is smaller…) 

The animations will also be reworked. For example, here is a comparison of the changes in the animation of Plee walking. The old version is on the bright stripes, the new one is in the black stripes:

If you are a game developer, you may have already used some free resources from websites like OpenGameArt.org or Freesound.org. If you are a gamer, you may have played games using the resources of such websites. In both cases, you are certainly interested by our process consisting of releasing each part of the game under a free license. Actually, we have recently started to supply OpenGameArt.org with our assets.

So, if you like our project:

• give us some money for the next development steps,
• give us feedback about the process to help us improving it,
• share this announcement with your neighbors.

This way, we will all go toward a fun and good game :)

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Open Source Game Summer Screen Shorts 2012 #2

Haunts: The Manse Macabre is a BSD-code/CC-BY-NC-SA-art Kickstarter-funded, turn-based RPG(?). There are still a few hours left to contribute to additional features.

Sintel: The Game, currently completely CCBY3-licensed, just had their first alpha release! They have original voice acting and all! (Although I did not manage to get it running on Linux yet).

Irrlicht-based cute Puzzle Moppet has been released under the WTFPL and I was able to replace all non-free textures and sounds. Now all we need is a repository coordinator.

Valyria Tear is a continuation of the jRPG Hero of Allacrost project with an active development blog.

Frogatto is a well-designed-code, beautiful-proprietary-pixel-art platformer. The developers started "making friends" on their blog by talking about projects they like.

idTech3 was reviewed in an extensive, illustrated article.

Summoning Wars, a 3d-visuals hack'n'slash needs a new lead developer.

A discussion about OpenGameArt's usability for game developers started on their forums. Improvements were recently added to the texture section and this is a chance to formulate enhancement to the other sections.

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Cube Train, Frogatto development and LPC

Today is another session of: "Look what I found in my FG spam folder" ;) But this time I am actually adding a lot of nice other stuff to it, so that it is almost a "dev-corner" post!

But first things first... the frogatto developers made us aware that there is a new game based on their really nice 2D engine, called Cube Trains:

Cube Trains Beta gameplay

Note that, just like frogatto, the final version will cost a few pennies, but the engine is totally FOSS and the current Beta is still free to download.

This seems to fit to the general idea of the folks behind this engine as they outlined in the email to us:

I'm really glad we now have a second major title done in frogatto's engine, because we're gradually trying to position frogatto's engine as an open-source alternative to closed-source packages like GameMaker or RPGMaker;  partly just because development tools are one software category that benefits far more than other categories from being open-source, but also because our engine technology is a lot better than GameMaker;  we're fully GPU-accelerated, and we've got a much better internal programming language.  We've got a ways to go, since GameMaker still has a bunch of advantages over us on the gui side, but we're getting there.

Cube Trains is not one of them, but eventually, we're hoping to build a stable of "starter kits" for different game types - like GameMaker has, built under a CC0 license so they're suitable not just for GPL games, but for absolutely anything (indie titles being a big one).  Hopefully that was we can get a bunch of people from the indie gaming crowd behind an open-source tool.

Which seems like a pretty good idea to me, and looking at the awesome features they recently showcased in three tutorials (1,2,3) I wholeheartedly agree with the comment on their superior engine technology!

Speaking of the frogatto engine and tutorials I can elegantly lead to my other topic today, as the people behind the currently pre-warming Liberated Pixels Cup, aka our friends from OpenGameArt, are also endorsing the use of that engine as outlined here. The have also recently featured another really nice 2D game dev. tile editor, and hot of the press is the news that the Mozilla foundation has joined the FSF and Creative Commons as a main sponsor of the event!
With Mozilla also came a significant cash contribution, which means that the initial goal of US$ 10,000 has been reached, but you can still up the ante!

It seems that this comes along a general push from the Mozilla Foundation towards more HTML5 gaming (now part of the LPC too), supported by the fact that they have recently released a nice RPG game demo (BrowserQuest) and are working even on a 3D engine called Gladius.

Ah and not to forget: OGA has also recently added a nice featured tutorial section to their site... so nothing is holding you back to finally become an active part of the FOSS game-development community... yes, I said YOU! :D

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New Me and My Shadow release

Almost forgot posting about this... somehow our "own" projects here on FreeGameDev.net get somewhat neglected on the blog from time to time...

But it's not because we don't care ;) So check this great new trailer for Me and My Shadow:

New Me and My Shadow trailer

Or head over to the release announcement on our forums to read about the changes in version 0.3 and download it! Don't forget to comment too ;)

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Zolo, Food Fight, GameLV - Treasure Hunt on Reddit!

A thread called "Post your Open Source Game" on the gamedev subreddit let me discover some new and old projects.

Here are three of them:

Zolo

A hyperactively fast jump and run with chainsaws: Zolo.

Food Fight

An OGRE-based real time strategy with vegetables and taco: Food Fight.

GameLV

An "adventure game in a post-soviet environment": GameLV.

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МедведьИгра - BearGame

Please bear with me for the duration of this post.

Медвед

BearGame игра про медведя прыгуящим на воздушных шарах. Актуальная альфа-версия была написана в Java.

  

видео: BearGame

Plee le Porter

BearGame n'est pas le seul jeu avec un ours. Par exemple, Plee The Bear est un jeu avec un ours comme personnage principal.

Neues Pac-Bär Logo

Des weiteren habe ich letztens das Logo für eine Berliner Hobbyspielentwicklergruppe namens Berlin Mini Jam überarbeitet. Dies hat nicht direkt was mit open source Spielen zu tun, aber einige von uns mögen die offene Soße und stellen unsere Spiele unter freien Lizenzen zur verfügung.

Thanks for Bearing!

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Winter Shorts 3: Wizznic Cursor, TORCS Music, Knights Deathmatch, Humm and Strumm Specs, SuperTux Contest

Wizznic! received more GUI enhancements [video (00:57@YouTube)]
TORCS 1.3.2 brings menu music into the game [.ogg (05:50/7.1MB)]
Knights 0.19 features deathmatch [description]
Humm and Strumm is an in-dev co-op game engine [design .pdf (156kB)]

SuperTux' level contest has four entries so far [submission thread]

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SuperTux Forum and January 2012 Level Contest

SuperTux level design mistakes to avoid

SuperTux just got a forum on FreeGameDev.net and started a level contest.

Rules:

• A snow tileset theme 
• Submit your levels here until the 27th of January, when voting will start
• Voting on levels will end on the January 30st
• Winners will be announced January 31st
• Have fun
• One level per person
• Top few levels will/can be made into an add-on or
• If admins are okay with it top levels will get added to incubator island (if winners are okay with it - pick cc0 or cc-by-sa for your level)
• One entry per person
• Please make a new level. (not from and existing worldmap/levelset)
• Don't vote for your self.
• Voting will take place in a new forum topic.
• Feel free to comment on peoples levels, most people would like to hear what was wrong or good with their level.

Get the editor, read the editor guide (and just play around, as the guide is incomplete ;) ) and check out the style guide.

You can upload submissions in this thread.

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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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Adamant Armor Affection Adventure (and more) open sourced

Adamant Armor Affection Adventure

The quadruple-A block-style story-based, sneaky-action pandora game Adamant Armor Affection Adventure is now GPLed. Along with it some other games for that platform by the same author (AAA for one [video]) were open sourced.

Sources can be downloaded here (AAAA) and here (other games).

 

Video: 13 minutes of AAAA on OpenPandora

 Much more info about the releases along with some internet drama history can be read in this post.

I'm not sure about the assets and their license, there seem to be none included in the tarballs.

/me requesting Linux desktop ports

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PyWeek 13 (And PyWeek 12 Winners)

It's time PyWeek #13 soon!



The dates of this challenge are are 00:00 UTC 2011-09-11 to 00:00 UTC 2011-09-18.

Timetable
Friday 2011/08/12	Registration underway
Sunday 2011/09/04	Theme voting commences
Sunday 2011/09/11	Challenge start
Sunday 2011/09/18	Challenge end, judging begins
Sunday 2011/10/02	Judging closes, winners announced

Check out PyWeek 12's winners by the way:

Loopback: Asteroids + Tower defense. Retro Look. Permissive code license.

Loopback - PyWeek #12 Team Winner

Lemming: Enough Plumbers + Canabalt??? Hand-drawn horrible ;). Permissive code license.

Video: PyWeek #12: Lemming Speed Run

The PyWeek guys seem to have figured out the license part of game prototyping well: Lemming for example contains a list of all used art pieces' urls and licenses. Neat!


PS: Ludum Dare got 600-1 entries last weekend.

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News Shorts

OpenPatrician is a not-yet-playable free implementation in Java of Ascaron's classic The Patrician and The Patrician 2. There are some assets but unfortunately the project's default license is a noncommercial one.

OpenMW is moving forward: new blog look, renderer is being refractored, inventory being implemented, record saving too.

Alex the Allegator was part-ported to HTML5 using the melonJS library. I'm #9 on the high score at time of post! :D

DusteD, maker of Wizznic! is not dead.

Blendswap now has a slim set of rules for contributors and texture licenses are annoying.

Bandit Racer is a car racing and combat game in HTML5, built with GameJS. Comes with track editor and pretty UI. An earlier version multiplayer mode, which will probably come back sooner or later

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