FPS release weekend?

As the self proclaimed FPS expert here on FreeGamer (who doesn't have a PC to play any FPS right now :( ), I have to keep you updated on the newest released and developments of course!

So what is the big news for this weekend? Well looks like the Cube2 engine powered Red Eclipse is finally getting an official release tomorrow :)

Red Eclipse release teaser

Head over to their IRC chat to not miss the release, which is expected for Sunday 13th of March, 2am GTM! Oh and they are also having a small donation drive to fund their new player-model which will be released as all art assets of the game under a FOSS compatible creative commons license (170 Australian $ still needed at this time) AFAIK.

Alien Arena 7.51 released

A smaller release comes from the Alien Arena team today. Not much changes in version 7.51 in regards to gameplay or media, but under the hood the engine got some serious performance upgrade (full change log).

Enemy Territory Xreal development picked up again

To my surprise it stayed really quiet after the Enemy Territory source release last year, with ioET never getting even seriously started, and no other interesting releases showing up :( The only exception was the Xreal renderer partially ported to ET, but development stalled and their website recently went down, with no further signs of development.
Now however someone else seems to have taken up the source code and released a updated developers version. Let's hope for the best and I am really looking forward to play an updated version of that multiplayer classic again!

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Ryzom now nearly free to play

In a bold (desperate?) move the guys behind the nearly completely FOSS but still commercial MMORPG Ryzom have decided to make their game free-to-play, but with some smaller limitations (which are supposed to make you buy a subscription at some later point of course ;) ).

Ryzom running on Linux

We mentioned it before, but Ryzom also runs fine under Linux (as seen above), and check out their developers page, and art asset repository if you are thinking about contributing.

Personally I feel the game shows it's age a bit too much on the desktop platform, but a mobile version (lets say on Maemo and Android) could really shine and attract a lot of users. But now is your chance to try it out as long as you like ;)

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Besiege - 3D RTS (Java/Ardor 3D)

Besiege

Besiege is a space based real time strategy game where you conquer planets to let them produce new ships (and eventually research new technologies for you). Somewhat inspired by Eufloria and Galcon.

The description resembles Qonk.

The project did one thing that I think is very, very right: BIG SCREENSHOT ON FRONT PAGE.

The ardor3d game runs on Linux this way:

java -Djava.library.path=native -cp lib/*:Besiege.jar net.playbesiege.Besiege

Besiege 1.0 Beta gameplay with sound

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ManicDigger & ArdorCraft - Open Source Minecraft-likes

 Manic building on a ManicDigger server

ManicDigger started as a third-party client for Minecraft Classic. According to the FAQ only Windows is supported but if you have Mono, you can do the following:

Get nightly binary (.zip: warning, it is a .rar), unpack.
mono GameModeFortress.exe

Thanks to gustavo for the instructions!

Must.. build.. house..

Unfortunately ManicDigger has the "most commonly used textures (grass and dirt) are ugly"-feature (just like Cube2/Sauerbraten for example).

ArdorCraft

ArdorCraft runs in Java (Ardor3d) and I got it running with its webstart file. I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that development halted four months ago.

ArdorCraft Dev [mute]

Even more ArdorCraft screens

By the way, Notch (Minecraft lead dev) just posted his first (technical) article about terrain generation. How is this open source related? Weeell.... not that much, except for the following scrap of text (from here):

Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.

So it's future open source, right? :D

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PyWeek 12 is upon us! - Also: Python Game Book wiki and Spielend Programmieren

Take this for not doing your own "thing, number" logo! ;)

PyWeek 12 is a game challenge/competition. It goes for a week. It starts on 2011-04-03.

It's kind of open source: code needs to be visible, FSF license list is recommended, open source license appears not to be required though. See rules for rules.

Screens of PyWeek11's entries

Here's the initiator's blog (+feed) - in case you're the stalker type. I know I am. :)

PGB and SP banners/logos

Horst, a Wien-based friend of FOSS hosts the Python Game Book wiki and Spielend Programmieren ("Programming by Playing") which is a wiki used for his courses teaching kids to make games using open source tools and libraries. There might be a guest post by him on this blog sooner or later.

Some cool kids on his YT channel.. I hope you like das German.

PSA for psychodelic PyGame Hirnschoner

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Blender Game Engine Air race

We recently featured another air race kind of game, but this on has much more eye-candy:

BGE_Airrace ocean demo

And believe it or not, but it is made with Blender3d 2.49b's game engine (update to 2.5/2.6 planned at some point)! Another video with a nice terrain you can find here (beware crappy sound). And an in-game track editor is under development too!

You can have a look at the development of it and download some old versions of the .blend over at the Blender artists thread. But don't expect visuals like above, as the awesome Blender artist Martinsh just recently started to overhaul the graphics like that.

So where is the catch? Well licensing is a bit unclear... in a recent BlenderNation news posts the main developer stated: "This air-race related project is a non-commercial open -source freeware and source .blend file will be released for common good", but I am not sure in how far this will extend to the new art assets, and a clearer commitment to a Creative Commons license and an actual release of the source .blend would make me feel more confident about the licensing status ;)
But hey... at least I assume it was completely done with FOSS software (e.g. Blender3D)!

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OpenDungeons: Huge Progress

OpenDungeons finally released version 0.4.7 of their Dungeon-Keeper like game, now with a new UI, better team colors, and many more animations. Very exciting to see the project develop! Download the new release here 

The Peragro Tempus project also kindly enabled DAMN asset managing for the OpenDungeon's media repo, which could really help with getting artists to contribute in the future (go to the DAMN link, then browse, and you should see the OD assets).

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