All Maps of Bos Wars 2.6.1+ (svn r10193)

I filled a recent craving for playing a sci-fi real time strategy game by re-discovering Bos Wars and playing every single player map.

image: Bos' level of art, many screenshots indicate a much lower quality.

The game runs on low-spec computers and can be quite fast-paced. I quite enjoyed playing it in a tower-defense/tower rush style. The last release of Bos Wars has been over two years ago, but development is not frozen, the last commit was on 2012-08-09.

The three biggest issues I personally had are:

1. Some maps are aesthetically displeasing.
2. For a beginner, it's hard to decide what map to play.
3. Many units and buildings don't have voices/sounds.
4. The interface is confusing in regards to resource quantity.

Visual style of old maps

image: most likely the first map you play in Bos (because it's selected by default)

To address issues 1 and 2, I hope that this blog post will help. The screenshots at the bottom show the game start screen at 1280x1024 for every of the "Start Game" single player maps. If you see a level that you'd like to play, right-click and "open" the link or image, to see the level name in the file name of the screenshot.

An in-game solution to issue 1. would be to create a map folder called "old" and move all levels in there, when the rendered ground texture clashes with the units, buildings and resources.

This suggestion might be seen as disrespectful insult to the original map makers, but having the current map selection structure is a barrier for new players, who need some guidance to get started without having to open random levels first. They are likely to assume that the first level they play is representative of the visual style of the entire game, which can be quite wrong, as you can see by the different-looking screenshots at the bottom.

Map selection screen

image: Bos Wars map selection screen

To solve issue 2 in-game, a preview of the mini-map, as it is seen with "non-revealed map" would help. This might be a non-trivial UI/in-game-rendering task if it has to work fully automatic.

Missing/repetitive sounds

In regards to issue 3, I started by contributing a patch with some voices and sounds. If you would like to help as a voice actor or by turning voice lines into soldier/pilot/driver voice/effect mixes, please feel free to comment in this blog post, if you would like to coordinate this with me and other potential contributors. Female voices are especially welcome (source).

Feedback on my patch is welcome too. Watch/listen to the video below, to see what kind of voices are missing and what kind of voices are being used multiple times in Bos Wars.

video: Unit sounds in Bos Wars

Resource UI

I'm not sure I have figured it out completely but here goes nothing.

image: how I interpret Bos' resource info

Without having thought this through in detail, this is what seems to be missing:

• Resource icons.
• Absolute value of resources in stock, rather than divided by ten(?).
• Color coding of income/spending.
• Display of the sum of income and spending - in a prominent position, individual display of income and spending in a non-prominent position.
• Indication of resource effect by buildings when selecting buildings and when hovering them in the build menu.

Starting screens of all Bos Wars maps

If you see a level that you'd like to play, right-click and "open" the link or image, to see the level name in the file name of the screenshot.

gallery: All Bos Wars maps

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DevCorner: Professionalize your art asset management

Today I thought it might be nice to have a small talk about Digital Asset Management systems (DAMs). Now I have to admit, given the abundance of open-source DAM systems and my general lack of having actually tried them, might make me not really qualified to talk about this. However I think those are actually really useful if you are managing a game project with more than one artist, and I just happened to stumble on one (TACTIC) that seems to be especially geared towards 3D movie and game development (Note: I hope this doesn't turn into too much of an advertisement post, but this system is after all completely open-source. But if you have other, or better DAMs for FOSS game development, feel free to add them in the comments).

So what are DAMs actually? Maybe this short introduction video of the system mentioned above, will give you an idea quickly:


TACTIC from TACTIC on Vimeo.

The system was quite recently open-sourced under the Eclipse Public License, and has been previously in use by some of the big 3D gaming companies. For an overview of the features head here. Its client interface is completely web-based, and you can easily set up your own asset-repository VM server if you want.

For most FOSS games (which tend to be mostly one-man shows :( ) such a system is probably overkill, but using a DAM might actually help involving more people and make collaboration across the globe more efficient (Just like GIT and such systems did for code collaboration projects).

Maybe someone would also be willing to host such a service for FOSS game projects? However high data-transfers rates would make it probably not possible to offer such a service for free. Feel free to comment on that too ;)

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D3 BFG source drop, and new hosted forum

Hot off the press is the news that id software has released the source-code to their Doom3 remastered BFG edition. Have a look at the code here. It seems like Mr. Carmack has back-ported a few nifty things from idTech5, so this is potentially quite useful for upcoming idtech4 based FOSS games.

In unrelated news, I am happy to report that we are now hosting the forums for the nice off-road racing game StuntRally. Join the discussion here.

Old StuntRally screenshot, too lazy to find another right now ;)

One of the really awesome features of that game is the track-editor by the way... have a look at some awesome video tutorials here. Given the Techno-style music in these and the awesome spline-based tracks, I actually think that a WipeOut like modification of this game would really rock, join the discussion I started on that here :D

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0 A.D. and Megaglest updates

Some assorted news from the FOSS RTS thematic area.

First of all, Megagest saw another somewhat bigger release (3.7.x), and someone also made a nice cinematic for them:

Sadly no news on the planned graphical update, as the merger with GAE seems on hold, but the new version adds a lot of nice usability enhancements.

Much more active on the graphics front is 0 A.D. on the other hand. In their recent development update #9 they talk about completely switching to their new shader based renderer, and the guy behind these renderer improvements recently gave a short interview too.

Some other interesting news include this recent forum posts of some modders trying to switch to the 0 A.D. engine for their modern warfare RTS called Rogue Republic.
Asset integration seems to work already as you can see here:

Rogue Republic assets in O A.D.

The thread over at the 0 A.D. forums has a few additional details, but no significant info on the FOSS status they are aiming at in regards to their media.
Never the less, it looks like it might become a RTS project to follow more closely.

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Aliens vs Business Suits

Time remaining to vote

SourceForge.net has "Project of the month" to promote communities supporting their favorite projects.

December 2012: UFO:AI battles against JStock in the poll for "Project of the month". It's a close race.

You know what you have to do.

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Cinematic ZeroK trailer

Busy for a while moving... and the crickets take over FreeGamer it seems *chirp* *chirp* :D
Anyways, I am partially back in business, so a warm HELLO from East Africa!!!

So nothing much to report right now, except that there is a really nice cinematic trailer available for the FOSS RTS ZeroK (which is based on the Spring engine):

They also released a new version not all that long ago, so give it a try if you haven't so far.

Stay tuned, as I struggle to get into my regular FOSS-Games blogging habit again ;)

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Engine reimplementation day!

This is a guest post by user Hythlodaeus, discussing GPLed video game engine reimplementations, and presenting several projects related to the topic.

I thought I should take some time to discuss in detail one form of project that has been sometimes featured here, on FreeGamer, and is generally quite popular in the FLOSS gaming world: engine rebuilds / re-implementations.

Rather than being wholly original projects or Intellectual Property-free clones of more popular games, engine rebuilds (also known colloquially as “engine clones”) are essentially an attempt to completely reconstruct and improve upon the features of a given original game, without going trough the trouble or replacing original game art assets and without creating a new whole, free-of-restrictions and copyrights IP. Thus, engine rebuilds merely reproduce the rules, mechanics, and game logic of the original game, while still being dependent on some other form of original data.

These projects frequently arise as a form of preservation: the need to ensure and expand compatibility of a proprietary game out of its original borders, and to make sure the target game will not only be able to run on future systems, but also to be ported to different platforms where it wasn't originally available, without damaging the profits of the original developers or breaking any form of copyright. Better than that, engine rebuilds are a great way to fully enjoy many video game classics in a purely free-as-in-freedom environment, while still rewarding the original developers by purchasing the original game. As of now, I have four particular projects under my radar which I would like to talk to you about.

VCMI

VCMI is an engine re implementation of New World Computing's turn-based strategy classic, Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It aims to replicate the original game, and introduce many new features that will make it a more pleasant and customizeable experience, as well as providing a platform for scenario building, mod making, and even the creation of completely new games.

VCMI has also been noted for its portability outside of the desktop computer environment, with some developers outside of the main dev team apparently creating an Android port, and other similar mobile versions.

With the recent release of version 0.90, and bordering closer and closer to the 1.0 release, VCMI is the brightest hope for the huge Heroes of Might and Magic fan community which still holds HOMM3 as its all-time favorite game in this long-running series, and whose official releases and reeditions tend to run poorly on modern operating systems, including Windows.

FreeSynd

The second project is the Syndicate reconstruction known as FreeSynd. For those that are too young to have ever played the original game, Syndicate was a dystopian organized crime simulator, in which the player controlled a team of cybernetically enhanced zombies (!!!) in a campaign to achieve complete global domination.

Syndicate was known for its fast-paced, guns-blazing gameplay, and, after many years since its original release, it's still highly regarded as one of former British developer Bullfrog's best titles. FreeSynd is currently on version 0.6, with updates oozing out slowly, once in every few months.

The goal of the developers is to replicate the original game as it was, when released, with further upgrades and improvements coming only after version 1.0 is finished.

At its current form, many missions can be fully played, but the game still has many bugs and much to is left to be made. However, as a fan of the original game, I still felt it was my duty to talk about it and maybe motivate some of you to lend some help to what promises to be a fantastic game. Naturally, you will still require the original game data to run FreeSynd.

NXEngine

Next up we have NXEngine. So far, I'm really surprised how come this one escaped most people's attention, especially at the FLOSS gaming sphere. NXEngine is none other than a free, open source recreation of the legendary freeware game Cave Story. Now the original game is not only freeware, it has already been ported to as many platforms you can shake a stick at (including GNU/Linux). However the game creator, Daisuke Amaya, AKA “Pixel”, always requested people in charge of porting the game to never share the source code, due to the deal previously signed by Pixel to distribute the game commercially. This, however, did not stop programmer Caitlin Shaw from rebuilding the whole game engine from scratch, requiring only for the user to download a copy of the original freeware version, and extract all art and music assets from its bowels.

As of the current version of NXEngine (1.0.0.4), the game runs flawlessly, even more swiftly than the freeware original. Having played both in their entirety, I can say the only slight inconsistencies going for NXEngine, are a couple of enemy attack patterns which are slightly different, and barely affect game experience in any way. All in all, it's Cave Story, running free-as-in-freedom. And that's a great achievement by itself.

OpenXcom

Finally four our fourth project, we have OpenXcom. Many of you might be familiar with the game it is based on, as it was considered many times as one of the best PC games ever made. OpenXcom is a full reconstruction of this great tactical simulator, once again aiming for expanded compatibility and a more stable, smoother gameplay, along with many improved features and mod support planned along the way.

If you disliked the Firaxis remake, maybe you should keep an eye on this one. It's pure, classic X-COM with all the rough edges trimmed, and even at its 0.45 release, it already seems like an impressive achievement. If you feared for the future of X-COM, fear no more. OpenXcom is here.

That's all for now! I'm sure there are other great engine rebuild projects around there, many of which have been discussed here on FreeGamer previously. Feel free to post your own suggestions or comment on this matter.

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