Open Source Textures

OpenGameArt's texture section just received an update. There now is a category tree and files from texture packs are also available as single nodes (pages/description/downloads).

You can see some discussion about the new features on the official announcement's comments.

More about →

Arx Libertatis 1.0 "Bloody Gobblers!" released!

Walking in the underground city hub in Arx Libertatis

Looking up magic recipes and managing inventory while a vision enhancement is active in Arx Libertatis

[more screens]

Arx Libertatis 1.0 has been released. We already wrote about the engine a month and a half ago but this is the first official, stable release of the GPL-licensed engine for the proprietary first-person cave RPG Arx Fatalis.

But being able to play the proprietary game is not the end of the development. There are plans for future milestones, for example a Qt-based modern game editor and support for modern shaders. I look forward to it!

More about →

Tesseract, Cube2 next-gen'd

A FOSS gaming engine stalwart made a major leap forward today. Sauerbraten/cube 2, everyone's favorite octree, in-game editing game engine has finally implemented modern dynamic lighting, making its innovative mapping system a lot more intuitive and easy to use, as well as allowing for all kinds of new game play. Tesseract loses the backwards compatibility of Cube 2 in order to take full advantage of modern gfx cards.

Personally, I'm looking forward to games that utilize to implement destructible terrain, and the inevitable Minecraft clones that come with it. So go out coders, and create!

                            

You can find the sourcecode on Github here

EDIT: Well, that was quick! Hirato from Sandbox / Redeclipse pointed out this day/night cycle made with the new code: 

More about →

A Las Barricadas CC-by-SA boardgame & Kickstarter

Yes...you read right, a board-game on FreeGamer :p
Playable completely without the aid of a computer or similar device. But hey... it's a game and libre licensed, so it is not really that OT.

So this ominously named "Black Flag Games" collective has recently jumped on the Kickstarter hype and seems to have quite successfully financed their game by it (but you can still donate to the cause). Currently they are at $5,932 of their $3,500 goal with 22 days to go.

I noticed it because they already started releasing graphics on OGA under the CC-by-SA license as promised:

Personally I am looking forward to this, as I actually proposed something quite similar in my long running "game design brain-fart" thread. Luckily for them I released these ideas into the public domain... otherwise I would be sooo suing their a**es off :p

P.S.: viva la revolución... errr I for one welcome our new Kickstarter overlords!

More about →

Trigger Rally Online Edition Open Sourced on GitHub

Trigger Rally Online Edition race start on a sand track with green trees and an animated checkpoint ahead.

Trigger Rally Online Edition [github] is a WebGL racing game based on the concept of Trigger Rally. It has a more detailed car model than the classical game, however I am not sure about the game data license. It features replays too!

The project was created by the lead coder of the original/classical Trigger Rally version.

video: Trigger Rally Online Edition gameplay

By the way: if you are interested in helping me to sort out missing license-clear graphics and sounds for the classical Trigger Rally, I created a thread on OpenGameArt for that purpose.

More about →

The Big corrections round-up post (and TA contest)

So... you might have followed the lengthy discussion in the comment section of this blog entry of mine from last week... if you didn't don't worry you didn't miss anything important :p

However I was corrected in quite a few things (besides all the disagreements), so I though it would be good to post a sort of "counter statement" to clear up some recent mess-ups by me:

First of all, the developers from Q2W informed us that in fact most (but not all) of their art assets are CC-by-SA or GPL, which is great. They have also released a Linux installer now, so feel free to check it out if you are gaming on this platform (like me). Oh and I have also updated the video to a newer one, in case you didn't notice yet.

Also, and I am to be honest quite surprised by this, OverDose does in fact have an open source-code repository since some time now, where you can download the source to the engine and some of the cool in-house tools they have developed. No clearly visible notice on the website about this however :-/ Even on the wiki they have no link to it I think.

Ah, and I was also informed that UFO:AI has now released an Linux version of the mentioned 2.4 RC.

Otherwise? Stunt-Rally does indeed have a player-collision option, which I somehow missed... but at least I am not the only one who feels that the physics are a bit off :p

Last but not least, and that is the only real news in this post:
The rather early in development steam-punk themed MMORPG Tempest in the Aether are hosting an art contest in collaboration with OGA too (to celebrate their first release). A bit of a pity that it will probably be somewhat overlooked due to the big OGA contest mentioned in Bart's previous post, but maybe you want to contribute to this game as well.

P.S.: Criticize me all you want, and I am open to corrections as you can see, but don't expect me become a "proper" journalist! After all this is the "splatter zone" :p

More about →

Announcing the Liberated Pixel Cup!

I'm excited to announce that OpenGameArt.org is will be teaming up this summer with the Free Software Foundation and the Creative Commons for a big summer games contest, the Liberated Pixel Cup!

The TL;DR version is that the Liberated Pixel Cup will take place in two phases.  The first phase will be the art phase, in which artists will be asked to submit pixel art that matches an existing body of professional quality art that we're building specifically for the contest.  The second phase will be the programming phase, the object of which will be to create a game using the pre-made assets along with the assets created by contestants during the art phase.  A longer overview (as well as the official rules page) can be found on the website.

I've been running OpenGameArt.org for just over three years now, and I'm incredibly excited because this marks the first official recognition we've received from the FSF and the CC.  It's particularly awesome because it'sa massive boost for OGA's goal -- that is, bringing artists and coders together to make awesome games!

So, spread the word, donate to the cause (donations will be used to add to the already impressive base art set, and fund contest prize money), and above all, join us and take part in the contest!

Bart K.
OpenGameArt.org

P. S.  I'd like to offer a special thank you to Chris Webber (aka paroneayea) from the Creative Commons, who conceived this idea and made it happen.  You rock. :)

More about →