In the past weeks I’ve been working on some of the last changes to clean up the guts inside the mech class by moving everything to components and systems. That includes a component for sounds that should eventually enable foot steps. Of course some special cases still remain for later cleanup (like the jump jet light). Some possible experiment-branch directions I see now are these:
Persistence (savegames dude) using sqlite
Reworking the Input to have events consumed by systems/components (or passing abstractions of SDL events).
Some relaxing modeling work and integration of some more models
Extending Physics to support tracked and wheeled vehicles – just talking about slanting on sloped ground by having 4 particles for wheels.
Multithreading would be possible, and easy with the system/component approach now but it isn’t a top priority I think. Easy because the execution model is working in phases, one sub-system at a time with no immediate communication between subsystems.
FreeOrion 0.4.1 has been released a month ago. There still is no manual ship combat mode and there is a certain sluggishness regarding GUI responsiveness but the beautiful audio and graphics and consistent writing are definitely worth a try.
You can check out a preview of current 3d ship combat tech demo in this video (7m30s in).
Xonotic
image: Sniping a Hovercraft on Unsealed Trial 2 in Xonotic (more screens)
Some helpful vote commands: vcall timelimit 600 (for when the time is draining too quickly) vcall gotomap unseal (for when you realize that Unsealed Trial is the only playable map )
If you’d like to record your own videos, all you need to know is on Xonotic’s Democapture wiki page.
The OpenMW engine re-implementation for proprietary RPG classic Morrowind brings fixes, a pause menu, camera modes and proper player control, potion usage, drain/fortify dynamic stats/attributes magic effects and other changes in release 0.17.0.
Work has also begun on an Editor and The Example Suite.
A Free-as-in-Freedom OpenMW game?
The Example Suite is going to be a small standalone game that does not contain any Bethesda owned art assets. Therefore, even those who do not own Morrowind will be able to play with OpenMW and test it.
The project uses the “Release early and often” mantra and so hopefully we will have an early build available for download soon.
If you can help with; skills in animating, music, sounds, modeling or are an experience modder please visit The Example Suite forum.
An editor for OpenMW!
The OpenMW Editor is necessary in order to implement the post 1.0 features that the original Morrowind engine isn’t capable of. It’s currently a one man project and he could use some help. Visit the OpenMW Editor forum.
The Flight of the Maxima (TFM) is an unlikely fusion of Sci-fi, dark comedy and medieval Christianity.
It is a free roaming roleplaying computer game where you can explore vast lands, talk to an extremely diverse amount of people, and do a lot of crazy things that certainly sounded like a good idea at the time.
There’s also a central story element that begins with you suddenly finding yourself a long way from home and dealing with… well let’s not spoil things just yet.
The game can run on Linux and Windows, is intended to run on Mac (untested as of late), and both the games code and it’s assets are Open Source (BSD), which means you can modify and redistribute the game nearly any way you want.
The game compiles fine for example on Arch Linux 64bit (with these hints). One license problem is the use of non-free FMOD but if I understand correctly, that dependency is optional.
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.
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.
Of about 150 entries at the first seven day first person shooter development jam (7DFPS), so far I could identify two prototypes that have clear open source licensing in their code and run.
Note that this contest did not require sources to be released, only 19 entries had theirs released at time of writing.
Cannonball Z is a game where you shoot zombies with cannonballs. It features randomly generated maps.The source code is in the .zip file. The engine uses a BSD license. My code is GPL and my assets are CC BY-SA.
OxyFPS is a simple first person shooter with the restriction of being in an oxygen-lacking environment.You are on an airless planet with only a suit, a crossbow and a tank of air.Your objective is to survive as long as you can while the corporate goons that caused this terraforming catastrophe hunt you down.
Then there’s also Jedi-Academy–Renaissance, which I haven’t been able to compile yet and Zombies in the Dark, which is only indirectly GPL-ed by being hosted on Google Code.
By the way: I participated in a project with my beginner Blender abilities but only the art assets are freely licensed.
Keyboard, mouse and touchscreens control the prettier-than-ever, polished retro puzzle Wizznic!, which is 100% GPLv3 and available as a GitHub project.
Last release (0.9.9): ~six months ago.
Last commit: one day ago.
A recent progress update post reveals the goals for and the path to 1.0:
Before Wizznic 1.0 we will create two completely new themes, each for it’s own pack, thus, two completely new packs! That is 40 new puzzles, leaving the mainline puzzle set at 80 puzzles. However, before doing that, we will sit down and play through the entire game, this should allow us to come up with some really evil puzzles for the later levels Anyway, just wanted to say, in this in-browser, Object Oriented, Accelerated, flashy, highres, 3D world, that little pixel pushing Wizznic is not dead!
DccNiTghtmare (DNT) is a 3D single-player RPG “in a satirical post-apocalyptical world”, which encourages suggestions to be posted on their forum.
Version 0.9 has been released not long ago, which on the gameplay-side appears to mainly bring new models and audio. We have missed quite a few versions here on Free Gamer though. See the changelog for a complete list of versions and features.
As you can see in the video above, third party art assets were used. They were originally created for OpenDungeons and shared on OpenGameArt end of March 2012.
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