Godot Winter Game Jam

Godot winter icon

A game dev jam to create a winter-themed open source game was community-initiated at the Godot forums. The (vote-determined) winner will get a budget of USD 50 to have donated to an open source project of their choice.

What is Godot?

Godot editor

Godot is a game engine. No wait, it's actually a game development IDE with its own Lua-based scripting language.

As far as I can tell, it's a promising project that is a bit buggy, especially when it comes to mobile exports. It has some UI flaws (subjectivity warning) but still, open source Godot is more appealing than proprietary Unity 3D.

If you want to try making a game in Godot, I recommend this official tutorial as a starting point. Good luck & great success to you!

What else?

Another way to support Godot: "like" it as a Unity 3D alternative on alternativeTo.

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Winter Shorts 3: PyWeek #16 in April, Rainbow Rooms, Valyria Tear on OS X

PyWeek #16 in April

PyWeek logo

PyWeek is a game jam that obviously goes on for one week and requires the use of Python. It takes place online and there are overall winners in team and solo categories, as well as awards. The dates of the 16th PyWeek challenge are 00:00 UTC April 14, 2013 to 00:00 UTC April 21, 2013. Registration opens on 15. March 2013.

There is a message board for the community and there are interesting methods to publish Python games as HTML/JavaScript using pyjs, as demonstrated by the PyWeek #15 entry Kaos.

License Requirements: At least Shared Source required. Free software licenses recommended.

PyWeek #15 Entry: Rainbow Rooms

Rainbow Rooms Video

Rainbow Rooms is a physical-nonsense-maze puzzle game based on libtcod.

Various fonts are being used, some of which might be problematic license-wise for including in for example Debian's official repositories but it should be possible to replace them in less than two hours including research and documentation.

Code License: GPLv2
Content License: Unclear

Valyria Tear: "Final Release of Half-Episode I"

New Valyria Tear GUI screens

Valyria Tear Half-Episode I has been released, which I suppose we can take as 50% of Episode I's acts being complete.

The release brings new graphical interfaces and development is ongoing.

An OS X version can now also be grabbed from the OSX thread.

Code License: GPLv2
Content License: Various (DFSG approved)

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FLAT: Innovative Allegro-made 7DFPS+ is Open Source

image: lethal battle scene in FLAT

FLAT combines ice skating and shooting in an atmospheric ice scenario.

I haven't been able to progress too far but exploring the movement has been interesting alone.

If you feel like getting dirty with Allegro 5, there are many enhancement tickets open.

video: FLAT gameplay

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Liberated Pixel Cup July 2012: Coding Phase

The Content Creation Phase of the Liberated Pixel Cup is over!


You might want to ignore this blog post and read their announcement instead.


Here is a partial preview of the results:

More, not so nice previews: [part1, part2]

18 minute preview of all .flac files (two .ogg files excluded):
Download from box.net [mp3, 17M or ogg, 13M]


Get all files from opengameart.org/lpc-art-entries in .zip format:
Download from mediafire.com [link, 185M], box.net [part1, 96M | part2, 90M]

Now it is time for the Coding Phase of the Liberated Pixel Cup!

Rules:

• Start: July 1st, 12:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time
• End: July 31st, 11:59PM Pacific Daylight Time
• License:  Code entries must be free and open source, and must be available under the GNU GPL 3.0.  You may optionally release the code under any additional license(s) that you choose.
• Source code:  You must provide the complete source code for your entry.  Any code you have written for your game prior to the beginning of the contest must be made available at the beginning of the contest.
• Platform:  Your code must be able to be compiled and run on a 100% free-as-in-freedom platform.  It may not make use of any proprietary libraries or VMs.  Just to be clear, we cannot accept games that will ONLY run on one of the following:  Flash, Silverlight, XNA, Unity, Windows, MacOS , Mac OS X, iOS, proprietary JVMs, or similar.  It is perfectly acceptable if your game runs on any of these platforms, but it must also work on an open platform (we strongly recommend making sure that your program run on modern flavors of GNU/Linux, as all of the judges will have access to it).
• Framework:  You may use an existing engine or framework, or build your game from scratch.

Judging Criteria:

• Consistency of style:  Your game should primarily make use of the art either provided for or entered into the contest.  You may add additional art if needed, but all original art included in the game must be available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GNU GPL 3.0 (existing art from other sources may be under any free-as-in-freedom license).
• Ease of use:  Your game should be easy to compile and run.  You won't be disqualified automatically if a judge is unable to run your game, but it will count against you.  You are advised to avoid having large numbers of obscure dependencies or requiring bleeding edge (unstable) libraries.
• Creativity:  Games will be judged on how creatively they use the artwork.
• Judge's opinion:  How much the judges like your game.

Good luck and great Success!

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7DFPS - Open Source Prototypes (2012)

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.

Video: 7DFPS Cannonball Z Gameplay

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.

Video: 7DFPS: OxyFPS

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.

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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. :)

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Moosader's Text-Based Game Competition [until April 9th 2012]

image labeled "Text-Based Game": ASCII-Art Female with a o_o expression. Buttons saying "Attack" and "Glare" next to her, the first being selected

Moosader - creator, host and leading contributor to OpenArt - also hosts game development competitions on her community's forum.

The current theme is "Text-Based Game" and will be over in 9 days, so feel free to join! There are 25 projects in it so far.

Make a text-based game, like Zork, Adventure, Nethack, or something completely your own!

I spotted some free, open source projects among them [1] [2] but didn't have time to take a closer look. There's parody, Lua, C++ and JavaScript represented is all I can tell so far.

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Wolfire's Mojam Game Art Assets are Public Domain

Wolfire made an unfinished prototype using the proprietary Unity engine for the private Humble Bundle Mojam. You can watch thic entertaining, commented timelapse video to find out more.

another video: Mojam Art Overview

 Art assets have been released into the public domain (.zip here), with a few exceptions mentioned here (music and sand texture).

Blender import of a few .obj files from the .zip for testing

Included are 47 .obj 3d models, 41 .png/.tga/.psd images and 7 .wav sounds.

If you're interested in the ongoing development of The Broadside Express, follow this thread.

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Dev Corner: Crowdfunding, OpenGameArt and Kickstarter

Donations: Commercial use of Free Software and Libre Art

Kickstarter for Game Dev
I'm sure you heard the amazing Kickstarter news ;) Dusted, author of Wizznic! shared a short thought about the news I'm actually talking about.

FOSS Games and Donations Now
The FLARE RPG project page now has a PayPal donation button.

0A.D. uses Pledgie for funding.


There is a list of FOSS projects that accept BitCoin here and a more general list here.

OGA and Kickstarter Thoughts
OpenGameArt founder and admin Bart K, shared that he is considering Kickstarter, but could use some more inspiration about what rewards could be given to high pledge-givers.

OGA/CC/FSF Game Dev Contest Plan
There's also a game dev contest in the works, which will be organized this summer by Creative Commons, Free Software Foundation and OpenGameArt. The details are still getting ironed out.

Donations on Free Gamer
By the way: here on FreeGamer, we have Flattr widgets below the posts of the authors who provided their Flattr IDs and other donation methods are available on the about page.


So far no "Donations" page on our wiki, where setting up of PayPal, BitCoin, Flattr and other services is explained for open source game dev projects. There is a rather long thread on the topic of making money with free/FOSS games.


Any donation statistics from open source (game) projects and expertise on the subject are highly welcome in the comments!

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GGJ License, EGP Feb 2012, STK Overworld, FG Interview

GGJ 2012 Theme

Global Game Jam 2012 is over and you can find all the by-nc-sa-licensed games here. We talked to the organizers about allowing free (as in freedom etc.) licenses and got some positive replies, but in the end it was too short a notice.

We ask you now to write a short message to GGJ, asking for the inclusion of further licenses, for example a GPL+CC-BY-SA combination for GGJ 2013. Also feel free to discuss this in the comments.

If you participated in GGJ, we would like to encourage you to release your games under free licenses in addition to the required nc license.

EGP February 2012

Speaking of jams, the 7day-jam-during-one-month by Experimental Gameplay Project is "Infinite Worlds" for this month.

STK Overworld

As recently announced, one of the new features in SuperTuxKart 0.8 will be an overworld-connected challenge system.

Durk Talsma: AI programmer

Flight Gear's blog released a new interview. You can find the other interviews so far linked in this post.

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Ludum Dare, Game Jams and Licenses

Olofson's LD22 game

Free, open source licenses are underrepresented at game jams and contests.

This weekend's Ludum Dare ends in a few hours and it already counts 754 entries. The following authors mentioned open source licenses in the context of the compo/jam:

• roschdal plans on "releasing the game as open source on Github"
• Riley Adams's project is already there (GPL3)
• Agon's code is as well ("LICENSE: TODO")
• mcc released LD code as open source before, maybe it'll happen again?
• Olofson's (of Kobo Deluxe fame) failed submission is available (under LGPL)
• Furyhunter submitted a jME game (Not sure but seems to be GPL)
• kragniz's GPL game requires pyglet and pymunk
• lorancou made a HTML/Canvas game called lonekitty (GPL)

lonekitty

Here are some non-submission projects discovered on Ludum Dare:

• dwrensha released a SDL framework (GPL)
• KhaoTom mentioned the Spacescape skybox generator

A *lot* of other submissions use GitHub but have no license info. :(

I found above projects using this advanced Google search. Hopefully, there will be more results in a few hours, which would mean another blog post.

kragniz' in-progress

Here's a quick list of ideas how free licenses could get more attention in such events.

• Organizers could recommend free code and asset licenses
• Developers could offer porting non-cross-platform submissions in exchange for release under free licenses
• Participating developers, who already use free licenses, could advertise these in blog posts and announcements (more)

The Global Game Jam for example requires use of the CC-BY-NC-SA license, which unfortunately is non-free though.

Let us know of any freely licensed game jam/competition entries which we didn't cover!

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jMonkeyEngine Official Beta Contest Announced

We're a week into what has been an absolutely thrilling experience so far. What was more of an experiment to see what some developers might pull off with the new Beta release has far exceeded our expectations.

Prizes include a free copy of the upcoming "jMonkeyEngine 3 Beginner's Guide" and a free theme from the WooThemes shop. Additional prizes might be added.

If you want to get caught up you should read the following articles:
Brief Announcement
Exhaustive Contest Rules
Contest Prizes

Even if you've never used jMonkeyEngine before, 1 and 1/2 months could be enough time to put a game together if you have some experience in Java programming and game development already. We highly encourage developers to download the jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK as the recommended route to a quick start. From there the wiki and community forum are mere clicks away.

We hope this contest will bring some new blood into our lively community, and we trust you'll find it worth your while.

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