Lost Sky Tactical J-RPG [PyGame]

Lost Sky is a PyGame-based Tactical J-RPG that runs on Linux, OS X and Windows.

To play on a system that has mercurial and pygame installed, run:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/featheredmelody/lost-sky-project-public
cd lost-sky-project-public/Story\ of\ a\ Lost\ Sky/
chmod +x srpg.py
./srpg.py

Lost Sky screenshots

Video: Lost Sky Gameplay: Tactical jRPG on Linux [PyGame] 

Story of a Lost Sky is a Turn Based Strategy RPG with gameplay that is similar to Fire Emblem. Units are placed on a tile map and each side takes turns moving and attacking. Outside the battle map, the player is able to customize their characters and equip new spells and traits.

This project was discovered by seeing a link banner on Valyria Tear's blog. Yay networking!

Code License: New BSD
Content License: Various: PD, CC-BY 3.0, CC-Sampling+ (non-free), Unknown

Read More

Hedgewars 0.9.19 released

Everyone's favorite clone of worm-warfare, Hedgewars recently got a rather big new release as one of the developers pointed out to us by email.

One of the new level themes for Hedgewars 0.9.19

The changes are quite extensive, so instead of failing to summarize them here, check out the above linked quite extensive original release announcement.

You can also have a look at this fan-made trailer if you enjoy cheezy stuff ;)

Read More

Free Orion 0.4.2

A few day ago a much improved version of the 4X space strategy game FreeOrion was released. Check out this cool set of introduction videos (Part 1, 2, 3):



Most notable additons:

• Very much improved, non-cheating AI. Sometimes experienced 4X players loose.
• Many GUI enhancements and shortcuts.
• Galactopedia expanded with game mechanics articles and many cross-links.
• Batch production of ships now possible.
• Improved sitrep notifications
• Reworked stealth and detection
• Almost everything has been enhanced, reworked, and better balanced.

So go and kick some alien butt ;)

Read More

Ancient Beast: HTML5 Hexagonal RTS' First Release

Ancient Beast is a FOSS game project that has been in development by Freezing Moon for a couple of years, tantalizing everyone with top notch concept art and 3D models. 

After a rather large restructuring in game scope, where they changed from attempting to create a 3D RTS in the Blender Game Engine, to a 2D hexagonal TBS built on HTML5, they have delivered a promising gameplay prototype that offers a mix of Heroes of Might and Magic and Magic: The Gathering's gameplay. 

Gameplay currently revolves around summoning creatures and using their abilities to defeat other summoners

Still in heavy development, the game still needs to implement the entirety of its sizable bestiary, as well as adding animated creatures by utilizing the models they have created.

So, if you have any skills in web development, jump aboard and help them complete this awesome game!

Read More

Shorts: FreeOrion 0.4.1 and Xonotic Vehicle Gameplay

FreeOrion

image: Moving a fleet around in FreeOrion

video: FreeOrion testplay (best viewed at 720p HD)

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)

video: Unsealed Trial 2 Vehicle CTF longplay

I have been playing Xonotic on the [MoN] Vehicle Gameplay server and quite enjoying it lately. Just recently, a first version of Unsealed Trial 2 (screenshots) has been released there.

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.

Read More

Shorts: LambdaCube + StuntCarRacer, Naval Warfare, 0 A.D. Alpha 11

video: StuntCarRacer/LambdaCube 3D demo

StuntCarRacer (last release 2006) got re-born as a demo for LambdaCube 3D, a Haskell-based rendering engine.

video: Naval Warfare Test

Naval Warfare is a game in progress being made at Universidade de Brasília, using Gear2D (Linux/Windows).

image: celtic settlement in 0 A.D.

0 A.D. Alpha 11 got released.

Some of these news have been powered by SourceForge's ability to sort games by update date.

Read More

Great changes upcoming for UFO:AI

One of the FOSS projects I really hold dear (mainly because they chose to include a few models made by myself :p ) is UFO:AI.
For those totally out of the loop: it's a turn based strategy game based on the classic game X-Com utilizing an improved Quake2 engine.

Recently they had a new release, version 2.4, but the changes upcoming are even cooler (new soldier models and a greatly improved GUI):

More cool screens of those upcoming changes can be found here and here. And here you can find some more as part of a slightly older, but still interesting interview with the developers.

Besides these development news, there seems to have been an informal competition of who can do the nicer Let's Play videos of UFO:AI ;)

FrontFox's UFO:AI Let's Play video part1

Click here for Part 2 and Part 3, or check out this series of Let's Play videos as the alternative: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Part 1 starts out with an outdated version though).

So if you are hooked now by this awesome game, you might as well check out some alternatives: OpenXcom and XenoWar. Neither of which has as much polish and nice graphics as UFO:AI however.

Read More

The Big idTech 2 round-up post

Hello fans ;) Today we get back to the main business of this blog: gaming news!

And of course my favorite genre: FPS (forevar!)... specifically everything related to the Quake2 engine (idTech2).

The reason is that we got a nice mail from the developers of Quake2World, which I had not really on my radar as still under development. But now they released a public beta, which I have not tried yet as there isn't a Linux download (yet).

Edit: Updated to newer video

But judging from the pictures and videos, I am was quite sure that DFSG standards are not fulfilled... and they know and don't care (very short sighted... but well).

So that is why I decided that they don't deserve a news post all by themselves :p

Low and behold... an update on all Q2 based games that *are* on my radar:

AlienArena is preparing for a new release with a reloaded trailer and some update one engine improvements:

What's new in AlienArena

Ya3dag, also released a new version recently and I still think its cool in-game editing features should be picked up by some other idTech2 engines. Can't be that hard to port...
Especially for UFO:AI it might be a nice way to modify missions. Speaking of which... they are also preparing a new version 2.4 and released an RC (changelog) recently. Again no Linux download, so I am skipping it for now. They have however almost reached full FOSS status of their sound-effects... at least that is what they say, the graphic they posted says CC-sampling plus though, which is AFAIK not FOSS compatible :(

Now to the games that don't show any real visible progress: War§ow is just posting stupid stuff interesting trivia on their blog. However I don't consider the long awaited 0.7 release vapourware yet.
Another matter in the vapourware category is OverDose though... in development since what feels like at least a decade, and still no release anywhere near (which is also their excuse why they don't share their nice engine improvements or for that matter any source-code all together >:( ). However they recently posted a lengthy news on Moddb in what seems to be an attempt to jump on the current "Kickstarter" bandwagon. Think what you want of that... but they are for sure not getting any of my cash before there isn't a engine-source release...

Read More

Ancient Beast now Free as in Freedom!

A little while ago, Ancient Best dropped the NonCommercial license they were using for art and assets and are now DFSG-free.

Facebook announcement about Ancient Beast's license change

The game runs in HTML5 and is a turn based strategy in early, active development. It is supposed to run on low-spec computers.

Ancient Beast Battle Mock-Up

Their 1.4 G repository of concepts, drawings, mockups, audio files and 3d models is impressive:

 Ancient Beast Concept Art

Ancient Beast Icons

More can be seen in the official gallery

You can support the project through PayPal, Bitcoin and Flattr here.

Read More

Traction Edge: Squad-Based Tactics, Roguelike Interface

Traction Edge is a story driven, turn based strategy game set in a Steampunk Victorian England. Gameplay is similar to the Gollop Brothers UFO or Lasersquad series in that you have "Action Points" to spend during your turn. The game also borrows heavily from roguelikes in both look and feel.

Traction Edge is currently under development and is considered alpha software. It is playable but limited. v0.2 was released for the Annual Roguelike Release Party 2011. It is distributed as source only and requires SFML 1.6 (not 2.0) and cmake to build.

Current Features:

• Turn based gameplay
• 2-4 member squad teams
• Destructable terrain
• Victorian Steampunk setting
• SFML based, rescalable on the fly, 16x16 graphical tiles.

Planned Features:

• 16-20 static levels with full story arc
• Random content, procedural maps
• Procedural tech tree
• Civilians
• Z-levels

You can keep track of all development activity using this feed. The Linux distro that I use doesn't support SFM 1.6 any more, which makes me unable to test this interesting sounding and looking squad tactics game.

Read More

Hale Review & Flare 0.15 Video

Hale RPG

A very fine read is this review of the TBS/RPG Hale. Its first comment was written by the sole developer.

Video: Flare 0.15

Flare 0.15 introduces outdoor areas. Translation submissions are welcome now as well. Look for instructions and examples in this post.



Freedroid RPG recently released the second candidate for 0.15. Soon it will be ten years since registration of the freedroid project on SourceFroge.net.



Checking on Scourge 2, another open source RPG title, there has been no development for eight months.

Read More

Settlers of Catan Rules in Open Source Games (aka Clones, Remakes, Implementations)

Settlers of Catan is a popular board game. In today's terms it can be described as very 'social' thanks to its trade mechanic, which can lead to exploitation, corruption, deception... all that fun stuff.

There are a few open source implementations of the game rules, some of which I mentioned years ago and with two of them being updated recently, I decided to revisit them.

First, a few fun facts in comparable table form, further below you'll find screenshots, impressions and feature lists. Enjoy! If you're looking for somebody to play against, why not try the #freegamer IRC channel? :)

Thanks for hiponboy's (of SumWars fame) help at testing games and collecting data!

	Game	Platform	Activity	© Infringement	™ Infringement	Compilable?

	Pioneers (pio)	C, GTK+	active	Hex-tiles look suspicious	None found	Yes (./configure && make)
	Java Settlers of Catan (jsettlers2)	Java	active	Yes ("Gorillaz" character portrait file in resources)	Yes ("Settlers of Catan")	Yes (ant)
	Cities3D	C/C++, openGL	6 months ago	None found	None found	No (./configure error)
	Solitaire Settlers of Catan (solitairecatan)	Java	3 years ago	Yes (original Catan card images)	Yes ("Settlers of Catan")	No (ant error)
	jCatano	Java	5 years ago	None found	Possibly ("Catan")	Yes (ant)
	GL Catan	C/C++, openGL	5 years ago	Yes (original Catan card images)	Possibly ("Catan")	No (source not found)
	Java Settlers of Catan (javasettlers)	Java	6 years ago	None found	Yes ("Settlers of Catan")	No (instructions missing)
	Nettlers of Catan (nettlers)	C/C++	7 years ago	None found	Possibly ("_ettlers of Catan")	No (not ported to Linux)

In the table I pointed out copyright and trademark infringement, which according to this article created problems for SoC clones in the past.

I encourage project maintainers to check whether all assets are openly licensed, credited and legal and distance themselves from the Settlers of Catan trademark to avoid confusion.

Pioneers

Pioneers is feature-loaded and is configurable in content (maps), look (theme) and gameplay (rules).

Features: Various boards, Seafarers mode available, network multiplayer or single-player, one AI level, map editor, complex trade (not sure if it's possible to trade multiple vs multiple resources though), few custom rules, themes


Java Settlers of Catan (JSettlers2)

JSettlers2 nice to play with complex trade, although offers can be confusing and widgets can't be resized individually.

Another drawback is the apparently forced slowness of the AI. On the other hand the AI sometimes offers trade, which makes it stand out from the trade-passive AI of the other games.

Features: Board for 4/6 players, network multiplayer or single-player, one AI level, complex trade, few custom rules

My suggestion for a hopefully non-infringing name change: "Builders of Javatan"

By the way, I was inspired to create a little tile set for JSettlers2.


Cities3D

Cities3D looks great and feels great but needs a developer/maintainer.

Unfortunately FMOD is used for sound, which renders the game non-free.

Features: Various boards, Seafarers mode available, network multiplayer only, complex trade, polished UI, sounds


Solitaire Settlers of Catan

Solitaire Settlers of Catan has a nice look and a clear trade interface (although unfortunately only simple trade is possible).

Features: Board for 4/6 players, single-player only, different AI levels, simple trade, additional Volcano scenario

jCatano

jCatano has a non-intuitive interface and is a bit of a pain to play with for example no resource icons and impossible action buttons not being grayed out.

Features: Board for 4 players only, network multiplayer only, no harbors, no trade between players, unpolished UI

GL Catan

As long as source code is missing, GL Catan can be considered proprietary software.

Features: Custom board size, single-player only, different AI levels, savegames, map editor, no trade with AI, points to win can be set


Java Settlers of Catan (javasettlers)

Javasettlers is not playable.

Features: Javasettlers is a techdemo of board rendering and building placement.


Nettlers of Catan (nettlers)

Nettlers' advantage is its shortcut-driven interface and minimal UI.

Features: Custom board size, Seafarers mode only, multi-player only, complex trade, shortcut-driven interface

Note about features: "complex trade" means that "I will trade 2 wool and 1 wood against 1 iron" is possible with other players, "simple trade" means only "1 resource for 1" resource trade is possible.

Read More