Jedi Knight source-code liberated & Flare 0.18

In a pretty surprising move the source-code of the idTech3 based games Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were released under the GPL by Activision and Raven Software. You can find the original source drops here and here.
The content is obviously still propitiatory (e.g. you need to buy it), but some people have already plans to upgrade the source as OpenJK (most likely back-ports from ioQuake3) and make a Linux version most likely.
Would be also cool if a nice stand-alone FOSS 3rd person sword-fighting game would come out of this... but the detailed player animations will likely be the biggest road-block.

Ahh well... and since I hate posting something with no pictures or videos I include the pretty nice new Flare 0.18 release:



It includes some pretty nice new features too:

• 10 Equipment Slots, up from 4 (and easily configurable)
• Starting "Class" choice (beginner's power/item kit)
• Environmental/Ambient Sounds on maps
• Much improved handling of Animations, Effects, and Sounds
• New Powers: Stealth, Traps, Thrown Weapons
• New Item Bonuses: XP gain, Gold Find, Item Find, and more
• Improved support for various input devices
• Two new starting quests

That's all for now :)

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Unvanquished development news

I have to apologize for the recent lack in FG updates, but at least *I* have a good excuse as first my Internet broke down, and now I am preparing to relocate to another continent (extra points for guessing which in the comments ;) ).

Anyways... it seems like there is now a "winner" out of the total breakdown and split-up of the efforts to revitalize Tremulous earlier this year. I will not go into details, but I can assure you it was not pretty, and I decided to skip any news coverage on it until the dust had settled.
I hope this is now the case, and for now it seems only one of the projects really shows some progress... that is unless the other is not working in stealth mode.

Lets see... at least Unvanquished is actually releasing alphas of their game, so I am leaning toward them when it comes to which will actually become a nice, playable game soon.

You can follow development quite well on one of the team-member's blog here. In the most recent post, some nice screenshots surfaced, and both their new modeling, GUI and animation work seems quite nice too.

Unvanquished: Human base preparing for an attack

Anyways, check out the other cool news from them, and maybe try one of their recent alphas... however don't expect a fully refurbished Tremulous yet.

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Open Source Game Summer Screen Shorts 2012 #2

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.

Summoning Wars, a 3d-visuals hack'n'slash needs a new lead developer.

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.

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