Showing posts with label unknownhorizons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unknownhorizons. Show all posts

Monday, February 11, 2013

To unknown horizons to forge worlds...

I totally missed the rather big update of Unknown Horizons at the end of last month. The changes/updates are summarized by them as following:
  • Completely new tileset
  • New buildings: alvearies, barracks, blender, cocoa field, doctor, herbary, lookout, pastry shop, spice field, vineyard, vintner
  • Many new graphics for existing buildings
  • AI can now handle war and diplomacy
  • Vast performance improvements
  • New music track: Battle
  • Tons of bug fixes
  • Updated translations
  • Much, much more
Yesterday there was also a new 0.7.0 release of the 3D Worldforge client Ember:
Worldforge 3D client Ember 0.7.0
Graphics are starting to look rather nice, right?

Last but not least,the recently open-sourced AgentKeeper got a dedicated sub-forum on our messageboards and is looking for contributors:



So, if you want to help out with this brand new jMonkey powered dungeon tycoon game, check out this nice list of video tutorials.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Summer of Code: Earn Money Developing Open Source Games


Matt Raykowski, aka sfb, is a community herder for the Ryzom Core project and Summer of Code mentor.


Some people may not be familiar with Google's Summer of Code. Annually Google hosts two programs: Summer of Code and Code In. Google Code In (aka GCI) is a contest for 13-18 year olds to engage them in open source that features a variety of tasks and projects for them to complete for points. Google Summer of Code (aka SoC or GSoC) is a program to encourage college students to participate in open source development. It is a 3 month long project that pays USD$2500 per evaluation period - there is a mid-term and final evaluation. You can find a detailed timeline on their site and a complete list of organizations. The student application period begins on March 26th, 2012 and ends on April 6th, 2012. The actual programming portion of the project is between May 21st, 2012 and August 20th, 2012.

In years past Google hasn't given a lot of love to open source games in its Summer of Code program. There have been a small handful of projects which have participated year after year but the selection was pretty limited. Beginning last year they opened the proverbial flood games for participating projects and we saw a number of new open source game and game-related projects become accepted which is very exciting.

Listed below are open source games, game engines or tools frequently used by game projects that have been accepted into Google Summer of Code 2012. If you are a college student looking to "flip bits not burgers" this summer and are interested in game development now is your chance to contribute to an open source game-related project and get paid (USD$5000) for doing so!

Open Source Games
Open Source Engines


Open Source Tools

If I missed a project you think should be on this list just let me know!


Thursday, March 8, 2012

Unknown Horizons Multiplayer Session March 10, 4:00 pm GMT

image: Unknown Horizon's multiplayer menu

There have been six updates on Unknown Horizon's blog this year alone and their latest is an invitation to a multiplayer gaming session.

Saturday, March 10, 16:00 GMT (convert to your time zone)

You will have to get and compile the development builds for Linux, Mac OS X or Windows but the guidelines are extensive and you can get real-time support via IRC, so don't let that intimidate you. :)

images: showing off Unknown Horizon's multiplayer chat

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Monday, November 14, 2011

Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Changes and Videolog

Unknown Horizons 2011.3 is out! Features are:


  • Complete settlement AI (details here)
  • Combat and diplomacy system
  • Increase in performance (partially thanks to FIFE)
  • Support for internationalized voices (right now available: de, en, fr)
  • Nine new buildings, one new ship (here are some)
  • New statistic widgets
  • Usability and interface improvements (for example the in-game menu)
  • New maps and a parameters-based map generator
The original announcement is here and some more details about the new features here.




Development is active and they are on the lookout for people to help out or even join:

  • 2D/3D/Animation artists can find some tasks here
  • Naval public domain painting lovers can help by finding some background art
  • Interested in mechanics/story? Share your ideas for catastrophes!
  • Interesting screenshots and videos should be posted here
  • Feedback is needed for this release. It can be shared on the forums or IRC room.

Translators, sound artists, programmers, game designers, writers and voice artists can also help. The get involved  page will let you know how to get started.

Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Screenshot 12
Pioneer and settler buildings


Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Screenshot 11
Shooting pirates


Unknown Horizons 2011.3 Screenshot 9 - Translucent Environment
Translucent environment