Weaver: Magic FPS, OpenArena 0.8.5, Evidyon, Code Summers and web findings

Weaver

Weaver [introduction] is an objective-based ("invade checkpoints") team fps with a simple gesture sequence spell casting system. It uses the XreaL engine and is currently in an early development stage. Maps are under construction and a few spells are in place. Code is GPL-licensed, "Media will aim to use Creative Commons licenses."

Weaver concept art

Weaver's current spellcasting interface (Goethe's color wheel [1] ;) )

The level work I was able to witness is impressive. TRaK is the designer, which explains it.

Strolling in bow_block of Weaver - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5NQ1iT3Gg

Weaver's introduction includes a simple game design document. Compilation instructions are located here, communication happens over forum and IRC.

OpenArena 0.8.5

OpenArena has a new website look and a new patch release. It provides new or improved weapon effects, player skins, menu UI (video, compare to old), icons...

OA 0.8.1 icons

OA 0.8.5 icons

...and maps. For example:

OA 0.8.5 Botmatch DM on am_underworks2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrzGKL3zcg

Even though OpenArena is supposed to be a freely licensed Quake3 clone (with an anime theme) it also adds new weapons and game modes. I recently tested some of them, for example the Overload game mode, in which you have to destroy the enemy's base crystal:

OA 0.8.5 Overload on ps9ctf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Cpfldgsso

Evidyon

The Evidyon MMORPG's developer expressed their interest for making the game run on Linux and finds it to be relatively simple task. More info in this thread.

Don't have much to add to that. I'm glad to hear that it's possible and I hope that somebody will want to take such a programming job. Here's the latest gameplay video of the game to make completing this task more desirable: :)

Evidyon Town Guards - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWcCH6Td0Q

Google and Ruby Summers of Code

Battle for Wesnoth, Blender, Crystal Space, FreedroidRPG, Thousand Parsec, Tux4Kids and WorldForge take part in GoogleStudentsOpenCash.

EDIT: I was just informed, that NeL will share WorldForge's GSoC permission.

By accident (I wanted to get on the Rigs of Rods IRC channel but found myself on a ruby one) I discovered the existence of the RubyStudentsOpenCash. Any FOSS game projects besides Rubygame that could benefit from this? :)

And.. some websites

Blendswap, the new blender file sharing site will probably use CC0, BY and BY-SA as available licenses [2] and that makes me glad..

I discovered SampleSwap (via this post), which has a CC-licensed music category. It is impossible to filter by license (non-free CC flavors are supported), but at least it is easy to identify it, if you care about the terms. It uses yahoo's handy proprietary flash audio player and lists individual tracks instead of the ancient album-model that Jamendo chose. This makes it much nicer to browse for me.

Last bit of info: GameBoom is a site that wants to bring foss games to the people. It tries to do so not by covering only foss games but by allowing gratis games, while promoting the free as in freedom ones.

They are looking for bloggers/game reviewers, so if you are not on a strict foss diet, maybe there's a game you would like to introduce over there? Always remember though, that guest posts are welcome on this blog as well. ;) Just contact us via forum, irc or email (I'm sure you'll be able to find the links up there :) ).

EDIT: Remember GameJolt, another games-thing, where open source games are given attention.

Evidyon, HackWars, and SlothRPG: FreeGamer MMO Time!

So, here we go! First post from scary old uncle TheAncientGoat ;)

Evidyon, MMO from Reddit-way

Evidyon

Evidyon is an interesting 3D MORPG recently gone Open Source under the advice of the reddit community, releasing a whole slew of content, tutorials and documentation of how they went about making it in the process. This is a very admirable move, we'll all agree, so show them some love. Unfortunately, it's windows only, relying on DirectX (not VB though, thanks for the fix Nerrad), and I haven't gotten it running under Wine as of yet, but hopefully a few smart alecs can help port it.

Like most other mmo's it has a fantasy setting, as you can see in the screenshot and video, it also sports a Diabloesque style of combat

HackWars: MMO where you craft by programming

HackWars

Here's one for you scriptmonkies, Hackwars, a Java MMO where you play as a hacker (or cracker, more accurately), breaking into pcs by attacking their ports for massive damage. An interesting aspect of this game is its crafting system, you program your own programmes, either in Javascript or the game's built in HackScript, to make scripts that either help you fight or just entertain you. It has both a 2d and 3d interface.

This was also found via reddit and the author wrote some pretty interesting commentary on developing such a game (which you'll see if you follow that link). Also, why not post upcoming FOSS games on our little corner of redditOpenSourceGames and we'll try and cover them if we have the time.

SlothRPG

SlothRPG

SlothRPG is a fantasy 2D MUD -like RPG, also written in Java. It has recently been re-invigorated, so it's worth checking for updates. Unfortunately it doesn't have any servers online at the moment, so you'll have to host your own if you want to check it out