LinWarrior 3D September news 2012

video: LinWarrior September 2012 git gameplay status

A word from the developer of LinWarrior 3D:

In the past weeks I've been working on some of the last changes to clean up the guts inside the mech class by moving everything to components and systems.
That includes a component for sounds that should eventually enable foot steps.
Of course some special cases still remain for later cleanup (like the jump jet light).
Some possible experiment-branch directions I see now are these:

• Persistence (savegames dude) using sqlite

• Reworking the Input to have events consumed by systems/components (or passing abstractions of SDL events).

• Some relaxing modeling work and integration of some more models

• Extending Physics to support tracked and wheeled vehicles - just talking about slanting on sloped ground by having 4 particles for wheels.

Multithreading would be possible, and easy with the system/component approach now but it isn't a top priority I think.
Easy because the execution model is working in phases, one sub-system at a time with no immediate communication between subsystems.

- hc on the forums

LinWarrior r19+

LinWarrior r19+ Test Video

I tested and recorded the latest LinWarrior git revision (a few changes since release19). Some of the new features in r19 and after include:

• Atmospheric daytime setting


• New units (Flopsy, Scorpion and Tank)


• Cockpit frame in first-person view


• Trees, trees, trees

The LinWarrior engine is still being developed, for example mechs are still hardcoded rather than configured in textfiles right now.

PS: A video of actual gameplay, rather than just testing the controls. Unfortunately no sound but 1920x1200 resolution...

Playing LinWarrior r19+ [mute]

Some random news from our forums etc

Yes, big summer hole here in FG... luckily we get at least some guest posts from Bart (aka the OpenGameArt founder).

So, maybe today we just make a small summery of recent news that popped up in our Freegamedev forums (boring for the forum regulars I know :p ):

First of all (as we mention that project way to little), find a release candidate of the latest SuperTuxKart version in this thread.

In our showcase forum you can also find a nice (but low-fi) turn based strategy game called Strategic Initiative, which is made by the same guy who was also behind the classic Empire (well I didn't know it before ;) ). Also don't miss the updates on The Legend of Edgar.

Back in the section of out hosted projects, the user Skorpio has been showcasing some nice Mechs for Linwarrior3D lately, which are now being integrated into the game:



At the Red Eclipse forums an interesting collaboration project to make a mod loosely based on Team Fortress (classic?) recently showed up, with the user John_III making a lot of progress on the first map (and a very recent small WIP by me too ;) ):



Oh and the work that is currently done to redesign the look of OpenDungeons as seen in this thread, is looking rather fantastic too.

In other words, don't miss the action in our forums (and on the FG planet), during this time of little blog updates ;)

LinWarrior r18 "Hazy Blur"

LinWarrior 3D r18

There's a new LinWarrior 3D source release [download link above first screenshot on this page].

• Enhanced look of landscape and sky
• Location markers and zones
• Mission messages 
• Jump-jet-thruster vibrations (quite awesome!)
• Blueoading screen:

There's a to-do list and I see collaboration options in procedural city generation: Current cities are textured blocks of different size aligned on a flat grid and created manually. The textures of roads and buildings are procedurally generated though.

There's supposed to be a git repository for the project soon.

HackCraft's OGA contributions

HackCraft, the developer of LW3D, has made many small-but-useful contributions to OpenGameArt in the last few months.

PS: Aw, yeah, mech games.

PPS: I'm curious what kind of suggestions people come up with after test-playing this release, so feel welcome to comment!

Contributing to FPSs, RPGs and other games by sharing thoughts and spreading words

I* joined PARPG to work on game interaction (controls and GUI). This decision was made after taking a look at some projects and talking with their members about what tasks are available. Now I want to tell you about the 'open source jobs' available out there.

Radakan (RPG) is currently a solo project that uses the Python 3D engine Panda3D. Project lead Taldor would like help with the game design, GUI design, Writing (dialog & quests) and content creation (creating and converting models, managing the content pipeline). Warning: Radakan's website is currently down, best way to get in contact is irc.freenode.net#radakan.

CubeCreate (FPS + Editor) will be a Lua-driven Sauerbraten-based engine. It could use some design help for editor accessibility improvements and thoughts on asset management (model/texture import) while the developers port to Lua.

0 AD (RTS) has a a well-compiled list of tasks.

Megaglest (RTS) would like to have somebody find more players for the game. In my humble opinion it could use the help of an audio designer to take a look at some files' volume levels as well. :) A re-work of their homepage is being discussed as well.

Ryzom (MMORPG) still needs to port the world editor but also would be interested in designers to work on a 3D editor.

LinWarrior3D (Mech Action) will soon have a new release. There might be a git repository soon. I got a list of possible tasks:

• Homepage enhancing, either with Drupal or static (portions of the website should have the feeling of you-are-in-the-world rather than you-are-reading-the-website). There needs to be resemblance to the current homepage for keeping identity.
• The HUD-Displays could use an overhaul.
• Concepts for a world setting, places, factions for (GTA-like) emerging gameplay - to enhance and populate the game world.
• Concepting a tutorial at the current state of interaction

Suggestions, problem/bug reports, performance reports and fan-mail are always welcome with LW3D. Contributors should be aware that LW3D is a slow-paced "lifetime" project. :)

*remember, this is a collaborative blog, I'm one of currently 4 posters :)

Coldest, LinWarrior, Metallblech - Mech Combat Action Games

I stumbled upon an older release of Coldest while making space on my HDD for game video recording, Metallblech popped out of nowhere recently on our forums with awesome art and I still haven't tried Linwarrior's latest release. Time for a mech games post!

Mechs are big robots and they make sounds like this and you can have great fun assembling them and then blowing stuff up!

Metallblech

Mashup of Metallblech's art

Planned as a game for Syntensity, there are many models ready for usage in Metallblech, but (IIRC) not one line of code has been written yet and the project is desperate for programmers. ;)

Coldest

Coldest: mech stomping, super weather, lasers overheating

Coldest actually allows you to assemble the weapon systems of your mech. That's quite an important part for this genre: first, carefully assemble your mech, then brutally disassemble enemy mechs! A readme would be quite a good addition.

The command `svn co https://www.nemebean.com/svn/coldest/` will allow you to pull the latest code [EDIT: and for more instructions check out this wiki page.]

Coldest code is under GPL, art is under who knows what. (Actually I do know that both textures and sounds wouldn't qualify as free-as-in-freedom free. :) )

Coldest's mech configuration menu

Coldest solo test [tinyogg]

LinWarrior 3D

Unfair 4 vs 1 at level start? Check!

Since the last time Free Gamer reported about LinWarrior, the 2010_03_20 "Hadron Collider" version was released (download here). Besides the fact that textures and models have been licensed under "good" CC licenses, code tweaks and visual fixes, the MD5Mesh format is now supported.

Mouse control is definitely the one thing I would like to see implemented ASAP.

Say hi to these rockets!

LinWarrior gameplay [tinyogg]

For some reason any video I recorded of LW3D would not show the dirty and brown ground texture, I'm sorry for the distorted view on the game caused by this!

Conclusion

I like mech games alot!

alot!

What do you people think of this genre? Do you prefer tactical, turn-based over action 3D mech games? What's the one thing you want to be able to do in following versions of the games I introduced here? (I want to be able to shoot off legs!)

Pretty Warzone; What's to see in Linwarrior; Sauerbraten and content

Warzone 2100 has pretty new textures! Oh wait, didn't I report this more than one year ago? Well.. the release after the next is supposed to feature them, finally.. But I *do* have news to offer: Building models are being re-modeled and re-textured! Slightly related: There is a tutorial on making models and texturing them on their forums.

 Warzone 2100: re-worked buildings

Hmm... I wish there were "tower defense" maps for Warzone 2100... and that moving units wouldn't be such a torture.. Speaking of torture, do you wish you could test WZ with new textures but don't have the time to figure out how to get the svn version? Well, maybe the following showcase video of the textures in-game will ease your pain. ^^



LinWarrior3D 2009_11_08 r15 was released a while ago. As a lover of the game that served as inspiration for LinWarrior, I'm compelled to like it. After all: you can shoot (and destroy stuff even!), you can move torso and legs individually and you have a wingman.

On the other hand, there is no mission goal and the game lacks any mech customization. Also I really miss a "STOMP STOMP" sound.. As for the game's name: well, at least they don't call it "FreeMech". :)



There's quite a bunch of new content in Sauerbraten's subversion repository, taken from Quadropolis, their community content sharing web site. However, [Insert expressions of discontent about licensing choices of others here].



I am quite surprised how much new content Quadropolis is attracting. On the other hand a discussion was started on OpenGameArt's forums, discussing the additional hardships of creating free as in freedom art, which kind of explains it. On the other, other hand, OpenGameArt is doing not bad as well, it attracts contributors who would probably never find a fitting project for their art and keep their works on their hard drive until the next disk failure should have separated them. I wish that projects would start telling their contributors to upload their works straight to OGA though.

I also hope that the community content sites set up for SuperTuxKart, VDrift and WorldForge will help contributors as they are supposed to.