SuperTuxKart accepted in GSoC2013!

Google's Summer of Code, is an annual sponsorship of programmers to improve selected open-source programs (or games :D ).
This year, quite a few interesting FOSS game projects got accepted (again) and one being our very own friends of the SuperTuxKart project.

Read more about their role as a mentoring organization here. So how about applying as a participant yourself and helping out this great FOSS game?

You can also browse other accepted mentoring projects here, if SuperTuxKart isn't your thing. Other notable FOSS game (engine) projects accepted are:

• Battle for Wesnoth
• WorldForge (Hosting also Ryzom Core & CEGUI)
• Crystal Space
• OGRE3D
• Blender 3D

Nice summer of coding ahead :)

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

• Battle for Wesnoth
• Hedge Wars
• Unknown Horizons (includes FIFE)

Open Source Engines

• Crystal Space (includes DAMN)
• OGRE3D
• ScummVM
• WorldForge, CEGUI and Ryzom Core
• PySoy (under the Python Software Foundation)

Open Source Tools

• Blender Foundation
• Inkscape
• Outercurve Foundation (see CoApp)
• GIMP

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

Complete List of Fosdem Game Dev Resources

A link to some Fosdem Resouces has been already posted here before, but now we have a complete list of available slides and audio and video recordings from the event:

Event	Slides	Audio	Video	Speaker
Xonotic: The road to 1.0	Yes	No	No	Merlijn Hofstra
FreedroidRPG: Anatomy of a RPG	Yes	Yes	Yes	Arthur Huillet
Unknown Horizons: Data-Driven and Component-Based Game-Entities	Yes	Yes	No	Thomas Kinnen
WorldForge: The Dynamic Data Driven Worlds	Yes	Yes	No	Alistair Riddoch
Pandora: Mobile Linux Computer with Gaming Gontrols	No	No	No	Michael Mrozek
Wesnoth: Balancing a Game the Open Source Way	Yes	Yes	No	Jeremy Rosen
Ogre3d: Getting Started with Game Development	Yes	Yes	No	Erik Ogenvik
Gluon: Game Creation and Distribution	Yes	Yes	No	Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen
The Future of Open Web Gaming	Yes	No	No	Rob Hawkes

Battle for Wesnoth Architecture

The popular open source game Battle for Wesnoth has been featured in the new free online book The Architecture of Open Source Applications.

We believe that the beauty of the Battle for Wesnoth as a program is how it made coding accessible to a wide variety of individuals. To achieve this aim, the project often made compromises that do not look elegant whatsoever in the code. It should be noted that many of the project's more talented programmers frown upon WML for its inefficient syntax. Yet this compromise enabled one of the project's greatest successes. Today Wesnoth can boast of hundreds of user-made campaigns and eras, created mostly by users with little or no programming experience.

Read the full section online for further insight into the design and design decisions of Battle for Wesnoth.

Assorted strategy game news

Quick Sunday afternoon rundown of recent strategy game updated...
0AD got a new beta 5 release, which improvements in rendering & AI code, a completely new faction (Iberians), and a new map:


MegaGlest also got updated recently (Version 3.5.1), bringing various fixes and performance improvements. Furthermore I can report that both the sable and the development version of Battle for Wesnoth have been updated, and I strongly recommend everyone (who has not played this game for a while) to retry this classic in the newest development version.

EvolutionRTS, a nice looking (but sadly CC-by-NC-ND licensed) game based on the SpringRTS engine also saw an update to version 1.3 this month (check out this gameplay video).

Hmmm, what else? Ahh, UFO:AI was ported to Android, and and the change of Warzone2100 from SDL to qt (which is not exactly a game framework) raised some eyebrows, but will probably make the game more easily portable and better integrated into your favorite desktop.

Non RTS strategy games

An update so quickly? Behold the Free Gamer world is coming to an end. :p


So, we mentioned some promising RTS games in the last update. OK, I forgot to mention Spring1944, but I am also a bit reluctant to mention Spring and its mods since it is such a pain in the backside to get it running correctly. :(


Back on topic... there a quite a few really great non RTS FOSS strategy games. I guess I don't really need to mention the classics to the typical reader of this blog, but Wesnoth, FreeCiv, FreeCol and UFO:AI are all very playable and good looking games! However there are others that get less attention and also some that show great promise!

Advanced strategic command

Advanced strategic command is one of those that gets relatively little news coverage, even though it is a really playable game. Granted, its graphics are pretty much the same as its big inspiration, the classic Battle Isle series, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad, right?

A new version was just released a few days ago, which finally also includes a tutorial for those new to this type of game.

Also interesting is the (German) Project: Battle Planets, which could be described as a MMOTBS based on ASC. It is not quite what you would expect from this description as most of the MMO part is done manually by human game moderators, which exchange ASC games states between players (sorry, it is a bit hard to explain exactly ;) ).

A similar game to ASC is Crimson Fields by the way, which has found its way to many mobile platforms.

Widelands

Another often neglected game is Widelands, which is obviously based on the classic game the Settlers (no not the Settlers of Catan, check Pioneers for that).

Widelands game play

The graphics could still be improved a bit, but it is shaping up to be a very faithful and fun re-implementation of that great classic game.

Unknown Horizons

While we are at FOSS re-implementations of great games... Unknown Horizons is continuing to become a Anno1602 clone of epic proportions. ;)

UH game play

It is not quite at the point where it could be described as a fully playable game yet, but you can expect it to become one relatively soon, I guess! (Another not quite playable but really promising game worth surely mentioning is FreeOrion by the way).

8Kingdoms

Last but not least, there is 8Kingdoms, which really is one of those games people don't even try after having a short glance at the screenshots. Yes, it's programmers art, albeit one that at least tried to hide it by having a plastic-like style for the figures. ;)

But if you actually try it, you will realize that even though it is a bit rough around the edges (why can't I set a custom wide-screen resolution :( ), the game play and the engine is already quite advanced.

What this game clearly needs is an artist taking over the graphical matters, and then this could quite quickly become one of those true FOSS strategy game gems!