FaceTrackNoIR and FreeTrack: FOSS head-tracking (like TrackIR) - use any webcam to link to freelook /movement in games

FaceTrackNoIR (download) enables a user to use any webcam,by moving their head very slightly, to control the free-look/xyz movement of any game, through joystick emulation via PPjoy for Windows or directly when the game developer has included support.
Very popular with space/flight simulation community, this technology can be used with FPSs/3rd person RPGs as well. FaceTrackNoir uses the protocol developed for FreeTrack, among others, including FlightGear's own.

Webcams known to work well with FaceTrackNoIR.

Normally this type of control through head movement was very expensive, and required specialised IR cameras/lights/markers to acquire raw data which was processed through closed source software and sent to games via protocols like TrackIR, being aimed at the high end simulation users. The FreeTrack opensource project used cheap but specialised equipment, wrote their own processing software and sent the data to games via reverse engineered TrackIR protocol/FreeTrack protocol. FaceTrackNoIR takes raw data from any webcam, processes it, and sends to games via FreeTrack or other protocols or through emulating a joystick.

Orbiter with FaceTrackNoIR.

Even used in a non-foss pinball game.

Devs note: the quick head movements accentuate depth perception a lot, and shows off the 3d art.

(The last two videos were non-FOSS games, but only a few youtube vids as it is new software, and demonstrates different uses)

This is a new project, started in May 2010, built from FreeTrack source code and using faceAPI to help with imageprocessing. Unfortunately it is not available on Linux as faceAPI is windows only at the moment, and would require substituting with one of the opensource face tracking techs. A simple face-mouse cursor example here called eViacam, 8.9mb.Apparently working well as shown being used in GIMP here.


There is no mouse or keyboard emulation for games that don't support a tracking protocol yet, but it should not be hard to port from FreeTrack.It should be possible to use a mouse/keyboard emulator that accepts joystick inputs if the game does not support joystick look.

With the advent of Kinect and PC hacks for it, movement tracking based control will become more sought after. Given the additional (upto 6) degrees of freedom easily input by the user, perhaps some quite creative uses can be thought of as webcams are very commonplace.

Games with direct support
Note: anything stated as working with FreeTrack will also work.

Any of the free games running under the Freespace 2 open engine.
Flight gear
Combat Simulator Project, when released
Orbiter

Games that (should) benefit through emulation
(If any game benefits particularly well, be sure to post in comments, if any game would benefit if better joystick support was added to certain control elements, be sure to let devs know). Free look can be catered for by assigning axis displacement to angles, very simply.

 Any Spacesim

Pioneer
Vega Strike
Hardwar, when released

Any flightsim

Palmino
A lot of combat sims mentioned in this blog post

3rd person 3d RTS

Political space war
Far colony
A lot of the 3d Spring RTS games

Quite a lot of 3rd person RPG/RTS games have automated and often wonky cameras that would benefit from being made freelook, mouse controlled views could be utilised by linking to tracking and emulated in engines like Open Morrowind.

---

FreeTrack

FreeTrack is similar to FaceTrackNoIR, but requires markers,usually very cheap IR leds attached to headphones, which must be tracked. Mouse/joystick/keyboard emulation for games that don't support tracking protocols available. Linux is not supported although from the forums one or two people might be working on linux projects.

What it involves, without buying TrackIR/mocap specific equipment

• Webcam

• Photo negatives from an old reel to only let IR light through (if your cam doesn't have an IR mode)

• A hat, headphones or similar to stick markers to

• Cheap IR leds to use as markers, probably work less acurately with IR reflective tape/stickers..the idea is it stands out from the rest of the picture, and IR is an easy way to do that

• Costs less than 10 euro according to their website, more info here.

Used to drive a mouse cursor.

All videos courtesy of various Youtube people.

---

Gamers can download and try it immediately, game developers can add direct FreeTrack support, or add joystick/mouse support in a way that better accepts emulation. If you have an interest in interface tech, source code for both are available.

How to Advertise your FOSS game

Have a nice new FOSS game that no one knows about? Make it known through these (rather obvious) tried and tested ( not really ;) ) methods:

Forums

A Delicate Balance

Make a nice generic post with a couple (not too many!) screenshots, relevant links etc. Also, remember to stick around and answer questions and generally contribute to the forums you are posting to, you don't want to be a spam bot ;)

Post on the FreeGameDev forums! Fastest way to get an article on the blog, and a bunch of helpful people willing to give you a hand with development ('' previous parenthesis ;).

Linux Distro Forums: Always a safe bet (links go to relevant gaming sections)

• UbuntuForums
• Gentoo Forums
• Fedora Forums
• Arch Forums

Propaganda


0A.D. video posted in 2007 that still attracts players

Make Video for Advertising goodness! Videos > Pictures > Words when it comes to marketing.
Upload to Youtube/Vimeo/Vidsiteofchoice and attach it to the posts you make on the sites mentioned below

Post everywhere! The more places you have presence, the more eyeballs fall onto your work, the more players you attract. There are lots of places to post to, so give this task to some of those pesky FOSS hangers-on who don't code or make art (Like me! :D)

General game databases:

• ModDB / IndieDB : ModDB recently split into two, IndieDB is where you want to post if you have a standalone game. Also, these sites are huge so it will be harder to get noticed
• GameBoom : The site sponsoring OpenGameArt, Gameboom wants to host communities for (preferably FOSS) games
• IndieGameMag : Haven't had success with this one, but it allows for user submissions so...
• The Indie Gaming Source : Another database for indie games, nice categorization and more indie than IndieDB ;)
• GameJolt : For freeware games only! Gives you hosting space for files as well, kinda like sourceforge like site for games - the development tools :P Has a special section for open source games

Linux Only

If the game runs on Linux, here are a couple of Linux gaming sites where you can post to:

• Linux Game Database  : Nice database for all kinds of Linux games
• Gaming on Linux : A community like news site for Linux games
• Linux Games : Another blog (hiss :P) that allows for user-submitted articles
• Penguspy : Another database like site but with strict quality moderation 
• HappyPenguin / LinuxGameTome : Most well known Linux game database, it has been down/sickish of late though... It's served the community well though, so lets not talk bad of it 

Web Aggregators:

Kind of hit-or-miss because they require people to vote for you... Getting your audience right is key, reddit's subreddits are good for this

• Slashdot : The g.old standard for geek/open source news aggregation, a tad difficult to get published though 
• Reddit : /r/linuxgaming , /r/gamedev , /r/indiegaming , are good subreddits to submit too, not all of them at once though, that'd be spammy ;)
• FSDaily  : A free software specialized news aggregator
• Flattr and YouTipIt : Aggregators with cash backing (but more on those later ;)
• Wikipedia : If you're lucky, Wikipedia can point a lot of people at your game. However, it isn't really a place to market your game/service, so you have to have some kind of proof that your game is noteworthy

 Micro/blogging

 Use Identi.ca / Twitter to get news to your readers fast. Identi.ca has nice groups, such as !fossgaming and !linuxgaming that you can join and post news to. Having timely updates show users (ones that don't know about commit logs) that the project is active, and all that social media stuff :P

Blogging in general is good as well, keep people updated = keep people excited and interested = get people playing (for example proprietary/open source game developers Wolfire)

Development Centric Advertisement

Knowing who you want to market to is an essential ingredient to a successful campaign; while you might pick up developers on more general sites, specialized, development centric sites have a far higher ratio of developers/users

• Freshmeat : A database of open source software, with lots of game projects on it
• Sourceforge : The biggest open source project hosting site (not researched, ain't Goat an exemplary journalist), it does have the best project discovery features as well. You don't necessarily have to host your code here; it's still a good place to have a presence on
• Engine forums: If you use Ogre, post on the ogre forums, if you use blender, BlenderArtists is a good place etc. Not a very difficult concept ;)
• Engine Databases: If your game is codeveloped as an engine (which is horrifyingly prevalent) DevMaster is an example of a place to post your engine on. Rather successful in my experience with Syntensity
• Gamedev.net : A pretty active game development community

Release Early, Release Often!

And repeat all steps above on every release. Golden rule and all that

More!

The internet is big, Goat's memory is bad! Comment below if I missed anything and I'll update the post.. Or maybe move it to a wiki page...

OpenMW reaches next milestone, reboots, recruits

OpenMW has released 0.9.0!

For those that don't know, OpenMW is a project to write an entire 3d rpg engine from scratch, made compatible with Morrowind data formats (other formats can be added later) with the noble intention of setting the first target at being feature complete with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
And after that's achieved?

"Ideas include multiplayer, improved graphics and animation, improved scripting and more flexible modding, a new editor, or moving on to Oblivion and other games" 

 sayeth their roadmap making them one of the most potential brimming opensource projects around.



Basically at 1.0:

• All Morrowind mods will be compatible

• Total conversions that do not use Bethesda art or recreate them, will be totally FOSS, (0$ for people who've never brought Morrowind). Non-total conversions need the retail copy.

• Modder rage inducing technical restrictions/bugs removed, improved modability/interface (of the type that caused Tolkien based AME project on Oblivion to give up after a heightmap issue)

1.0+:

Continuing development(see here), driven by a community, and not made casually obsolete once every 5 years when the next utterly incompatible game gets released



Why is it promising, and liable to deliver rapidly once a strong core is established?

These factors:

• Lots, and lots and lots of lots of total conversions for morrowind, and post v1.0, oblivion.

• Unlike other projects the modderbase, recognition and interest is there and widespread

• Morrowind rebirth project, Nehrim at fate's edge (moddb 2010 winner) for oblivion, Enormous Tolkien based MERP mod for oblivion, or the stunning Betrayal of Jarvall all are proof of the dedicated community required to energise and drive a project, even with engines more than half a decade old.

• Total conversions are often recreations of literary/television franchises. Suited for ongoing/iterative development..rather than reaching a completion point, or becoming completely boring conveniently in time for a new engine and different art

• Modders tired with 10s of thousands of modder-hours being gradually faded away by game obsolescense post-release dev halting

• Free->lower investment risk->wider audience

• After Morrowind/Oblivion waypoints, large community means attracting contributors, leading to real development a marquee status of OpenMW and opensource RPGs:)

Download from the OpenMW website.

How much left to do, you ask? 6-7 months, calculated when team was a handful of coders, apparently.

Latest:

The project has been rebooted, after the lead dev went MIA for a while.

They are conducting an extensive recruiting campaign after the reboot, so Ogre/Bullet/general c++ coders, python scripters, PR people, ideas people and moral support welcome:)

One option for them to disseminate the scale of what has been achieved (3d RPG engine from scratch) might be to retitle the project as OpenRPG and:

• Release a Morrowind compatible branch, Morrowind
• Maintain a branch that ports new compatibility breaking features, Morrowind+
• Release a Oblivion compatible branch, Oblivion
• Maintain a branch that ports new compatibility breaking features, Oblivion+
• Do the same for other games, but I suspect they will have enough of a following to just work on OpenRPG branch by then.
• Create a small test bed game using available foss art work, so everyone can try it

• Associate themselves with a few open ended total conversion projects, like Morrowind Rebirth (small team, but right spirit), and start working with an Oblivion total conversion team towards a free for public release by the time the mod is finished. The Tolkien based MERP Mod (large team/mod) would be released in about 3 years  which is ideal and given the Tolkien fan forums (not to mention game forums) with 50-100 thousand+ users a public FOSS release would be welcomed. (What ever project the Nehrim's sureAI team would want to work on next is an option, too)

• +s: Administrative and PR manpower that has been largely lacking, buzz, actual project requirements and practically tested feedback needed to drive design. Modders will benefit from not having to persuade users to buy an old/obsolete engine just for their mod.

Anouncements thread, twitter,moddb, online PR appear to be up:)

Gallium3d: Directx 10/11 recreated, opensourced, and now on Linux

Directx 10/11 now has a completely FOSS implementation, made possible via Gallium3d, for applications to plug into, and has been implemented in Linux recently.

Phoronix.com has the (4 months old) scoop:

Sep 21,2010 phoronix.com:

"In fact, today a new Gallium3D state tracker was pushed into Mesa and it's perhaps the most interesting state tracker for this open-source graphics driver architecture yet. It's a state tracker that exposes Microsoft's DirectX 10/11 API on Linux! And it's already working and can be hooked into Wine!"

Directx 10/11 has been reimplemented, using clean room reverse-engineering, by the gallium 3d project. That is no Microsoft code was used, just a completely different implementation that behaves exactly the same to applications requesting functionality through the application programming interface.

liquidat.wordpress.com has technical info in simple terms:

"Currently Mesa3D implements the specifications of the OpenGL API on Linux. Mesa3D has backends for each hardware driver type, so implementing parts of the API again and again for each driver.
Gallium3D will now hop in by being the only backend Mesa3D needs to focus on. At the same time Gallium3D will also provide a single API to the driver developers: they only need to produce one driver, no matter if DirectX, OpenGL or OpenVG is used (yes, Gallium3D could even help on Windows). This makes developing drivers for new device classes (OpenVZ is interesting for example for mobile phones) much easier."

José Fonseca's Tech blog has a bit more on the architecture.

Choice of DirectX or OpenGl would no longer be a platform consideration.

Of course, games have a lot of windows only dependencies, such as .net, that will need developers to avoid, or use re-implementations that are open and function on 'nix. Mono is the opensource .net project incidentally.



Saurbaten powered by Gallium3d, using OpenGl, from youtube.

First steps: Arx Fatalis OpenGL port!

A user named Black Mage decided to port Arx Fatalis to OpenGL and started a thread on our forums. Everybody interested in working on the game is welcome to join. Currently the developer is interested in getting the code to compile at all.

Should you have problems registering at our forums, please contact me: qubodup@gmail.com

Open Imperium Galactica

A very interesting development that I picked up thanks to LGDB is the Open Imperium Galactica project. 

Another open source clone of a proprietary game, Open-IG doesn't require external datafiles to be played; it comes with a launcher which downloads all necessary files for you. It has a rather wide variety of gameplay, from 4x galaxy management, to city-building, to rts battles in space and on land. A very cool game and definitely a project to watch.

Screenkey and Open Source Gifts of the Indies: Bikez II and Unknown World's Icons

Bikez II

After the amazing Arx Fatalis engine open-sourcing, I noticed the source/asset release of Bikez II, which is a city-driving-fighting game built on DirectX. 3D models are in the 3dw format (no idea what that is).

 Unknown Worlds' icons

I mentioned the developer of Bikez II in a talk on open game development marketing last week (not directly related to open *source*). One of the other developers I was talking about, Unknown Worlds (working on proprietary Natural Selection 2) have released some of their tools under BSD license: an updater library and an icon set.

I wonder what other freely licensed gifts lie around in indie developer's archives and wikis.

Screenkey

Somehow I found Screenkey, which shows key presses and could be used for making asset video tutorials and such.

Arx Fatalis Open Sourced!

Good news everyone! Arx Fatalis, an awesome first-person RPG from 2003's source code was recently released under the GPL.Their dev team, Arkane, was acquired (thanks Sindwiller) by Zenimax last year which is interesting because id, the legends whose open source patronage we have to thank for almost all of our FPSes, where also aquired by Zenimax in 2009; I can only hope it becomes tradition for the rest of Zenimax's subsidiaries

.

Arx wasn't your run-of-the-mill generic fantasy RPG either: it has a rather unique setting (a frozen, lifeless planet where everything living has retreated to underground tunnels) and a bunch of interesting game mechanics (gesture/rune based magic casting, multiple factions to interact with, and a bunch of other interesting tidbits). It was a bit overlooked due to the Elderscrolls 3: Morrowind having been released the previous year, but this underdog is still definitely worth a play (the game is still available on Steam and Good Old Games)

So, the code needs quite a bit of cleaning up before we see it running on Linux or anything the like, but it would really be a nice inclusion to one of the slightly less-represented genres in foss gaming, so get coding! 

Stunt Rally 1.0 plus Pioneer and LambdaRogue

I thought I'd come out of the desert back to this oasis of fun for the evening. Some emails to the freegamerblog gmail account (yes - I check it, sporadically) prompted this post. I do try to respond to everybody, even if sometimes I leave it a few weeks *cough* or months *cough* between logging in to the account.

Stunt Rally

Stunt Rally is a modification of VDrift which takes the VDrift physics engine and adapts it to the Ogre3D graphics engine. Add in a few really nifty Ogre3D-based components (terrain etc) and you have a very cool FOSS rally game! Since it was originally mentioned on the blog a few months ago, progress has continued unabated and the game has improved a lot.

In fact, the 10th public version - Stunt Rally 1.0 - just got released! 35 tracks to drive on, in 6 sceneries, and 7 cars to choose from. There is also a fully functional Track Editor to create your own tracks or modify the existing ones.

Above is a gameplay video of Stunt Rally. There's also a track editing tutorial (part 1, part 2) and more videos on the authors YouTube page.

Rigs of Rods

Another cool driving/flying/anything game is Rigs of Rods and development activity continues with the project more than ever since it became open source. Here is the 2010 RoR tech demo video:

Another cool, if less exciting Rigs of Rods video is this showcase for a hill climbing map. It does include some dodgy physics and trees, but the damage to the overturning cars is impressive and some of the views are spectacular.

I do wonder, so very publicly, if RoR suffers from being a bit too flexible. I mean, I don't see much 'game' in there. Lots of simulation, but the idea of loading crates or driving articulated lorries over hilly terrain... it just doesn't appeal to me. Racing on Stunt Rally does. Perhaps that's a challenge for the RoR team in 2011 - to present a more fun side to the game in addition to the simulating nature of it. Then again, simulating is fun for some.

...this post is turning out a bit longer than I planned. Let's be a little less ponderous.

LambdaRogue

LambdaRogue 1.6 just came out. This graphical rogue like looks fun. If you like RPGs but can't get into the ASCII nature of most rogue-likes (i.e. like me) then this is worth a download. It comes with both hi-res and lo-res tilesets.

LambdaRogue

Pioneer Space Sim

Pioneer. This is wicked. Dynamic planets. Check out these gorgeous screenshots (lifted from this thread). 'Nuff said.

Pioneer Space Sim

I'm off before I start to write an essay on the latest Free Software games...

Political Space Warfare

Political Space Warfare is an ambitious, multi faceted space based strategy in-progress game. Still far from achieving it's full vision, PSW wants to offer gameplay ranging from long-term strategy gameplay as seen in browser based empire building games such as Travian all the way down to a RPG where you play as a single unit in the greater picture.

Unfortunately, its Windows only at the moment, but the team are planning to port it to Linux/other platforms as soon as possible, which will be a lot sooner if there are any of you willing to help :)

PARPG

In a quick aside, PARPG is looking for a Lead Writer/ So if any of you are in the mood for writing some Post Apocaliptic fiction, be sure to have a look

Wagic

Yes I have to admit... I spend waaay too much money back in the nineties on that crazy trading card game MTG ;) But hey, I am a changed man now and I beat that addiction ;)
So I don't think I should actually touch the game I am about to present to you with anything but a 10 ft pole, but well... it is probably a damn fun game ;)

Anyways...Wagic is obviously an only half-heartily hidden Magic the Gathering implementation on your favorite gaming device (including the neat Linux driven N900, which is actually a FOSS dream compared to all those Android smart phones... no, I am not getting paid for mentioning it ;) ). And with that we have already the main problem with Wagic... it's data and media can obviously not be really free, even if they don't actually use any copyrighted pictures from that game as far as I can tell.

But the rest of that game looks actually really nice, and with the source under the BSD you can't make much wrong, right?

Wagic gameplay

But maybe the engine could be combined with the really FOSS Wtactics card game? (Edit: yay, they seem to consider doing so in the future; see comments!)

Simple & Polished

 Avoision

 Falling Block Game 2

Avoision is a simple collect-dots-avoid-blocks game.

Falling Block Game 2 is a Tetris clone.

Both are simple games. Both are very polished! I avoided them at first, assuming they would be of the yet-another-hello-world-game type but luckily got over that arrogant moment. :)

Neither forces full-screen, they scale to any resolution, controls are crystal clear and feedback is great.

Both games use Radius Engine, which is a Win/Lin OpenGL/SDL/Lua engine. Kind of like LÖVE.

For Arch Linux users: I made AUR packages for Radius Engine, Avoision and FBG2. I use clyde for managing packages.

PS: Sometimes polish is worth more than complexity. Can you name free open source games that are polished to the max?

Changes in Hardwar development

Possible Hardwar main menu scene

Hardwar is a long-term project to remake the 1998 Hardwar - a science fiction flight simulation game. There have been two recent changes:

The code hosting switched from Launchpad's bazaar to GitHub.

The in-game editor was dropped and instead Ogitor will be used. While in-game editing is awesome, I'm glad that a general tool is being used and time is being saved.

Ogitor 0.3

Ogitor is a Plug-In based WYSIWYG editor environment for OGRE.

OGRE is on a hunt for illogic in its API as a preparation for releasing 1.8 and every coder is invited!

Spring RTS bugfix and games list

There's a new Spring version, available as windows build and source package.

License info in spring games list

FOSS-advocate Gallaecio clarified the license status of the "open source" Spring games and now the Spring game list features detailed license information. None of the games have 100% free for commercial usage media.

Gallaecio has (a quite empty) blog (in Galician [english translation])

Coldest Cleaning Up

Re-textured base in Coldest

A few days ago LinWarrior 3D r18 got released, today there's news regarding Coldest! Re-texturing (license related) is in-progress. The current SVN revision looks ..interesting with missing textures :) .

 Coldest SVN r629 screens

I also recorded a video, but YT made it lag (glc-recorded, ffmpeg-encoded using this method)..

OGRE3D History: 2010

There's a retrospective of 2010 post on OGRE's blog. Here are some interesting FOSS projects they mentioned:

Project Name	Type	License	Description
Gorilla	Library	MIT	GUI library
Hovercraft	Game	GPL*	Racing *Depends on non-free fmod, havok and zoidcom
Island Hopping	Game	WTFPL*	Platformer *Depends on non-free irrklang
MOGRE	Library	MIT	Bindings for .NET
OgreKinect	Library	MIT	Input library for Kinect
OgreProcedural	Library	MIT	Procedural geometry library
OpenSpace3D	Tool	LGPL*	Scene Editor *Depends (?) on non-free newton physics
QuickGUI	Library	LGPL	GUI library
Spacescape	Tool	MIT	Create space skyboxes with stars and nebulas
Zen Engine	Library	ZLib	3D game engine client framework

Spacescape running in Wine

I wasn't able to build Spacescape SVN but the 0.3 release runs fine in Wine.

Island Hopping's game over screen

Island Hopping's dependency on irrklang is probably easy to replace, so I gave it a try using Wine with success (broken sound though, go figure).


OpenSpace3D wouldn't start in wine and I don't know if it's build-able on Linux.

PS: Statistics!

Better late than never

Doesn't seem like the other authors of this blog are big FPS fans, so I guess I have to keep you updated about the other nice releases of last week ;) Too bad my current PC is not capable of running any of those though :(

Xonotic 0.1 preview release

So people have been nagging about this in the comment section already... and I agree, the first release of the Nexuiz fork Xonotic is a pretty cool thing:

Xonotic 0.1

For more videos head over to this Youtube page.

Graphics are really a big improvement over the patchwork that was Nexuiz, however the player animation (blending) is still somewhat lacking. Sources tell me that this is actually a current limitation of its Darkplaces engine, but since everything of that game is GPL, someone should take up the challenge and change that ;)

World of Pandman 1.5

Not quite as FOSS (because of un-free media), but still fun is the new World of Padman 1.5 release:

World of Padman 1.5

Their website just says that there are a lot of changes, so be surprised ;)

SuperTuxKart 0.7

Errmmm, well and there has been also a very nice SuperTuxKart release over X-mas:

SuperTuxKart 0.7

I have to admit though that given the fact that their forums are actually hosted on our website, we are reporting about this neat game way too little. Well... I promise more coverage, ok? :)

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!

Remembering and discovering some adventure and role playing games

Blood and Iron menu

Blood and Iron "is a dark low fantasy tactical RPG where you attempt to lead a mercenary company to fame and fortune." This sounds like a Mount & Blade demake [EDIT] but it's not!

• Dark low fantasy theme 
• You play the owner of a mercenary company, the characters on the battlefield are just employees 
• Your goal is to make your mercenary company the most famous one in history, and to complete various special challenges (achievements) 
• Yes, you really won't save the world this time 
• Tactical (actual combat) and strategic (resource management) layer 
• Turn-based, of course 
• Ironman only, no girlie man reloading whenever something goes wrong here 
• Yes, when characters die they are gone - forever 

It is written in SDL and supposed to be portable.

So far (the project is one day old at time of writing) there is only a win32 binary (runs on linux using wine) available for download which features an incomplete menu and low-pixel art.. I would love to see this project ripen.

Pages of Adventure dialog

Pages of Adventure is a lovely "puzzle adventure in a strange world" which so far features one puzzle. I tested the game on Arch Linux.

Game testers are wanted for the SVN version of the game, different resolutions need to be tested for example. Testers and people who can recommend game/map/dialog editors for tile-based rpg/adventure games, please report to the PoA thread on our forums!


Dawn RPG makes progress. They use MediaWiki for posting news, which makes following development not too comfortable. SumWars is progressing as well. Both games have gained new team members and released new versions.


Hmm.. remember Hero of Allacrost, Silver Tree and Adonthell, FLARE, Arkhart, Radakan and PARPG ? I wonder how many open source non-roguelike role-playing or adventure games are out there and how many are playable and how many are finished..

Happy Aðfangadagskvöld!

Three more days, 688 more US Dollars pledged to the Portrait Marathon and we get art video tutorials (so spread a little word, why don'tcha? ;) ):

Fantasy Portrait Marathon pledge progress

OGA's presents

There has been a *LOT* of giving on OGA lately, two fully rigged 3d character models for example.

Another present: IOFORMS' (aka iosketch) first alpha release is being prepared.

Please let us know in the comments if you notice are any special present-ish foss game releases. :)

News Avalanche!

Zero-K:

Zero-K is the reboot of Spring RTS game Complete Annihilation, with aims to distance itself from the TA IP that has plagued Spring games, and just generally be better in every way :)

It comes with a revamped UI, multiple specialist commander units to play as, and a single faction instead of the traditional 2. The team is also providing a set of web services such as map and mission lists to enhance the experience, and maybe we'll even see the resurgence of Planet Wars, the awesome persistent galactic RTS that was running a while back

IrrRPG Builder

IrrRPG Builder looks like a promising 3D RPG IDE. So far, it features a terrain editor, drag and drop object placement, and scriptable using Lua.

There's a set of tutorials to get you started, and comes with enough content to play around with; the scriptable object system along with template scripts make it really beginner friendly. The built-in script validator could use a bit of work (doesn't detect undefined functions yet, which crashes the game) and adding some sort of api refference along with autocompletion would really make it a fully fledged IDE :)

Ryzom:

We've been giving Ryzom quite a bit of love recently, with their Linux native client and all, but they just announced an In-game competition for a Linux netbook and got accepted for the Google Code-In initiative. Here's hoping they have lots of success!

Warlock's Gauntlet:

Warlock's Gauntlet is a highly polished Gauntlet/Diablo/Hack'nSlash mashup. A nice interface, smooth gameplay and lots of spells make this a very nice find.(Thanks archl from the comments :) It even has co-op!

Egoboo

The Egoboo team just released their version 2.8.1 beta, it adds randomized loot, special effects and lots of bugfixes. Check it out!

FreedroidRPG

Freedroid recently had their website redesigned(aww I liked the old one :(), and also released version 0.14 which included the Summer of Code work. This added better randomized dungeons, a better interface for the level editor and replaced magical weapons with a more sci-fi addon system (the last addition was done by Nekotaku from Lips of Suna, which also had a release recently :)

An early Xmas?

Not very X-mas like at my current place of residence, but there are just so many good things coming to the FreeGamer enthusiast right now! But I am short on time and on a crappy internet connection... so only text for you guys tonight :p

So, as a follow up the the recently mentioned Alpha 0.3 release of 0AD and their donation drive, UbuntuGamer has now published a pretty nice interview with one of the 0AD contributors.

Their donation drive is also still running, so if you have some money to spare, head over here. They are still a long way from the target, so don't be shy :)

ZeroBallistics 2.0

So why is there an early X-mas? Well I just got the hot news that there has been a 2.0 release of the ZeroBallistics FOSS game!!! Definity some nice new features, but have a look at their release announcement yourself here.

War§ow 0.6 and AlienArena2011

Two pretty big releases also, but since I always get snubbed a bit for mentioning these games with non-FOSS media around here I will make it short: War§ow 0.6 (BIG and very nice release) and AlienArena2011 (now with ODE physics for rag-dolls).

From Open to Free, visual programming, new SumWars RPG and Berlin game dev summoning

FLARE logo

OSARE is now FLARE. From an OGA tread:

I sent an email to Richard Stallman asking if he's interested in supporting Justin Nichol's Creative Commons Fantasy Portrait Project.

He pointed out that the difference between "open source" and "free" or "free/libre" and noted this:

"However, if you decide to describe it "free" or "free/libre" instead of "open source", then I would be honored to participate."

Stallman's lectures are what convinced me in the first place to use the GPL for my work, and to be interested in copyleft licenses in general. I'm quite honored that he answered my email at all, and I agree with his reasoning.

IOSKETCH visual programming

IOSKETCH is a cross-platform visual authoring tool for games. It is written in Common Lisp.

Summoning Wars 0.5.3
The new version

SumWars 0.5.3 is out:

• Upgrade to Ogre 1.7 and CEGUI 0.7
• More art and story content
• Russian translation

See the arrow?

There's a little meeting this Saturday for making little games in Berlin. Artists, programmers, designers and whatnot are welcome! We speak English. Wir sprechen Deutsch. At least one speaks Spanish, at least one speaks Russian.

You might want to bring a multiple outlet strip (don't forget your converter if you need one).

Berlin Game Developers Meet-Up #5 on Facebook.
Where:   Cafe Osswald
When:    Saturday, December 18 from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm

Lithosphere - awesome visual procedural 3d terrain map generator with shaders

Forget my last post about terrain generators! I'm just going to let the screen/video talk for themselves.

Lithosphere is a GPU driven terrain generator. It allows you to create and export material textures and heightmaps intended for use in realtime graphics applications.

All terrain algorithms are implemented as GLSL fragment shaders operating on floating point textures. This allows realtime modification of the terrain. A graph of nodes is evaluated in order to arrive at the terrain output.

License: AGPL

Requirement: 32bit python2.6 (:|), a modern graphics card

Tested on: Windows, Linux

The creator's blog might be of interest to you as well. The last few articles cover OpenGL and HTML5/JavaScript Canvas.

Portrait Marathon got $1500, could use $1500 more :)

The fantasy portrait marathon reached first base. I just wanted to let you know. Remember, that if it reaches $3000 ($9000!!!/3), we will get a massive instructional video!

Fantasy Portrait Marathon Update and Reddit Game Jam #4 in a few hours!

Justin added new possible targets to his freely-licensed fantasy portraits project for OSARE and OGA:

$1500

by December 28th

30 portraits

$2000

by December 28th

35 portraits

$3000

by December 28th

35 portraits + a full length instructional video showing the painting process for the collection

I sure hope we can arrange this gift of Justin's video to ourselves..
You can spread the word on fsdaily and reddit.

In other news: there's a 48h game jam STARTING TODAY! Here's the IRC channel, here are the rules. I recommend github and love2d!

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 :)

Quoting releases: Bitfighter, Love2d, OpenClonk

Bitfighter

There's a new version of the retro-style multiplayer top-down action game Bitfighter and a well-readable changelog:

This version features new Soccer rules, and a verified user name system protected by your forums password. Many other improvements, including important stability fixes and enhancements for all platforms.

love2d 0.7 no-game-screen

LÖVE 0.7 "Game Slave" has finally been released! This is a Lua 2D game engine also known as "love2d". Oh, and it's on Indie DB. Oh, and Indie DB allows to sort engines by license!

Framebuffers, for rendering to places other than the screen. Threads, for true multithreaded programming. New callbacks, like love.quit and love.focus. A text-origin change from lower- to upper-left. And about a million different bugs have been squashed!

You'll find games and toys and demos to try out in this forum and you can give my stupid little game a try too.

"The Guardians of Windmills" OpenClonk scenario

OpenClonk 1.0 hass been released and I just noticed that I love how their main page contains all the info important to people who don't know the project.

This milestone focuses on some fast paced melees, races and a few experimental scenarios to choose from. All scenarios are meant to be played multiplayer through the internet. It features completely new controls, a new HUD and many weapons and tools to choose from. Also included are four tutorials that guide new players and veteran clonkers through the new controls.

I feel like giving OpenClonk a try soon and hope the tutorials are any good. Here's a game description, if you never took a closer look at the project like me.

OpenClonk is a free multiplayer action game where you control clonks, small but witty and nimble humanoid beings. The game is mainly about mining, settling and fast-paced melees. OpenClonk is also not just a game but also a versatile 2D game engine that offers countless possibilites to make your own mods.

Freely Licensed Fantasy Portraits Financing!

The style

Open-art artist Justin Nichol intends to create 30 freely licensed portraits (or more) in the style you see above. I support his Fantasy Portrait Marathon for 3 purposes:

1. Allow an open source enthusiast artist to continue his studies
2. Provide portraits for  the excellent slash-and-hack OSARE
3. Add a quality set of art to OpenGameArt for use in various games

The cash

$1500, Dec 28

The target

Targeted is a backing of $1500 until end of 2010. At time of posting, $580 (38.6%) have been already pledged (7 backers).

The artist

Other works by Justin

Justin Nichol is attending the Concept Design Academy in Pasadena, Ca. He contributed art to PARPG and OGA. He has a portfolio.

The portraits

• GIMP will be used for drawing the portraits
• Backers will be able to determine the faces they pay for (check the right sidebar of the project page for details)
• The portraits will be CC-BY-SA/GPL dual-licensed for maximum copyleft compatibility

I can only say: invest in this one! And spread the word too, for example on reddit.