Onslaught Arena Now Open Source Code!

Onslaught Arena

Onslaught Arena, a HTML5 top-down shooter that has a non-space-ship-scenario, is now open source code, non-free assets on GitHub.

video: Onslaught! Arena: How to beat the Green Dragon

The assets are included under non-commercial terms and the developers did not have the time to read about Creative Commons licenses, which I'm sure is one of the reasons why CC-BY-SA isn't widely adopted: time. If you are able to give a concise description, please do in this thread.

Three LostCast moderators

The team's blog is also home to a podcast about HTML5 games.

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Coldest: Mech AI and Playtesting with the Dev!

Trees in Coldest

Video: Coldest's Crazy Bots

Bots were added to the mech fighting game Coldest. If you would like to help playtest the game together with the developer, follow the project's news feed (there will be an announcement for a session sometime soon) and get the git version via:

git clone git://coldestgame.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/coldestgame/coldestgame coldest

Build instructions here.

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Mass Blaster: Ambidextrous Abstract Shooter

Synchronized shooting in Mass Blaster

Mass Blaster is one of the most intense arcade shooters for Windows and Linux. You will take control of two ships simultaneously to blast away at the invading Square Army. On your left, take down enemies with the red n' rad Trigerus. On your right, command the cool blue Pythagora to wipe out your foes. Choose from 4 modes of difficulty to fight your way through 10 gutsy levels. Only those with the skills to pilot both ships at the same time will go on to become High Score Heroes.

This game shares a vein with games like Avoision and pumps adrenaline. Intended for one player, Mass Blaster plays superb with two pilots as well. Just get a keyboard emulator and a joystick to avoid key locking.

Code is under GPL, while all other assets are under the not-so-free CC-BY-NC.

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HTML5 Defense: MiniMek Urbie Defense

Two 'towers' down in MiniMek Urbie Defense

A little top-down defense game was released under GPL (art & code) as a new year's present. It shows nicely, how libre art can be used for small game programming projects.

These use some art assets from megamek (http://megamek.info/) and therefore these games are also licensed under the GPL 

A straightforward interpretation of the GPL applied to assets. I'm afraid though, the images of MegaMek might be incompatible with the GPL, due to Battletech copyright and/or trademark.

The game has good performance but little complexity except for a Missile Commander-esque twist: getting hit reduces player's spacial ability to shoot.

According to the project page, more games with the same graphical theme are to be expected. I'm looking forward to them!

Video: MM:UD

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Double 0.7.4: Pingus and M.A.R.S.

No screenshot of Pingus 0.7.4

Version 0.7.4 of Pingus introduces an array of changes:

Content:

• New levelsets, "Desert" and "Factory Campaign" (27 new levels in total)
• This is the first use of the desert and factory graphics in official levels

Gameplay:

• Deadly fall height increased
• Digger/Miner/Basher paths cleanup

Features:

• Demo recordings/playback re-implemented (32bit/64bit not compatible)
• --usedir parameter added (useful for portable play)
• Unicode support added
• Option menu added

Usability:

• Window can be resized in-game
• Soundcard dependancy removed
• Man page added

Look:

• Level dimensions now suit 1920x1200 resolution
• Anti-aliasing added to bitmap fonts

Performance:

• Software rendering improved
• OpenGL rendering option added

Other:

• Editor enhancements
• Fixes

Good Old Colorful M.A.R.S. (0.7.4)

0.7.3 and then 0.7.4 of M.A.R.S. were relesed:

• New speacial
• New weapon
• Dutch, Mongolian and Norwegian languages added
• In-game speed settings

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GunFu Deadlands 1.01: Performance Up!

GunFu Deadlands title screen

GunFu Deadlands, a quick, atmospheric retro keys+mouse top-down shooter for Win/Osx/Lin has been updated (1.01) to run with LÖVE 0.7.2 and the development codebase moved from Subversion to Git.

The game plays perfectly fine on a ASUS EeePC 1000H netbook running Arch Linux 32bit. A previous version (don't remember which) was extremely slowly. I can't tell whether the playable speed is thanks to improvements of GFD, love2d or perhaps the drivers for my netbook but if you've had performance trouble with the game in the past, try again!

Note: if you get shot in the title screen and start the game before respawning, you will be able to walk through walls.

This is the first update of GunFu Deadlands since the 1.0 release 22 months ago.

Video: GunFu Deadlands 1.01 gameplay

By the way, did you know that GunFu Deadlands is one of the 250 Indie Games You Must Play?

PS: I got word from the developer about the performance increase:

Just for your interest, I made some measurements and it seems that the speed increase is indeed dramatic: 55% faster.

I computed the mean FPS rate by measuring the time it takes to render 1000 frames in-game and dividing 1000 by this number. The formula (FPS_faster_version - FPS_slower_version) / FPS_slower_version is what produced this 55%.

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PyWeek 13 (And PyWeek 12 Winners)

It's time PyWeek #13 soon!



The dates of this challenge are are 00:00 UTC 2011-09-11 to 00:00 UTC 2011-09-18.

Timetable
Friday 2011/08/12	Registration underway
Sunday 2011/09/04	Theme voting commences
Sunday 2011/09/11	Challenge start
Sunday 2011/09/18	Challenge end, judging begins
Sunday 2011/10/02	Judging closes, winners announced

Check out PyWeek 12's winners by the way:

Loopback: Asteroids + Tower defense. Retro Look. Permissive code license.

Loopback - PyWeek #12 Team Winner

Lemming: Enough Plumbers + Canabalt??? Hand-drawn horrible ;). Permissive code license.

Video: PyWeek #12: Lemming Speed Run

The PyWeek guys seem to have figured out the license part of game prototyping well: Lemming for example contains a list of all used art pieces' urls and licenses. Neat!


PS: Ludum Dare got 600-1 entries last weekend.

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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]

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