The Big corrections round-up post (and TA contest)

So... you might have followed the lengthy discussion in the comment section of this blog entry of mine from last week... if you didn't don't worry you didn't miss anything important :p

However I was corrected in quite a few things (besides all the disagreements), so I though it would be good to post a sort of "counter statement" to clear up some recent mess-ups by me:

First of all, the developers from Q2W informed us that in fact most (but not all) of their art assets are CC-by-SA or GPL, which is great. They have also released a Linux installer now, so feel free to check it out if you are gaming on this platform (like me). Oh and I have also updated the video to a newer one, in case you didn't notice yet.

Also, and I am to be honest quite surprised by this, OverDose does in fact have an open source-code repository since some time now, where you can download the source to the engine and some of the cool in-house tools they have developed. No clearly visible notice on the website about this however :-/ Even on the wiki they have no link to it I think.

Ah, and I was also informed that UFO:AI has now released an Linux version of the mentioned 2.4 RC.

Otherwise? Stunt-Rally does indeed have a player-collision option, which I somehow missed... but at least I am not the only one who feels that the physics are a bit off :p

Last but not least, and that is the only real news in this post:
The rather early in development steam-punk themed MMORPG Tempest in the Aether are hosting an art contest in collaboration with OGA too (to celebrate their first release). A bit of a pity that it will probably be somewhat overlooked due to the big OGA contest mentioned in Bart's previous post, but maybe you want to contribute to this game as well.

P.S.: Criticize me all you want, and I am open to corrections as you can see, but don't expect me become a "proper" journalist! After all this is the "splatter zone" :p

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Stunt-Rally 1.5 Multiplayer

We are getting a lot of nice mails from developers lately... not sure yet if I am annoyed by the spam or pleased that I don't have to do any research of my own :p
These must be the benefits of real journalists who always get these nice offers from lobbying firms to write fair and balanced articles for them (yeah, I included some social commentary in this blog!).

So... what was in my spam folder lately? Stunt-Rally got an version 1.5 release (changelog here) which a prominent new feature: multiplayer!

Multiplayer test in Stunt-Rally 1.5

You can find a small guide to set up a multiplayer game here. Not sure if player collision is also implemented... it would be cool however ;)

In general I really think the physics are too bouncy however... not sure if that hits the nail, but something feels off about them. Also... "LOD popping" trees is soo last century :p

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Stunt Rally Podcast

(video) podcast FLOSS Weekly #202

A (video) podcast show called FLOSS Weekly interviewed Crystal Hammer of Stunt Rally about the project in their issue #202.

I only recently discovered the vast spaces of open source and Linux podcasts. If you know of open source games podcasts, please let us know in the comments! :)

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Planets are a nice thing...

...but make us FreeGamer blog-authors lazy, as all the news are already in our awesome game and development planets :p

New to the feeds is our revision control planet, for those news-freaks that want to keep up to date even if it is just a change in punctuation of the readme file :p



It is btw interesting to see on this planet how much changes happen in the Xonotic SVN, while to the outward observer the project seems to be moving only slowly forward.

However, recently they released an auto-builds update script, which makes it much easier to keep up with their development builds (which seems to be the preferred version for them now in general, but things can break from time to time). Oh and for the lulz: a "my little pony" mod recently surfaced for Xonotic also :p



Next on the list? Ahh yes, Stunt Rally version 1.2 got released:

Stunt Rally 1.2

Changes include (amongst other stuff) a new split-screen and a ghost car rally mode.



Other things to mention? Mage is a open-source MTG client, but not as nice looking as Wagic. But it might convince you with other features (of which Mage has a lot ;) ).

Unknown Horizons has a nice news update with all the improvements Google's Summer of Code gave them and the Zod engine is set out to improve the multiplayer part of the (back then really nice) game Z (using the unfree media from the original it seems).

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Double Trouble

Hallow thar Free Gamers!

Warmux, the project formerly known as Wormux, is dying. (It amuses me how "formerly" sounds like "formally", doesn't it? Or is that my colloquial pronunciation?)

The current development version has rather minor changes: improved game mode (ie including weapon), new "squad" play (teams can ally). But there's little more coming. What this means is that the next version - if any - of WarMUX, might be the last. At least, it is most probably over for the author of these words.

Who knows. It was not long ago that the PARPG lead was calling that dead (and I scolded him for it, did I). The great thing about Free software is that it can live on.

Moving on to more vibrant projects, and ToME4 beta 29 30 31 is in the wild. The current development pace is quite astonishing. More graphical tiles, bug fixes, play balancing, and some useful optimizations - don't get addicted!

zzoxx

In a similar vein, the author of Scourge has embarked on another project: a HTML/JS isometric graphical rogue-like called zzoxx. It is intriguing, though not yet really playable. What's the best Free browser-based game you know of? Comments encouraged, let's talk about how Free software gaming is engaging the browser as a platform - and if it is a good idea or not.

Freeciv 2.3rc1 (NEWS) was released a few days ago. This major release of Freeciv is focused on multiplayer features including longplay. I just had a quick go and Freeciv is really well done these days. There's a few kinks still, but this is the best release yet. It still misses some of the charm of the original, and there's a few ways in which is not friendly to new users (no direct link from the city screen to the help content, in case you want to know what a wonder or building does, for example). I'd love to see some dedicated community members put together an introduction and a palace and/or throne screen.

There's also been a Freecol bugfix release. Freecol 0.10.1 fixes many of the issues with version 0.10.0 which was a fairly major release for the project.

There's been other stuff I forgot about. It's a funny time of day. Speaking of fun - here's a rather fun video of Stunty Rally 1.2 mishaps doubled up with music I found fitting. There are several points where it seems like those two videos are deliberately synchronized!

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Stunt Rally 1.1

Stunt Rally 1.1 looking awesome

Stunt Rally now compiles on Linux!

There is a two-part text-commented video tutorial for making new tracks on youtube [p1 | p2]. Check out this channel if you want to see more videos of the game.

Technology-wise the game is VDrift + Ogre + Pagedgeometry (also used in DungeonHack) + MyGUI.

Thumbs up to the project website following the "big screenshots on main page"-philosophy!

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