Last day to support the LPC!

While we are talking about crowd-funded game-dev assets:

The Liberated Pixel Cup has almost reached its funding goal, but today is the last day to contribute... so think about the poor captured pixels and donate!

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Professional Car Sounds Crowdfunding for Public Domain

~5% of David's Merceds' sounds will be donated to the public domain

At the time of this post, USD363 353 are missing and 8 days are left for TrackTimeAudio's Mercedes Sound Recording Kickstarter Project to be crowdfunded.

In a recent update, it was announced, that 5 to 10% of the more than 200 resulting sounds will become freely available.

Free, open source projects that could profit from this include TORCS, Speed Dreams, Trigger Rally, Stunt Rally, Rigs of Rods and many more. It would be delightful to see if advocates of free content licensing would bring this project to a "funded" state and further with many small contributions. (And remember, this will allow you to comment what your incentive for supporting was :) ).

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Dev Corner: Crowdfunding, OpenGameArt and Kickstarter

Donations: Commercial use of Free Software and Libre Art

Kickstarter for Game Dev
I'm sure you heard the amazing Kickstarter news ;) Dusted, author of Wizznic! shared a short thought about the news I'm actually talking about.

FOSS Games and Donations Now
The FLARE RPG project page now has a PayPal donation button.

0A.D. uses Pledgie for funding.


There is a list of FOSS projects that accept BitCoin here and a more general list here.

OGA and Kickstarter Thoughts
OpenGameArt founder and admin Bart K, shared that he is considering Kickstarter, but could use some more inspiration about what rewards could be given to high pledge-givers.

OGA/CC/FSF Game Dev Contest Plan
There's also a game dev contest in the works, which will be organized this summer by Creative Commons, Free Software Foundation and OpenGameArt. The details are still getting ironed out.

Donations on Free Gamer
By the way: here on FreeGamer, we have Flattr widgets below the posts of the authors who provided their Flattr IDs and other donation methods are available on the about page.


So far no "Donations" page on our wiki, where setting up of PayPal, BitCoin, Flattr and other services is explained for open source game dev projects. There is a rather long thread on the topic of making money with free/FOSS games.


Any donation statistics from open source (game) projects and expertise on the subject are highly welcome in the comments!

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Crowd-Funded Open Source RPG Portraits Set DONE!

Justin Nichol finished the Kickstarter-crowd-funded portrait marathon! The art has been uploaded here to OpenGameArt.

Back in December 2010, the project was funded with USD 2,567 (of at least USD 1,500) to make 30 portraits. Now all 30 portraits of the backers that sent him model photos have been finished.

The remaining five backers have been asked to get in contact with the artist. Best via Kickstarter.

Kickstarter will take a fee of USD 128.35 (5%).

Justin has a blog you can follow.

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Crowd-Sourced Portraits ETA: February 2012!

New fantasy portraits by Justin Nichol [more here]

Remember Justin Nichol's crowd-sourced fantasy portrait commission?

In a recent announcement the artists reports, that the collection of 35 portraits will be finished by February 2012, as they will be exhibited some day that month somewhere in California, USA.

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HTML5 2D Game/Engine crowdfunding: Time Hammer

When I was looking for last post's link to Justin's portraits, I found a collection of b/w portraits and a new crowdfunding game project: Time Hammer.

Timehammer project introduction video

What is Time Hammer?

1. A game where you run, jump, fall and die, try again, smash enemies, and have fun (hopefully!)  It's a retro, 8-bit throwback to an earlier time, but with some modern touches that we just couldn't help but include.  Low gravity, destructible environments, a kickin chip-tune soundtrack... yeah, it's a blast!
2. A gaming engine built from scratch in HTML5 / Javascript. Time Hammer will be the first fully-featured, plot-driven game featuring the HTML5
3. An indie community dream come true. The game engine will be released open-source on GitHub - meaning that anybody can download it, improve it, and use it for any purpose, free of charge.

"Which license?" was my first thought and question.

I haven't actually researched the nuance of those licenses, and honestly some of the kickstarter money would be used to get a lawyer to recommend one. Two strong contenders are the GPL and MIT license.

Isn't there a group of free software lawyers, who might consult for free beer or less? Supporters can voice their opinion to this topic on the comments page.

Going for USD 8,500

I was reassured, that flash will not be used at all, not even for sound.

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Flare 0.14 Characters, Quests and HD video

The last version of Flare that Free Gamer took a look at was 0.11. The newest version is 0.14.

Character customization in Flare

Title and savegame loading screens now exist, adding to immersion.

Character customization (gender, portrait and name) is now possible. (Note how much depth this part of starting a game can acchieve in some cases). The character portraits are a product of Justin Nichol's fantasy portrait marathon.

Joystick support, conversations, vendors, quests, a new area and many more smaller additions included. It is now possible to configure keybindings and resolution, which leds to my first 720p HD video of Flare gameplay:

Watch this video in 720p HD here

Clint Bellanger, main developer of Flare, posted a reflection on game progress in Flare, which includes some simple but interesting statistics.


You can show Flare some pocket love via Flattr.

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CC Fantasy Portrait Marathon Update!

Remember Justin Nichol's CC Portraits Marathon? There's an update [kickstarter|justin's blog]!

I had an injury earlier in the year which kept me preoccupied, and then school started. The pace should be much quicker from this point on and I apologise for the delays. In any case, I have these 10 and about 23 others to complete (with 2 additional portraits of my choice to finish the 35 I guaranteed). I intend to complete the bulk over the next month and a half, and will try to post the fruits of my labor every Wednesday from this point forth, so if you don't see anything from me one wednesday, feel free to bug me.

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