Art assets are apparently not available yet due to some non-free placeholders, but I hope this will be changed soon. Also no multiplayer, but that might be possible to fix.
Also really cool would be a Occulus Quest VR port via the already available and quite awesome Darkplaces VR port called QuakeQuest.
It's been a long and winding road for mascot racer SuperTuxKart, but after more than ten years of continuous and dedicated progress, the team has finally announced the release of build 1.0, marking an important development milestone for the project.
Yes, if you have followed our development a bit, that might be a bit of a surprise. But we have been asked why we don't call this release 1.0, and the majority of us developers discussed this and decided that indeed this release is a major milestone that deserves the big 1.0 number.
Indeed a nice surprise and definitely a big step forward with the inclusion of online multiplayer!
See more new features in the official release video:
The Godot Engine ("the open-source answer to Unity3D") continues to make exciting progress with the recent stable release of version 2.1. Besides lots of small usability improvements to the GUI, the main new feature is a asset sharing store build right into the editor:
This should hopefully result in a lot of extremely easy to use assets, and I am looking forward to seeing a lot high quality assets from OpenGameArt.org transferred into it ;)
In related news, it was recently announced that there is work going on to allow C# (a extremely popular game scripting language also used in Unity3D) scripting in Godot besides the current Python based custom language. So this should lower the entry barrier for indie developers significantly, and maybe we will even see a conversion utility for open-sourcing simple Unity3D games?
Furthermore they are also working on a visual scripting system akin to Unreal's Blueprint or what you can use in the Blender Game Engine. Yeah, visual programming systems are usually pretty limited, but they have their use-cases and definitely lower the entry barrier for artists (map events or shader scripting). Or to put it in the Godot Engine developer's words:
To make it clearer, it is not our belief that forcing programmers to write code with visual blocks will result in a more efficient workflow. We know other game engines and solutions try to sell you this point of view, but rest assured that this is not our view or intention. We stand by programming and still believe it's the best. So then, again, why visual scripting? Our goals with it are the following:
Provide a way for non-programmers to experience what developing in Godot feels like, by ensuring they have a way to manipulate their game's logic.
Allow programmers to set up their scenes, AI, etc. in a way they can expose the coarse parameters and logic to level designers or game designers. This way, they can do tweaks without bothering programmers.
Allow programmers to expose how data is organized in a visual way. Godot's VisualScript has so much flexibility in how the graph flows that it allows creating dialogue trees, coarse game flow, event handling, etc. with small effort.
Please understand it as just an extra tool, not as a replacement to programming. It will be possible to use both GDScript and VisualScript as complementary tool in a same project.
Check out this interesting (somewhat recently GPLv3 re-licensed) game Blackvoxel:
As you can see it has some interesting mechanic which they call "Molecular Voxel Interaction Engine". As seen in the trailer above, it basically allows you to automate crafting, resulting in interesting "programmable" factory setups. Of course this might sound a bit too much like actual work and not fun... but given the big fan scene for the closed source game Factorio, I would say it can be more fun that it looks at first ;)
Blackvoxel itself probably needs to be a bit more of a game instead of "just" a sandbox, but there is big promise in the overall concept, so give it a try :)
Great news for HTML5 game developers: a few days ago Superpowers was released under the ISC license.
What is Superpowers? A game development platform (an integrated editor but you can collaborate in realtime online; how cool is that! :D ) for making HTML5 games using TypeScript (a superset of Javascript). But you will also be able to work with other languages, so far support for the well known LÖVE2D is available.
Great news for the FOSS enthusiasts: after many years of constant nagging the latest release of the great parcour/arena FPS Warsow has now most of it's artistic content under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 license (with a few remaining but clearly marked ones under CC-by-ND).
Also updated particle effects in Warsow 2.0
You can find more screen-shots in the above link and the full changelog here.
Rendering speed was also increased (claimed to be 30-50% faster) and a movement tutorial is now included.
So far I always recommended Xonotic over Warsow as the coolest (=most competitive; Red Eclipse is also cool, but much more casual) open-source arena FPS, but I think I might reconsider this now...
(please note that due to video capture performance reasons the graphic settings are pretty low, and the game can look much nicer with different settings)
On the longer term horizon of Xonotic development, there is the very exiting news that they are currently porting their game to run on the same engine that Unvanquished uses. With this the future of Xonotic is indeed much brighter, as their current engine has not seem much development lately. See more details in this thread.
Oh and while we are talking about FOSS arena FPS: A short while ago Red Eclipse also released a new version. Changes include updated to the AI Bots and a build in universal updater to easily follow the latest releases.
F-Zero and Wipeout set the standard for the futuristic sci-fi racing games genre and inspire many game developers.
Over the years, four projects of that genre were started and developed to a playable state that are now open source code:
H-Craft by Irrgheist is a free sci-fi racer with IAP on Android. It is built with the Irrlicht engine and was recently released as free software with freeware data.
While gameplay is simple without pickups, boosts or weapons, the campaign keeps it interesting. The 180°-Turns used in H-Craft level design are very refreshing to the genre.
CoreBreach is a commercial anti-gravity racing game with combat gameplay. There is a freeware dataset that allows compiling and playing a simpler-looking version.
Being an Objective C project, it was unusual to compile for me on latest Arch Linux but possible. Campaign mode, weapons and split-screen multiplayer make it cover many bases.
Racer is the only project with 100% free as in freedom data, yet unfortunately it does not compile on current Arch Linux.
Of our four projects, this is the only that has the classic drive-over boost fields.
Ecksdee is the oldest of the bunch and has challenging time trial single-player gameplay.
There are weapon pickups but without AI or human competitors they serve no purpose yet.
Project Comparison
H-Craft
CoreBreach
Racer*
Ecksdee
Latest Version
2015-02-23 (1.3)
2012-11-30 (git)
2010-10-10 (r349)
2006-11-24 (0.0.9)
Campaign Mode
yes
yes
no
no
Split-Screen Multiplayer
no
yes
yes
no
Weapons
no
yes
no
yes
AI
yes
yes
no
no
Gamepad Support
yes
yes
yes
no
Menu UI Look
good
ok
good
ok
Music
yes
yes
no
yes
Sounds
yes
yes
yes
yes
Linux Builds or Compiling
not tested, build used
complicated but compiles
fails
fails, win32 build/wine used
Art Asset License(s)
Mostly no-modify-no-distribute
no-distribution, GPL, CC-BY 3.0
CC-BY-SA 3.0
GPL, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-ND
Is It Cool?
yes
yes
yes
yes
* Could not build racer, reviewing from long term memory
Related projects
Stunt Rally has a F-Zero-esque antigrav vehicles and futuristic levels but primarily it's a car racing game. The default physics don't seem to be working for a futuristic racing style.
The cool Blender Game Engine project RGP has it's .blend file available but it does not have license information. The .blend contains no audio and only one level without AI.
HexGL is pretty but has no sound, no ai, only one level and is CC 3.0 BY-NC licensed (including code) at the moment. If anybody is interested in contributing: the developer indicated interest in the MIT license.
TheRush seem to be Windows-only and does not run in Wine.
A game dev jam to create a winter-themed open source game was community-initiated at the Godot forums. The (vote-determined) winner will get a budget of USD 50 to have donated to an open source project of their choice.
What is Godot?
Godot editor
Godot is a game engine. No wait, it's actually a game development IDE with its own Lua-based scripting language.
As far as I can tell, it's a promising project that is a bit buggy, especially when it comes to mobile exports. It has some UI flaws (subjectivity warning) but still, open source Godot is more appealing than proprietary Unity 3D.
If you want to try making a game in Godot, I recommend this official tutorial as a starting point. Good luck & great success to you!
What else?
Another way to support Godot: "like" it as a Unity 3D alternative on alternativeTo.
The very innovative and awesome looking (+ fully FOSS) multiplayer FPS Terminal-Overload got a new release today. Edit: By now there is actually already a 0.4.0 release, get it here.
Charged x-jump on the new ETH5 map (3rd person camera turned on)
One of the new features is a charged jump that lets one take big leaps to reach good sniping spots or evade an enemy etc. Other changes for this release:
- New map: ETH5
- Prettier GUI
- Replace re-jumping with instant & charged x-jump.
- Tweak CAT movement speeds.
- Simplify disc controls.
- ETH mode: Each class only has one type of offensive disc.
- MGL changes: Remove recoil, decrease firing rate, fire only one projectile.
- MG changes: Projectiles are affected by gravity.
- Remove etherboard from class #4 (Minigunner) loadout.
- Remove SG2 from class #2 loadout.
- Improve responsiveness of mouse look while in CAT form.
- New projectile visuals (except discs & grenade).
The new GUI looks like this:
New menu graphics with options window
While it is is quite awesome looking and playable already, it obviously still needs a bit of further development. Since the funds of an earlier crowd-funding drive have been used up, the developer is now looking for other ways to survive. If you like what he is doing, you can head over to his new Patreon page to support him with a monthly payment.
Yes, YOU! Right NOW! ;)
Developer contributions to code and art are of course also welcome.
He also posted a game-play video of the current development version:
He also recently stated that the new release will be fully FOSS, i.e. not only GPL source-code but also all artwork under a FOSS compatible creative-commons license (most likely CC-by-SA).
It's just a pity that the new much improved GUI code from MegaGlest seems to be not yet ready for the release.
This is by the way to my knowledge the first FOSS game utilizing the open-sourced version of the Torque3D engine and also the only one that uses the work in progress Linux port so far.
In a lonely planet circulating a distant star, a war of survival rages on. There a sentient race, the Valkyries struggle to protect their world and themselves against the parasitic organisms Devourers. Explore large maps for resources, treasure, and other advantages to fight back the relentless horde of Devourers.
Terra Centauri: The Last Stand is a new unique MG based game. While game shares a similar art style to Annex, this game has radically different gameplay and much higher quality models.
Highlights in this release include integration of the FGCom voice communications client within the simulator, improved terrain rendering, faster scenery loading, and improved usability. This release also coincides with the release of FlightGear World Scenery 2.0 – massively improved scenery data covering the entirety of the planet and incorporating OpenStreetMap roads and detailed terrain information from a variety of sources.
Also interesting is the "Bombable" add-on, which adds combat mechanics:
Following the release of the Torque3D engine under the MIT license (latest release 3.5 here), there was a lot of back and forth regarding a port to Linux (the engine actually used to have a good Linux port, but that one was dropped a few years back). At some point there was even an official Kickstarter crowed-funding attempt, which however failed to reach the estimated funds (but nether the less more than US$10k were pledged). After that things quited down, but several people continued developing a OpenGL renderer and Linux port.
Now it seems like all these efforts seem to be near a somewhat usable Linux port or at least that's what I understand by following this forum thread.
Great news if you ask me, so don't forget to pledge some of that Christmas money you got towards reaching the funding goal (currently $388 out of $1500, with 36 days left). Let's make this happen!
Edit (nearly forgot): these two projects related to Torque3D might be interesting to follow: Project GREED and Zentense.
Lots of great new features and especially multiplayer games should be now much easier to do with hosting improvements and a lobby for browsing available games.
Another open-source RTS engine (using Mono/C# though) has also released a new version: OpenRA. Currently it is still geared toward running an assortment of older Command & Conquer based games, so you need to own these for the data. But this release adds lua scripting for the creation of custom missions, so maybe someone will come up with a libre game to run on this engine.
Last but not least, a new version of Warzone2100 was released about a week ago. This one actually includes some higher resolution textures, which is hopefully the first step to officially integrate all the awesome new art assets from the art revolution project. Speaking of WZ mods: There is also an interesting new tower-defense mod currently being developed.
The current version still runs on an old closed source build of the Torque3D engine, but with the somewhat recent move to MIT licensing, it has now become possible to go fully open-source.
According to the author:
All I need is about a month's time and some cash to make it happen.
So lets give him the help he needs ;)
The only not so great part of it is that the Linux port of the Torque3D MIT engine is not yet available. Several people are slowly working on it, but after a failed attempt to crowd-fund it, there seems to have been some setbacks. But optimistically speaking, this could give it the needed push to also motivate the finalization of a working Linux port.
One of the newer engine/game projects I have been following closely is Octaforge. It is basically a fork of Tesseract, which in turn is an graphic improvement project by the makers of the well known Cube2 engine.
The main difference with Octaforge is that aims to become a game SDK and platform for easy creation of mods; And one of its prime new features for this is full scriptability with Lua.
Read about their progress on the latest beta here, which also includes this nice video showcasing the new player model and an test map:
