10 Best Open Source RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
| 2:00 AM

By On 2:00 AM


 
Top ten RPGs - I made a video of this. People who love text so much they would marry it, will be delighted to see this concise side-product of that video. A list of sorts. With thoughts that came to me after the fact. Especially nagging thoughts.


The bestness of films is determined by their profitability. Which one can claim allows concluding the quality of the product. Maybe the marketing is part of that product.

Whatever the case, none of this is applicable to the underground niche pro-tip specialized target audience-seeking open source games, where using the word choice "open source" is valid enough to stop writing and discuss philosophy.

Thereby I declare that "best" means "complete-ish, playable, fun" which is 33%-66% objective. I present to you - in order of "not like in the video" - the best eleven minus one* RPGs that ever existed yet.

RPG platforming is still a concept to get used to but for some reason It works well. As for balancing: I have no idea if I could finish it with melee weapon choice. Ardentryst's ending is a little anticlimactic but I'm just happy to have an ending at all.

I don't actually know what the ending looks like of the classic Diablo-esque game for Linux and the open source sphere. Freedroid RPG seems however to dictate: pick either fun (hacking droids) or progression (experience point rewards in exchange for direct kills).

Custom resolution support AND 3d graphics is great, the UI is tiny however in DNT. I just reported a build error and a fix was pushed hours ago, so I'm looking forward to trying to compile it again! The vertical slice that is the game is not very thick but so colorful! Nerdy post-apocalyptic humor FTW.

The first time I saw FLARE art in another game was Erebus. The D&D feel is great for someone like me who loves the memory of playing Baldur's Gate II but hates actually investing the actual time to actually play it actually. The most boring part so far was finding new items - there seem to be so few and none seem special. On the other hand: less item micro-management.

It is weird that this even exists. It is so freaking polished. The only weird things are: shooting corners of walls and... I guess the android version setup. Theoretically FLARE is totally mod-able. I worry that the people that are not scared away by the documentation might be the kind of people who will just start writing their own engine instead.

I fell in love with only one jRPG - a genre I usually hate for the grinding and unskippable animations/sequences - because it had painless and low quantity grinding. Fall of Imiryn is short and sweet. I actually contributed a little. It is complete and done and as long as Python 2 remains, it will be playable. That is at least 5 more months and 6 days.

When I enjoy the humor of a game, that can be the hook it needs to catch me in its net. FreeDink is cartoonishly-brutal, silly, stupid. The hero is a prick. I like it. I haven't ever finished it yet but I am curious to one day find out his punishment.

Speaking of humor: this is a joke. I love it. I did play nethack but it was kind of a social pressure thing. For IVAN however I was glad to learn the initially painful controls.

I am very much not into Wesnoth or Panzer General. Therefore if I ever ran into Hale before, I had ignored it. I was wrong to do so. I like the spells, I like the relative casualness (compared to roguelikes). I don't know whether I like the inventory management yet. It has absolutely no sound, which is a problem for me. Others will love that fact.

When upon entering a game it feels like I should know what is going on, a variety of emotions is triggered. The end sum (pun intended): is it worth it, let me work it. Summoning Wars is dead, long live Summoning Wars. Just like OGRE. Im impressed by how much playtime it has already. The visuals (oh the grass textures) might prevent me from even going beyond the first few maps but still one of the best.

I lost my patience on my lest test-play of Valyria Tear and used Cheat Engine (don't ask). My only regret was that it took me hours to remember to use speedhack. The extreme difficulty is just as problematic as the slowness of movement and battle - for the kind of time-greedy being that I am. Story seems cool though and the characters too.

*try guessing (without watching the video) which of these actually does not belong on the top10 list!

While re-finding all these projects, I was really happy that SourceForge still exists. Didn't expect to ever think that thought again.

Please use the video comment section to discuss this article.

Naev, Valyria Tear, Wyrmsun, ReTux
| 5:17 AM

By On 5:17 AM

Wymrsun 1.6.0 was recently released (announcement on our forums and on Steam). Wyrmsun is inspired by the original Warcraft games and many reviewers on Steam compare it to Warcraft II. The project continues a steady development pace which is always a good sign so I encourage RTS fans to try it out.

Wyrmsum

Naev 0.6.1 has been released. After a long period without releases until release 0.6.0 appeared in March, this follow up release indicates a return to regular progress for the project. Naev is a 2D space trading and combat game.


I couldn't find a more recent video but here's a bit of a development log of some features for the 0.6.0 release.

Speaking of resurgent projects, Valyria Tear has some news.
The most noticeable change is that I killed a few days ago a very nasty bug that was there from the beginning, making the lua threads never freed from memory. This means the game won't end up anymore swallowing gigs of memory for nothing and crash due to some memory overflow.
Well that does sound like a bit of a killjoy, so good to see it fixed. Other changes are in the blog post.

Onto more things slightly more dubiously open source in nature...

ReTux 0.2 has been released. ReTux is a new Super Tux inspired game. It is a completely rewritten (in Python) codebase although uses many of the assets from the original Super Tux so naturally people will mistake the two despite the significant differences. I already covered the IndieGoGo campaign in a previous article.

ReTux
I'm not really on board with the way the developer Onpon4 is now soliciting $20 for access to the code. I think he's both hurting himself by limiting exposure of the game (you need a password to access the downloads) as well as asking for a fairly significant sum in an age where AAA games are of a similar price a year after release (and regularly on offer, as any Humble Bundle or Steam user will know).

I would say he should just get it on Steam, sell it there, and be open source outside of that. Perhaps have additional levels in the Steam version but accept that charging for the source code is as pointless as it is ineffective.

Valyria Tear 0.6.0 released
| 10:37 AM

By On 10:37 AM

I have to admit that we are a bit slow on reporting the news on FOSS gaming projects with we actually host ourselves via the freegamedev.net forums. Valyria Tear is sadly no exception, and their new 0.6.0 release has been out a few days already. Sorry to all whom this may concern.

For those not in the loop, Valyria Tear is based on the engine of Hero of Allacrost and aims to be an all FOSS jRPG. To give you a better idea of the game-play, here is a (slightly older) cool video of it done by some Linux enthusiasts:



(Thanks also to Rootgamer who reminded me of this news).

If you like the new release, give them some praise on our forums!