Data Dealer, an interesting project to fund!

The the last Kickstarter game project we featured was sadly not successful and with only 11 days to go it doesn't look too good for Data Dealer either. But this HTML5 and CC-by-SA licensed game project comes with a pretty cool idea and is quite playable already.



It centers around the idea that services like Facebook & Google really arn't in the business of bringing you a good service (aka "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold") and makes a ironic game out of that.

Here is game-play trailer to give you an better idea:



Or try the current demo on their webpage.

Now of course as we have all recently learned (or at least got confirmation about), the reality is even more twisted than just the private business side of things. But over the revelations of the mass surveillance by the NSA & Co., we should still not forget that all those big internet companies arn't victims by far either.

P.S.: My best wishes go out to Mr. Snowden! You are a hero of our generation.

Cube2 engine keeps on expanding!

While the recent new release of Cube2: Sauerbraten didn't bring any really big changes, the network of friendly forks keeps expanding. But before I go into more details, here is a new feature trailer of Cube2: Sauerbraten:



The maybe most prominent and fully FOSS fork RedEclipse is still working on the promised new 1.4 release, with them doing some silly and some cool enhancement projects in the meantime... so yeah:

Red Eclipse in Valve Time tm

Octaforge still has a few day to go in order to avoid missing their estimated release "this month", but when browsing OpenGameArt.org, I came across an interesting fork of the Sandbox Game Maker fork, called Lamiae with the RPG game Kelgar:


Kelgar Gameplay 0.8 - Indie DB

According to their github page, content seems to be libre (CC-by or CC-by-SA) but information is a bit scarce. Even less information is available for this other fork, called SabiCube, but you can download and test their alpha.

Oh and a bit older, but also interesting: the emscripten powered HTML5 port of Cube2, called Banana Bread, has also really picked up since the main emscripten developer was hired by the Mozilla foundation. Here you can see it running a multi-player game (very recent new feature), and with the upcoming (also Mozilla powered) asm.js Javascript speed-up, it will probably run at near native speeds in the not too far future.

Ok... I hope that is all... if you know of other interesting Cube2 powered projects, please comment below!

Complete List of Fosdem Game Dev Resources

A link to some Fosdem Resouces has been already posted here before, but now we have a complete list of available slides and audio and video recordings from the event:

Event	Slides	Audio	Video	Speaker
Xonotic: The road to 1.0	Yes	No	No	Merlijn Hofstra
FreedroidRPG: Anatomy of a RPG	Yes	Yes	Yes	Arthur Huillet
Unknown Horizons: Data-Driven and Component-Based Game-Entities	Yes	Yes	No	Thomas Kinnen
WorldForge: The Dynamic Data Driven Worlds	Yes	Yes	No	Alistair Riddoch
Pandora: Mobile Linux Computer with Gaming Gontrols	No	No	No	Michael Mrozek
Wesnoth: Balancing a Game the Open Source Way	Yes	Yes	No	Jeremy Rosen
Ogre3d: Getting Started with Game Development	Yes	Yes	No	Erik Ogenvik
Gluon: Game Creation and Distribution	Yes	Yes	No	Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen
The Future of Open Web Gaming	Yes	No	No	Rob Hawkes

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

Maquetta, IBM's open source WYSIWYG HTML-5 editor

Short quick news related to (more game focused HTML5 editors and game creators) tools we discussed earlier:

Our all beloved corporate overlord IBM, has handed over their internal WYSIWYG HTML-5 editor Maqetta, to the open-source dojo foundation so that it will thrive and be expanded by the community.

The feature list is already quite impressive, and even though I am no HTML-5 programming expert I assume it could be used for game creation already. But of course some extra specific extensions, pre-made game code and easier java-script integration would probably go a long way in making this tool even more user friendly for the game-dev. crowd.

Open Web Games, GameOn and Construct 2

(edit: Construct 2 is going Closed Source, I'll either edit out this part or keep it for reference, but don't get your hopes up when reading this)

Scirra Construct is one of the few FOSS competitors to the proprietary GameMaker 2D game development suite (Gluon, Enigma and Game-Editor being the others). Unfortunately, the system has been limited to Windows since its inception due to relying on DirectX fiddlies, however, that has all changed...

Construct 0.x Showreel

Yesterday the long awaited Construct 2 project released a public alpha. No longer are Construct games chained to Windows; instead, games can be exported to HTML (5) which is pretty much on the opposite spectrum of platform-lockin.

Construct 0.x Interface

Now, one significant problem is that the editor isn't cross platform, and relies on a Windows GUI lib. However, seeing as the games are now cross platform, maybe the FOSS gaming community can show their appreciation by helping with the porting process? "Game Maker" like software is something that really lowers the bar of entry into game development, and Construct 2 fits that bill.

Jump on their forums if you're interested!

Why HTML (5)?

So, some people might ask why Scirra is targeting this rather new platform. I'm most probably mistaken, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Construct 2 is the first "HTML 5 Game IDE", and definitely the only Open Source one. Among the Free Gamer blog team, we have a couple of writers who don't approve of the web being used as a game platform (you know who you are), personally I find it rather promising. The fact that open web tech is immensely cross platform, and has an ease-of-delivery that is second to none, I can only see benefits to developing and embracing it further.

Mozilla seems to have gone that route; they recently hosted the "Game On" competition where developers entered games that utilize open web tech; and FOSS web games won 2 of the categories ("Best Webbiness" and "Most Fun")!

Don't write HTML 5 games off to 2 dimensions either, someone recently posted a rather simple but fun 3D RPG game utilizing WebGL on OpenGameArt the other day,  it's rather cool :) Also don't forget about the Quake 2 WebGL port! (remember, these require a WebGL enabled browser, such as Chrome/ium and Firefox 4)