Game Developers: Standardize Custom User Files Path on Mac OS X and Linux Now!

Naev became XDG-compliant on *nix systems. By following the Freedesktop XDG Base Directory specification. Join the right cause! [edit]Here's a second post on the topic by the Naev developers.[/edit]

Examples of non-compliant ~/.placement:

.alephone	.freeciv	.OpenLieroX
.allacrost	.freeciv-client-rc-2.2	.openttd
.ardentryst	.frogatto	.phlipple
.Avoision	.frozen-bubble	.q3a
.chromium-bsu	.ivan.conf	.redeclipse
.civserver_history	.IvanSave	.renpy
.coldest		.scavenger
.dosbox	.minetest	.supertux2
.fall-of-imiryn	.nikki	.teeworlds
.feuerteufel.conf	.nikki-free-levels	.trigger
.fife	.openarena

And here are some good ones:

.config/flare	.config/inkscape	.config/mapeditor.org
.config/violetland

Naev 0.5 released!

Naev 0.5

A new release of the 2D space trading and combat game Naev is out and available as binaries for Lin/Mac/Win here.

For those using Ubuntu (or other Debian-derived distributions), Naev is available from PlayDeb. Naev is also available in Arch Linux, Gentoo, and from the openSUSE Games repository.

 Have a changelog:

List of changes since 0.4.2:
For Players

• Larger universe

• Expanded Dvaered, Frontier, Empire and Pirate territories

• All-new Sirius and Soromid territory

• Big systems

• More planets per system

• Much larger planets, many new planet and station graphics

• Players must fly to jump points before jumping to another system

• Overlay map for in-system navigation

• Mouse interactivity

• Planet, ship and jump point targeting

• Contextual click actions (board, hail, land, etc.)

• Optional mouse-controlled flying

• Electronic warfare

• Ships have cloaking and detection abilities

• Sensor range depends on cloak vs detection

• Turrets no longer track all ships equally

• Time model changes

• In-game time progresses in real-time

• Dynamic time compression speeds up long journeys

• On-map security rating abandoned in favour of faction presence indicators

• System backgrounds (nebulae, stars and more!)

• Fancier new GUI

• Brand-new tutorial that is independent from the main game

• Outfit slots now have sizes

• Weapon sets allow easy configuration of different weapon combinations for each ship

• Ship and weapon heat system

• Weapons start with perfect accuracy, and become inaccurate as they overheat

• Severe overheating causes rate of fire to drop

• Damage absorption and penetration system

• More diverse planetary inventories (see the tech system below)

• Random bar NPCs

• Sound system improvements

• Smarter autonav behaviour

• … and plenty more (new missions, ships, outfits, portraits, etc.)

Naev Sound and Xonotic Map Devolution

Spoiler alert regarding a video of a NAEV mission that shows off the sound capacities of the game. The project relies on OpenAL Soft.

You should come for the sound [10MB vorbis rip]* or for the HD version.

Effects to notice:

• Positional sound (basic for OpenAL)

• Doppler Effect (depends on velocity)

• Air absorption factor (sounds like you’re under water)

• Reverb (also helps make it sound like you’re underwater)

• Speed of sound changes (depends on nebula density – also for sounding underwater)

* It'd be great if more project took so much care of audio licensing so there could be f-a-i-f game sound walks. Great distraction from urban noise. Game soundtracks are disturbing though mostly.

An amazing screens-video of the different stages of modernizing/Xonoticisizing CBCTF1 - Space CTF to Newtonian Nightmare was posted.

Naev 0.5 beta

Naev, the excellent 2D space combat and trading game, recently released a huge milestone (0.5 beta). It adds a far larger universe with more planets, more gameplay aspects such as electronic warfare, gui improvements and lots more. It also added new features to the game's engine giving developers more tools and features to play around with.

Contributors, contributors, contributors

The development structure of FOSS game projects can be a one-man show, it can be semi-closed by having a fixed team and little web presence, it can have lots of tasks without anybody knowing what needs to be done, or it can be plain frozen until a developer decides to pick it up.

Today, I will try to pick some of the open development ones that provide some kind of ordered task list and provide instructions in the case of media creation being the job.

Programming

Rocket Race in Syntensity [more]

Syntensity has some open tasks (having played the game helps understanding :) ), which involve tinkering with the Sauerbraten-based engine and JavaScript.

latest UFO:AI world view

I just found out on #ufoait that UFO:AI is soon to release the first version that allows you to win the game. This will make the squad tactics game be eligible to a line on our list of complete foss games! There are still a few tasks to complete before 2.3, a humble list compared to all the open issues.

PARPG developers wants to ship the first tech demo on 10th of March but could use some Python programmers' help. The engine used by PARPG, FIFE, just released 0.3.0, introducing internationalization as one of the features. One plan for a forthcoming version is to improve rendering performance.

Never mind the sidetracking, regarding PARPG programming: here's the first step (chat) of involvement and the second (forums). :) In case you're worried about setup complications: being on Arch Linux it has been no effort for me to install fife-svn and test the svn version of PARPG many times.

Current PARPG status

I told you about the problems of getting Bitfighter to run on my x64 system. Others suffer from the same and now the development team is looking for someone willing to take a look at our errors and their code in this thread. Should you happen to take a look and have an idea of what the problem is but are too laz.. busy to register at yet another forum, please do comment on this post. :)

Assets/Media/Art

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Racer r242 screenshots

Racer is getting prettier and prettier and hopefully the instructions for making cars, using the editor and creating visual themes will let some race track artists do their magic. I recommend the racer-dev group for getting in touch with the developer.

A list of wanted voice lines for NAEV was compiled. For brainstorming, a PiratePad was used, which is based on the FOSS collaborative web text editor etherpad.

jClassicRPG recently received a new voice pack but is still looking for more voices. If you are or you know someone who likes to put their voice to use and has a way to record it, go to/direct them to the updated voice acting instructions.

irrlamb documentation now features a wiki page on level editing. For questions and feedback use this thread.