A bunch of updates

Very creative headline, I know... but news of various games were piling up in my "should post about it on FreeGamer" link-list... yet I never really felt like actually writing an article about. So some of it might be old news... but hey at least it hasn't been featured here AFAIK.

So, where to start?

Maybe with some nice puzzle games: Rezerwar is a pretty nice mixture of a pipes game and some sort of tetris, and it was even created using only open-source software. Another pipes game is Cooldown, which might be worth to check out, too. Graphically a bit more advanced is Octaspire: Crates, a block movement type game or something like that ;) But see for yourself:

Octaspire:Crates Tutorial

A non puzzle game worth checking out are Hero of Allacrost (a 2D RPG), which recently had it's DEMO 1.0 release. Another, albeit 3D RPG (engine) is DNT (DccNiTghtmare), which is set in a "satirical post-apocalyptical world".

If you are following the development of the promising turn based colony game Unknown Horizons (aka the artist formerly known as OpenAnno), their new development blog might be of interest. Oh and did I mention that FreeCol also got a bunch of updates lately?

Very neat is also the recent release of FreeOrion, a turn based space colonization game. It still lacks some important features to be really playable (combat and diplomacy), but otherwise it is already a pretty good looking game:

FreeOrion

Another game currently heavily updated game (engine) is OSARE, which aims to be a fully featured base to build Diablo like story lines/games with. An already slightly outdated (v0.08, newest v0.09) shows what can be done already:

OSARE loot drops

Another interesting project I came across lately is the Darkplaces based Blood Omicide, which is of course sadly based on copyrighted material. Overdose, a recently already mentioned open-source "in engine but not in media" (and even the engine code has yet to be released) game has recently shown some rather nice enemy model screen-shots. Furthermore their newest video is quite amazing in regards to the light rendering.

A game-engine and the games based on it that is probably vastly under-reported here on FreeGamer, is the Spring RTS engine. I guess it might be due to my dislike of Total Annihilation like RTS, but there is actually one (with public domain licensed media) that strays from that kind of RTS concept: Kernel Panic puts you right inside of a PC, and has quite a bit of nice uncommon game modi that break up the usual RTS grind.

Kernel Panic promo

I guess that's all for today... my link-list is not yet completely empty, but the rest will have to wait for another day ;)

Two FOSS gems

Ok today I have updates for two real FOSS gems. First of all the long promised update on ZeroBallistics: the former indi, now FOSS tank shooter. A few weeks ago thy made all the game (including even .blend model source files!) available under the GPLv2 (and the media also under CC-BY-SA) so even the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts will be pleased :)

After some trouble compiling it (more on that later) I made a nice game-play video today (sorry for the low frame-rate, but my PC wasn't quite up to the task):

ZeroBallistics game-play

Pretty neat, isn't it? The developers are currently looking into getting their master-server and website back up running soon, but are also looking for more people to help them out!

There is especially one problem that needs to be solved however: Currently it still depends on the un-free Raknet3 for networking, so it's not possible to distribute GPL binaries. There is an older GPL version of Raknet2 which could be maybe used (we talked about it earlier), but it has its far share of problems too (f.e. broken 64bit support). Another project recently replaced it with their own enet wrapper, so maybe that could be also used. So if you know your coding, get into contact with the ZeroBallistics developers ASAP!

Summoning Wars 0.5.2 released

Speaking of Summoning Wars, they have just released their new version now with music and sounds (at least partially). Check out the game yourself (available for Linux, Windows or Mac)!

Edit: Here is a small video showing some features:

Summoning Wars game-play

But for those that like more eye-candy, the next version with terrain system will for sure make you look again. Besides with upcoming new player models like this, it will for sure look even greater soon.

Some more (L)GPL strategy game love

Ok, quick update before too much dust gathers around here ;)

Just yesterday I stumbled upon this gem of a strategy game over at LGDB:

They call that simple bot???

Its name is Quantum, as some of you might have guessed it is a clone of Dyson/Eufloria. But the game is quite mesmerizing with the strange background noise and your armies of small space tree spores conquering new worlds. But try it yourself!

Now normally clones are not as good as the original, right? Not is this case: Full multiplayer (with master-server and lobby), singleplayer skirmishes, in-game editor etc. are just a small part of the long feature list! Furthermore it's all available under the LGPL (written in Java). Me = happy puppy :)

Seven Kingdoms GPL version

Not exactly super fresh news but the relatively recently GPLed 1997's strategy game Seven Kingdoms got a SDL based Linux port. Check out a small video tutorial here (as I found it difficult understand what to do initially).

Oh, and lets not forget a game-play video

So that's all for today. Stay tuned for more awesome FOSS gaming news!