OpenDungeons Progress

OpenDungeons, a long-time Freegamedev project has been through a lot of changes since it started on the Freegamedev forums, going through a lead-dev swap and a major re-write. In the years since we last mentioned them, they've actually produced something playable: lots of new code and artwork has been contributed by a small but dedicated team of contributors and it has been shaping up to be an exemplary FOSS game.

There's still lots of work that needs doing though: loads of creatures that need concept art, models and scripting, room tiles that need textures and models, and game design work that needs finalizing. There's a lot of ideas floating around on the forums that need art and implementation

With all the work that's gone into the project, they're busy readying up another release. Unfortunately they've had a bit of trouble with ubuntu/debian packaging (and linux packaging in general), so if anyone out there would like to give them a hand, it would really be a boost to the foss gaming world :)

RTS: The Romans VS. the Greek (+Chinese)

I take it my comments regarding the Spring RTS engine were not taken so well... so I will present some (in my opinion) much better and less messy to setup RTS games ;)

One, I really like to come back to is Glest! The previously featured version/fork of that game, Megaglest (Edit: Now links to their awesome new webpage, how did I miss this ;) ), just released another version (3.4.0) with quite a lot of new features.

Newest Megaglest gameplay

It now got a new build-in IRC client for multiplayer chatting, can transfer missing files from the server (useful for all those custom maps you can find ;) ), some performance and stability improvements as well as the usual assortment of new maps and map-themes. Ah and to come back to the headline: A new faction, the Romans were added ;)

The Contestant

Of course, adding Romans to the game is poaching in an other's territory... that of the Greeks ;) So lets have a look at the recent developments in 0 A.D.:

New 0 A.D. gameplay

They are progressing quickly, and the game is surprisingly playable already, given it's early beta status. But you can still help them out even if you are not a real artist or a programmer:
Their previously mentioned donation drive is still running, and they are also having some sort of competition for creating a nice video trailer of the game.

The support crew

So who is going to win the battle about the Mediterranean? Well I fear the Greeks just got support by the fleet of the Chinese Emperor:

A mod team going by the name of Scion Development is making great progress in implementing a Chinese faction into 0 A.D.; Check out their development thread here. Oh and no worries, after some initial license confusion, they seem to have decided to go for a fully FOSS compatible media license :) Edit: Well it seems like they are still not quite sure, so I can't guarantee that they will go completely FOSS... lets hope they don't go for one of those atrocious CC-ND/NC licenses.

Contact: Tactical Squad RTS

Another game from the well of innovation that is the SpringRTS community, Contact aims to be an Open-Source squad based RTS. It uses models from the DOTA-like attempt "Engines of War" which unfortunately never really got anywhere, other than a couple of nice mechs.

The Contact team released a beta on the 25 Dec last year, so it's not exactly breaking news, but the project is still moving forward and could use a couple of eyes if anyone is interested in it.

Forum Thread with more screenies