SuperTux Forum and January 2012 Level Contest

SuperTux level design mistakes to avoid

SuperTux just got a forum on FreeGameDev.net and started a level contest.

Rules:

• A snow tileset theme 
• Submit your levels here until the 27th of January, when voting will start
• Voting on levels will end on the January 30st
• Winners will be announced January 31st
• Have fun
• One level per person
• Top few levels will/can be made into an add-on or
• If admins are okay with it top levels will get added to incubator island (if winners are okay with it - pick cc0 or cc-by-sa for your level)
• One entry per person
• Please make a new level. (not from and existing worldmap/levelset)
• Don't vote for your self.
• Voting will take place in a new forum topic.
• Feel free to comment on peoples levels, most people would like to hear what was wrong or good with their level.

Get the editor, read the editor guide (and just play around, as the guide is incomplete ;) ) and check out the style guide.

You can upload submissions in this thread.

Winter Shorts: Bits & Bots, Goblin Camp 0.2, BASE PRO 0.4b-r2, FlightGear Interviews

Bits & Bots: controlling two robots at once

Bits & Bots is a real-time puzzle game about figuring out the codes to moving robots around and get them to their targets most efficiently. It comes with binaries for 32/64bit Linux and Windows. Gpl code, by-sa art.

Goblin Camp 0.2, probably running some fancy tileset

Goblin Camp 0.2 brings a stockpile of changes:

• Piles replace Stockpiles. Everything is allowed and containers get automatically shuffled to where they are needed.
• Diseases will weaken and eventually kill your population if you don’t do anything about a growing population.
• Migratory animals will sometimes cross the map
• The spawning pool expands and spreads corruption in a smoother way, it’s improved from the abrupt way it was before.
• Cowardly creatures can now also panic if they encounter another panicking creature
• Death messages have been improved to give a bit more information, and a bit of variety has been added to them as well.
• Constructions strobe under the cursor now, to better visualize where one stops and another one begins.
• Portable mode. Just create a file named goblin-camp.portable in the directory where GC is installed and it’ll store all the files it needs in a sub-directory in that folder, instead of in the operating system’s default folder.
• Skeletons no longer bleed and other assorted bug fixes.

video: BASE PRO Edition 0.4 beta patch2 - Gameplay Sample

BASE Pro is a Windows-only base jumping simulation game. Its community and news can be found on this forum.

Community member LedInfrared got the hang out of gameplay video recording and shared videos of STK and Xonotic on this YouTube page, including download links to original video material!

Stuart Buchanan: FlightGear contributor

FlightGear's news section has seen quite a high activity lately, including three interviews:

• Oliver Jacq: scenery designer/scripter
• Gijs de Rooy: modeller and scenery designer
• Stuart Buchanan: coder and aircraft designer

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