Cube Train, Frogatto development and LPC

Today is another session of: "Look what I found in my FG spam folder" ;) But this time I am actually adding a lot of nice other stuff to it, so that it is almost a "dev-corner" post!

But first things first... the frogatto developers made us aware that there is a new game based on their really nice 2D engine, called Cube Trains:

Cube Trains Beta gameplay

Note that, just like frogatto, the final version will cost a few pennies, but the engine is totally FOSS and the current Beta is still free to download.

This seems to fit to the general idea of the folks behind this engine as they outlined in the email to us:

I'm really glad we now have a second major title done in frogatto's engine, because we're gradually trying to position frogatto's engine as an open-source alternative to closed-source packages like GameMaker or RPGMaker;  partly just because development tools are one software category that benefits far more than other categories from being open-source, but also because our engine technology is a lot better than GameMaker;  we're fully GPU-accelerated, and we've got a much better internal programming language.  We've got a ways to go, since GameMaker still has a bunch of advantages over us on the gui side, but we're getting there.

Cube Trains is not one of them, but eventually, we're hoping to build a stable of "starter kits" for different game types - like GameMaker has, built under a CC0 license so they're suitable not just for GPL games, but for absolutely anything (indie titles being a big one).  Hopefully that was we can get a bunch of people from the indie gaming crowd behind an open-source tool.

Which seems like a pretty good idea to me, and looking at the awesome features they recently showcased in three tutorials (1,2,3) I wholeheartedly agree with the comment on their superior engine technology!

Speaking of the frogatto engine and tutorials I can elegantly lead to my other topic today, as the people behind the currently pre-warming Liberated Pixels Cup, aka our friends from OpenGameArt, are also endorsing the use of that engine as outlined here. The have also recently featured another really nice 2D game dev. tile editor, and hot of the press is the news that the Mozilla foundation has joined the FSF and Creative Commons as a main sponsor of the event!
With Mozilla also came a significant cash contribution, which means that the initial goal of US$ 10,000 has been reached, but you can still up the ante!

It seems that this comes along a general push from the Mozilla Foundation towards more HTML5 gaming (now part of the LPC too), supported by the fact that they have recently released a nice RPG game demo (BrowserQuest) and are working even on a 3D engine called Gladius.

Ah and not to forget: OGA has also recently added a nice featured tutorial section to their site... so nothing is holding you back to finally become an active part of the FOSS game-development community... yes, I said YOU! :D

GameLV: Completely Free, Open Source Point And Click Post-Soviet Adventure Game

Post-Soviet Adventure's protagonist cleaning up the inventory

The story of GameLV: Adventure Game in Post Soviet Environment (Post-Soviet Adventure) begins with your dog having gone missing and your only lead being a meat product factory. For about one hour you point-and-click through pre-rendered environments, hunt pixels, read humorous descriptions and dialogues to reach a resolution.

I for one appreciate the humor in AGiPSE's humor, which I might have a high affinity to due to do my roots in Russia and my life taking place in eastern Berlin most of its time.

Be warned though: references to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography and violence are common in this game.

Post-Soviet Adventure is available in English and Latvian languages, both text and voice, although the English voices are incomplete.

video: [English Voices] Adventure in Post Soviet Environment (GameLV) by snauts (Artūrs Grebstelis)

The engine features savegames and scene animations and uses image masks to set define interactive areas. Text files seem to be used for defining the game.

To use voices, see following note:

So here is GameLV HEAD from our local repo with half way done english speech that has terrible pronunciation and was abandoned. http://piepe.lv/game-lv/assemble.tgz
That "assemble" is the same as "data" directory on https://github.com/snauts/GameLV, just put your binary in there and run.
P.S. My uplink to foreign countries is slow, so it should take a while for you download it. [mediafire mirror]
P.S.S If you want to run latvian version issue (in assemble directory)
sed "s/\-en//" *.lst -i
UI will still be in english because UI strings are compiled into engine.

Both code and art are freely licensed and the very nice music was even written and performed for the game. Some sounds have unknown sources though and finding freely licensed replacements on Freesound and OpenGameArt would be a way to contribute to the project.

Terasology - YAMC or not?

YAMC? Yet another Minecraft clone??? Well Terasology (previously called "Moving Blocks") sure looks like one:

Terasology alpha gameplay

But besides looking like a pretty good YAMC, it actually promises to deviate from the boring Minecraft routine and mentions the pretty well liked games Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Keeper as inspirations for its planned game-play :)

Code is under the Apache license, however the current pixel textures are non-free. But if this takes off, those should be relatively easy to replace with really free ones ;)
Oh and you can run it via Java directly from your browser (I had a black void as a world under Linux though... so your mileage might vary also).