Annex:CTW RTS version 4.0 close to release

The MegaGlest based RTS Annex: Conquer The World is very close to a major update as version 4.0. Strait from the developer's mouth:

Yes! We are so close we can almost taste it.

He also posted a game-play video of the current development version:


He also recently stated that the new release will be fully FOSS, i.e. not only GPL source-code but also all artwork under a FOSS compatible creative-commons license (most likely CC-by-SA).

It's just a pity that the new much improved GUI code from MegaGlest seems to be not yet ready for the release.

P.S.: Also check out this Tower Defense mod for MegaGlest.

Support the development of the Terra Centauri RTS

Not exactly hot of the press, but the developer behind the MegaGlest based RTS Annex: Conquer the world has started a new project:

In a lonely planet circulating a distant star, a war of survival rages on. There a sentient race, the Valkyries struggle to protect their world and themselves against the parasitic organisms Devourers. Explore large maps for resources, treasure, and other advantages to fight back the relentless horde of Devourers.

Terra Centauri: The Last Stand is a new unique MG based game. While game shares a similar art style to Annex, this game has radically different gameplay and much higher quality models.

He is also running a funding campaign on Patreon and you can give feedback on the Megaglest forums.

Speaking of Megaglest: while development has slowed down a bit lately, the work on the CE-GUI based new menu and HUD is looking great.

Code Combat: Open Source Javascript Tutorial Gamification (In A Good Way)

youtube.com/watch?v=dCOHjERswGw

Code Combat is a javascript programming learning IDE wrapped in a delicious cute RPG/2D RTS packaging that runs in the browser without any plugins. They recently announced their open source/free art release.

The current set of Code Combat tutorials starts with directional movement and activation of pre-programmed behavior, continues with coordinate movement and targeting and conditional behavior and continues towards prediction calculations.

Editor GUI

youtube.com/watch?v=H5u5ga5dHm8

There is an editor, officially described as "broken". I can confirm that the text editor was slow when I tried using it. :)

All in all, a very exciting project. I have noticed a few possible drawbacks so far:

• It's not yet clear which parts will not remain proprietary. It looks like the excellent humor (writing) unfortunately will do so (legal page).
• The music tends to be too exciting to code to.
• There's a CLA requirement for contributing.

What do you think? Persuaded to work on a HTML5 game yourself perhaps, seeing that this performs okay? :)

December RTS updates

Merry Christmas from FreeGamer!

As a nice present from the 0 A.D. team, the new Alpha 15 Osiris was released today:



Lots of great new features and especially multiplayer games should be now much easier to do with hosting improvements and a lobby for browsing available games.

Another open-source RTS engine (using Mono/C# though) has also released a new version: OpenRA. Currently it is still geared toward running an assortment of older Command & Conquer based games, so you need to own these for the data. But this release adds lua scripting for the creation of custom missions, so maybe someone will come up with a libre game to run on this engine.

Last but not least, a new version of Warzone2100 was released about a week ago. This one actually includes some higher resolution textures, which is hopefully the first step to officially integrate all the awesome new art assets from the art revolution project.
Speaking of WZ mods: There is also an interesting new tower-defense mod currently being developed.

MegaGlest 3.9.0 released

Since I am having internet troubles as of late, I'll keep it short and hope it will actually come through:

Megaglest 3.9.0 was released today, see changelog:

v3.9.0
- we hopefully now really solved the last out of sync problems for cross platform games.
- animated tileset object support. ( like trees moving in the wind )
- new tileset texturing possibilities
- new tilesets birchforest, desert4 and updated mediterran using animated objects and new texture system
- greatly improved textures and animations for the roman faction
- new maps
- better network game performance / management to handle slower clients.
- easier ability to download game content from host and masterserver( if available there ).
- new arranged options menu with several sub menus
- menu gui improvements
- attack hotkey toggles through all attack types
- single player games can be sped up incrementally in steps.
- color picking is greatly improved and the default selection mode now for better compatibility
- greater ability to translate game content into your native language. (including techtrees)
- Added Hebrew, Arabic, Vietnamese (and others).
- screenshots for savegames without annoying menu in screenshot.
- addition of google-breakpad to better track down bugs.
- many new lua functions for scenario modders.
- cell coordinates are shown in the mapeditor
- tilesets can set default air unit heights
- added ability for stand alone mod's to customize more of the engine like about screen.
- performance improvements.
- and as always many bugs were fixed
- improved textures for tech faction

Alpha 14 and a crowd-funding campaign for 0 A.D.

Pretty interesting news from 0 A.D. today: They are having a Indigogo crowd-funding campaign.



Note that this is a flexible funding campaign, so even if they don't reach their goals all money donated will go to the project.

They also released a new Alpha version, codenamed Naukratis. Change-log would be too long to list here (which I consider a good thing ;) ), but here is a picture of some high-quality newly added building models:

New blacksmith buildings

So check out the new version and please consider donating to this top of the crop FOSS game project.

Much activity for Zero-K and some other news

Zero-K, the probably coolest fully FOSS offspring of the SpringRTS engine has seen at least two new releases since it last crossed my mind to check their page... a pity actually as the new features of version 1.1.7.0 (and prior) seem quite nice.
And for those not into the game (yet), there is now a channel with commented multi-player matches like this one:



Just a pity that the game-play doesn't really allow much zooming in to see the graphically really nice units ;)

In unrelated news:

• New release of Arx Libertatis (1.1.1)
• Tesseract is getting its own "base game" it seems
• There is a constant stream of new betas from Octaforge
• The Unvanquished summer tournament is under way, but matches so far have been a bit one-sided ;)
• Check out the new 3.8.0-beta1 version of MegaGlest

Hmm, there is probably much more... so please comment below :D

Project Leadership & Management in Free, Open Source Games

Both 0 A.D. and Unknown Horizons experience a change in leadership!

For 0 A.D., Erik Johansson steps down from project leadership and Michael D. Hafer assumes that role.

In Unknown Horizons, Nightraven steps back and Kilian fills the project management role.

Leadership in free and open source game projects is an exciting topic with much opinion about which style will lead to a successful game - whatever the subject's definition of "success" is - and too few examples to make objective statements about it.

Are you following any specific projects and their leadership structures an want to comment on these? I must admit that I am out of the loop with many, many projects, although I am pretty sure that for example Flare, NAEV and Valyria Tear have (successful) Benevolent Dictator for Life style leadership.

On related note: FIFE (the isometric 2d engine used by Unknown Horizons) moved to GitHub.

Shunned Survivor: MMORTS Tower Defense

Defending your outpost in Shunned Survivor

Shunned Survivor Commentary Video

Shunned Survivor is one of the entries for PyWeek #15 September 2012 "One Way Trip".

In the genre mix between MMORTS, city building, economy simulation and tower defense game, you control an exiled human, with the apparent goal to get back to earth.

The interaction with other players is quite indirect. You can attack other player's bases and win the "data" resource this way, which you need to perform "research" actions. However, defeating a base does not change it, you simply get the reward and can attack again.

Shunned Survivor Server map

While researching, however, you need to perform in a tower defense minigame, during which your defensive towers can be destroyed. If you succeed, the research was successful. If not, you have to enforce your defenses and try again.

Even though quite a bit of the gameplay time is spent on waiting for resources to be generated by the various resource gathering buildings, I find this game very entertaining and highly recommend you to give it a try.

Code License: CC0
Content License: CC0

Fresh versions of Stunt Rally and Warzone2100

Just released today, there is a new version (1.9) for Stunt Rally:

Stunt Rally 1.9

It has a few nice new features, but probably the greatest update is a major change in the car handling physics, including an "easy" mode for those of us not wishing to practice for a career as a professional rally driver ;) and the guys would like feedback in the SR forum so let them know what you think.

A big collection of (partially quite crazy) screens can be found here.

Another great release that surfaced just today is Warzone2100 version 3.1.0. It cumulates all the changes made during the last 2.5 years, however if you tested the RCs already then there isn't too much new. Most notably they mention the new and fully fixed netcode, so that "out of sync" is a thing of the past (unless you have a crappy net connection like me :( ).

Have fun playing!