Some things on my radar

"Damn Free Gamer is popular." So says the L-echo developer, as well as posting graphic illustration on the project home page. L-Echo is a free and open source clone of the game Echochrome (aka Mugen Kairou). Version 0.4.3 arrived in early February, although performance was unplayable on my non-hardware-accelerated laptop.

Freedroid RPG version 0.12rc1 - a 2D isometric RPG, a bit like Diablo, but not like it at all. There's lots of bug fixes, a new tutorial, a new starting level, lua scripting, and more! Help them playtest it so that version 0.12 is solid.

"Tesliz", a 3D turn based strategy game, inspired by Wesnoth, written in Python on top of OGRE. Early days here.

Speaking of Wesnoth had lots of updates over the Christmas period, building up to a stable 1.6 release. That game has some amazing artwork these days, like these wizard portaits. They have lots of playtesters already. If you don't know what Wesnoth is, crikey, just click the link already.

Globulation 2 version 0.9.4 (changelog) which is a lot of balancing, bug fixing and enhancement of existing features, from what I can tell. Globulation 2 is an innovative 2D RTS where you lead autonomous blobs into battle. Innovative, yah. Blobs, meh.

Java Classic RPG version 2009-02-28 (announcement) which has a rather large amount of changes since the previous release. Highlights include moving to jMonkeyEngine 2.0, new monsters, area dependent music playback, new portraits, and optimizations. I hope to see this project become a completable game this year.

Freelords tech release 0.03 is out. Freelords is a Warlords-inspired 2D strategy game written in Java. This release introduces simultaneous movement and improves the graphics and dialogs. Freelords was originally a C++ project - the C++ codebase lives on in LordsAWar. Recently the developer posted a video of a city history report (ogg) on the LordsAWar homepage, which I thought was quite neat. It's the kind of feature usually missing from Free games.

Tennix 1.0 is available. Tennix is a very simple pong-like Tennis game, but the amount of polish going into it shows how nice a simple game can become. All it takes is a little passion.

Gearhead2 version 0.540 (announcement) continues the spate of game rule adjustments. I like it that there's a lot of thought going into giving the game depth.

Rigs of Rods goes Open Source and Glest 3.2

Rigs of Rods is going open source. How cool is that?

Rigs of Rods (also known as RoR), is a truck, car, airplane and boat simulator. You can drive, fly or sail in total freedom in an open environment. What makes RoR different to most simulators is its unique soft-body physics: vehicles chassis and wheels are simulated in real-time as flexible objects, giving the simulation an extremely accurate behavior, while allowing the vehicles to be simply specified by their structural composition, as a network of interconnected nodes (forming the chassis and the wheels). Crashing into walls or terrain can permanently deform a vehicle in a realistic manner. In addition to its unique soft-body physics, RoR also features an advanced flight model based on blade element theory, allowing the accurate simulation of any airplane, base on their physical dimensions and wing airfoils. It also features an accurate buoyancy model based on elemental pressure gradients, enabling boats with complex hulls to move realistically in the swell.

Thanks to Mantar for the heads up. Here's a video showing just how cool it looks:

Well Glest 3.2 is out. Which is interesting given I proclaimed official Glest development dead* and Glest Advanced Engine to be its successor. It's like I just made it all up. Only I didn't, there was a thread where the official Glest developers stated that GAE would become official Glest. The link now goes to an inaccessible page. However, I'm not the only one who found it and logged it. Sadly Google obviously hadn't, since there's no cache available.

* FYI "Glest is dead, long live Glest!" is a play on "The King is dead, long live the King!" I didn't mean it was actually dead.

So, either the good news is that the main Glest developers have returned, or that the Glest team (new and old) has decided to make things look a little more cohesive, or somebody is playing a practical joke on me and posting grumpy anonymous comments implying that I am inciting trouble. Either way, it's great to see a new Glest release.

Glest 3.2 brings Lua scripting support, a new tileset, and tutorials as its primary features. I think more was expected, but given the lack of activity, the developers decided to push out a toned down 3.2 release instead.

Freelords tech release 0.03 has been released. Ignore the website, which says 11th Feb 2008, it's a typo. New graphics and new features, although it is still not quite playable yet.

Some other releases that piqued my interest: Neverball 1.5.0, Tennix 0.7.0, Vacuum Magic 0.9.

In the article reviewing simulation games, I lamented a lack of documentation for Simutrans. I was a bit off, there is plenty. It's just a bit scattered. For those who want to try it, I suggest starting with the wiki and specifically this page on transportation basics. There are also several errors in the article that stem from me writing it ad hoc and not proof reading properly, but I'm too lazy to correct them.

In the comments somebody offered to help out with FreeTrain development, the didn't leave any contact details and didn't get in touch. Still looking for help from C# developers for FreeTrain. Please leave details or email me - freegamerblog at gmail.

There did seem to be a bit of a negative slant from some commentors on the article in general. There were those lamenting that there is no depth (5 playable games not enough for you?) and those lamenting that Lincity-NG was not enough like Sim City 2k (no-win scenario, if it was a clone there would also be complaints). Come on guys and gal! Lighten up a bit!

Briskly Brief

I'm really quite strapped for time right now so again this is brief.

Stargus, the Stratagus-based project to get native Starcraft on Linux, is close to release. If the screenshots are anything to go by then Stargus will be pretty playable with this release.

The latest Freedroid RPG release looks nice. The project seemed to have stalled earlier in the year but there's lots of contributors these days which is nice to see.

Want to make games but not a programmer? Maybe Mokoi Gaming is for you. The project is in it's infancy but it's already usable although the documentation is a little sparse. Still, it all seems well done so a bit of user feedback I'm sure will be warmly received.

Tennix now has SVG graphics. A very concise concept is turning into a nice little game to while away the occasional onset of boredom.

Also another simple game shaping up nicely is Qonk, with 5-minute galactic conquest gameplay.

No screenshots. No time to find any. :-(

Edit: also the FIFE developers are celebrating their project's 2nd birthday. Always a good milestone to have had 2 years ongoing development.