GameGuard - do you know?

Gameguard is an application that is bundled with some of the MMORPGs. The program uses kernel driver that allows any process to access it and it allows unrestricted IO access in a user mode. That leads to some problems. Even without malicious software problems with the system and bad data can be expected. In other hand any process can get access to direct read/write the hard disk, etc ..
Now you will think that when you are not playing you are safe? Nop. The driver is installed as a system service and runs even when GameGuard is closed. Also it wont uninstall itself when the application is removed.
Why am I writing about this now?
Because few days ago I got my registry file deleted.

Priston Tale

Site: http://eng.pristontale.com/
Free-To-Play, with in-game shop

Priston Tale is a fantasy Korean MMORPG by PRISTON Inc. Since 17 May 2007 Prison Tale is a free-to-play.
The gameplay is standard – leveling up, trading, clans. There are some events that deserve mentioning:
Bellatra(Survive or Die) is a competition for 4 teams that fight against monsters until the last one survives.
Bless Castle is a PVP event equivalent to a castle siege in other MMORPGs.
Class Change system allows the players to freely choose the path of developing their characters.
Aging system allows to increase the power of your equipment, similar to item enchants in most of the other games.

Priston Tale 2 – currently released only in Korea.
Korean: http://www.pt2.co.kr/

Vega Strike 0.5.0

After over 3 years of development since the last stable release, many major new features and contributions, and lots of patience, Vega Strike 0.5.0 has finally been released.

There's so much potential in this release. Shader support, movie support, so many active contributors, and a more settled development timeline that should see more regular releases from now onwards. Despite the length of time since the previous release (0.4.3) the project rarely was not in active development. That means that 0.5.0 is a huge update and Vega Strike is poised to return to the high esteem in which it was once held as a FOSS project.

For screenshots check out the gallery but none were recent enough for me to include them here.

Vega Strike is a really cool project and this stable release will hopefully further galvanise the development. If things continue, I have no doubts VS will turn out to be a truly stunning FOSS game. It's pretty damn good already!

Cronous

Site: http://www.cronous.com/
Free-To-Play, with in-game items shop

Cronous is an action 3D MMORPG.
Classes:
Fighters - they have strength, skills to make magic damage, skills to heal party.
Valkyries – they are the fastest, they have a lot of deadly skills.
Magicians – they have area on effect magic damage and can summon magic cretures.
Savages – they have the most power and strength but also they are the slowest, also they have stun and self buffs.
Fun Systems:
Polymorph System - character can be transformed into monsters of Cronous.
Pet System, PK System and more

It looks a little similar to ..
Have Fun! ;)

Adonthell-artwork, FreeOrion Linux builds

Adonthell's broccoli bushes.

James Nash has kept working on vegetation sprites for Adonthell's art repository (which is quite meager right now.) He is using layers for producing the images.

What you don't see is the fact that in the original image I have the outlines and surfaces separated as individual layers so I can easily re-colour them to make variations. Equally I can hide some layers such as the leaves.

This way it is much easier to manipulate the images and to create a richer variety of objects. Layered images can be seen as "source" files for flat/"compiled" bitmaps. Great to know that people actually use this editing-friendly layered-images technique for producing game art.

Good news for Linux-users! Automatically built binaries of FreeOrion's latest SVN revision are available from psitronic.de/div/FO. They will allow you to play the game without having to build it, which isn't that easy on some distributions. Best thanks to kroddn! Windows builds are also available, but they are not as fresh... Sorry dear Win-users, but I see no other way for you, but to switch to Linux ASAP. ;) Anyways, here's a gameplay video while you download:

FreeOrion rev2473 gameplay

sil-ver-tree, arr-pee-gee

SilverTree, buggy and ugly but stable and promising!

SilverTree RPG dead? It's forum full of porn (nsfw) spam (nsfw)? Today I got a letter from Anok (name not changed), asking about the whereabouts of SilverTree's devs and whether the project did evaporate or not, and I say "Stand back lady, I'll handle this!" ;)

Well, I have to say that the inconsistency between the google code project, the forum, the web page and the Gna! project is a bit confusing, but SilverTree seems to be pretty stable and working.

There are lots of sensible-gameplay-impossible-making bugs, but as I said, the game is stable and the major problem seems not to be the code, but rather the media. It definitely needs more 3D models and prettier textures and sounds and music. Very nice about SilverTree is how easy it is to compile it. Here's a little introduction set for ya'll:

Getting the source? Easy as pie! svn checkout http://silvertree.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ silvertree and wait. Compiling? Easy as cake! ./configure, wait, install missing libraries, ./configure again, wait, make, wait. Playing the game? Easy as brownies! src/silvertree, play. Creating new content? Easy as muffins! src/editor/silvertree-editor (for the editor to work you will need to pay extra attention to ./configure's output, for example you'll need libqt-dev) Read the README and get additional info in the SilverTree wiki

The menus aren't pretty, please help, oh 2D artists out there!

The editor is cool, it's simple and just works! I played around with it, because that was satisfying for me. Now I share my hard, hard work with you. Enjoy! =D

SilverTree RPG editor

With Your Destiny (WYD) - Episode II : ADVENT OF GODS

Site: http://www.wydglobal.com/
Free-to-Play

With Your Destiny(WYD) is a fantasy 3D MMORPG. The first impression is that of an another Diablo 2 style game, but it is not a bad feeling.
Classes
Transknight - male soldier, uses knives, claws, swords, axes, and hammers. He has area of effect skills.
Beastmaster - he can take werewolf form, summon beasts and use melee weapons.
Foema - female mages.
Hunters - female with powerful weapon(archer), they are best PK characters.
Max level in WYD is 400, but the leveling up is very fast. Also there is in game auto combat/cast/pots system. I find that very useful, lately most of the MMORPG producers want to make players work harder and harder to get some fun/items/kills with the idea to spend more time in game. I don't like to work hard in games, I am there to have fun. So in this concept WYD is very good - all the hard work for leveling up is done by the bot, I just play from time to time in a dungeon or when I feel to.
Some features I like are the mounts(animals to ride), summons, also it looks like there are a lot in game events.
Screenshots

Pi-Story

Site: http://www.pistory.com/
Status: Free 2 Play

PiStory is a 2D fantasy MMORPG in anime style. Classes available are Fighter and Cleric, both have class change on level 15 and can fight actively in combat.

Kal-Online

Site: http://www.kalonline.com/
Free-To-Play, with in-game shop
Fan-Site: http://www.kal--online.de/english/

Kal-Online is a free-to-play fiction MMORPG by Inix Soft. The action takes place in a beautiful oriental fantasy world.
Gameplay
The gameplay is a little diablo-2 style. Players move and use simple attack with left mouse click and use magic or skill with right click.
Classes/Jobs
It has three starting jobs - Wondering Knight, Wondering Archer and Scholar.
W. Knight's next class is Apprentice Knight, when the character learns the basic kill of knight. A. Knight has two paths for developing skills - offensive and defensive.
W.Archer - quickness and long distance attack. Their next job change is Apprentice Archer. A. Archers have powerful long distance attach, but they are considerably weak and need a party. Their next change gives the chance to choose to have long-distance more powerful attack and be weaker on defense or skills to increase friends' attacking power and skill to cure them.
Scholar uses magic to attack enemy. Next class for scholar is Literary Person. They also have revive and cure skills. L.Person can choose to become Hermit or C.J.B. Hermit are specialized to attack specific object with magic while Chairperson of Joong-Bangs have skills to damage multiple enemies and a powerful revive skill.
Egg/Transformation
When you reach level 15 you can do a quest to get an egg. After that you must level up your egg to become grade 11. After that you can transform to an animal.
PVP/PK System
PvP(duel) starts after agreement of both parties and there is no penalty on winner or looser.
PK(Assassin) System A player who wants to be a PK must wear a mask to be known by others. Mask can be bought from the merchant in Temporary Fort of Geum-Ohee Castle and High Land of Sky. When the player became an assassin his/her name is not shown but the name changes to "assassin" in red and he/she can't disable assassin mode for 2 hours.

Screenshots

Radakan is pretty

Radakan's devs have decided to use the jME aka jMonkeyEngine, just like JCRPG does! Neat! I admit that I was expecting the project to evaporate, it just had too pretty a website and some team member was very concerned with picking the right wiki and installing a flash audio player on the site, while there was nothing of the game in sight. (I also was afraid the team would come up with some idea like "Hey, let's make our own 3D engine! Right?")

I'm glad I seem to be wrong, the first tech demo video has been uploaded. (I'm not sure if that's not just some engine-bundled terrain and model, but even if it is, what the hell! They're grappling with it! Enough proof of interest and engagement for me!) I just hope they won't let the plans for game story get in the development's way. But I might be wrong worrying about that - Radakan is a "single-player sandbox 3D RPG". Sounds like something that is free of the bug feature "storyline" and like something one can have fun with, without touching any code. Yay for spawning 1k melons mid-air and abusing rag doll physics!

Radakan - Prototype #1

La Croix Pan, some game made with AGS

I tried to find an open source 2D adventure game engine and also was given some recommendation in the last post's comments. Wintermute Engine (WME) and Adventure Game Studio (AGS) caught my attention, both are closed-source freeware. What surprised me, was that AGS has been ported to Linux and MacOSX! Thanks to .Net and Mono (the open source .Net implementation) I suppose.

SceneEdit, one of WME's tools

I visited WME's IRC channel and asked Mnemonic (the only developer, since the beginning of the project) about his views on open sourcing the engine. He said approximately "not now and not anytime soon". These are his reasons: Leading an open source project means stress, because people whine about your code. It requires work, because the code has to be put in a readable state for others. It requires even more work, because submitted patches have to be tested, to make sure that they don't 'feature' new bugs.

"Simply dumping the source on SF.net" was right out, a decision which seems logical. After all, why should you make a project open-source, if you're not able to manage foreign development to take place in it? But on the other hand: If one has not enough time for maintaining an open project, maybe "dumping" the code isn't so bad a thing? In the end it shouldn't do any harm to the project and if someone decides to fork it, it can only be good for the gene pool.

I haven't talked to anyone in the AGS team. I hope I'll get round to catching up on that.

Update: (thanks to the comments) There is only a client, no editor of AGS for linux. Also there is Adventure Game Goddess, something about being an open source adventure game engine. I don't know, read it yourself ;).

Adventures, art, design...

New art for Adonthell

There has been slight activity on Adonthell's mailing list: James Nash, an artist of the team, announced some new art to be soon added. Good thing too, considering the graphical quality of the engine demo game "Waste's Edge" (I'm only 120% sure, but "Adonthell" is the name of the engine and "Waste's Edge" is the title of the small adventure game that often gets served as "Adonthell".)

Waste's Edge, in case you forgot how... classic it looks

Adonthell 0.4.0 alpha 2 has been released half a month ago, luckily with build instructions, the INSTALL file directed me to them and I was actually able to build it. Unfortunately it seems to be an engine-only release - I don't see any demo to execute. FIFE (which by the way recently switched to the LGPL) at least includes it's tropical island tech demo.

Speaking of adventures/RPGs and their engines, Steve commented on the open source adventure games situation. Compared to RTS or FPS, the situation is: "there aren't any." At least not of the point-and-click kind of type. Steve says the reason is that making adventure games isn't fun - since the story/surprise/suspension of your work won't work on you.

There is however the Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine, an apparently simple-to use visual interactive fiction engine. It sure is and all and the engine's logo is the obligatory girl entangled by a tentacle monster python snake, but I'd rather prefer a decent point-and-click engine and community. I simply am a sucker for more interactivity and less text and more animations and less relationship novels and more (audible) speech and less *blush* in adventure games. It's great to see that the open source gamedev community appears to be useful for lots of prepubescent girls though!

Back on the adventure games issue: Tranberry proposed, that instead of creating games, game developers should create game frameworks for non-developers. O_o Of course it makes sense from the perspective, that it's no fun to know the story of the game for the game programmer, but on the other hand someone will have to know the whole story and won't be able to play the game as a player, this way or another. I think he's correct though that the role of the game designer should be separated from the role of the programmer for great justice better game quality. Excluding some naturals I guess.

BTW: Tranberry is the guy, who created the friggin-awesome looking current style for the JCRPG blog (see old style for comparison.)

Ulroth Axe, one of the kick-ass awesome models from OpenFrag

Again back to the game design issue: Creating the story and assembling the game's code and media should be done in a specific order. I am the fan of the "functionality-first, story-second"-method. OpenFrag's dev team is walking such a way at the moment, as I was told on #openfrag yesterday. In the beginning of the project, there were discussions about the story, but it became too complicated and now they concentrate on getting the orcs and swords and the slaughtering and bloodsheds to work and will worry about story later! Awesome!

Metropolis game menu

PS: Something seems to be happening regarding Micropolis' port to *nix systems... But I'm not sure what. I can start the game menu, but fail to actually play it. See screen.

Where are my buildings?

PPS: Anonymous just told me to deactivate NumLock, which helped :) But I am unable to see anything besides the map. O_o

PPPS: Gah, all the info is in the comments, if you want it. ^^

Anarchy Online AO

Site: http://www.anarchy-online.com/
Paid with a free program.

Anarchy Online is a science fiction themed MMORPG by Funcom. The action is set on the planet of Rubi-Ka, 30 000 years into the future. Races are called breeds. They are:
Solitus - most similar to natural human beings. They are average characters with no special abilities and also no bad abilities. Their balanced abilities make them suitable for all types of symbiants. They also have access to some of the best defensive perk actions.
Opifex - they lack strength but they have agility and dexterity. They are suited to Support symbiants, which rely on Agility and Sense.
Nano Mage - they are created to control Nano-bots, but they lack HP and evasion.
Atrox have big advantage in strength, stamina and HP, but lack agility and intelligence.
Anarchy Online Wiki

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Site: http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_overview.htm

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is fantasy single player RPG set in the award-winning world of The Elder Scrolls. Oblivion has releases for PC, Xbox 360, and PLAYSTATION 3.
It features improved AI system that gives the NPCs ability to make their own decisions based on the world around them. The main quest line in Oblivion is to find the hidden heir of the throne.
Oblivion Wiki - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Oblivion

And a happy new year...

Bad timing, I know, but better now than waiting until next Christmas! It's a cute snake-like game, RUDI. Source code under GPL, media probably under some non-commercial license. It runs in wine-0.9.58-473-g1eba09b (but without sound for me). Perhaps it can even be compiled for Linux.

One strange thing about the game is the Readme file:

[...] The compiled version of RUDI v0.1 is freeware, but the source of RUDI v0.1 is GPL licensed. You
are not allowed to use any elements of the software (neither the compiled nor the source version)
for any commercial purposes including contest submissions. [...]

I suppose by "Elements" the developer means "media" because it is of course not legal to prohibit commercial use of GPL-software. I'll try to find out. Enjoy the annoyingly movie-trailer-like video!

Fun: Lineage2 and Point Blank

Silkroad Online (SRO)

Site: http://www.silkroadonline.net/
Free-To-Play, with in-game Mall

Silkrode Online is a fantasy MMORPG based on the the Chinese trading traditions by Joymax. SRO is free, but it has in-game Item Mall for purcahsing items or "Silk"-game currency. The game is designed to represent the Silk Road trades of 7th Century.
Gameplay
Silkroad Online gameplay is a lot alike other Korean games this genre, especially Lineage2. There are two type of characters - European and Chinese. Also players can chose to master weapon or elemental skills.

Nice SRO Fortress Movie

Seal Online

Site: http://www.sealonline.com/

Seal Online is a fantasy MMORPG by the Korean company - YNK Partners Inc.

Eve Online

Site: http://www.eve-online.com/
Monthly payed game, players can try it with 14 days trial accounts.
Guide(Strongly recommended for new players - personal experience)

Eve Online is science fiction space MMOG by CCP Games. The action is set in distant space, players pilot wide variety of ships through thousands solar systems. The game is persistent - this means that anything that is left in game while player is offline such as undocked ships will continue to exist and will be visible and attackable to other players.

Gameplay
Eve Online is little confusing at a first glance. Considerably more time is needed to learn the interface compared with other games from the same genre. EVE don't have leveling system, which is replaced by a complex skill system with a wide variety of skills. To learn a skill characters must acquire skill learning kits and the training consumes amount of real time(players can spend that time offline). Some strange issue is that characters can purchase clones as a precaution against death. Activities in EVE can be combat, exploration, trading, mining, advancement, research, manufacturing and more.
Combat in EVE is highly tactical with different range weapons. Players can group together in corporations, the corporation creator and leader(a.k. party leader) is titled Chief Executive Officer - CEO. Corporations also have some other roles like Director, Station Manager and so on. Corporations can declare war to other corporations. Also some spicy piece is added with the corporate spies.
Races in Eve Online are Amarr, Gallente, Caldari, Jovians.

Dragonica

Site: http://dragon.plaync.co.kr/
Status: Under development - upcoming
Dragonica is a colorful 3d fantasy side-scrolling MMO by Barunson Interactive and NCSoft.
Some nice movies:

Real-time 3D graphics scene graph framework engine toolset

Hi, I'm qubodup; not the regular guy. As you see, I can post here too. We had a discussion about making Free Gamer a collaborative blog a long time ago, so maybe some of you feel like writing big-time? Especially now that Charlie is more busy with life? :)

Another while ago, a related idea came up: Creating a non-English subforum. Here it is and if we're lucky, it might be(come) useful some day!

Among other things, I spent a heap of time on trying to un-messify our free engines list - the result so far is the Work In Progress 3D engines list, please comment which features you think are important for the categorization of real-time 3D graphics libraries (aka. engines ^^) After all, one could say, I create these wiki pages for you. So go ahead and give me instructions.

I visited many IRC channels for getting information about the engines and I learned a bit about them too. For example the PySoy project, (which was formerly based on Soya 3D but was rewritten four times since then) will release a Firefox extension, which will allow you to play 3D games inside the browser window. The idea comes from one of last year's GSoC students, who was involved with the PySoy project. Easy installation is the one pro I see in this idea. At the same time: easy distribution, though we'll have to wait and see to know if it is fast enough for playing.

By the way: PySoy is licensed under the AGPL which is used to enforce copyleft on server software, obviously it aims to be a multiplayer engine and possibly a MMOsomething engine too.. Just imagine: A MMORPG written in Python using the PySoy engine, and all the servers and clients run Ubuntu as their operating system.

Speaking of massive multiplayer online games, if you're in a forum, where you are encouraged to post game ideas or ask for game dev help, you will notice the high percentage of MMO... posts. GameDev.Net has a solution for this: All MMO.. projects are to put [MMO] in the thread title, kind of like [DO NOT READ] for the haters.

I found the following video when browsing the 3D engines' web sites. This clip is more than half a year old, was made for the G3D engine and is in my opinion quite a good promotion video. What really impresses me, is how the video emphasizes the importance of documentation (by just listing it as one pros of the engine).

PS: I was quite surprised, when I red the comments to Charlie's last post. In contrary to the commenting folks, I interpreted his writing as a declaration of a down-phase.

Didn't you notice how there are many many many posts for some time and then nearly none for a while and then again many? Yes, good times and bad times. I don't think Charlie said he 'quit'. He can't hide from his hobbies forever. ^^ I see it more like this:

Vote for your favorite MMORPG

Now you can vote for your favorite game.

Dekaron

Site: http://www.dekaron.com/
Play: http://www.gametribe.com/gt/dekaron.do
Status: Open Beta for Europe

Dekaron is a fantasy MMORPG based on the middle age Europe by GameHI. Its gameplay is standard for this genre - parties, clans, alliances, wars for castles. Dekaron PVP system is moderate. Players can invite other players on a combat. The opponent can accept or decline the pvp. The game has a PK system a lot alike many other MMORPG.
Some other features are Mp3, Fishing, Messenger, Summon Systems.
2moons is other mmorpg like Dekarion, in facts 2moons is based on Dekarion.

Game Movie