Games As Art... Or Not

ABSTRACT
Primarily discusses the
games Passage, Gravitation, Braid, Portal, Mario Kart 64, and Silent
Hill 2 as being varying degrees of art.  Includes links to other
commentary on several of these games, and discusses why it's okay that
some games are art, and others are not.  AI War is noted as falling into
the not-art category, the same as Chess and most other strategy games,
but there are different reasons these games are valuable.  Concludes
that some games are art, most are not, and while it would be nice to see
more artistic games, there is still very much a place for the styles of
games that are currently predominant.

Games As Art... Or Not

The Case For Co-Op Games

ABSTRACT
Discusses co-op games,
why they are needed, and some of the ancillary design benefits that were
found by making AI War co-op only.  The chief argument is that many
gamers are getting married and starting families, and that co-op games
helps to make gaming a family experience instead of a solitary one. 
Based on observation and intuition, this seems to be an important
emerging market that will only grow during the coming years.

The Case For Co-Op Games

AI War Comes To Stardock's Impulse!

AI War is now available for purchase through Stardock's Impulse platform. Here is the direct link to the
game. Impulse is one of the premiere digital distribution platforms
for PC games, and working with the Stardock staff to get AI War on their
system has been a really great experience. What a dedicated group of
people. Be sure to check them out!

AI War 1.003 Released (Free DLC)

Arcen
Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command
version 1.003. You can download
a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to
unlock the full version.  If you already have the game or demo
installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the
latest patch.




More Free DLC:  Two new missiles are now available at your
Missile Silos.  The Lightning Missile (shown right) is a comparably
inexpensive missile that heavily damages all nearby ships when
detonated.  Sending a swarm of three or four of these is a great way to
take
out a large group of tough enemy ships (even core or starships).




The second new unit is the Armored Missile, now the most expensive unit
in the game.  It basically works like a Lightning Missile except that it
has a smaller area of effect, and it is so heavily armored as to be all
but indestructible.  This allows you to do precision strikes deep into
enemy territory -- if your gate-raids have been failing on a planet, an
Armored Missile might be your one chance for success.




There are also a few other small tweaks, and a fix to a crash bug that
was affecting some users in the prior version (the crash occurred when
starting new campaigns on a subset of maps, with certain AI types and
Simple ship types selected).  Most users were not affected by this
issue, but we're happy to have this fix out and be back to zero known
issues with the game. More free DLC will be heading your way next week
(including something other than missiles this time). Enjoy!

Fellow adventurer, turn back while you can!

Crikey, it's been a while. What can I say, life gets busy, and games sometimes just can't be a priority. I know, it's crazy talk. I meditated long and hard, facing many demons, moments of utter despair, but I couldn't get past the conclusion that sometimes Free Gamer won't be on my list of things to do. Fortunately Q has been on top of things so it's not silent when I'm off the radar.

Today is a temporary reprieve, brought on somewhat by enjoying the current development pace of the Scourge project. Timong, of JCRPG fame, has been taking a break from Java coding to indulge in his new found passion for music composition. You can listen to the new main theme music he has composed for Scourge, one of many he has contributed lately. I think it sounds pretty damn good. Meanwhile you can now roam around a massive persistent outdoor world in Scourge, with generated villages and NPCs as well as varying climate and weather conditions. It all sounds quite impressive.

IVAN

On another dungeoneering frontier, Iter Vehemens ad Necem (aka IVAN) is probably the most challenging and addictive nethack variant I ever played. (Although I only ever played a couple.) It has surprisingly good 2d graphics, which aren't done justice by the screenshot, but alas development stalled after 2005. The IVAN community seems to be filling the void left by the developers who[se motivation] seem[s] to have met some kind of gruesome demise - perhaps their brains turned into banana flesh by a vindictive god.

There is the IVANX project which seems to pull together a lot of the popular community contributions, and should be more likely to compile on Linux. There's also LIVAN which stands for Linux IVAN, thus should compile on Linux. Neither compiled for my Fedora laptop, somewhat thankfully as it means I can't play it and thusly be more productive! \o/

IVAN 3D

Of extra interest is IVAN 3D which turns it into a bit of a funky pixelated adventure. There's obviously quite a few challenges to overcome when transposing a totally 2D described game into a 3D world without it looking a bit other-worldly. Still, I don't think pixels are a bad thing. After all, it's a game, not a life simulation!

OWS

Hey look, Open World Soccer is moving steadily towards being a modern Sensible Soccer clone. Impressive looking! However the AI doesn't do too much yet, just keeping the two teams level with the ball.

Raidem is one of those vertical scrolling shooters, a nice classic pixel explosion fest. It is surprisingly well done, but it's also bloody hard - I never survived more than 20-30s. From the intro screen, it looks like the author needs an additional graphic designer but other than that it's a very nice looking game. No development since 2006 though so I guess it's to be taken as-is.

Another game that is surprisingly well done is Abe's Amazing Adventure. It looks weird, really weird. However the animations are very smooth and the game plays pretty well, far better than it looks. Still, I couldn't quite get over the game's oddness.

AI War 1.002 Released (Free DLC)

Arcen Games is
pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 1.002.
You can download a trial
version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to
unlock the full version.  If you already have the game or demo
installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the
latest patch.




More Free DLC:  A new unit is now available in the CONST tab
of your Command Stations! Missile Silos are an expensive new constructor
that can build powerful missiles.  The first two missiles are the
Nuclear Missile (shown left) and the EMP.  Each add powerful new
strategic options for players, but there is a lot of risk involved with
using nukes in particular (see in-game explanation for details).




In addition, there are a couple of performance improvements that should
help with lower-end graphics cards and hard drives, and the usual milieu
of balance tweaks and small bugfixes. More free DLC will be heading
your way next week (including at least one new missile type). Enjoy!





More About
Missiles...

4Story

Site: http://global.4story.com

4Story is a free2play, fantasy, 3D MMORPG. My personal opinion is that it looks too much like WOW. If you are fan of WOW feel free to try this MMO.


4Story has three playable races – human, werebeast and fairy. Here is short character creation video with all the races:



There are six available professions – Warrior, Assassin, Archer, Wizard, Priest and Summoner. Every race can select any of these. Every profession has three skill trees.


4Story gameplay is quest driven. Players can carry out quests right from the beginning. There are also some hidden secrets.

PvP
There are several PvP options – from fractions war, war for territory, dueling with friends from the same kingdom and PK players from the enemy kingdom.

AI War Trailer

AI War: Fleet Command - Trailer -
Download High Quality Trailer

AI War 1.001 Released (First Full Version, Plus More DLC)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet
Command version 1.001. You can download a trial version
of the game, as well as purchase
a license key to unlock the full version.  If you already have the
game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to
get the latest patch.





More Free DLC:  A new unit is now available in your Starship
Constructors! Leech Starships (shown left) are basically an upgraded
version of the existing Raid Starship. The Leech Starships are the first
starships to have the Reclamator ability, which makes them take over
ships they kill (like parasites or core leeches).







The AI also has two elusive new units:  AI Troop Accelerators, and
Anti-Starship Arachnids. The arachnids might come out if you spam
starships at an AI planet for too long, but for the Troop Accelerators
you'll just have to keep your eyes open.  There's a small chance you
might see one on any given galaxy map -- and there's a chance that they
will even be inserted into your existing savegames when you install the
latest patch.




In addition, there are a number of small balance tweaks, the most
significant ones dealing with making the single player experience more
akin to the multiplayer experience in terms of resources available.
Lastly, the final two in-game music tracks are now in place (and they
are beautiful); there is also now victory and defeat music.  AI War is
now considered fully released -- we'll continue doing patches with AI
upgrades, free DLC, and any minor bugfixes/balance shifts that are
needed (like any other RTS game, players tend to find these small issues
over time). Enjoy!

idTech engine game news

Tremfusion is a fork of Tremulous, that wants to be more open in development. There's more to read on its organization and philosophy (too many words for my taste). One of the most noticeable changes is the use of the Xreal as the game engine. Thanks to Julius for letting us know.

An audio interview with Quake2World's lead coder reveales details about improvements in his graphics and physics engine. (I don't like podcasts usually but this one is pretty interesting.)

An audio interview of Lee Vermeulen, founder of the Nexuiz project, was published on the new site Open Gaming Now. The audio unfortunately is of a not-so-good telephone line quality and the added music makes it even a little bit harder to listen. Lee tells about the early history of the project, but other than that it's mainly a introduction to Nexuiz.

The rest & snippets

Voxelstein

Andrewj, one of the best Let's Play artists, has recently recorded a playthrough of Voxelstein, the Wolfenstein3D-inspired shooter with voxels (you can destroy everything) which unfortunately is win-only. Here's the video.

Palomino flight simulator release 20090511 adds shaders to the game.

Boomwar Nitro 0.1b1 has been released [win32 binary] (after 2.5 years of no releases, but some svn activity). It appears to be using the non-free Newton Game Dynamics lib, so I refrained from compiling it.

Last time I mentioned PopCap Framework. Now I found out about PyCap, a python wrapper for the PopCap framework. Thanks to GBGames for passively helping me find this. :)

Slick is a LWJGL-based Java game lib, which even supports SVG (not completely though). Some of these games make use of slick and two of them are supposedly free software. (I haven't searched for the source much though).

There's a first screenshot of Nethack_3D.

Hey, what do Glest, Freeciv, FreeCol, FreedroidRPG, FlightGear, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, SuperTux, SuperTuxKart, Warsow and Yo Frankie have in common? - All of them are being STOLEN by reckless PIRATES. ARR!

AI War 0.940 Released (With First Free DLC)

Arcen
Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command
version 0.940. You can download
a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to
unlock the full version.  If you already have the game or demo
installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the
latest patch.




First Free DLC:  A new unit is now available in the DEF tab of
your Command Stations! Tachyon Drones (shown left) are tiny  mobile
tachyon beam emitters, great for discovering enemy mines and other
cloaked ships.




In addition, the AI has learned a few new tactics on difficulty 5 and
up -- this happens from time to time, and makes your already formidable
digital opponents even more fearsome and realistic. The number of
in-game music tracks has also doubled, and more music is on the
way in Friday's release of version 1.0.  Lastly, there were a few tweaks
to unit balance and a couple of minor bugfixes.  Enjoy!

Designing Games In A Vacuum

ABSTRACT - Part 1
In developing
the space-based RTS game AI War: Fleet Command, I encountered an
unexpected design challenge: namely, I hadn't anticipated the issues
that would be caused by setting the game in space.  I've played many
great games set in space, but most have either been action-oriented
(Star Wars, etc), or very slowly paced (Homeworld).  The first and
largest issue that arose was creating a sense of location in a
non-action-oriented game.

Designing Games In A Vacuum, Part 1: Terrain &
Positionality

ABSTRACT - Part 2
Continuing the
discussion from the first part of this article.  Discusses the
challenges of making unique spaceships memorable, RTS-genre issues
caused by the lack of walls in space, and unit balance in a cooperative
game.

Designing Games In A Vacuum, Part 2: Units, Walls, and
Caps

AI War Demo And "Advance Release" Now Available

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the general availability of AI
War: Fleet Command! You can now download a trial version
of the game, as well as
purchase a license key
to unlock the full version.





Our release date for version 1.0 of the software remains May 15, one
week from today, but the current build is quite stable and a blast to
play.  We decided to do an "advance release" of the pre-1.0 version of
the game in response to requests from gamers who weren't able to be part
of the closed beta.




All future patches for AI War will be free, regardless of when you
purchase the game. We play this game ourselves (it's replaced our other
weekly RTS sessions), so rest assured that we're committed to
continually updating and expanding the game.  In addition to a pair of
planned expansion packs (pricing TBA), we'll also be including free DLC
for all players. During the first month after release, we'll have at
least one free new unit, gameplay mode, AI type, or game mechanic per week.
After the first month, we'll be adding at least one of those new
features for free every month, even after the expansion packs come out
in 3-6 months.





AI War is already a huge game -- it will take you well over 120 hours
to see every current feature if you play full campaigns -- but we're
committed to expanding it even further. So much of this game is about
exploration that we want you to always have something new to discover!

Sauerbraten Trooper Edition, first playable Mark IV network Demo

Sauerbraten [more screens]

Cube 2: Sauerbraten Trooper Edition has been released [download]: new logo, new maps, new weapon looks, bots! (from BloodFrontier), movie recording function (I have to check this out ASAP), rag dolls, new music, and so much more.

Sauerbraten characters

The bots are rather dumb as of now and don not know what a powerup is yet but they're definitely better than no bots at all. What I found most amazing about this release is the characterization of the player models. Each of the three has a little back story. I felt that Sauerbraten had no soul before this release. Now it has a little soul. :)

Mark IV

The tank simulation engine Mark IV [project, web page, blog] v0.80 Alpha-1 is out and first-time playable over network. It however uses FMOD (which can be avoided, see this) and RakNet. Windows users will be able to use the pre-compiled binary.

A little arcade

Atomic Worm has recently been open sourced. It appears to be a Pacman-Snake mix plus different grid types plus the visual style of Transcend. Source available here. It uses the PopCap Framework, which appears to be free software.

Atomic Worm at YouTube

Do you like cruel, hard moon lander games? If yes, OldSkoolGravityGame was made with you in mind! It may look harmless, even retro-pretty on video... but I have felt the pain...
O_O

Portable game packages

DSN

The Damn Small Nexuiz (DSN) project provides a slim version of Nexuiz with the aim to make it playable on netbooks. Deja Vu?

Speaking of reduced weight: Spring RTS Engine Portable is a win32 Spring (RTS engine) package that doesn't touch the registry.

Release Date Moved Forward Again!

Our beta testing has proceeded exceptionally well, and at this stage
we are hovering at or around zero known issues.  Things have been going
so well, in fact, that we've decided to bump up the release

date once again -- at present our target is May 15th, just ten days
away.  Not all digital distribution services will immediately carry it
on that date, but it will be available for purchase through our site at
the very least, and other services will likely follow in the weeks and
months afterward. More details on that as the date approaches; we will
also release a demo on or before the 15th, but we will not be accepting
preorders.





Now that the game is more finalized, we've once again updated the
Gameplay, Features, and Mini Strategy Guide sections for AI War.  The
Mini Strategy Guide has seen the largest update, with the amount of
content in it almost doubling.  Also: if you haven't yet noticed, we
added forums to the site a few weeks ago.