Independent Gaming Article At Gaming Daily

David from Gaming Daily has
written a nice article about the state of independent gaming. The
discussion is on how and why indie games differ from their AAA
counterparts, and cites AI War as an example in several spots: Independent
Gaming

AI War Versus RPS Part 1

The folks over at Rock,
Paper, Shotgun have been having a go in three player co-op against
the AI in AI War. This is part one of a series in which they try to
kick a level 7 AI off of a 15-planet map: Officially
Unintelligent: AI War Versus RPS Part 1

GamersGate Games of the Weekend: 30% Off On AI War!

This weekend (the 27th through the 30th), you can get AI War: Fleet
Command for 30% off the regular price at the GamersGate
store. AI War is already an incredible value, but this is a great
chance to get it at an even lower price ($13.95 instead of the usual
$19.99). Don't forget to rate us up if you buy the game through
GamersGate and like it!

Delegation In Game Design

ABSTRACT
Transcript from a
discussion on these forums, where a discussion about the relative
complexity of economic management turned into a discussion of delegation
and automation as a means to enable players to effectively manage games
the size and scope of AI War -- without feeling like they are giving up
fine control when they want it.

Delegation In Game Design

Pink Pony 1.2.1

Pink Pony 1.2.1

I wanted to write about Pink Pony for a long time, but never came around to it. It's a Tron-like racing game and features hearts, ponies (also ai-controlled ones), graphic shaders and split-screen multiplayer support. Your aim is to collect hearts and to not run into your foes' trails. Last pony standing wins!

Download it for Win32 or as an easy-to-compile source tarball.

Unfortunately, the game does not support older graphics cards. If you are capable and willing to add legacy support, you can find the source repository here. If you have ideas for more features, please post them (or just comment this blog article).

Pink Pony development was not a one-man ride: While the game concept and code is by ginkgo, tornado created the pony model and textured it, then Skorpio added animation to the pony. A sky render by brisingre is used in the game and I contributed two textures to it. Edit: I forgot to add that MCMic programmed the AI and that Renich's music is used.

I believe that Pink Pony now is the best child-friendly open source game, regarding visuals and gameplay. Most free software games friendly for kids I know try to be education software. Then again, maybe I should give Tux Racer another try.

Pink Pony 1.2.1 two-player mode

Just a small puzzle game update: Zaz 0.2.6

Zaz 0.2.6

Zaz is a puzzle game, a 'clonespiration' of Zuma, one of PopCap's notorious proprietary (casual) games. You are confronted with a stream of differently colored balls and have to put three of the same type next to each other to destroy them. There are power-ups, you're under time pressure, you have to aim, that's fun actually.

The game has nice music and good sounds, though I couldn't find author information on any of the game data. EDIT: Ha, I looked in the source directory, but not on the menu screen! So gfx & sound is by Remigiusz Dybka (who also programmed the game) and I guess it's GPL3-ed. The music tracks are (remixed?) CC-BY-NC-SA Nine Inch Nails music.

What I'm *very* much impressed with is that the game has a in-game menu to create a recording of a game you played! It even captures audio! Usually I use glc for recording video/audio in OpenGL games.

When you record a game using Zaz' internal recorder, it creates a Vorbis/Theora .ogv file. Only problem is that you can't do anything while the recording process (you have to watch the replay, while it records and can't even switch to another window) See an example video that I recorded below.

PS: Since I'm a big wuss when it comes to playing puzzle games in which you have to aim games, I have a wish for Zaz (besides nice background images :) ) and that is to have an indicator, what ball will be affected by me pressing or releasing the mouse button. I don't like aligning the Grappling hook with the balls. :|

Advice For Aspiring Indie Game Developers

ABSTRACT
Chris isn't super
excited about giving out advice, given that he's still learning the
ropes himself, but since this is a question that keeps coming up -- and
since he has had some measure of success already -- here are at least
some observations and tips that might help aspiring indie developers.

Advice For Aspiring Indie Game Developers

Weekend Impulse Buy: 25% Off On AI War!

This weekend, you can get AI War: Fleet Command for 25% off the regular
price at Stardock's Impulse store.
AI War is already an incredible value, but this is a great chance to
get it at an even lower price ($14.99 instead of the usual $19.99).

AI War on Rock, Paper Shotgun

It’s a Sins of the Solar Empire meets Supreme Commander meets Simply
Nothing Else, and I think a lot of you will find this very intriguing.

- Kieron
Gillen, Rock, Paper Shotgun

Reviewing A Bad Review

ABSTRACT
If you're an indie
developer, not everyone is going to love your game.  It is a fact.  It
is also a fact that something is going to be wrong with your game, like
every other game in existence.  And reviewers and players will comment
on these things, so that hopefully you can address them.  But what
happens when you receive a review that is simply bad, with false
information, a clear lack of actual play of the game, and/or other
problems?  Well, if you're me, you write a snarky blog post analyzing
all the points, which ones are valid and which are not, and what makes
the original review so poor.  All reviews, like all things being
reviewed, are not created equal.

Reviewing A Bad Review

Game Vortex Review of AI War

If it hadn't been brought to my attention through an email, I
probably would have never heard of AI War: Fleet Command. This would be a
shame because it turned out to be one of the more entertaining games
I've played recently. It isn't something for everyone, but fans of
well-thought-out strategy games will want to download the game and give
it a try.

- Ricky
Tucker, Game Vortex

Snippets and whippets

Complete Annihilation

Apparently the Spring mod Complete Annihilation is rather good, although it's about to be renamed and not quite fully free of its ties to the original Total Annihilation content. The goal is to be totally Free. And it's pretty complete(ish) as a game already. There's lots of lovely screenshots.

Glest Advanced Engine 0.2.12 got released. They also got a Sourceforge project for GAE.

Q3Rally

Fun racing games are always, er, fun. Well, in demand as well. So maybe Q3Rally can strike a chord with the Free gaming public? Apparently the original Quake Rally was the best Quake mod ever, although it was never completed and all that is left of it is Quake Rally: Leftovers. There's plenty of maps and cars and it is billed as a mod for OpenArena so should be totally Free. \o/

Here's a promotional video for Q3Rally that makes it look rather ooo aaah:

Dark Phear, a classic Phantasy Star-like RPG, as reported in the Ubuntu forums. Go there for links, screenshots, and more information.

Oolite, the Elite cloney-but-better game, is getting purty with shaders it seems.

The Privateer Gemini Gold team have been fairly quiet but work is ongoing and the next version will contain much better videos / graphics to make it even more immersive. Some of it can be seen on their youtube channel although the videos are currently just very short showcases.

LAN in Starcraft 2 petition - please read

A petition - http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html in response to Blizzard announcement that Starcraft II will not support lan and the only multiplayer will be through battle.net. Currently there are more than 105,000 signs and the count is increasing fast. Many fans got dissappointed by Blizzard’s announcement. Greed threatens one of the coolest games out there.

People tweet about the petition, starcraft and blizzard. You can get more information on what is going on from twitter channels - #Starcraft2, #BlizzCon or just search for the petition.

CaptainD's PC Gaming Blog Interview with Chris Park about AI War

CaptainD's
PC Gaming Blog interviews Chris Park, the developer of AI War,
about inspirations for the game, Chris's experiences as an indie game
developer, and upcoming titles from Arcen Games.

Read The Interview

How to secure your game account - tips

A friend of mine lost her account from a popular MMORPG. It is a tragedy because she spent more than six months playing this game. I make a short list of basic rules on how to prevent game account-stealing.

• Create unique username and password combination for every game you play. Don’t ever use the same username/password for two or more online games. The game and site publishers claim they respect your privacy but don’t rely only on this.


• Use strong passwords. Your password must be 8 symbols or more and it must contain both letters and digits.


• Use personal emails to register game account. Many people share their emails with friends. Don’t use such email to create game account. Many game sites have an option to restore forgotten password. Somebody else can use this option to steal your account.


• Don’t share your account. Don’t share it even with your best friend. You don’t know what will happen. It’s better not to risk hours of playing.


• Don’t use somebody else’s computer to log into your account. Don’t play from internet cafe.


• Don’t answer to any emails or chats from fake moderators or administrators that ask for your password. Any game staff won’t need your password or it would be very bad game.

Be careful and use your brain.

Crispy Gamer Article About AI War

I think I've stumbled across this year's Really New Thing. There's a
lot of 2009 to go, but I'll be surprised if anyone else twists the RTS
formula this dramatically and this effectively. And I'm hoping it'll be
the Next Big Thing, because it's big, different, entirely unprecedented
and an exciting way to play an RTS.

- Rush,
Boom, Turtle: And Now for Something Completely Different, by Tom Chick

AI War Trailer 2

AI War: Fleet Command Trailer 2 - Download High Quality Trailer 2

We've created a new trailer that does a better job of showcasing the game in general, and which also features the new art from recent releases.

Recent Arcen Games Team Additions

This is a bit belated in several cases, but we'd like to officially
announce the latest team
members to Arcen Games.  Our team has definitely been growing!


Lars Bull, or Fiskbit as he is known on the forums, has been
helping out with design advice and QA testing for Arcen titles long
before Arcen actually existed.  Now he's officially joined the team to
collaborate on developing his concept for "Feedback," a puzzle game that
we aim to release later this year.



Philippe Chabot is the artist responsible for many of the
graphical upgrades you have seen in recent weeks.  There's tons more
planned, so you can be sure that Phil is going to help us transform AI
War into an ever-more-polished-looking affair.



Calvin Southwood, or Revenantus as he is known on the forums, has
been helping out for some time now with player questions, the printable
hotkey reference, the wiki-based unit strength guides, and more.  All
of this was on a volunteer basis, which we very much appreciated, but
now he's joined the team to become a full moderator for the forums as
well as authoring a printable manual for the game.



Welcome to the team, guys!

Fiesta music video

Very cool fan made music video - Revenge and Salvation. The game is Fiesta, the music is Butterflies & Hurricanes by Muse.



Its one of my favorite game videos. Cool and epic.

PC Games and Reviews - AI War Review

I've played quite a few space RTS and empire builder type games in my
time, but AI War feels
like it's on a different scale ... one of the more epic tactical RTS
games I think I’ve seen to date.
If you’re an RTS nut this is not one to pass over!

- Andy
Yates, PC Games and Reviews

An example of why a license matters

Simutrans


OpenTTD OpenGFX

Why is OpenTTD now in Fedora 10/11 but Simutrans is not? The former has been only playable with Free media since some time this year - and the media is still incomplete - whereas the latter has been Free for years now? Is it because somebody requested it?

Digging (and by digging I mean Googling) to some it seems that Simutrans media is unclearly licensed. Download the official (currently r102) version of Simutrans and it comes with two licenses - one copy of the 'artistic license' and a 'copyright notice' that states:

"Simutrans may not be sold or modified in any way without
written permission by the author.

Which license applies to which part of the game? I guess you can make assumptions but it really should be clearer. The artistic license applies to the source, the custom NC / no modification license to the media. OpenTTD is about to get many 1000s more players by being in big distributions. Simutrans is going to continue in its role of shadowing OpenTTD by being the transport tycoon game that hardly anybody knows about and it is somewhat self inflicted.

Do you want your Free game to be played by as many people as possible? License it clearly and explicitly, and push for inclusion in mainstream distributions. And don't use a custom, restrictive license. Go with something that is compatible with mainstream distributions like a creative commons license.

• I covered Simutrans and OpenTTD in more detail in an article on Free tycoon & city building games.


• There's a more in-depth comparison of the two games by Danny Stable who digs deeper than me and sides favourably with Simutrans.

Update 379

Todays date is 07/08/09 if you're not a silly yank (m/d/y wha'?) and it made me think about how long the blog has been going. 379 posts... quite a lot! It's been a while since I started doing this blog. Who knows how far it'll go before life moves on, eh?

I originally started out to make a place that documented all the worthwhile Free software game projects. I stumbled a bit along the way - the original version of the blog (for those who don't remember) had a nice list down the side. Now we just have this broken old page that is too much of a PITA to edit and update. Hopefully one day I'll find the time and energy to sort it out properly.

Without a good central resource* of worthwhile projects, it can be easy for things to get lost in the Internet haze. People complain about a lack of polished FOSS games but there's more out there than you realise, even if some are still in active development. Then there's those that probably fell by the wayside because they just failed to penetrate the public view.

Update: as commentor Bram points out, Libregamewiki is a pretty decent resource, although not ideal - it misses comments, ratings, tagging, features to make it easier to get straight to the content you are looking for.

Update2: there is also the list of Complete open source games on the FreeGameDev wiki, but this omits many projects that are very promising and playable.

Shotgun Debugger is a fun, polished, top down GTA-style action game. It's well done, although I didn't get too far, because I'm a busy bee y'know.

People often lament the lack of FOSS single player 3D RPGs. Arbarlith II happens to be one of those although I haven't played it so have no idea how well done or how deep or how long the game is. It looks interesting though!

Lips of Suna is a very ambitious MORPG (not typo). If beautiful graphics and destructible voxel terrain don't appeal to you, then the developer focusing on gameplay must be applauded.

Grumbel's Mech

Linwarrior 3D is a mech warrior game that's been in slow and steady development since 1999. The mech models are a bit low detail, but it is a playable game. The website is one ad-ridden atrocity with no recent information on it, and no screenshots of the later versions other than some mosaic.

Qubodup put together a video of it.

I wonder if they know of and could make use of Grumbel's mech model and his other FreeMech concepts?

Speaking of long running projects, the Combat Simulator Project seems quite active at the moment (look at the project page and forums). Love planes? Love fighter planes? Get involved.

Knights (or Amiga Knights if happypenguin.org is to be believed) is a 2 player action/quest game. It looks fun, I might try to play it with my son some time.

Crimson Space

Crimson Space is a very interesting looking Elite-style 3D space trading game. Sadly development seems to have ceased circa 2002, but not before the developer implemented the ability to enter the atmosphere of planets and skim the oceans. This is the first time I encountered this game and purely by chance (linked as a 'similar project' on a Sourceforge project of mine). It's a shame development stopped and you have to wonder, if it had the kind of buzz Vega Strike has enjoyed, where it might be now had development been ongoing.

If I ever do a sequel to the Top 10 Projects To Revive (I'm collecting another list) then Crimson Space is sure to be in it.

AI War 1.013 (Free DLC, Player Suggestions, And Major Graphics Update)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet
Command version 1.013. 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:

- Major improvements to all special effects, including shots,
explosions, and other ship-to-ship effects.

- Major improvements to all star backgrounds, especially on high
resolutions.

- Major improvements to about half of the planet graphics.

- Faster starts:  Players now start with 20,000 each of metal and
crystal, and 10,000 knowledge.

- No more planetary boundary -- ships can go out as far as they
like, though fixed-position ships can only be built the same distance
from the planet area center as before.

- Yet more efficiency improvements for graphics and the simulation.

- Ion cannons are much more deadly.

- New visual zoom indicator shows zoom level as "letterbox" black
bars at the top and bottom of the view.

- Some of the battle sound upgrades (more are coming).

- Several AI tweaks and ship balance adjustments.

- Several fixes to the tutorials to update them to the latest
gameplay.

- Various other bugfixes.





The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the
full release notes to see everything (attached at the end of this post).
More free DLC to hit in a week or so. Feel free to check out our updated screenshots
gallery for a better look at our new visuals (of which lots more is
scheduled for the upcoming months)!

Clonk open sourced and Free Gamer ceil(foss games)

Clonk

Clonk got open sourced! Welcome OpenClonk. Clonky! It seems to be the indie game fashion at the moment what with 0AD and all. What is Clonk?

Clonk is a multiplayer-action-tactic-skill game. It is often referred to as a mixture of The Settlers and Worms.

So, the Clonk developers open sourced it, but since backwards compatability is a big problem for them, they ditched all Clonk content and are asking the community to contribute new game content. Judging by the forum, the community looks very active, it's a case of 'watch this space' I guess.

The above video is the "Clonk Rage" trailer. I got the impression this is what has been open sourced although I'm not sure how of the levels/content came with it, if at all. Perhaps somebody could check out the source and see where it is up to?

Anyhoo... so, Ceil... round up... get it?

Despite the lack of Free Gamer activity, the FOSS game scene is as active as ever.

Some new releases that should have been mentioned earlier:

• Unknown Horizons 2009.1 (announcement)
  
  Many improvements over the 2009.0 release, new UI, multilanguage support, music, game features


• Egoboo 2.7.4 (announcement)
  
  Lots of features, updates, and bug fixes - should be getting pretty good now


• Project Football 0.2 (FGD announcement)
  
  Consecutive seasons, UI updates, AI updates, but still a Spanish-only website although English secions in their forum


• Legend of Edgar 0.20 0.22 (FGD announcement)
  
  Compatibility with 64 bit CPUs, 2 additional maps and a new boss


• Stone Soup 0.5 (LinuxGames announcement)
  
  Its got graphics but is also the winner of the 2009 Ascii Dreams Roguelike of the Year award


• And last but not least: Yo Frankie! 1.1 (announcement)
  
  Includes the 3 winning levels from the level design competition, with additional improvements

I probably should make more of a fuss over Yo Frankie! than I do - it does look absolutely stunning as you can see in the following video - and it could yet become an important starting platform for creating other types Free games using it's materials and gameplay as a foundation:

Well, so, that's some stuff we already knew about, but what about some things we don't?

Skyscraper: A first-person 3D virtual building simulator. Perhaps not a game. I report, you decide.

Wesnoth + Bloodbowl + a blender = Wesbowl! It's early days (0.1 alpha) but good to see somebody having a bash.

Grandwing is a game being developed to be similar in gameplay to the game Spyro the Dragon.

And world's worst website award goes to... *drumroll* ...ok, I'm not going to say its the worst, but the site for YSFlight (an open source flight sim) has to be a contender.

Toodlepip!

Regional Pricing Adjusted For AI War

Our goal is always to charge a fair and equivalent price to customers
in all countries, but apparently at GamersGate
and our
own website's ecommerce partner, prices for Euros and GBP were set
higher than the USD prices.  Thanks to a regular in our forums for
alerting us to this.  The price for AI War has now been adjusted to be
€13.99, £11.79, and $19.99 USD.




We may need to shift this over time as exchange rates fluctuate,
since these prices are now manually set rather than calculated through
our partners' sites (except at Impulse,
which already handles this), but our goal is to basically have a price
point equivalency of  $19.99 USD regardless of what country you are
purchasing the game from.  If the pricing seems off from that in your
country, please let us know and we'll do our best to adjust it!

AI War 1.012 Hotfix Released

If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For
Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  This hotfix corrects
an issue in the official 1.011 release.




-Fixed a bug with AI ships not properly guarding the command posts
they are supposed to reinforce, instead attacking player planets too
much.

-AI was getting too many engineer drones in some reinforcements.

-Planets that are on alert now appear with a yellow border instead
of a crimson one.

-Planets that have incoming waves now flash their borders black and
red.




The above list is the entirety of this hotfix.  We do our best to insure
a high degree of quality in every official release we make, but in this
case one rather critical issue slipped through.  The best we can do in
these circumstances is issue an official hotfix as soon as possible, but
of course with our normal QA testing and the testing of those players
who opt to download our prerelease versions, we try very hard to make
sure the inconvenience of hotfixes like this does not arise.  Thanks for
your patience!