Canaan Online – another cute, browser-based MMO

Site: http://en.canaan.gpotato.eu/


Canaan Online is new browser MMORPG by gPotato. It is a free to play game with manga characters and fun, colorful world. It is a flash game so you don’t need an installation to play. The game is somewhat similar to Neverland Online.

Canaan Online offers four playable classes – Ranger, Priest, Warrior and Mage. Each class has its specific skills and style. Pets take main part in the game as they accompany your character in battles and fight.

First Steps
Your character will receive a quest right at the beginning – fight the flying piglet. You must defeat one of the cute flying piglets near the village. If you can’t find them, use the link on the monster name in the tutorial window. You will have a piglet as a pet to accompany you in your first battle. The game offers even an auto-combat mode for lazy players like me.

Overall Impression
Canaan is nice and relaxing game, perfect for people who don’t want to be too engaged in an online MMO.

Aika, finally some good news

Few days ago GPotato announced Aika’s closed beta is going to run from 3rd February to 9th February. More information about the closed beta can be found on the official website of the game http://aika.gpotato.com/.
The test will feature all 6 classes, 5 nations and 30 levels of character development.

Actually so many facts and rumors are spreading on the net that I can’t wait to try this game. I wonder why GPotato haven’t made it available yet. Aika is played in Korea for more than two years. I’ve heard that it has several gaming awards there.

In case you don’t know, Aika is beautiful, fantasy MMORPG that greatly emphasize on PVP or more likely RVR (Realm vs Realm) battles. The information about the game on the official site is too little and I don’t know Korean to learn more from their sites.

Edit: There is some fun information about the game on the official forum. And many, many fans. The community seems big and nice.

I found this mass video on youtube, I want to play this game!

Evidyon, HackWars, and SlothRPG: FreeGamer MMO Time!

So, here we go! First post from scary old uncle TheAncientGoat ;)

Evidyon, MMO from Reddit-way

Evidyon

Evidyon is an interesting 3D MORPG recently gone Open Source under the advice of the reddit community, releasing a whole slew of content, tutorials and documentation of how they went about making it in the process. This is a very admirable move, we'll all agree, so show them some love. Unfortunately, it's windows only, relying on DirectX (not VB though, thanks for the fix Nerrad), and I haven't gotten it running under Wine as of yet, but hopefully a few smart alecs can help port it.

Like most other mmo's it has a fantasy setting, as you can see in the screenshot and video, it also sports a Diabloesque style of combat

HackWars: MMO where you craft by programming

HackWars

Here's one for you scriptmonkies, Hackwars, a Java MMO where you play as a hacker (or cracker, more accurately), breaking into pcs by attacking their ports for massive damage. An interesting aspect of this game is its crafting system, you program your own programmes, either in Javascript or the game's built in HackScript, to make scripts that either help you fight or just entertain you. It has both a 2d and 3d interface.

This was also found via reddit and the author wrote some pretty interesting commentary on developing such a game (which you'll see if you follow that link). Also, why not post upcoming FOSS games on our little corner of redditOpenSourceGames and we'll try and cover them if we have the time.

SlothRPG

SlothRPG

SlothRPG is a fantasy 2D MUD -like RPG, also written in Java. It has recently been re-invigorated, so it's worth checking for updates. Unfortunately it doesn't have any servers online at the moment, so you'll have to host your own if you want to check it out

Battle of the Immortals - new MMORPG by Perfect World Entertainment

Site: http://boi.perfectworld.com/

Battle of the Immortals is the new, action MMORPG by Perfect World Entertainment. PWE created quite a buzz with releasing only bits of information and teasing the gamers’ world.












Here is a list of promised game features:

• 2.5D action MMORPG game
• The story combines eastern and western mythologies - from North Mythology to Qin Dynasty
• 5 classes, each with unique skills and equipment
• Zodiac System – your character will be empowered according to its creation date
• Auto-Navigation Quest System
• Soul Gear – unique sets of armor, that change as players use them
• PVP with ranking system
• Dungeons with bosses
• Pets
• Mounts
• Territory Wars

Battle of the Immortals is promised to be unique title, not alike any other PWE game. The art of the game looks very cool, these armors catch my heart. I hope the game will be as good as they say.

Last Chaos – awesome MMORPG game

Site: http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com/

Last Chaos is a free-to-play, 3D MMORPG with cool graphics and nice gameplay. The game looks incredibly similar to the popular pay to play MMORPG Lineage 2. More or less most of the free to play MMORPGs have problems with its gameplay. They sure look good but after some time the player finds no depth. In contrast, Last Chaos doesn’t have awesome graphics but its gameplay is ways above. I really was amazed to find myself addicted to a game so fast. 

Graphics
The game has somewhat beautiful graphics with large castles, vast territories and strange monsters. There are also a lot of different pets and mounts with bright and cool graphics, they create part of the magic atmosphere in the game. The horses maybe are a bit to colorful but the overall impression isn’t bad.

Gameplay
One drawback of this cool game is the poor customization options of the game characters. I really prefer to have bigger choice.
When I play MMO games I prefer to play magic damage dealer so I created a mage character. At the beginning my mage was thrown in something called private dungeon – there you can fight different monsters (zombies and similar) and learn the interface. At the end of the dungeon I was teleported to the first town. What made me an impression was that the game has good number of players – many players were selling different goods and some number of newbies like me was fighting low level monsters outside the gates. There were also many players leveling their pets with low level mobs. The pets are something cool – with many different shapes and colors – not your usual stupid (or cute) looking pets but fantasy creatures with nice and eye-catching design.
The monsters also make an impression – they are not grouped by types and you can see many different kinds in one field. The foxes at the beginning look too much like the keltirs from L2.
The game offers large maps with many places for exploration and different mobs. You are actually free to do what you want, you are not bound to different quests like “run to point A, return to B, then run back to A”. Of course you can do quests as you want and they bring a lot of experience (I usually go and take all available quests before hunting but I don’t like to do quests only).

Classes
Last Chaos has six playable races – Knight, Healer, Mage, Rogue, Titan and Sorcerer.
Knight - The knight is your usual tough guy with sword and shield or two swords.
Healer – She is a surprise, she actually can use bow and arrows and she can become an archer or a cleric at her first job change.
Mage – I like characters with high damage, especially high AoE damage.
Rogue – fast and deadly character she can use dual daggers or a crossbow.
Titan – rough guy with high HP and sword or axe of course. Do you like barbarians? My brother always plays this type of characters.
Sorcerer – something like summoner, maybe strong character. I need to try this one soon.

PVP
I haven’t tried it yet, my character is brand new, but I prefer to play on PVP servers. I was surprised to see a bunch of high level, bored people at the town gates in the middle of PVP battle.

The story
Actually I spent some time reading the story – war between gods of course. Good against evil, light against darkness and we, the humans were always the good ones, blessed with many abilities. Now you can choose a side and fight for it. So cool, I wonder who writes these stories and why game creators or publishers won’t hire a professional writer to do the job. Either way, the game is cool, maybe the best free to play game out there.

Visual Utopia – browser-based, strategy MMO

Site: http://visual-utopia.com

Visual Utopia (VU) is a free to play, strategy MMO game. It is a nice, browser-based adventure with many fun points.

The player takes the role of a ruler to develop and defend his land. At the beginning new players start in a tutorial mode, where you can learn the basics of the game. This MMO have some of the standard features of the genre – you can build structures, train soldiers, send them on missions, join forces with other rulers.

Dark Void - trailers

Dark Void is a sci-fi, action, adventure game - you can learn more from this post: http://godsector.blogspot.com/2010/01/dark-void.html.

Dark Void

Site: http://www.darkvoidgame.com/

Dark Void is a new sci-fi, action-adventure game published by Capcom. The game is developed by Airtight Games and uses Unreal 3 Engine.

The main character in the story, William Augustus Grey, is a pilot who crashes in the Bermuda Triangle. He is teleported to a strange world – the Void. The Void is a parallel world accessed through the vortices in the earth atmosphere. There William meets the Survivors, a group of people, trapped in the world of Void. Of course, the Survivors want to return home but they can’t because of the Watchers. The Watchers are the bad guys, an alien race who wants to enslave the mankind.
The game is available for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Fire Sales In Digital Distribution

ABSTRACT
Chris Park discusses
his thoughts on the benefits of the current culture of frequent sales
for digital distribution games, and why players shouldn't feel guilty
for taking advantage of any offers that a developer or publisher decides
to put forth.

Fire Sales In Digital Distribution

Complexity for the sake of complexity.

ABSTRACT
Chris Park is a huge
proponent of simplicity in game design in general -- so why has he
created such an incredibly complex game as AI War?  This lengthy article
examines the market forces that lead to various kinds of complex games,
and why a game like AI War or Dwarf Fortress is able to gain more
popularity than certain game designers or reviewers might expect.  The
short answer is that there is an underserved niche for certain kinds of
complex games, which meet certain needs for genre experts.  The long
answer is more robust and explores this from a cross-genre,
history-of-gaming perspective.

Complexity for the sake of complexity.

What Makes For An Expert Indie Developer?

ABSTRACT
Chris Park believes
that "expert indie developers" are a real thing, and common to spot
among successful indies.  But, even among those that are less
successful, there are certain hallmarks that identify those that would
be investment-worthy for anyone looking to start up angle or venture
funding aimed at indie developers.

What Makes For An Expert Indie Developer?

Combat Arms - fast and addicting MMO FPS game

Site ( Europe ): http://combatarms.nexoneu.com/
Site ( America ): http://combatarms.nexon.net/

Combat Arms is an online, free-to-play FPS game developed by Doobic Studios and published by Nexon. It is an addicting, fast-paced, strategic shooter with many customization options.

Players start in a lobby where they can join matches or create rooms and host a game.
Successful match brings experience and GP (Gear Points – in-game money). The experience is needed to obtain a higher rank (similar to real life army ranks), and players with higher rank can buy better weapons.

Combat Arms offers many different modes – One Man Army, Elimination, Quarantine, Fireteam. You may wonder what exactly these mode names mean – here is the list of modes and explanations for newbies:

• One Man Army – Free for All Deathmatch
• Fireteam – a cooperative, story-based game, something like team quest
• Elimination – team match. A team must reach an amount of points (kills) first.
• Elimination Pro – similar to Elimination but each player has only one life per round.
• Search and Destroy – similar to Elimination, but one team is in offense (place bombs and destroy the other team fascility) and the other must defend itself.
• Capture the Flag – popular mode in many FPS games.
• Spy Hunt – strange mode where players can become spies through obtaining a special item – Intel Case. All other players hunt the spies but the spies have some advantages like speed and special armor. This mode has a phase 2 where the spy is only one (the person, who has gathered all suitcases), but he is equipped with some powerful weapons to fight all the other players.
• Quarantine (Zombie mode) – Some of the players are chosen to be infected. They must infect all the other players, while the non-infected players must kill them or at least survive the match.
• Snowball fight – Christmas event mode.

The gameplay is fast and addicting. If you are FPS and Combat Arms newbie you may feel a little confused at the beginning but the game is easy to play and fun. I’ll write separate gameplay review after this post.

Upgrading graphics? It's easy

Funny ATI video.

Cube2: Is it finally taking off?

Ahh, qudobup and Charly are back and posting. Lots of interesting news even for me!
So what can I add to this? Well first of all I forgot to mention this awesome TBS in my last post: UFO2000, which is of course like UFO:AI a clone of a very well known series.
And I should have also mentioned Stellar Forces which is a remake of Laser Squad :)

Cube2 Engine

So as you might have guessed todays topic will be the Cube2/Sauerbraten engine, which besides being a mighty fine game on its own, has also spawned some great offspring projects lately. Blood Frontier has been mentioned before and since there have not been any new releases since then I will keep it short and just mention this video review which gives you an idea of the game play. But check it out if you have not done so yet!

Platinum Arts Sandbox

Plantinum Arts Sandbox has also been mentioned here before, and could be quickly described as a game development platform aimed at kids (and adults), utilizing all the nice in game editor features the Cube2 engine offers (and more).

Recent news are that they are hosting a nice contest , they have also just announced a new version. And besides offering the usual amount of fixes and updates, it now boasts a really nice 2D platformer template for you to create new games:

Sandbox's 2D platformer

Furthermore they have templates for RPG projects and for wanna be film makers a new tool called movie cube (movies made with game engines are also called Machinima for those unfamiliar with the term).

Syntensity

Syntensity is a project quite similar to the one mentioned above, albeit with a more mature focus. Their feature list is long and even though still under heavy development it is starting to be a really nice tool for game developers.

And besides the fact that we are happy to announce that they have chosen our network for hosting their community forums, they have also recently released a really nice new game template called Razanak:

Razanak gameplay

So check it out via the Syntensity lobby (the mod gets dowloaded automatically when you enter the corresponding portal), and see for yourself what a powerful game making tool Syntensity has become.

Bitfighter, "Cat Sokoban", JVGS, pseudoform, Gun-Fu Deadlands, Hex-a-Hop, racr.. and YouTube overkill

All subscribers to the FGD Planet feed (RSS/Atom) probably would want to add this feed. We split the planet into a game news planet and a development news planet. The latter contains game developer blogs and game engine news.

Bitfighter 0.12a

Bitfighter is a no-gravity multi-player 2-D combat game with a cool name, cool looks, good controls and a quick way to get started. I like the visual style a lot too. (Which reminds of Word War vi by the way.) Unfortunately I was unable to compile on my 64-bit desktop so far (only on my 32-bit netbook).

The video recording qualities of my portable device are weak, so the video I recorded is .. broken. It plays 3x faster than it is supposed to. What you see in it is me flying on an empty server at 500ms latency, trying out the the "mines" and the "burst" weapons.

A game with an even more awesome name is The Villany of Cat Food Inc., which introduced on our forums as a little puzzle game, which I found to be a sokoban-like with interesting and weirdly cute story.

JVGS is the latest game brainchild of the author of Fall of Imiryn. It is a black and white "poem platformer" meaning you (sometimes) jump on platforms made of words -_-. The style is based on xkcd while the levels are based on .svg files - they are pre-rendered for use in the game though. The feeling is melancholic.. The controls are... not polished.. The video has been recorded...

Pseudoform.. aka portalized. aka Open Source Portal. It looks impressive! The game relies on non-free physics and sound libraries but the developers wish to change that. They are also thinking about using the Cube2 engine (although Cube2's main developer considers adding decent physics to his engine as equally challenging as creating an own engine).

Ah Gun-Fu Deadlands (GFD), you are pain, but even more pleasure, simple and forgiving but non-forgiving also. It is a specimen of retro 2D graphics wild west keyboard-move, mouse-aim game. One shot and you die but you also have unlimited lives and unlimited bullets. The lovely piece uses LÖVE. (Version 0.5, so watch your back!) It Is pretty much fantastic and well-received, according to the comments made on GFD's forum.

Do you like to stalk? Gun-Fu Deadlands' dad can be spotted in this photo!

Two years have passed since this blog last mentioned Hex-a-Hop. The project now has new developers (the original author disappeared it seems) and some sounds have been added to the game. The following might be the first recording of the game with sound/music! Who knows, maybe it will convince you to try it if you have not yet...

Are you a fan of Trophy and/or Racer and sad about these two not developing further [BEEP Racer's last release was 24th Dec 2009, shame on my research!] or do you just like top-down racing games? Maybe the new, early-development racr will give you hope.

I have something rather off-topic for you: a 5-headed team that is working on a audio editor and a video editor is looking for #6 in San Francisco, USA. Both their products are rather minimal so far. Let's call this news content-creation-related. :)

By the way: Having problems with the YT videos? I found youtube-dl to be an excellent tool for downloading videos for off-line/no-lag/no-flash-crash-risk watching of videos. `youtube -bt URL1 URL2 ...` will download the best quality and use titles in file names.

AI War 3.0 Released!

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet
Command version 3.000. 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.  




- Updated art for many ships, including larger and more
impressive command stations, space docks, fortresses, colony ships, and
more!

-New starships: The Raid Starship line has been split, so
that now there is a Raid Starship line (Mark I-III), and a separate
Leech Starship line (Mark I-III).

-New capturables: Fabricators, which let you manufacture (the
previously AI-only) Mark V ships, Bomber Starships, and more!

-Co-op improvements: Players who have lost their home
station, or who join the game late, now get a “Home Command Station
Core,” which provides them with the resources and build capacity they
need to keep playing in a fun way without slowing the other players
down.  Other minor changes also abound, such as messages to allied
players when technologies are unlocked, and improvements to engineer
assistance from allies.

-AI Improvements:  The AI is smarter and more devious than
ever, while some of the more game-flow-interrupting tactics such as
Cross-Planet Attacks have also been made less frequent.  Ship
autotargeting is now notably better for both the players and AI.

-Performance Improvements: The game now performs 400% to
1000% better in supermassive games of (those with 100,000 to 200,000
units on the map), and on average 20% to 80% better on regular sized
games (usually 80,000 units or fewer).

-Interface Improvements: A wide variety of player-suggested
minor tweaks have been made to the interface, leading to ever-improved
usability.  The planetary summary now has category-colorization on
mouseover, planet names are colorized by owner status in the galaxy map,
“control nodes” have been added to allow new automation options for
players, amongst many others.

-Other New Ships: Rally Posts allow for directing incoming
allied forces to a specific place on a planet, Cleanup Drones remove
exploded enemy mines and turrets, and Mine Layers have turned into more
generalized Remains Rebuilders which can auto-rebuild turrets as well as
mines for players (both AI and human, so be sure to use Cleanup Drones
on enemy planets).

-New Minor Factions: Minor Factions aren’t just for customers
of the expansion!  Three new minor factions have also been added to
version 3.0 for all AI War players (optionally enable any combination of
them through the lobby).  

-Human Marauders are a hostile minor faction that will
sometimes attack you or the AI from deep space, using their powerful new
Buzz Bombs and Dagger Frigates.

-Human Resistance Fighters are an allied minor faction that
will sometimes decloak from deep space and join you in assaulting AI
worlds with their powerful new Fighter/Bombers and Frigates.

-Rebelling Human Colonies are formerly-captive human cities
that need your help in order to survive -- fail and you’ll see an
increase in AI Progress, but succeed and your entire team will be able
to build the powerful new ships used by the Resistance Fighters.

-Ship Balance Updates: Many minor and major ship balance
adjustments have been made – the most notable of these is that the core
fighter/cruiser/bomber triangle has been redefined into an
easier-to-follow fighter/bomber/frigate triangle.

-Game Flow Improvements: Not only are the disruptive
cross-planet attacks less frequent, but all human ships now move 40%
faster (making it easier to stage defenses or coordinate assaults –
especially so since AI ships are still the same speed as before), many
new automations have been built into the interface (the most notable of
which is that metal/crystal harvesters are now automatically rebuilt on
human planets after hostile AI forces are gone), and a few key
structures (space docks, factories, etc) have been made more robust.
 Players will spend less time than ever on repetitive tasks, letting
especially new players take to the stars faster.

-And Much More: The full release notes for version 3.0 (not
including expansion notes) are over 10,000 words long.  This is by the
largest single release AI War has ever seen, and no small wonder – it
was three months in the making!  Future free DLC updates will resume
their monthly schedule.

AI War: The Zenith Remnant Now Available!

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first expansion to their hit RTS/4X hybrid, AI War! You can download a trial version or purchase a license key on the details page for the expansion.  Thanks to all of our fans who have helped to make this game possible with their feedback, suggestions, and preorders over the last months!






The Zenith Remnant includes a massive amount of new content that brings the galaxy to life in exciting ways. Capturables, special AI ships, and ancient alien artifacts litter the cosmos, making your choices as a player more varied than ever. Do you risk total war with the AI by capturing and rebuilding a massive golem? Do you procure defensive superweapons from Zenith traders?



Maybe you’d like to finally be able to build the powerful Core ships that the AI has long used -- or the all-new experimental ships with strange and powerful abilities. Befriend the dangerous alien Dyson Sphere by helping it against the AI forces, or sneak around it to avoid incurring its wrath (that thing is moody). If you see a Devourer Golem, don’t forget to run -- preferably as it pummels your enemies. Any path you take, there are consequences; AI War is known for being heavily strategic even amongst strategy games, and The Zenith Remnant takes it to new heights.



Key Features

* 122 new ships, including:

   * 14 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.

   * 7 massive capturable "Golem" ships.

   * Dozens of other new capturables, including “experimental” ships.

* 12 new AI Types.

* 4 Zenith alien minor factions (NPCs).

* Over 40 minutes of new in-game music tracks.

* Several new map styles.

* Several new AI behaviors and many related special AI weapons.






Availability And Pricing

The Zenith Remnant has a retail price of $9.99 USD (or equivalent currency), and is digitally available in English in all territories.  The expansion will, starting today, be available through all of our online partners including Impulse, Steam, Direct2Drive, and GamersGate.



50% Off Sale On AI War

In celebration of the release of the expansion, we and most all of our partners are selling the base game of AI War: Fleet Command at a 50% discount until the 18th or 19th (the end date varies depending on the vendor).  If you already have the game, now's the perfect time to get a friend into it so that you can enjoy some co-op together!

Speed Dreams, Racer, irrlamb, Violetland

Speed Dreams (SD, formerly known as TORCS-NG) is a fork of TORCS with the aim to

implement exciting new features, cars, tracks and AI opponents to make a more enjoyable game for the player, as well as constantly improving visual and physics realism.

Now I'm not a racing game fan and so the biggest change I noticed between SD and TORCS is the menu look in which the fork really shines. See my comparison over here.

Anyways, I recorded a video. Please excuse my driving un-skills :)

Racer has been making some progress. You can now play player-vs-player (there is no way of 'winning' though) and the levels have been improved as far as I can tell. If you have some ideas to share for this sci-fi racing game in the works, please do comment on their group!

After quite a while, another version of irrlamb has been released! It takes away the old (in my opinion very original) levels and instead presents polished graphics, a friendly tutorial and two skateboard arenas.

I tried the um.. "top-down zombie shooter with rpg elements, I guess" violetland and was impressed by how much fun I had! Its simple gameplay is well-supported by the cool music. I have been playing a match of this fun action-rpg now and then.

Altis Gates - upcoming MMORPG game

Site: http://ag.igg.com/

Altis Gates is a turn-based 2.5D MMORPG published by IGG. The game features a fantasy world, influenced by the European mythology.
The game promises many fun features like shape-shifting, pets, marriage system, guilds, formation system and so on.
Altis Gates alpha testing is scheduled for this month and will run from 19th January to 22nd January.

Trailer For AI War: The Zenith Remnant!

Work on The Zenith Remnant is finally coming to a close, and the game will be officially released tomorrow --
it extends the base game even more than we had planned when we set out to create it. Thanks so much
to all of the AI War players whose suggestions really helped take things to the next level! For the first
preview of the new music that is in the expansion, check out the trailer:






View On Youtube

Mytheon Preview - when strategy and MMORPG collide

Site: http://www.mytheongame.com/

Mytheon is a MMORPG game under development by Petroglyph Games. The creators promise an exciting action-RPG in a mythology-based universe.

The events behind the Mytheon story are based loosely on Greece and Egypt mythology. After many centuries on the mercy of the gods, mankind finally has the chance to prove itself.

The gameplay will combine strategic elements with standard MMORPG play style. The action in Mytheon will revolve around the “Power Stones”. They are collectable items that can be used for summoning creatures or structures and casting magic. Additionally players will have the opportunity to craft rare power stones through the help of arcane recipes.

The game will offer three playable classes: Warcaster, Elementalist and Eidolon.
Warcasters have the largest selection of creatures in battle but also the least amount of healing potential.
The Elementalists are descendants of sorcerers, oracles and mystics. They posses the ability to command the forces of Air, Earth, Fire and Water. They use mainly spell stones. Their vulnerability is their lack of companion stones.
The Eidolons are an order of warrior-priests from Egypt. They have stones to create structures, dispel magic, enhance and heal.


Mytheon currently accepts applications for its closed beta.

Game trailer: