Downtime coming tomorrow morning.

Just to warn folks, the Arcen forums will have about 1-2 hours of
downtime (at worst -- could be as little as 20 minutes) tomorrow
morning, June 28th.  Somewhere between 8am and 12 pm EST, but I'm not
sure the exact window there.  The community wiki  will also be down
during that time, but the rest of the Arcen site, including the store
and the official wiki, won't experience any downtime at all.

We're
switching hosts away from lunarpages shared hosting to the rackspace
cloud sites.  It's amazing we've lasted so long on a shared server, to
be honest -- we're routinely averaging 8000 to 12000 hits per day now
even when there's not much going on, and significantly more when there's
big news or events.  We switched our large file handling over to the
Amazon S3 cloud about half a year ago, and that really staved off the
inevitable of us needing a more robust hosting service for the site
itself, but now we're hit the point where things are slowing down a bit,
and with the release of Tidalis being pretty close at hand we had fears
of the site slowing to a crawl or getting so overburdened there would
be outages.

At any rate, with the new hosting service it should
be a lot zippier of service, especially under heavy load conditions.
 After the brief window of downtime tomorrow, there will also be 24-48
hours where the Arcen forums and similar are running on a different url
other than arcengames.com (while the DNS transfers), so don't be alarmed
when you see that.  It will be back to being arcengames.com for
everyone by mid-week.

Should be a good improvement!  And we're
also going to make use of these new servers to enable our own master
server game listings for Tidalis, and later AI War as well (while we
wait for Impulse Reactor V2).

AI War and Zenith Remnant Bundle 66% Off During Steam's Summer Sale

Today through July 4th, there's an incredible discount on AI War: Fleet Command
and AI War: The
Zenith Remnant via the Steam "Perils of Summer" sale! We're
experimenting a bit by trying out a discount rate of 66%, which is
unusually large for us. We recently did something similar with
Direct2Drive, and now we're trying it with Steam, but this deal
definitely won't last, so make sure and tell your friends and family if
you think they might be interested (or if you haven't yet taken the
plunge, you might want to get to evaluating the demo while this deal
lasts).



So what's going on with AI War, anyway? AI War is still very much a
living and growing game, with a big version
4.0 + Mac OSX support upcoming in a few months, and our upcoming
for-charity micro-expansion, AI
War: Children of Neinzul. Those are both currently scheduled for
release in August, but in the meantime we've also got a current
beta version chock full of updates that will become the next
official free DLC release within a few weeks (around the same time that
preorders for AI War:CoN begin).



So, while it's safe to bet there will probably be other sales in the
future, after this summer they probably won't go this deep again until
2011 at the earliest. Just fair warning!

Coldest, LinWarrior, Metallblech - Mech Combat Action Games

I stumbled upon an older release of Coldest while making space on my HDD for game video recording, Metallblech popped out of nowhere recently on our forums with awesome art and I still haven't tried Linwarrior's latest release. Time for a mech games post!

Mechs are big robots and they make sounds like this and you can have great fun assembling them and then blowing stuff up!

Metallblech

Mashup of Metallblech's art

Planned as a game for Syntensity, there are many models ready for usage in Metallblech, but (IIRC) not one line of code has been written yet and the project is desperate for programmers. ;)

Coldest

Coldest: mech stomping, super weather, lasers overheating

Coldest actually allows you to assemble the weapon systems of your mech. That's quite an important part for this genre: first, carefully assemble your mech, then brutally disassemble enemy mechs! A readme would be quite a good addition.

The command `svn co https://www.nemebean.com/svn/coldest/` will allow you to pull the latest code [EDIT: and for more instructions check out this wiki page.]

Coldest code is under GPL, art is under who knows what. (Actually I do know that both textures and sounds wouldn't qualify as free-as-in-freedom free. :) )

Coldest's mech configuration menu

Coldest solo test [tinyogg]

LinWarrior 3D

Unfair 4 vs 1 at level start? Check!

Since the last time Free Gamer reported about LinWarrior, the 2010_03_20 "Hadron Collider" version was released (download here). Besides the fact that textures and models have been licensed under "good" CC licenses, code tweaks and visual fixes, the MD5Mesh format is now supported.

Mouse control is definitely the one thing I would like to see implemented ASAP.

Say hi to these rockets!

LinWarrior gameplay [tinyogg]

For some reason any video I recorded of LW3D would not show the dirty and brown ground texture, I'm sorry for the distorted view on the game caused by this!

Conclusion

I like mech games alot!

alot!

What do you people think of this genre? Do you prefer tactical, turn-based over action 3D mech games? What's the one thing you want to be able to do in following versions of the games I introduced here? (I want to be able to shoot off legs!)

HE'S ALIVE

*Qubodup's eyes shift left and right*

Qubodup mutters, "I smell death."

*Charlie jumps out from behind a tree*

"No! It's me!"

Or maybe Q meant death by a thousand of Charlie's bad jokes? I got jokes, man.

Ok, ok... games stuff. Enough inane joke stuff. Games...

FreeOrion 0.3.14 came out with a fairly mega changelog. A preview of the 3d space combat is in there, as well as lots of fixing and balancing and content enhancing. It's becoming a very deep game and once the 3d combat is done it'll be one of the stand out open source games you can play, and only getting better. Hats off to the developers for their dedication to realising their dreams, it's been a long haul. Here be a video:

FreeCol 0.9.3 just came out. Fixes ahoy! Good game, that, although I still don't understand how to play it. One day I'll swallow my pride and ask how the hell you assign hammers and build things.

Danger from the Deep 0.4 preview release for those who are a bit brave. It might torpedo your computer, yuk yuk yuk =). It's got great graphics, although is more of a simulation than a game - but that's a good thing in my book. Part of the fun in a submarine game is in the challenges that befell those unfortunate enough to end up in a watery grave. Ah, video ahoy:

XreaL. It's not dead. Actually there's a video in that link that will blow your mind, it looks so good. You won't be able to see the forest for the trees (that'll make sense if you see it). No youtube though here's a [rather dark] video showing off a few XreaL levels:

Looks like YAOSCSC (Yet Another Open Source Counter Strike Clone) is underway although this one is probably more likely to succeed than some of the other rather limp efforts. This one is called Code 43: Urban Warfare and it uses XreaL. It is formed by the people associated with the ET Mod True Combat: Elite which could never really be open source.

And now for something completely different. And I'm not talking about breaking English grammar rules by starting sentences with 'and'...

Runesword II is a 2D RPG made in 2001 and now open source. They released version 2.6 recently, which can be downloaded from Sourceforge. Bizarrely the 2.6 release announcement never seems to have been made outside of the forums. Sadly it is made in VB *ew* and can be run on Linux via Wine. Still, it looks like a fairly involved RPG game.

I eagerly anticpate Egoboo 2.8.0, which has been a year in the making. They got a new website.

Which reminds me. Nothing to do with it, but I haven't yet tried UFO:AI 2.3...

DigitalMan Open Source Game Competition

Squamulus in the forums has pointed us to the DigitalMan Open Source Game Competition, a competition for complete-ish open source games, wherein the winners get ported to their new all-encompassing content delivery/creation system WorldKi



Nominations started a week or so ago and so far they have 41 open source games nominated, which is quite a decent list in my opinion, you can view the full list here. Unfortunately, nominations close today (12pm CST) so this post might be a bit late if you want to nominate your own games..



Voting begins as soon as nominations close, so check back at their page if you want to be heard.



My thoughts on the competition:



It's definitely interesting to see another entry into the sparsely populated Open Source( Gluon[alpha], OpenCDS[dead], and to a lesser degree DJL[also dead]) /densely populated Proprietary (Steam, Desura, Impulse etc etc) game content delivery arena.



There's not a whole lot of info on WorldKi, it seems a very ambitious project that combines game distribution with game development, with monetization all along the way (eg. Middleware devs can sell their libraries, Artists their art, and finally devs their games). If FOSS game devs can pay the bills from foss games alone, we might see some real growth..



As for handing out porting as a prize? I'm not totally sure if that's the way to go about doing things, especially if no one has heard of the platform before. Mentioning the possible monetization through the platform might have made it a bit more appealing, but then again, such things also cause dispute.



OpenGameArt Weekly Competition




On another note, the OpenGameArt Friday Challenge got renamed to "Weekly Challenge" and still starts on Fridays but ends after ten days (Mondays) so on during the weekend there are two topics to contribute to. :) The challenge art submission count is now at 77 (17 new + 60 old).



The current theme is Public Treasure Hunt and involves scouting the web for public domain game resources and is due June 28th.

BOFH: Servers Under Siege

BOFH title screen: NINJAS AND PIr.. SERVERS! (and whips and guns)

BOFH is a top-down shooter that takes place in a school. You're a mean administrator and have to shoot bad guys, take their weapons and disarm bombs attached to server stacks by finding notes that tell you in what order to cut the wires!

Now this might sound overly simple, but the enemy AI make the mindless shooting interesting enough by reacting to gunshots sounds and having non-naive movement patterns. I haven't progressed too far in the game so far, so I can only say that there is a new enemy type on a higher building floor, maybe there's even more, probably at least a boss battle.

Music and sounds are just excellent, although I sometimes wish there was more than one in-game track.

The game was originally (.exe here) made for c64 and then ported to PC. I tested neuromancer's version which contains fixes and compiles with no problems on my Linux flavor of choice.

Forks (and suggestions) are welcome by the way, besides new maps and objects it might be nice to have alternative resolutions (via scaling) implemented and also having the flickering gray shadows fixed.

Sign of a good game: the plot is no more than one screen long!

Oh, and bazookas!!!

Besides the 'save the servers' scenario, there is a mini level in which you just have to clear a room of computers. Along with workstation computers, glass is also destructible (and their shards hurt the player and enemies).

BOFH gameplay [much better quality: .ogg | .mp4]

A level editor allows easy to learn level creation. If you come up with a cool new level, let us know via comment or forum thread! I'll do the same. Here is the complete editor documentation in one screen.

Basic BOFH level editing (track #1: Crystal Space [BY-SA] by maxstack)

If you like BOFH, Shotgun Debugger most likely will suit your taste as well! And remember... It's always the blue wire first!

Well, maybe not

Ufo:AI and A3P updates

A long awaited update of one of the flagship FOSS games has just been released: UFO:AI! UFO:AI (for those not in the loop) is a turn based strategy game very similar to the classic X-COM.

The improvements of the new version are multi fold; Besides big improvements to the render engine, game-play was also overhauled, but head over to their full change log to get the full picture.

Speaking of pictures, here a nice one showing the new glow effects on the world map:

(Maybe qudobup will be so nice and make a video of it too *hint*)

A3P 1.0

A3P (we mentioned it before) was also updated to its first non beta release today. You can check it out directly in your browser (a feature of the Panda3D engine used) or download it as a normal version (currently Windows only).

A3P Gameplay

Tidalis Beta 0.854 Released (Gargantuan Updates) and New Videos

It's been a while since we've done an update to the installer for Tidalis, but if you've been following the Tidalis forums or the budding Tidalis wiki, you already know that the game has been seeing massive nearly-weekly public beta releases since mid-April. The latest version, 0.854, represents the culmination of everything we wanted to get done before the PAX 10 contest deadline. And look! We've also now done an official trailer for the game:











So what all is new since the last time we updated the installer build (which was version 0.407)?





Visually and Aurally

• We've now completed all the visual/art themes for the game, though we're still adding animations and polish on the art. There are now 21 of these themes in all, counting three hidden ones that get unlocked during adventure play.


• There are now over 50 minutes of music in the game, or 90 minutes if you count the "dire" versions of the tracks.


• A lot of the music has been updated since 0.407; we had some trouble initially getting just the perfect sound, but now we think we've really nailed it.


• A ton of the art has already been polished and animated to a heavy degree; check out the Title Menu, the Open Plains theme, or the Volcano themes for specific examples. Pretty amazing, if we do say so.

Content

• We're now up to 16 game styles for the game (counting the Normal style), which will probably be the final count for release.


• We're now up to 31 special blocks for the game, which will probably be the final count for release.


• The game now has items -- 25 of them -- which will probably be the final count for release.


• There are now 74 (out of a planned 114) adventure levels, as well as 39 brainteaser-type puzzles. More coming on both of these.


• The game now has achievements -- 20 so far -- with more coming.


• There are now 19 story cutscenes out of a planned 40 or so.


• Both co-op and VS play are available on the local computer, either with two humans or 1-2 humans against the AI.

What Isn't Complete?

• We're still working on the networking, that will be done soon.


• We still need to finish the last quarter or so of the adventure mode and story.


• There are a few specific VS and co-op features that we still want to add.


• More polish is still being added to the art, and we'll probably add a few more sound effects, too.


• The VS AI is already pretty good in the specific game styles it is allowed to play in, but there are some tweaks we have in mind to make it better. All game styles are supported in human vs human play, but not all of them will be available for the AI; it's considered a fairly minor part of this game, by contrast with AI War.


• Gamepad support.


• Various other tweaks, polish, and bugfixes still remain, though our list is considerably smaller of late.

So, What's The Plan?

The beta is still in full swing, with the demo being free for anyone, and the full beta being available for anyone who preorders. Right now you can preorder at the main Arcen site, at GamersGate, at MacGameStore, and at myGameIQ. All of our existing partners who sell AI War will also be carrying Tidalis either at release or a few weeks ahead of release.





So when's the release? Right now we're looking at the week of July 12th, although we don't have a specific day nailed down just yet. We're still talking with our distribution partners and figuring out which day makes the most sense for everyone. But we expect to be materially complete with the game (including all the last polish, etc) by July 9th at the absolute latest, so anytime that week should be a possibility.





Check out the trailer if you haven't already, and if you're interested you might like to try the demo. Tidalis is available on both Windows and OSX (you get a license for both platforms when you buy it for either).





This game has grown incredibly far beyond what we had initially planned when we set out to make it, but that's largely due to the promise that the core mechanics showed and the team's enthusiasm for the project. Everyone on the team has the feeling that we've got something really special with this game, and so far beta customers seem to have that feeling, as well.





Definitely exciting times! We'll update with more news as the release gets nearer, and we'll also be having news in the next month about our upcoming AI War 4.0 (which will add full OSX support), and our upcoming charity-focused micro-expansion, AI War: Children of Neinzul. In the meantime, here are some other brand-new Tidalis videos that show off recent additions to the game:























About Tidalis

Tidalis is a block-based puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new "streams" mechanic. The basic rules of the game are this: blocks fall down into the board and have a color and an arrow direction. If a stack of blocks exceeds the height of the board, you lose. In order to clear blocks, you must right-click and drag paths through the arrows to set up chain reactions of like-colored blocks.





If this sounds simple, that's because it is -- you'll be lining up lengthy chains within minutes. But you'll be surprised how much brainpower it takes to set up combos of multiple chains, and the many brainteaser-style puzzles include some real stumpers. Tidalis has co-op and competitive multiplayer modes (offline only in this beta version); action-oriented modes and timer-less brainteasers; a lengthy, casual-friendly adventure mode; fifteen unique game modes providing innumerable twists to the basic gameplay; dozens of special blocks and items; and over fifty minutes of beautiful music to go with the painterly art.





In short, several games' worth of content are built on top of this core mechanic, which you'll quickly find to be as iconic as it is novel.

Summering Wars and Mac OSX

Recently modeled & textured SumWars character by Evil_E

While the sun warms my body, Summoning Wars' development activity warms my fossy heart: icons are being created by hal9000, sounds are being mixed by artisticdude, music is being composed by West. And of course the 3D model, see the image on top of this post.

A new release (0.5.1) has been recently uploaded and the next release is being discussed.

One quite important planned feature is an OSX port, as there are at least two (if I recall correctly) who use that operating system to produce art for the game. CMake is used for compiling on Linux, so I suspect that porting might be in fact trivial. If you can help with the task, please report to their forums/irc! :)