News? Yep news!

A bit slow in the world of FOSS gaming lately, and all the forum trouble here at FreeGamer/FreeGameDev certainly didn't help.
But with the help of Ghoul and qudobup there is now a new and advanced forum (well it still needs a nice non-standard style, but functionality is there).
So go and post some FOSS gaming news in there!

Bloodfrontier Beta2

So what news are there actually? Today a new beta of Bloodfrontier has been released! It is a FPS based on Cube2: Sauerbraten, which tries to do some things a little different while still keeping it a fun FPS.

Bloodfrontier beta2 trailer

Changes you can expect include running along walls and kicking of them (Parkour like features seem a bit of a trend in gaming lately... War§ow also has a similar feature), all new secondary fire-modes and a precursor to coop campains amongst the usual new maps and graphical updates.

Tremulous 1.2 gameplay beta

Shocking news! After years of waiting there is some movement on the Tremulous 1.2 front. You can now download and update to your existing 1.1 install with which you can test the new game-play changes of the upcoming 1.2 release (when ever that might arrive).
Changes include mostly balancing fixes and some "rearrangements" in game-play.
Sadly it does not include all the nice graphical updates which have leaked from the dev team now and then.

Some news from the Nexuiz forum

No new release from Nexuiz yet, but some interesting news never the less.
There are some nice upcoming new player models (link1, link2); Something which really is the last graphical department where Nexuiz doesn't shine.
And ODE physics have been implemented into Nexuiz:

Rube Goldberg machine in Nexuiz

Besides these great news, there is a nice modification in the works which adds zombies and spider-bots (awesome combination if you ask me ;) ).

Forum un-down #6

A poll/discussion was started to talk about how to handle the forum situation. Please add your two cents to the poll/discussion or comment on this blog post. :)

Forum un-down #5

Short version: feel free & safe to use the Forum again. The old posts might or might not be added to the posts we post from now on later.

Longer version: there is still hope that the files (and posts) will be restored but of course no guarantee. Having a job doesn't help the server administration spend money on trying to restore the files.

However, I was assured, that the posts we write from now on will be preserved, even if the old posts get restored. I told otherwise in a previous post's comment before.

I'm sure you are curious about whether the forum software is responsible for the data loss. It is not. It was me, not bothering to check whether the posts get saved in the database or not. The default behavior is to save to files, saving to db would have to be enabled.

Forum down #4

8 Oct, UTC+1:

22:27 < ghouly> freegamedev wiki backup restored : http://ghoulsblade.schattenkind.net/freegamedev/wiki

22:28 < dmj728> ghouly...are the message bodies back?

22:28 < ghouly> not yet, we'll work on that this weekend

PS: For all your game development forum communication needs I recommend this list for the moment.

Forum down #3

So a 'backup' forum is free for use again, while we wait for filesystem recovery results (the download of the fs has finished so 'repairs' begin now)..

Meanwhile jClassicRPG created a new forum. Make your choice ;)

Forum down #2

Permission to panic given.

We didn't lose the databse, but it might be that we lost the files. Unfortunately the messages of the forum are saved as files. Check this out (but don't post) to see how a 'full' forum without messages looks like.

So this is the 'message-only backup' I was talking about in previous post.

We still might be lucky and the filesystem can be recovered. It's 400GB big and it takes a week to download that, so expect having to wait...

Waiting is the magical word here.

:(

I'm very unhappy about the forum and how not having it around might affect the community members and especially the projects that use it as part of their infrastructure..

Forum down

Due to a filesystem error (apparently) the FreeGameDev forum is down. The post data (MySQL table) is safe and will be likely restored in a day or two. It's not clear yet if file attachments can be restored. We will keep you updated.

You can use this phpBB forum as a short-term temporary solution.