Humble Indie Bundle's Source Releases

The Humble Indie Bundles (HIB) have a tradition of at least part of the bundled games releasing their source.

While four of five games released source code under FOSS licenses in HIB1, only one released the source in HIB2 under a FOSS license (according to this comment, a license similar to LWJGL's).

No assets were released under Free-Art-compatible-terms, except for demo objects in Penumbra.

In HIB: Frozenbyte, two (or three) games have source releases, but all of them are non-commercial only.

This is not a complaint/demand/whine and I discourage any whiny behavior reactions. :)

I have no mind-reading ability or technology but I do have a theory, that shy source releases are missing out:

1. When a game has a source release, which is not FOSS-compatible (shy source), contributions will only come from people with high interest in the game. This will improve the game.
2. When a game has a FOSS-release, in addition contributions will come from people who think that the game enriches the community. This will improve availability and usability of the game.

#2 might be perceived as a problem by a game studio if they plan another sequel, because the prequel might become a stronger competitor to it.

Frogatto: open game & editor, closed art

Another game which is commercial (on iDevices) and has FOSS code and closed art (old art has been donated to OGA!) is Frogatto.

Star-filled Sky: 100% public domain

A revolutionary breakthrough were all of Jason Rohrer's commercial games, which are 100% public domain. My feeling is that assets are less of a focus for him, which makes releasing everything less of a risk.

Nikki and the Robots: open & closed

On the middle path is Nikki and the Robots, which is foss-code and has a functional foss-art version and will have a closed/for-pay-story. For now they activated paypal donations, flattr and T-shirts.

Platformer roundup

I thought I'd check out how Super Tux development is going. I grabbed the lastest svn, compiled, and performance was so abominable that it took me a minute just to quit. It didn't help that it was placed half-off the screen (probably because I have a dual screen setup) Super Tux used to run fine. I'll hold my hands up and say I'm using an nvidia chipset and the open source driver without any significant OpenGL Acceleration, but it's a 2D game. I hope they work on some kind of OpenGL-less fallback.

Mole Invasion

One little-known but very promising platformer is Mole Invasion. The website is mainly in French, but there is a dedicated English page. The game language defaults to English. The current release is version 0.4, and the first thing you notice is the Mario-like logo; obviously the inspiration for the gameplay. The second thing you notice is the performance - it runs great. It's really smooth, the animations are good, the characters move well, and there's plenty of variation. A lot of the levels are obviously made with testing in mind, and some of the graphics are still a bit raw, but otherwise it was a fun experience.

Mole Invasion feels like it is headed in the direction that Super Tux should have been. I can't help but feel that Super Tux development has significantly lost it's way. The first few post-GotM releases of Super Tux were very promising, and very well received. That was now several years ago, and little has changed for the better, some questionable decisions (move to OpenGL), and new milestones seem on the other end of a development void.

The Legend of Edgar

There's a new Parallel Realities game out. The Legend of Edgar is a platform game with a fantasy setting. I had a go with 0.1, which is playable with a single player storyline. For me, it suffers from the same issues I have with Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid - the movement is just way too slow. It takes many minutes to navigate levels to the point that exploring a level is just tedious as you wait for your character to amble his way around.

Remember Frogatto is a old-style platformer starring an anthropomorphic frog, championed by the lead developer of Battle for Wesnoth? It celebrates pixels and thrives on cute blocky graphics. There are updated Frogatto builds for Windows and Mac from the weekend, although pious Linux users must compile from source. I couldn't compile it. I had previously, and it was looking promising! Anybody else managed to compile it on Fedora?

Widelands

The next version of Widelands - based on the classic RTS gameplay of Settlers II - is fast approaching. "Build 14" will come with GGZ support, making it much easier to find multiplayer opponents. Map auto-generation, lots of other small enhancements, more campaigns and a better beta testing phase should make this the Widelands release well worth playing.

Tumbleweed

Well there was some, but let's tidy it up for a bit.

These days following Free Software game news is much easier, since we have planet.freegamedev.net. That place is ace but it means that the motivation to post here has dwindled. Still, for addicts, I suggest you tune in to there. I know I do.

For instance, if you did, you'd know that there's an updated version of Yo Frankie! (of Apricot project fame) available for download. Funnily enough, the post is no longer up as there was a problem with it (at least there was for me). Still, here is the download URL, and it uses 0launch which I'm afraid to say I really dislike.

You can also check out FreeCol 0.8-alpha2. I like that they are releasing early, releasing often. Future maintainers pay attention!

Another project that adopts that practise is Battle for Wesnoth. 1.4.x and 1.5.x updates are out with lots of polish. One wonders how much polish will go into that game before it loses momentum. There was hope that some of the community energy that goes into Wesnoth may move into the Silvertree project but at the moment it's somewhat stalled that did not happen and the lead developer is busy with some Frog-platform-like game called Frogatto (googlecode).

JCRPG

JCRPG looks ace these days. Lots of updates on the planet for that one. I love the pixelization on this shot :lookright: which enhances the "classic" (old-school) nature of the game experience. It's one of either a magic monkey brush or a depth of field shader. With loads of optimization lately as well means JCRPG won't need a mean machine to run.

Penultimately, why not take TORCS 1.3.1-test1 out for a test drive? There's a lot of momentum with TORCS development lately and to be honest I was pleasantly surprised how fun it was the last time I played it. It's a good game.

Finally, project admins, did you know that now Sourceforge offers a service called Hosted Apps - that is, they host MediaWiki and phpBB for you, all integrated with SF.net logins. Check out the announcement. Damn, all that effort of mine for nothing.