Mapping for Purity

Last month MCMic reviewed Purity and now he started making maps for it.

Stepbouncing for Purity by MCMic

p00 and p01 for Purity by MCMic

Purity

A long time ago, on the old FreeGameDev forum, I heard of Purity; an original game based on the idTech3 engine.

Recently, I was wondering what the project had become, and with the help of a few people on the irc channel, we managed to find the website, unfortunately, it appears the development stopped two years ago.

But the game is pretty cool, let me explain you what makes it interesting:

In Purity, there are no enemies! The enemy is the map, and you have to get you to the end.

In order to do that, you have 4 weapons:

-The PULS attack : a red rocket.

It allows you to activate red switches, and it allows you to jump. Right, in purity, you have no "jump button". You wanna jump? Shoot your feet, and you'll be sent in the air.

There is no lives or damage in purity, so it is not a big deal to shoot right between your feet.

You can also shoot the walls while you're in the air to project yourself higher. People who know DeFrag won't be surprised by this technique.

-The TRASE attack : a blue laser (Allows you to activate blue switches).

This laser works a bit like a hook : you can drag yourself to blue surfaces.

You can also repulse yourself from some other special blue surfaces.

-The BOM attack : a green grenade (Allows you to activate green switches).

This grenade implodes rather than explodes : if you are in the range of the grenade when it explodes, you'll be dragged to the center, and when the explosion finishes, you'll keep that speed, so you can use the BOM attack to project you to a other place.

There are also special surfaces where the grenade sticks.

-The SPHEER attack : a white shield (Allows you to activate white switches).

The SPHEER attack allows you to bounce like a bouncing ball.

Activating the SPHEER attack while you are running makes you dash, which permits you to jump over some short holes.

Combinations :

combination of bom+trase

And what makes Purity really great is that you can combine these attacks:

-Shooting a BOM attack with a TRASE attack makes it explode

-Activating the SPHEER in the range of a BOM attack makes it explode

-Using the TRASE attack on a PULS attack drags you to the rocket, basically letting you fly (I think this combo should be less powerful, maybe even removed, to make the puzzle game interesting)

-Activating the SPHEER while catching up a PULS attack makes it explode and projects you in the air

What still needs to be done in Purity:

-Audio needs to be redone, sounds are horrible and there is no music (though there is one really good in the video on their website)

-Some graphic effort could be made : some surfaces aren't really pretty.

-MAPS! Purity only has the 8 maps that train you to use the weapons and their combinations. Other maps available are training grounds with no end, just for practise.

Try and beat this!

So, I beg mappers here, please do some puzzle maps for Purity, it's all it lacks to be a great FOSS game!

PS : If you are an archlinux user, I made an aur package that allow you to install it easily in /opt : http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=46512

Uzebox

Behold! The Uzebox!

Uzebox is a retro and minimal game console, which supposedly will have an open architecture, driver and game soon. It is built for NES controllers and it's driver is written for NTSC. Take a look at this video to witness it's capabilities!

PURITY

It's now possible to play PURITY with pre-compiled maps! See this thread for instructions. Currently there is half a dozen of maps, on which you can roll around and figure out what the different attacks do. I found experimenting with the weapons very interesting and already developed some techniques for "get as fast as possible from this part of the map to that other part of the map."

Also, if you're into minimalistic art, you'll find PURITY to be a tool for creating some sexy screenshots. Hm... three dee canvas...

Radakan's team decided to use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license for all of it's content. What joy! I'm still waiting for WorldTool's next release. Impatiently.

I just red that Nosslak, who contributed to OpenFrag before, offered his skill to the Radakan project. His motivation seems to be the slow progression of OpenFrag.

Did you know you can learn to create a game showing a picture of cheese in under five minutes? It's true! True, I tell you!

Also, I'm trying to create a snake-like game in Lua. I've been thinking about the concept in the last four days, but I have some kind of mental blockade which keeps me from sitting down and keep on writing these less than a hundred lines of code.

Commander Stalin

PS: Commander Stalin is a Bos Wars-based RTS with a ww2 theme. The music in the game is screaming "copyright infringement" - I wonder about the artwork.

Reading material

I finally managed to compile and play Be The Wumpus (using the CVS version). I had some trouble finding out how the controls work, but then found out that you don't turn in 90-degree steps and that you have to attack (space) to make the humans squeak in fear. I immediately started hunting down and consuming those two-legged pieces of meat.

I am amazed by how this game appeals to your hunting instincts. It's also a game which will give you a break from ruining your eyes, as keeping them closed while playing makes it easier (and more fun). Now I just have to wait untill it's night, so I can go hunting at full darkness!

Orbit-Hopper split-screen

I tried playing Orbit-Hopper, but it appears that my outdated GeForce 5200 isn't enough. Which is a shame, I'd love to try a pretty and improved version of Skyroads. And Orbit-Hopper is supposed to be just that. It even has split-screen support and a level editor and I imagine both might be impressive.

Bughunter2 and Tranberry are working on Burning Dust, which will become a 2D RTS engine and then a game, using Hard Vacuum graphics. There's also a game design/brain storm document in the works.

Project Alexandria is a 2D gravity arcade space shooter containing some plot. I find the gravity part somewhat hard, but the overall game rather entertaining.

Justinnichol's sci-fi art, fonts and drawings are available under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

PURITY

PURITY is a minimalistic ioq3-based shooter and looks very interesting to me [video]. I was unable to try it, as there are no GNU/Linux binaries and the required GTKRadiant is not easy to compile.

A very resourceful discussion on managing free game projects was started by Brendan on the Dungeon Hack forums.

He explains that the most important rules for a game developing community are:

• Showing off progress


• Being nice and friendly


• Using shared code & content repositories


• Documenting code

It also appears that Anna Kournikova is the biggest enemy of volunteer game projects because she will start dating your best coder, making him unavailable for the project.

Since I have started giving reading recommendations: this blog will knock your socks off! It's a news blog for the being-developed, non-free* MMO game "love".

You will be either impressed by the fresh ideas or by how nifty the author introduces his views, so that you are tricked into thinking he is so right, which at the same time makes you love his game, as it's design follows his views.

*I'm talking about this kind of free by the way.