Saturday 31 August 2019

Yorg 0.11 released, now with split-screen multiplayer!

Yorg, the Panda3D based arcade racer has been updated to version 0.11 which includes some long awaited features. Most notably split-screen multiplayer:


Really cool is also the new controller support and awesome particle effects (a pet-peeve of mine in previous versions ;) ).
Add to that some significant performance improvements due to an update to the latest version of Panda3d.

Read the full release announcement on the Yorg website here. And download it from itch.io.

Comment on this in our forums here.

Sunday 18 August 2019

10 Best Open Source FPS Games


Time for another overweening list - the SEO godesses demand it!

Tremulous has 1.1 stable, 1.2 dev and 1.3 third party dev versions. It's a mess. Getting bots to run is a mess. Yet I love this game. I am only capable of playing 50% (can't handle moving aliens at all) yet I had the most fun building bases in Tremulous.

So you want to download and play Tremulous? HA! HA I SAY! Pick your poison:

  • 1.1 stable from 2006
  • 1.2 beta from 2009
  • 1.3 inofficial alpha from 2018

I still don't know which is the most useful for either finding servers with bots or humans. (1.3 has zombie game mode servers with bots is all I know).

Unvanquished is Tremulous 2.0 and a little more complex and hardware requirements. If you can find a better-looking FOSS game I'm all ears and eyes. Uvq has bots built-in.

OpenArena is Quake 3 Arena with strictly freely licensed assets, some of which likely satisfy niche fetishes. Who doesn't know OpenArena?

Rexuiz is really interesting because it takes care to not split the community. Assuming Nexuiz classic has a community? It also publishes on itch.io and any open source FPS is at least 10 times better than any Unity3D-made FPS on itch, so that's a really smart move - if your team has the time to make nice thumbnails/screenshots.

I really gotta compliment on the music in Xonotic. And the visuals.

Red Eclipse is still in development and has movement that is quite different from all the Quake descendents thanks to its doublejump and innovative weapons. I can't get over the blurry look though (I guess it's mostly the particle effects, maybe I could tweak them to be... sharper?). Additional microrant: some of RE music I like, some not much.

I like Trepedation's original game mode (Trepedation) but I have yet to try it against human players but at least the characters and levels seem to be hand-made for the project.

Sauerbraten is today minus 2013 years old and still popular, by comparison. And I gotta say: instaCTF is fun! To heck with the "flag dropped" sound though. Sauerbraten is partially non-free-as-in-freedom asset-wise.

FreeDoom is an entire single-player campaign. So is Blasphemer. Amazing amount of content! Once configured with mouselook and advanced sprite upscaling, it's nearly as good as an actual 3D FPS.

Smokin' Guns actually has a bunch of license uncertainties. But it looks like there's an effort to modernize it and liberate it.

Comment on our forums here.

Saturday 17 August 2019

Warsow is now Warfork and on Steam

Warfork Gameplay (livestream - skip ahead 1m20s)

Last updated 2019-08-22 (see bottom of this article).

The title says it all. Warfork is the revival of Warsow. Warsow is cool (and super hard to master) but does not have servers running and no development ongoing.

Warfork is an ironically-named fork of Warsow, has CC0 art assets and is for now only released on Steam. The source supposedly is mostly based on qfusion, the source code is supposed to be available as a DLC.

I recognized one of my own CC0 sounds in the game (dong.wav) without attribution (which is totally fine both legally and morally) but it's too bad that assets (especially the nice announcer voice) can't be re-used/re-shared with voluntary attribution without digging around for it first.

Some art is limited by containing trademarked logos. Would be cool to have clean versions if anybody plans on packaging Warfork for official distro packages eventually.

Shortly after launch time there were around 50 people on all servers, later it was even more. Let's hope it ends up being a success and that many other open source games will dare following!

Warfork on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/671610/Warfork/
Warfork on Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/VY95TKZ

Fun for me: I found out about Warfork two hours before release time as I was checking out a discussion about bringing Unvanquished to Steam.

Y'all better start with itch.io for distribution first. ;)

Discuss about this article on our forums here.

Update 2019-08-20: 

  1. To my knowledge, the Warfork team is not required to publish the source, the offer to provide the source in the license included in the Steam release might suffice. Somebody who cares enough might try to contact them and ask for the source. [Oh wait somebody already did]. This worked when I asked for the source of an OpenArena Android port on the Play Store years ago.
  2. I was wrong about Warsow not being under development - Its Beta was updated just days ago. However I'm there are no regular servers available for players.
Update 2019-08-22:

Thursday 15 August 2019

SuperStarfighter, a local multiplayer game made with Godot

Looks like FOSS game development with Godot is a breeze :)
SuperStarfighter is a fast-paced local party game for up to 4 players. Outmaneuver and shoot your opponents in a 2d top-down arena, and become an intergalactic champion!



Get it on Itch.io or find the source code here.

Hat-tip to GoL.

For commenting please visit our forums.

Saturday 10 August 2019

Shoot Your Goo, fun puzzle platformer made with FTEQW in 48h!

Shoot Your Goo is (despite its name) a family friendly puzzle platformer made in just 48h for the GMTK Game Jam 2019. It could be described as a mix of Angry Birds and mini-golf, but see for yourself:


The source-code can be found here, and you can head over to InsideQC to discuss with the creators.

The team who made this has become quite proficient in turning out interesting game prototypes (Bloodletter, Escape from Space etc.)  with the very cool FTEQW engine... a much advanced Quake1 derived engine (unofficial developer's documentation on the QuakeWiki & source code).

There are also a few other interesting projects with FTEQW, such as CubiQuake, FreeCS, and it has even gotten to the point of being nearly ready as a functional drop in replacement engine for Xonotic.

Semi-OT: Trenchbroom, the modern take on Quake engine mapping is continuing with great improvements and should be on your list to check out for sure

Discuss on our forums here.