After sorting through almost 400 applications of mentoring projects, Google has announced this year's list of projects students can contribute to.
There aren't too many FOSS gaming related projects this time though.
These are the relevant ones:
- Blender Foundation (task ideas) Ok, not really a game
- CodeCombat (task ideas) We covered it a while ago
- Copyleftgames.org (task ideas) Anyone got details on this one?
- Crystal Space Engine (task ideas) same as every year...
- Inkscape (task ideas) Ok I am stretchning it a bit here
- jMonkeyEngine (task ideas) great java game SDK
- ScummVM (task ideas) Point&click adventure game engine
- SuperTuxKart (task ideas) Yeah!
- Battle for Wesnoth (task ideas) No need to explain ;)
- Worldforge (task ideas) Also hosting: RyzomCore, CEGUI
If you are not into game developer but would still like to contribute your programming skills I recommend you to have a look at these other selected projects (totally subjective and unsorted list): Non-profit accounting, Mifos, Mixxx, Freifunk, OSGeo, Sahana & ProjectTox.
Google's Summer of Code, is an annual sponsorship of programmers to improve selected open-source programs (or games :D ).
This year, quite a few interesting FOSS game projects got accepted (again) and one being our very own friends of the SuperTuxKart project.
Read more about their role as a mentoring organization here. So how about applying as a participant yourself and helping out this great FOSS game?
You can also browse other accepted mentoring projects here, if SuperTuxKart isn't your thing. Other notable FOSS game (engine) projects accepted are:
Nice summer of coding ahead :)
This year, quite a few interesting FOSS game projects got accepted (again) and one being our very own friends of the SuperTuxKart project.
Read more about their role as a mentoring organization here. So how about applying as a participant yourself and helping out this great FOSS game?
You can also browse other accepted mentoring projects here, if SuperTuxKart isn't your thing. Other notable FOSS game (engine) projects accepted are:
Nice summer of coding ahead :)
Weaver
Weaver [introduction] is an objective-based ("invade checkpoints") team fps with a simple gesture sequence spell casting system. It uses the XreaL engine and is currently in an early development stage. Maps are under construction and a few spells are in place. Code is GPL-licensed, "Media will aim to use Creative Commons licenses."
Weaver concept art
Weaver's current spellcasting interface (Goethe's color wheel [1] ;) )
The level work I was able to witness is impressive. TRaK is the designer, which explains it.
Strolling in bow_block of Weaver - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5NQ1iT3Gg
Weaver's introduction includes a simple game design document. Compilation instructions are located here, communication happens over forum and IRC.
OpenArena 0.8.5
OpenArena has a new website look and a new patch release. It provides new or improved weapon effects, player skins, menu UI (video, compare to old), icons...
OA 0.8.1 icons
OA 0.8.5 icons
...and maps. For example:
OA 0.8.5 Botmatch DM on am_underworks2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrzGKL3zcg
Even though OpenArena is supposed to be a freely licensed Quake3 clone (with an anime theme) it also adds new weapons and game modes. I recently tested some of them, for example the Overload game mode, in which you have to destroy the enemy's base crystal:
OA 0.8.5 Overload on ps9ctf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Cpfldgsso
Evidyon
The Evidyon MMORPG's developer expressed their interest for making the game run on Linux and finds it to be relatively simple task. More info in this thread.Don't have much to add to that. I'm glad to hear that it's possible and I hope that somebody will want to take such a programming job. Here's the latest gameplay video of the game to make completing this task more desirable: :)
Evidyon Town Guards - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWcCH6Td0Q
Google and Ruby Summers of Code
Battle for Wesnoth, Blender, Crystal Space, FreedroidRPG, Thousand Parsec, Tux4Kids and WorldForge take part in GoogleStudentsOpenCash.EDIT: I was just informed, that NeL will share WorldForge's GSoC permission.
By accident (I wanted to get on the Rigs of Rods IRC channel but found myself on a ruby one) I discovered the existence of the RubyStudentsOpenCash. Any FOSS game projects besides Rubygame that could benefit from this? :)
And.. some websites
Blendswap, the new blender file sharing site will probably use CC0, BY and BY-SA as available licenses [2] and that makes me glad..
I discovered SampleSwap (via this post), which has a CC-licensed music category. It is impossible to filter by license (non-free CC flavors are supported), but at least it is easy to identify it, if you care about the terms. It uses yahoo's handy proprietary flash audio player and lists individual tracks instead of the ancient album-model that Jamendo chose. This makes it much nicer to browse for me.
Last bit of info: GameBoom is a site that wants to bring foss games to the people. It tries to do so not by covering only foss games but by allowing gratis games, while promoting the free as in freedom ones.
They are looking for bloggers/game reviewers, so if you are not on a strict foss diet, maybe there's a game you would like to introduce over there? Always remember though, that guest posts are welcome on this blog as well. ;) Just contact us via forum, irc or email (I'm sure you'll be able to find the links up there :) ).
EDIT: Remember GameJolt, another games-thing, where open source games are given attention.
