For those that are not keeping up to the latest development branch (via the autobuilds), the Xonotic developers have released a new version with various smaller changes and new official maps.
From the user "Antibody" (known for his duel commentary videos) comes this nice video overview of the new features:
(please note that due to video capture performance reasons the graphic settings are pretty low, and the game can look much nicer with different settings)
On the longer term horizon of Xonotic development, there is the very exiting news that they are currently porting their game to run on the same engine that Unvanquished uses. With this the future of Xonotic is indeed much brighter, as their current engine has not seem much development lately. See more details in this thread.
Oh and while we are talking about FOSS arena FPS: A short while ago Red Eclipse also released a new version. Changes include updated to the AI Bots and a build in universal updater to easily follow the latest releases.
From the user "Antibody" (known for his duel commentary videos) comes this nice video overview of the new features:
(please note that due to video capture performance reasons the graphic settings are pretty low, and the game can look much nicer with different settings)
On the longer term horizon of Xonotic development, there is the very exiting news that they are currently porting their game to run on the same engine that Unvanquished uses. With this the future of Xonotic is indeed much brighter, as their current engine has not seem much development lately. See more details in this thread.
Oh and while we are talking about FOSS arena FPS: A short while ago Red Eclipse also released a new version. Changes include updated to the AI Bots and a build in universal updater to easily follow the latest releases.
Very nice new movie from the Xonotic community:
It gives a pretty good idea about the vanilla game mode, although the very popular (some say too popular) "Minstagib" (one shot kills) and the total conversion mod Overkill (All new player-models and weapons, with team-spawn etc.) are also shortly shown.
Not shown are the popular vehicle mod and the recently added lightning gun (still WIP), but you can try everything yourself easily by getting the auto-downloader of the latest development build here.
As with most FOSS games, they are looking for more developers (& players) and if you have some cash to spare you can currently also pledge for the creation of some NPC characters for a single-player or COOP-mode here.
Speaking of FOSS crowd-funding, another great FOSS arena shooter, Red Eclipse this currently preparing a campaign for porting their somewhat aging Cube2 engine to the much nicer Tesseract (which is technically something like Cube3).
Oh and a new version (1.5) but still with the old engine should be out very soon ;)
Happy fragging!
It gives a pretty good idea about the vanilla game mode, although the very popular (some say too popular) "Minstagib" (one shot kills) and the total conversion mod Overkill (All new player-models and weapons, with team-spawn etc.) are also shortly shown.
Not shown are the popular vehicle mod and the recently added lightning gun (still WIP), but you can try everything yourself easily by getting the auto-downloader of the latest development build here.
As with most FOSS games, they are looking for more developers (& players) and if you have some cash to spare you can currently also pledge for the creation of some NPC characters for a single-player or COOP-mode here.
Speaking of FOSS crowd-funding, another great FOSS arena shooter, Red Eclipse this currently preparing a campaign for porting their somewhat aging Cube2 engine to the much nicer Tesseract (which is technically something like Cube3).
Oh and a new version (1.5) but still with the old engine should be out very soon ;)
Happy fragging!
After an agonizingly long wait, I am happy to report that a new official release of the premier FOSS arena FPS Xonotic is available to the masses.
Here is a nice (but slightly older) game-play video for those not having played Xonotic yet:
Changes are quite extensive compared to the last official release... most notably an extensive update the the CTF mode, some neat additional features for competitive gaming and an assortment of great new maps.
On the technical side of things, the engine DarkPlaces got quite a few performance improvements (mainly due to the fact that the creator now works at Valve software and thus has direct access to Nvidia's and AMD's graphics hardware divisions) and that an all new script compiler is now in use. That it runs on SDL 2.0 might also increase it's usability a lot for some.
There are also finally an animation bending feature for the player-models and creation of new characters has never been easier now that the iqm format is used.
You can comment on this release over at the Xonotic forum release announcement thread (or of course here in our comment section).
Also check out these two still under heavy development mods for xonotic:
P.S.: If you have a really fast Android device, you can also try to run Xonotic on it via this newly fixed DarkPlaces port. Just don't expect to be able to compete online with touchscreen input :p
Here is a nice (but slightly older) game-play video for those not having played Xonotic yet:
Changes are quite extensive compared to the last official release... most notably an extensive update the the CTF mode, some neat additional features for competitive gaming and an assortment of great new maps.
 | ||
| New maps in Xonotic 0.7 |
There are also finally an animation bending feature for the player-models and creation of new characters has never been easier now that the iqm format is used.
You can comment on this release over at the Xonotic forum release announcement thread (or of course here in our comment section).
Also check out these two still under heavy development mods for xonotic:
- Overkill is a mod that attempts to combine the best of minsta gameplay and TDM/CTF. It also has some nice vector shaded new weapons and player models.
- DotC is an DOTA like but in 1st person view type of mod.
P.S.: If you have a really fast Android device, you can also try to run Xonotic on it via this newly fixed DarkPlaces port. Just don't expect to be able to compete online with touchscreen input :p
Today I bring you news of yet another rather low profile Darkplaces engine game (e.g. the same engine that runs Xonotic), called Dead Morning:
As you can see in these other, more game-play oriented videos (1, 2, 3), it seems to be quite heavily influenced by another recent 1st person horror game...
The website mentions a fully open-source release at the end of this year, so I am rather intrigued what they will come up by then!
As you can see in these other, more game-play oriented videos (1, 2, 3), it seems to be quite heavily influenced by another recent 1st person horror game...
The website mentions a fully open-source release at the end of this year, so I am rather intrigued what they will come up by then!
Good news is that the long awaited Red Eclipse version 1.4 was released yesterday.
Read the announcement (with full change-log) here. Besides general polish the most notable features are:
The bad news is that we missed Xonotic's third birthday, but you can still congratulate here (where you can also read about some pretty cool updates to the game). To celebrate it, kojin made a nice frag movie:
Enjoy!
Read the announcement (with full change-log) here. Besides general polish the most notable features are:
Especially the visible legs in 1st person view add to the parcour movements and overall the game feels much more "complete" now. Here are some impressions of a bot-match I had earlier on:
- Vanity items and improved colours: dress up and frag with style.
- Visible legs in first person: know where you are kicking and parkouring.
- New and revamped maps: bringing you even more variety.
- Better viewing: level flythroughs, improved third and first person cameras.
- Better menus and other HUD elements: easier to see and read at a glance.
- New weapon: Mines add a new dimension to the existing gameplay.
- New mode: attack and defend in Gauntlet, competing for the most laps.
- Automatic demo recording: for those times you just have to watch it again.
- User Accounts: donate or contribute, and wear the in-game supporter badge.
- Improved weapon balance and gameplay rules, bugs fixed, and much more.
The bad news is that we missed Xonotic's third birthday, but you can still congratulate here (where you can also read about some pretty cool updates to the game). To celebrate it, kojin made a nice frag movie:
Enjoy!
Some of you might remember Mega Lo Mania back from the days when you could be amazed by PC speaker voice output... so if you spend way too much of your childhood playing that game (like me) you should probably stay clear of the FOSS remake called Gigalomania!
As the creator recently stated, it now uses the cool Liberated Pixels Cup contest sprites, but there is still the need to replace the castle graphics with nicer ones. Maybe *you* can help out with that?
On a related note, the LPC coding results are finally in, congratulations to the winners! I hope Bart will make a nice review on the quite awesome games here on FG soon.
Other recent updates not to be missed:
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| Gigalomania now using LPC sprites |
On a related note, the LPC coding results are finally in, congratulations to the winners! I hope Bart will make a nice review on the quite awesome games here on FG soon.
Other recent updates not to be missed:
- Today a new Alpha 13 of Unvanquished was released, marking the one year aniversary of their first alpha release. As usual it comes with a bunch of new nice features and fixes.
- You can now download automatic snapshots of the development version of Megaglest. And there seems to be finally some progress in updating the graphic capabilities of the engine.
- O A.D. continues to amaze with news updates about development progress and music creation.
- And last but not least: the awesome Xonotic mod Overkill now has a website!
Just a small reminder:
Don't miss today's (at 8:00pm CET = UTC/GTM+1 e.g. central European time) grand final of the Xonotic 1v1 tourney!
Check out videos of the semi finals here, and I will probably update this post with the video of the grand final once it is available.
Edit2: Congrats to Fisume, who won 3:1 in a pretty exiting match (especially the last two matches were great to watch). Watch this spot for a video of this match.
Edit3: Here are the videos.
Don't miss today's (at 8:00pm CET = UTC/GTM+1 e.g. central European time) grand final of the Xonotic 1v1 tourney!
Check out videos of the semi finals here, and I will probably update this post with the video of the grand final once it is available.
Edit2: Congrats to Fisume, who won 3:1 in a pretty exiting match (especially the last two matches were great to watch). Watch this spot for a video of this match.
Edit3: Here are the videos.
Short call for help: Awesome looking retro-graphics game is looking for a Darkplaces QC programmer.
So far only two screen-shots have been released (and no word on the license of the media):
I am loving the style... so here is the other:
So if you know your way around Quake's QC scripting language try to get into contact with them :) Otherwise you can still follow the progress of this game over at QuakeOne's forums.
Oh and taking about Darkplaces... Xonotic finally implemented client-side networked players in their most recent development release. Meaning that there is now client-side movement prediction and thus less (visually) laggy game-play on slower netspeeds!
So far only two screen-shots have been released (and no word on the license of the media):
Oh and taking about Darkplaces... Xonotic finally implemented client-side networked players in their most recent development release. Meaning that there is now client-side movement prediction and thus less (visually) laggy game-play on slower netspeeds!
So it seems Red Eclipse is having a "contest" for creating an official trailer for their upcoming 1.2 release. Nothing to win (except fame), but the guys from Sauerbraten (also Cube2 engine based, like Red Eclipse) recently did the same with a quite nice result:
So if you want to participate, have a look at their rules and check out these nice open-source tools for video capturing: GLC (short tutorial by our qudobup) and editing: PiTiVi or KDEnlive (sorry for being Linux centric here :p ).
In other news I can report that the Xonotic team is following up on their promise to report more news and developments on their Blog :) Check out the latest entry for a log read and many nice pictures.
Personally I am currently most excited about the mod "Overkill" with tries to take some features of the well loved instagib mode (sadly so much that it is sometimes hard to find anything but instagib games :( ) like right click laser jump etc. while keeping a variety of weapons that are a bit more appealing to non-instagib players.
Well, check out the more detailed description and pictures at the bottom of the post linked above! Oh and you can already play the mod by joining the test server with a vanilla Xonotic version (all needed files will be auto-downloaded).
P.S.: Here is a small video to show how it currently looks:
New official Sauerbraten trailer
So if you want to participate, have a look at their rules and check out these nice open-source tools for video capturing: GLC (short tutorial by our qudobup) and editing: PiTiVi or KDEnlive (sorry for being Linux centric here :p ).
In other news I can report that the Xonotic team is following up on their promise to report more news and developments on their Blog :) Check out the latest entry for a log read and many nice pictures.
Personally I am currently most excited about the mod "Overkill" with tries to take some features of the well loved instagib mode (sadly so much that it is sometimes hard to find anything but instagib games :( ) like right click laser jump etc. while keeping a variety of weapons that are a bit more appealing to non-instagib players.
Well, check out the more detailed description and pictures at the bottom of the post linked above! Oh and you can already play the mod by joining the test server with a vanilla Xonotic version (all needed files will be auto-downloaded).
P.S.: Here is a small video to show how it currently looks:
Xonotic Overkill mod (early WIP)
Unknown Horizons Player Scores...
libtcod's project browser filter
libtcod, an advanced toolkit for roguelikes now has an online browser for projects using it that allows to apply filters.
Tactical battle in Hale
I stumbled over Hale, an RPG described as having "deep tactical combat system and storyline".
The project seems to use freely licensed assets, which is a great. I hope that the GUI will receive a makeover (using a pastel background color and killing the 1995'ish 3d button/border look does wonders).
Example sound visualization at Freesound 2.0
Freesound went 2.0! CC-BY and CC0 as license options! (Unfortunately CC-BY-NC as well). Sampling+ remains for legacy sounds where authors have not switched to a modern license. Read the announcement here.
Six-legged vehicle in Xonotic
Xonotic 0.5 brings new maps, vehicles and multi-language support. Many more details can be found in their annoucnement post.
...but make us FreeGamer blog-authors lazy, as all the news are already in our awesome game and development planets :p
New to the feeds is our revision control planet, for those news-freaks that want to keep up to date even if it is just a change in punctuation of the readme file :p
It is btw interesting to see on this planet how much changes happen in the Xonotic SVN, while to the outward observer the project seems to be moving only slowly forward.
However, recently they released an auto-builds update script, which makes it much easier to keep up with their development builds (which seems to be the preferred version for them now in general, but things can break from time to time). Oh and for the lulz: a "my little pony" mod recently surfaced for Xonotic also :p
Next on the list? Ahh yes, Stunt Rally version 1.2 got released:
Changes include (amongst other stuff) a new split-screen and a ghost car rally mode.
Other things to mention? Mage is a open-source MTG client, but not as nice looking as Wagic. But it might convince you with other features (of which Mage has a lot ;) ).
Unknown Horizons has a nice news update with all the improvements Google's Summer of Code gave them and the Zod engine is set out to improve the multiplayer part of the (back then really nice) game Z (using the unfree media from the original it seems).
New to the feeds is our revision control planet, for those news-freaks that want to keep up to date even if it is just a change in punctuation of the readme file :p
It is btw interesting to see on this planet how much changes happen in the Xonotic SVN, while to the outward observer the project seems to be moving only slowly forward.
However, recently they released an auto-builds update script, which makes it much easier to keep up with their development builds (which seems to be the preferred version for them now in general, but things can break from time to time). Oh and for the lulz: a "my little pony" mod recently surfaced for Xonotic also :p
Next on the list? Ahh yes, Stunt Rally version 1.2 got released:
Changes include (amongst other stuff) a new split-screen and a ghost car rally mode.
Other things to mention? Mage is a open-source MTG client, but not as nice looking as Wagic. But it might convince you with other features (of which Mage has a lot ;) ).
Unknown Horizons has a nice news update with all the improvements Google's Summer of Code gave them and the Zod engine is set out to improve the multiplayer part of the (back then really nice) game Z (using the unfree media from the original it seems).
Fast games for slow summer news weeks... but actually some of these news are a bit older already also :p
To start out... yes RedEclipse got a (smaller) new release a few days ago, codenamed Supernova (Version 1.1). The release notes can be found in our/their forums, but it plays as great as before (except for the annoying hit sound :p ). Edit: game-play video from one of our forum users.
Noteworthy news related to that (albeit not strictly FOSS related): RedEclipse also got included into Desura now (Moddb's indie friendly answer to Steam, even with an upcoming Linux port). To avoid complains in the comments... I mention this here even though it is a closed source game distribution platform, simply because it can be a great way to promote (and maybe even sell?) FOSS games, and if we would finally be able to attract the modding community (which is largely represented on Moddb) to work with FOSS engines instead, it would be win-win for everyone involved.
Despite its unfree content War§ow is also worth a look now and then. According to their somewhat recent blog entries they have made great progress in speeding up the Quake2 based renderer, and plan to include a matchmaking and statistics system in the maybe not so distant 0.7 release. It's actually a pity that the engine isn't used for other projects, and given that it is Quake2 based, it could probably be ported to mobile platforms like Android rather quickly (since there is a full and fast Quake2 Java port).
Talking about mobile platforms... the engine behind Xonotic (formerly Nexuiz) Darkplaces, seems to have gotten an iOS port judging by a quick look at the very recent new source release. No news post about the most recent changes, but slightly older news tell us about a much higher frame rate then before :) Would be nice if Xonotic would see another Beta release soon also ;)
Oh and I know I will get flamed for this again (e.g. for mentioning a commercial game on this blog; but I stand by my opinion that commercial isn't != FOSS), but the Darkplaces based and GPLed source-code containing SteelStorm: Burning Retribution, has been added as a free bonus to the latest HumbleBundle (at the time of writing this, with still 5 days remaining to get this "pay what you want" indie-game-bundle including some really nice games all running on Linux). Just to quickly mention... no news about source releases from that source this time (but they added all of the games from the 2nd bundle if you pay above average)... but given the somewhat lukewarm source releases last time (not really FOSS) I guess that is not a big loss :-/
Hmm what else? World of Padman was somewhat recently updated, and its engine ioQuake3 is moving to a modularized renderer.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST (hot news coming in while I am writing this)... John Carmack just confirmed in his keynote on this year's QuakeCon, that the Doom3 source code will be released this year (probably shortly after the Rage release scheduled early October)... which will be a really nice addition to the FOSS engine pool (finally a somewhat modern single player FPS engine). I am especially looking forward to see some of the existing high quality Doom3 mods to go stand alone, and maybe even FOSS!
To start out... yes RedEclipse got a (smaller) new release a few days ago, codenamed Supernova (Version 1.1). The release notes can be found in our/their forums, but it plays as great as before (except for the annoying hit sound :p ). Edit: game-play video from one of our forum users.
Noteworthy news related to that (albeit not strictly FOSS related): RedEclipse also got included into Desura now (Moddb's indie friendly answer to Steam, even with an upcoming Linux port). To avoid complains in the comments... I mention this here even though it is a closed source game distribution platform, simply because it can be a great way to promote (and maybe even sell?) FOSS games, and if we would finally be able to attract the modding community (which is largely represented on Moddb) to work with FOSS engines instead, it would be win-win for everyone involved.
Despite its unfree content War§ow is also worth a look now and then. According to their somewhat recent blog entries they have made great progress in speeding up the Quake2 based renderer, and plan to include a matchmaking and statistics system in the maybe not so distant 0.7 release. It's actually a pity that the engine isn't used for other projects, and given that it is Quake2 based, it could probably be ported to mobile platforms like Android rather quickly (since there is a full and fast Quake2 Java port).
Talking about mobile platforms... the engine behind Xonotic (formerly Nexuiz) Darkplaces, seems to have gotten an iOS port judging by a quick look at the very recent new source release. No news post about the most recent changes, but slightly older news tell us about a much higher frame rate then before :) Would be nice if Xonotic would see another Beta release soon also ;)
Oh and I know I will get flamed for this again (e.g. for mentioning a commercial game on this blog; but I stand by my opinion that commercial isn't != FOSS), but the Darkplaces based and GPLed source-code containing SteelStorm: Burning Retribution, has been added as a free bonus to the latest HumbleBundle (at the time of writing this, with still 5 days remaining to get this "pay what you want" indie-game-bundle including some really nice games all running on Linux). Just to quickly mention... no news about source releases from that source this time (but they added all of the games from the 2nd bundle if you pay above average)... but given the somewhat lukewarm source releases last time (not really FOSS) I guess that is not a big loss :-/
Hmm what else? World of Padman was somewhat recently updated, and its engine ioQuake3 is moving to a modularized renderer.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST (hot news coming in while I am writing this)... John Carmack just confirmed in his keynote on this year's QuakeCon, that the Doom3 source code will be released this year (probably shortly after the Rage release scheduled early October)... which will be a really nice addition to the FOSS engine pool (finally a somewhat modern single player FPS engine). I am especially looking forward to see some of the existing high quality Doom3 mods to go stand alone, and maybe even FOSS!
Spoiler alert regarding a video of a NAEV mission that shows off the sound capacities of the game. The project relies on OpenAL Soft.
You should come for the sound [10MB vorbis rip]* or for the HD version.
You should come for the sound [10MB vorbis rip]* or for the HD version.
Effects to notice:* It'd be great if more project took so much care of audio licensing so there could be f-a-i-f game sound walks. Great distraction from urban noise. Game soundtracks are disturbing though mostly.
- Positional sound (basic for OpenAL)
- Doppler Effect (depends on velocity)
- Air absorption factor (sounds like you’re under water)
- Reverb (also helps make it sound like you’re underwater)
- Speed of sound changes (depends on nebula density – also for sounding underwater)
An amazing screens-video of the different stages of modernizing/Xonoticisizing CBCTF1 - Space CTF to Newtonian Nightmare was posted.
Do you like Let's Plays (Commented gameplay videos)? I do. Antibody of Xonotic made something similar with pro Xonotic/Nexuiz players and sometimes developers: Interviews during playbacks.
Um, I hope you like YouTube..
Um, I hope you like YouTube..
The first piece of news is that console Nexuiz will be re-written from scratch, because some coders decided against giving permission for a proprietary port (Slashdot , interview). This means no code contributions to Nexuiz.
Secondly, Nexuiz has been forked under the name Xonotic. Because philosophy, because management, because change.
I can't complain! Git repository instead of Subversion, no more tikiwiki (I hope) finally a feed for news (has been added to our Planet)! Open management and content enhancements are on the list of plans and promises, perhaps a little too much even, which led to the creation of a critical thread on our forums.
I have had the pleasure to test the warpzone/visible-portal feature (which is available in Nexuiz' SVN as well):
youtube-dl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4zk-31sVU
Currently, instructions to get Xonotic (using git) are here. Compilation is easy and right now the game starts using "./all run -nexuiz".
If you want to get involved, get on their forums and/or get on their IRC! The website is still in development, a public wiki is in the works.
So what do you think about the fork? I understand the "divided we are weaker" point, but console Nexuiz has caused much confusion and a new project (Xonotic) seems like a clear cut and new hope™. Also.. "Xonotic" sounds slightly better than "Nexuiz" in my most humble ears. :)
Secondly, Nexuiz has been forked under the name Xonotic. Because philosophy, because management, because change.
I can't complain! Git repository instead of Subversion, no more tikiwiki (I hope) finally a feed for news (has been added to our Planet)! Open management and content enhancements are on the list of plans and promises, perhaps a little too much even, which led to the creation of a critical thread on our forums.
I have had the pleasure to test the warpzone/visible-portal feature (which is available in Nexuiz' SVN as well):
youtube-dl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4zk-31sVU
Currently, instructions to get Xonotic (using git) are here. Compilation is easy and right now the game starts using "./all run -nexuiz".
If you want to get involved, get on their forums and/or get on their IRC! The website is still in development, a public wiki is in the works.
So what do you think about the fork? I understand the "divided we are weaker" point, but console Nexuiz has caused much confusion and a new project (Xonotic) seems like a clear cut and new hope™. Also.. "Xonotic" sounds slightly better than "Nexuiz" in my most humble ears. :)
