Traction Edge: Squad-Based Tactics, Roguelike Interface

Traction Edge is a story driven, turn based strategy game set in a Steampunk Victorian England. Gameplay is similar to the Gollop Brothers UFO or Lasersquad series in that you have "Action Points" to spend during your turn. The game also borrows heavily from roguelikes in both look and feel.

Traction Edge is currently under development and is considered alpha software. It is playable but limited. v0.2 was released for the Annual Roguelike Release Party 2011. It is distributed as source only and requires SFML 1.6 (not 2.0) and cmake to build.

Current Features:

• Turn based gameplay
• 2-4 member squad teams
• Destructable terrain
• Victorian Steampunk setting
• SFML based, rescalable on the fly, 16x16 graphical tiles.

Planned Features:

• 16-20 static levels with full story arc
• Random content, procedural maps
• Procedural tech tree
• Civilians
• Z-levels

You can keep track of all development activity using this feed. The Linux distro that I use doesn't support SFM 1.6 any more, which makes me unable to test this interesting sounding and looking squad tactics game.

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Hale Review & Flare 0.15 Video

Hale RPG

A very fine read is this review of the TBS/RPG Hale. Its first comment was written by the sole developer.

Video: Flare 0.15

Flare 0.15 introduces outdoor areas. Translation submissions are welcome now as well. Look for instructions and examples in this post.



Freedroid RPG recently released the second candidate for 0.15. Soon it will be ten years since registration of the freedroid project on SourceFroge.net.



Checking on Scourge 2, another open source RPG title, there has been no development for eight months.

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Settlers of Catan Rules in Open Source Games (aka Clones, Remakes, Implementations)

Settlers of Catan is a popular board game. In today's terms it can be described as very 'social' thanks to its trade mechanic, which can lead to exploitation, corruption, deception... all that fun stuff.

There are a few open source implementations of the game rules, some of which I mentioned years ago and with two of them being updated recently, I decided to revisit them.

First, a few fun facts in comparable table form, further below you'll find screenshots, impressions and feature lists. Enjoy! If you're looking for somebody to play against, why not try the #freegamer IRC channel? :)

Thanks for hiponboy's (of SumWars fame) help at testing games and collecting data!

	Game	Platform	Activity	© Infringement	™ Infringement	Compilable?

	Pioneers (pio)	C, GTK+	active	Hex-tiles look suspicious	None found	Yes (./configure && make)
	Java Settlers of Catan (jsettlers2)	Java	active	Yes ("Gorillaz" character portrait file in resources)	Yes ("Settlers of Catan")	Yes (ant)
	Cities3D	C/C++, openGL	6 months ago	None found	None found	No (./configure error)
	Solitaire Settlers of Catan (solitairecatan)	Java	3 years ago	Yes (original Catan card images)	Yes ("Settlers of Catan")	No (ant error)
	jCatano	Java	5 years ago	None found	Possibly ("Catan")	Yes (ant)
	GL Catan	C/C++, openGL	5 years ago	Yes (original Catan card images)	Possibly ("Catan")	No (source not found)
	Java Settlers of Catan (javasettlers)	Java	6 years ago	None found	Yes ("Settlers of Catan")	No (instructions missing)
	Nettlers of Catan (nettlers)	C/C++	7 years ago	None found	Possibly ("_ettlers of Catan")	No (not ported to Linux)

In the table I pointed out copyright and trademark infringement, which according to this article created problems for SoC clones in the past.

I encourage project maintainers to check whether all assets are openly licensed, credited and legal and distance themselves from the Settlers of Catan trademark to avoid confusion.

Pioneers

Pioneers is feature-loaded and is configurable in content (maps), look (theme) and gameplay (rules).

Features: Various boards, Seafarers mode available, network multiplayer or single-player, one AI level, map editor, complex trade (not sure if it's possible to trade multiple vs multiple resources though), few custom rules, themes


Java Settlers of Catan (JSettlers2)

JSettlers2 nice to play with complex trade, although offers can be confusing and widgets can't be resized individually.

Another drawback is the apparently forced slowness of the AI. On the other hand the AI sometimes offers trade, which makes it stand out from the trade-passive AI of the other games.

Features: Board for 4/6 players, network multiplayer or single-player, one AI level, complex trade, few custom rules

My suggestion for a hopefully non-infringing name change: "Builders of Javatan"

By the way, I was inspired to create a little tile set for JSettlers2.


Cities3D

Cities3D looks great and feels great but needs a developer/maintainer.

Unfortunately FMOD is used for sound, which renders the game non-free.

Features: Various boards, Seafarers mode available, network multiplayer only, complex trade, polished UI, sounds


Solitaire Settlers of Catan

Solitaire Settlers of Catan has a nice look and a clear trade interface (although unfortunately only simple trade is possible).

Features: Board for 4/6 players, single-player only, different AI levels, simple trade, additional Volcano scenario

jCatano

jCatano has a non-intuitive interface and is a bit of a pain to play with for example no resource icons and impossible action buttons not being grayed out.

Features: Board for 4 players only, network multiplayer only, no harbors, no trade between players, unpolished UI

GL Catan

As long as source code is missing, GL Catan can be considered proprietary software.

Features: Custom board size, single-player only, different AI levels, savegames, map editor, no trade with AI, points to win can be set


Java Settlers of Catan (javasettlers)

Javasettlers is not playable.

Features: Javasettlers is a techdemo of board rendering and building placement.


Nettlers of Catan (nettlers)

Nettlers' advantage is its shortcut-driven interface and minimal UI.

Features: Custom board size, Seafarers mode only, multi-player only, complex trade, shortcut-driven interface

Note about features: "complex trade" means that "I will trade 2 wool and 1 wood against 1 iron" is possible with other players, "simple trade" means only "1 resource for 1" resource trade is possible.

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Non RTS strategy games

An update so quickly? Behold the Free Gamer world is coming to an end. :p


So, we mentioned some promising RTS games in the last update. OK, I forgot to mention Spring1944, but I am also a bit reluctant to mention Spring and its mods since it is such a pain in the backside to get it running correctly. :(


Back on topic... there a quite a few really great non RTS FOSS strategy games. I guess I don't really need to mention the classics to the typical reader of this blog, but Wesnoth, FreeCiv, FreeCol and UFO:AI are all very playable and good looking games! However there are others that get less attention and also some that show great promise!

Advanced strategic command

Advanced strategic command is one of those that gets relatively little news coverage, even though it is a really playable game. Granted, its graphics are pretty much the same as its big inspiration, the classic Battle Isle series, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad, right?

A new version was just released a few days ago, which finally also includes a tutorial for those new to this type of game.

Also interesting is the (German) Project: Battle Planets, which could be described as a MMOTBS based on ASC. It is not quite what you would expect from this description as most of the MMO part is done manually by human game moderators, which exchange ASC games states between players (sorry, it is a bit hard to explain exactly ;) ).

A similar game to ASC is Crimson Fields by the way, which has found its way to many mobile platforms.

Widelands

Another often neglected game is Widelands, which is obviously based on the classic game the Settlers (no not the Settlers of Catan, check Pioneers for that).

Widelands game play

The graphics could still be improved a bit, but it is shaping up to be a very faithful and fun re-implementation of that great classic game.

Unknown Horizons

While we are at FOSS re-implementations of great games... Unknown Horizons is continuing to become a Anno1602 clone of epic proportions. ;)

UH game play

It is not quite at the point where it could be described as a fully playable game yet, but you can expect it to become one relatively soon, I guess! (Another not quite playable but really promising game worth surely mentioning is FreeOrion by the way).

8Kingdoms

Last but not least, there is 8Kingdoms, which really is one of those games people don't even try after having a short glance at the screenshots. Yes, it's programmers art, albeit one that at least tried to hide it by having a plastic-like style for the figures. ;)

But if you actually try it, you will realize that even though it is a bit rough around the edges (why can't I set a custom wide-screen resolution :( ), the game play and the engine is already quite advanced.

What this game clearly needs is an artist taking over the graphical matters, and then this could quite quickly become one of those true FOSS strategy game gems!

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