Winter Shorts 3: Wizznic Cursor, TORCS Music, Knights Deathmatch, Humm and Strumm Specs, SuperTux Contest

Wizznic! received more GUI enhancements [video (00:57@YouTube)]
TORCS 1.3.2 brings menu music into the game [.ogg (05:50/7.1MB)]
Knights 0.19 features deathmatch [description]
Humm and Strumm is an in-dev co-op game engine [design .pdf (156kB)]

SuperTux' level contest has four entries so far [submission thread]

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Winter Shorts 2: Wizznic! Mouse Input, Me and My Shadow New Look, Epiar Cleanup, GemRB Platforms and Games

Wizznic!

Wizznic! supports mouse & touchscreen. [Video] Code available on GitHub.

MeAndMyShadow

MeAndMyShadow 0.2rc1 is out. It features tutorial, in-game help, a new default visual style and an improved editor.

video: Epiar 0.5.0 game start

Epiar 0.5.0 has been released:

• UI clean-up
• Expanded missions system
• Sound and music additions
• Main menu
• Editor greatly expanded
• Misc. bug fixes

GemRB logo

GemRB 0.7.0 was released recently. Their wiki received a clean-up as well. The engine re-implementation runs on Android and iOS. BG, TotSC, BGII, ToB, IWD and HoW can be played start to end. Some features are missing and there are some new features too.

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New FPS updates

As the FPS resident gamer here at FreeGamer (I am playing usually under the nick poVoq btw ;) ) I am keeping you up to date to the newest FPS updates:

Hot of the press: the cosmic edition (1.2) of Red Eclipse was just released; Lots of new maps and feature additions (and they toned down that annoying hit-sound a bit). Sadly their trailer-contest has not resulted in a cool video yet that I could post here, so take this opportunity to make a cool one ;)

Another new release (7.53) comes from the AlienArena guys, which seem to have made some nice updates to their engine to speed up the performance on higher settings.

Alien Arena 7.53

Quick rundown of other news:
War§ow got a new website, and there is a nice teaser webpage up for TremZ (no surprise to me btw, that they pushed back their release date by 2 months). But the engine (OpenWolf) they are using is making nice progress also as you can see here (and here in a video: integration of Newton Physics and more).

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Stunt Rally 1.4 Release & Trigger Rally 0.6 Videos

video: Stunt Rally ver. 1.4 - gameplay

From an announcement email:

Hi, after some months of silence we've released version 1.4 with a huge changelog. Some highlights:

• 71 tracks
• 2 new cars (TC6, NS)
• Fixed shadows (self shadowing, lightmapping)
• Better looking shaders (fresnel effect, reflectivity/specular maps) 
• SSAO effect (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion)
• Sound effects and particles for water or mud areas
• Improved in-car camera
• Rear gear throttle-brake inverse option

Also, installing this game just got a whole lot easier for linux users as there is now a binary Linux release (32 and 64 bit).

• Downloads page (Linux and Windows):
• Project's page (including info and links):
• Screenshots gallery:

Trigger Rally 0.6 has been out for two months by now but now there are some high-resolution gameplay videos available:

video: Trigger Rally 0.6.0: Desert Rush

video: Trigger Rally 0.6.0: Pulp: Cars Can Fly

The game is much simpler in all aspects than Stunt Rally but it runs well on netbooks. There is a community effort going on to replace copyright/trademark-problematic assets right now.

Maybe you can help by answering this strange question: would you consider these 3D models to be infringing on proprietary car designs?

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SuperTux Forum and January 2012 Level Contest

SuperTux level design mistakes to avoid

SuperTux just got a forum on FreeGameDev.net and started a level contest.

Rules:

• A snow tileset theme 
• Submit your levels here until the 27th of January, when voting will start
• Voting on levels will end on the January 30st
• Winners will be announced January 31st
• Have fun
• One level per person
• Top few levels will/can be made into an add-on or
• If admins are okay with it top levels will get added to incubator island (if winners are okay with it - pick cc0 or cc-by-sa for your level)
• One entry per person
• Please make a new level. (not from and existing worldmap/levelset)
• Don't vote for your self.
• Voting will take place in a new forum topic.
• Feel free to comment on peoples levels, most people would like to hear what was wrong or good with their level.

Get the editor, read the editor guide (and just play around, as the guide is incomplete ;) ) and check out the style guide.

You can upload submissions in this thread.

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Winter Shorts: Bits & Bots, Goblin Camp 0.2, BASE PRO 0.4b-r2, FlightGear Interviews

Bits & Bots: controlling two robots at once

Bits & Bots is a real-time puzzle game about figuring out the codes to moving robots around and get them to their targets most efficiently. It comes with binaries for 32/64bit Linux and Windows. Gpl code, by-sa art.

Goblin Camp 0.2, probably running some fancy tileset

Goblin Camp 0.2 brings a stockpile of changes:

• Piles replace Stockpiles. Everything is allowed and containers get automatically shuffled to where they are needed.
• Diseases will weaken and eventually kill your population if you don’t do anything about a growing population.
• Migratory animals will sometimes cross the map
• The spawning pool expands and spreads corruption in a smoother way, it’s improved from the abrupt way it was before.
• Cowardly creatures can now also panic if they encounter another panicking creature
• Death messages have been improved to give a bit more information, and a bit of variety has been added to them as well.
• Constructions strobe under the cursor now, to better visualize where one stops and another one begins.
• Portable mode. Just create a file named goblin-camp.portable in the directory where GC is installed and it’ll store all the files it needs in a sub-directory in that folder, instead of in the operating system’s default folder.
• Skeletons no longer bleed and other assorted bug fixes.

video: BASE PRO Edition 0.4 beta patch2 - Gameplay Sample

BASE Pro is a Windows-only base jumping simulation game. Its community and news can be found on this forum.

Community member LedInfrared got the hang out of gameplay video recording and shared videos of STK and Xonotic on this YouTube page, including download links to original video material!

Stuart Buchanan: FlightGear contributor

FlightGear's news section has seen quite a high activity lately, including three interviews:

• Oliver Jacq: scenery designer/scripter
• Gijs de Rooy: modeller and scenery designer
• Stuart Buchanan: coder and aircraft designer

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HTML5 Defense: MiniMek Urbie Defense

Two 'towers' down in MiniMek Urbie Defense

A little top-down defense game was released under GPL (art & code) as a new year's present. It shows nicely, how libre art can be used for small game programming projects.

These use some art assets from megamek (http://megamek.info/) and therefore these games are also licensed under the GPL 

A straightforward interpretation of the GPL applied to assets. I'm afraid though, the images of MegaMek might be incompatible with the GPL, due to Battletech copyright and/or trademark.

The game has good performance but little complexity except for a Missile Commander-esque twist: getting hit reduces player's spacial ability to shoot.

According to the project page, more games with the same graphical theme are to be expected. I'm looking forward to them!

Video: MM:UD

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