Open source 3D RPG updates

There has been some activity in the most prominent free (as in freedom) software 3D role-playing games DungeonHack, jClassicRPG and Radakan.

DungeonHack

Green, water and village in DungeonHack [more]

DungeonHack (DH) 0.10 has been released in form of win&lin 32bit biaries and a few commits later I was able to compile the game on my 64bit Arch Linux machine. It is the first release of DH that does not rely on non-free libraries.

I played the game for the first time and I was positively surprised. Not only can I move around in the nice-looking (endless) landscape but also fight, cast magic, pick up items, enter houses and dungeons as well as talk to npcs. Physics also work (see barrels video below). On the downside: the current code is crash-happy and there is little content: In toto three houses, two dungeons, two enemy types, two items, one non-player character, one spell).

Zombie roasting á la DH

The next DH aim is to create a typical RPG village, add some inventory and status GUI and to write a dialog system (the current one runs on boxes). Maybe you feel like giving them a programmer's or artist's hand at achieving one of these or other goals? Then enter the DH chatroom and/or forum (which I find one of the most entertaining floss game forums to read).

Q's first gameplay - DungeonHack svn rev 520

Fun with barrels!

When test-playing DH, it appears weird to me that enemies' bodies disappear when eliminated and wish they would drop and also drop loot, which I could then collect into the (also not yet accessible) inventory. When playing the latest release or watching the videos, is there something you feel is missing?

jClassicRPG

Shrine and road in jClassicRPG

There has been much activity lately in jClassicRPG's Subversion repository. There are texture-roads now, the map not only shows terrain type any more but also infrastructure (roads and settlements). Shrines and Igloo buildings appear in the game world and a yeti creature has been added to the game's repertoire.

Usability has increased a lot through mouse menu integration and addition of buttons for map, character status etc. Though the drop-down menus don't act as the ones most of us are probably used to, the GUI-usage learning curve has dropped a lot. I especially like the tool-tip system, which shows usage instructions for the different controls or details about fields in the map. If only the font was better readable...

If you would like to help jClassicRPG grow, I can think of at least one Blender-modelling task: give attack animations to this gorilla. Apart from that you can find ways to help on this page and in this thread. And if you're hardcore, also read the TODO! (Search for "[ ]") :D

New game & character creation jClassicRPG r1849

Travel and battle

What I would like to see in jClassicRPG are cloth/armor items and a menu for equipping my party members with them. (EDIT: already there - left click character portraits.) Also the shiny flowers scream to me "pick me" and I hope that will be a gameplay option some day. Can you think of content or features that would enrich the game?

Radakan

Panda3D integration in Radakan

Radakan's developer announced a while ago, that the 3D view of the game will be postponed and a text/GUI interface would be developed first. Now Panda3D, a fun, BSD-licensed, python-powered game engine is being integrated.

What Radakan's developers could use help with now is exporting their already available media [.7z archive] and some media from OpenGameArt to the Panda3d .egg format. Instructions here (press "next" multiple times to see instructions for various 3D applications).

Radakan's 'behavior' editor

I do not care too much for the 3D part of the game (at least not yet). I would prefer the engine to be more stable, so I could try out the quest and add some detail to it using the behavior editor. What do you think? Is implementing 3D worth the time or would you rather prefer the gui/text-based framework to get developed further?

Off-topic

A little hint if you ever feel like making a gameplay video yourself: I prepared the videos for this post (and other posts) using glc to record and mencoder to encode. Sometimes (for non-OpenGL games) I use recordmydesktop to record. Feel free to ask in the comments or forum if I can help you with making videos.

Another little hint: If you are unable to use YouTube but curious about the videos and can play back mp4 files (vlc and mplayer can handle them), use youtube-dl to download videos for off-line playback.

Releases - Teeworlds, GearHead2, FreeCol, more

These days there's a flurry of open source game development activity and I don't have time to blog or follow it closely, but here's a highlight of some of the most recent game developments.

Teeworlds 0.5.0 is out. Everybody's favourite game about tea, where you have an entire world of tea bags and... wait, Q is whispering something to me... *listens*

Oh, it's not about tea. The clue was the double-e apparently. Still, despite the disappointing news that there still isn't a game dedicated to my favourite beverage, Teeworlds 0.5.0 is the largest update to the game yet. New features to everybody[ who doesn't love OpenLieroX or another game I can't think of]'s favourite 2D deathmatch Free project include demo recording, a revamped server browser and in-game voting, as well as a a gazillion changes under the hood. There is also a new, shiny 16-player limit.

FreeCol! The game where you get to free Colin! Right?! No? Dammit.... !

Ooooh, the col is short for colonization, which has nothing to do with turning the things into colons but everything to do with creating a new country on new land. Aaah, so, FreeCol 0.8.0 brings lots more polish - bugfixes, music, gameplay tweaks, graphical enhancements - to a project that seeks to embody and improve upon the original game (and succeeds).

Warzone 2100 2.1.1, bugfixes, and it's about war in a zone! I knew it, at least one game had to be guessable from the name!

There's some really interesting posts on the Worldforge dev blog these days. All aggregated on the planet - which isn't actually a planet, or technically attempting to be one, so don't visit it and be disappointed at finding a collection of feeds on Free Software game development. Anyhow, here's a video showing the compass in Ember (note: website is out of date, currently releases is 0.5.5), one of many recent Worldforge developments:

Whenever I see people saying, "Hey, let's create the next world of warcraft or an amazing 3D single player RPG!" I think, why don't you guess help with the Worldforge project. And nobody ever does. And they end up ditching their dreams to become an alpha mud. Like Radakan did.

Back to Worldforge, it's quite impressive these days. Whilst it is client-server based, it has a nicely featured persistent AI server, and the focus seems to be somewhat on non-MMORPG features even though it is an MMORPG toolset. So, if you want to make an RPG or MMORPG, unless you're a blood relative of John Carmack, stop thinking you can do it all yourself when these guys have been designing and implementing it for 10 years and thought through all the problems you don't yet know you have yet to face. Instead, start by prototyping your game on Worldforge. That's an official Free Gamer blog mandate / recommendation. :-)

GearHead2 0.532, lots of bugfixing.

I know I'm missing something other than screenshots and good jokes... there's a game release I've forgotten to mention. Sadly, for comedians everywhere who get relatively funnier when I'm typing, I have to go.

Sandbox becoming free, more free hardware: aurora

Levelhead

I don't really know yet how to play Levelhead, but it has GPL-ed code and CC-BY-SA-ed art assets. This means it's good, right? Right? Well, I'll try to find out whether or not you can play it without having to cut a LCD display in mouth-sized pieces first.

Sandbox co-operative map editing

There's news regarding Sandbox, the child-friendly Sauerbraten-based 3D game/engine/editor. A completely freely licensed version is in the works. (Code and media.) So, hopefully we'll have a release soon, which will be includable in Debian for example. I'm very interested in this project, as it's obvious aim is to make content/game-creation a child's play!

MonkeyWorld 3D

MonkeyWorld 3D is a BSD Licensed scene editor for the jMonkeyEngine which I found through a thread on Radakan's forums.

Radakan's WorldTool is currently frozen as the energy is now aimed towards the general MonkeyWorld 3D editor. Maybe even jClassicRPG will benefit from it. :)

Speaking of Radakan: There's some tasty new gui design and concept art going on.

aurora: not only sexy but also with free inner values

Cool, I searched for "open source" on flickr and found a new toy: The aurora open source mixer. It's specifications and driver appear to be CC-BY-licensed. I'm not sure if the license is well suitable for hardware, but it does make the device attractive. I wonder if I can get enough motivation to get my soldering iron out. A GNU/Linux driver seems to be missing.

Uzebox

Behold! The Uzebox!

Uzebox is a retro and minimal game console, which supposedly will have an open architecture, driver and game soon. It is built for NES controllers and it's driver is written for NTSC. Take a look at this video to witness it's capabilities!

PURITY

It's now possible to play PURITY with pre-compiled maps! See this thread for instructions. Currently there is half a dozen of maps, on which you can roll around and figure out what the different attacks do. I found experimenting with the weapons very interesting and already developed some techniques for "get as fast as possible from this part of the map to that other part of the map."

Also, if you're into minimalistic art, you'll find PURITY to be a tool for creating some sexy screenshots. Hm... three dee canvas...

Radakan's team decided to use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license for all of it's content. What joy! I'm still waiting for WorldTool's next release. Impatiently.

I just red that Nosslak, who contributed to OpenFrag before, offered his skill to the Radakan project. His motivation seems to be the slow progression of OpenFrag.

Did you know you can learn to create a game showing a picture of cheese in under five minutes? It's true! True, I tell you!

Also, I'm trying to create a snake-like game in Lua. I've been thinking about the concept in the last four days, but I have some kind of mental blockade which keeps me from sitting down and keep on writing these less than a hundred lines of code.

Commander Stalin

PS: Commander Stalin is a Bos Wars-based RTS with a ww2 theme. The music in the game is screaming "copyright infringement" - I wonder about the artwork.

Radakan's WorldTool and the importance of game content creation tools

WorldTool r3 for Radakan

Today I finally gave WorldTool (release 3) a try, which is a map editor for Radakan. To use the tool, one has to download it, extract it and then run java -Djava.library.path=. -jar WorldTool.jar.

The tool allows you to create a map and to raise and lower the terrain and paint textures on it via brushes. You can place objects on it, which will automatically be at the correct height relative to the ground.

It is fun to play around with (though not for too long, as the art asset is tiny and I don't know how to import additional media and because all I can do is make a map, not walk with a character on it or place items or monsters. - Mind you, the editor is in an early stage.)

While using it, I got the thought that if such tools were developed enough to be able to produce content to truly enrich games, their ease of use would attract many potential contributers and could turn a player into a contributor. Even if the advanced features (like creating characters with dialog options) would be more complicated, the simple things would be easy to do, which means that there will be motivation enough to learn how to do the more complicated work.

I haven't given much thought to game-specific editors before, but I will take a closer look at the ones I can find and figure out where their limitations are and if there are any faults with them and write my findings here. Please tell me if you know of any such tools (besides the ones for SilverTreeRPG, Sauerbraten, SuperTuxKart and FreedroidRPG that is. ;) )

In not so dashing news: you can vote for Apricot's official name now. The suggestions are kind of cute ("point blank frank", "frankie’s reign of terror") but I really would prefer "Apricot". Do you like the name "Bick Buck Bunny"? I don't too much..