Both 0 A.D. and Unknown Horizons experience a change in leadership!

For 0 A.D., Erik Johansson steps down from project leadership and Michael D. Hafer assumes that role.

In Unknown Horizons, Nightraven steps back and Kilian fills the project management role.

Leadership in free and open source game projects is an exciting topic with much opinion about which style will lead to a successful game - whatever the subject's definition of "success" is - and too few examples to make objective statements about it.

Are you following any specific projects and their leadership structures an want to comment on these? I must admit that I am out of the loop with many, many projects, although I am pretty sure that for example Flare, NAEV and Valyria Tear have (successful) Benevolent Dictator for Life style leadership.

On related note: FIFE (the isometric 2d engine used by Unknown Horizons) moved to GitHub.

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:

• Battle for Wesnoth
• WorldForge (Hosting also Ryzom Core & CEGUI)
• Crystal Space
• OGRE3D
• Blender 3D

Nice summer of coding ahead :)

Order of War

• Developer: Wargaming.net
• Publisher: Square Enix
• Genre: Strategy
• Release Date: September 22, 2009 (US)

About Order of War

In the summer of 1944, the Second World War entered its end-game when the Allies launched two major operations that would drive back German forces on both the Western and Eastern Fronts at once. In the ultimate test of military strategy, Order of War will challenge you not only to lead America's finest to victory in the West, but also place you in command of German forces charged with repelling the Red Army's seemingly unstoppable offensive in the East. Even the keenest military minds will find that it's one thing to make history, but quite another to change it. Do you have what it takes to command?

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP SP2
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz or Dual Core @ 2 GHz
• Memory: 2 Gb
• Hard Drive: 10 Gb free
• Video Memory: 256 Mb
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows Vista
• Processor: Dual Core @ 3.2 GHz
• Memory: 2 Gb
• Hard Drive: 10 Gb free
• Video Memory: 512 Mb
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 10
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Download Order of War – Direct Links

Part 1 – 700 MB

Part 2 – 700 MB

Part 3 – 700 MB

Part 4 – 700 MB

Part 5 – 667 MB

Crack

www.elj-games.blogspot.com

Order of War

• Developer: Wargaming.net
• Publisher: Square Enix
• Genre: Strategy
• Release Date: September 22, 2009 (US)

About Order of War

In the summer of 1944, the Second World War entered its end-game when the Allies launched two major operations that would drive back German forces on both the Western and Eastern Fronts at once. In the ultimate test of military strategy, Order of War will challenge you not only to lead America's finest to victory in the West, but also place you in command of German forces charged with repelling the Red Army's seemingly unstoppable offensive in the East. Even the keenest military minds will find that it's one thing to make history, but quite another to change it. Do you have what it takes to command?

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP SP2
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz or Dual Core @ 2 GHz
• Memory: 2 Gb
• Hard Drive: 10 Gb free
• Video Memory: 256 Mb
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows Vista
• Processor: Dual Core @ 3.2 GHz
• Memory: 2 Gb
• Hard Drive: 10 Gb free
• Video Memory: 512 Mb
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 10
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Download Order of War – Direct Links

Part 1 – 700 MB

Part 2 – 700 MB

Part 3 – 700 MB

Part 4 – 700 MB

Part 5 – 667 MB

Crack

Great news from the people behind the idTech4 powered stealth FPS The Dark Mod: They are making great steps to leave their Doom3 mod legacy behind and a standalone version should not be all that far from now.

New The Dark Mod replacement artwork

You can follow the progress here on their forums, and maybe you can also give them an helping hand.

Interestingly there are two other recently updated Doom3 mods, that could easily fit in as The Dark Mod mods, e.g. going stand alone with The Dark Mod's help.

The first one is a Hexen remake, called Hexen: Edge of Chaos:



And the other one is a prequel to the Arx: Fatalis (engine also FOSS, btw.) game, called Arx: End of Sun:



Sadly both of them use proprietary themes (and one could even argue that The Dark Mod is borderline infringing on one too), but I am still looking forward to try out these nice community creations once they become stand-alone!

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
• Release Date: March 20, 2007
• Genre: Action

About Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is based on the CG animated movie produced by Imagi Animation Studios and based on Mirage Studios' Foot Clan-kicking Turtle heroes. The game takes place in a New York City plagued by secretive villains and strange, otherworldly creatures. Faced with these perils, the Turtles will experience their most trying time as heroes and as a family, as Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo lose their focus and struggle to maintain their unity and ninja discipline. It's up to Leonardo and the faithful father figure Splinter to reunite the band of brothers and save New York City from a monstrous evil that lurks around every corner. Players engage in over-the-top acrobatic navigation, collaborative combat and powerful fighting moves.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 1.5 GHz or Athlon Equivalent
• Memory: 512 MB
• Hard Drive: 1.6 GB Free
• Video Memory: 64 MB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• CD/DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz or Athlon Equivalent
• Memory: 1 GB
• Hard Drive: 1.6 GB Free
• Video Memory: 128 MB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• CD/DVD Rom Drive

Download Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [Full] – Direct Links

Part 1 – 700 MB

Part 2 – 700 MB

Part 3 – 264 MB

Crack

www.elj-games.blogspot.com

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
• Release Date: March 20, 2007
• Genre: Action

About Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is based on the CG animated movie produced by Imagi Animation Studios and based on Mirage Studios' Foot Clan-kicking Turtle heroes. The game takes place in a New York City plagued by secretive villains and strange, otherworldly creatures. Faced with these perils, the Turtles will experience their most trying time as heroes and as a family, as Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo lose their focus and struggle to maintain their unity and ninja discipline. It's up to Leonardo and the faithful father figure Splinter to reunite the band of brothers and save New York City from a monstrous evil that lurks around every corner. Players engage in over-the-top acrobatic navigation, collaborative combat and powerful fighting moves.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 1.5 GHz or Athlon Equivalent
• Memory: 512 MB
• Hard Drive: 1.6 GB Free
• Video Memory: 64 MB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• CD/DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz or Athlon Equivalent
• Memory: 1 GB
• Hard Drive: 1.6 GB Free
• Video Memory: 128 MB
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard & Mouse
• CD/DVD Rom Drive

Download Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [Full] – Direct Links

Part 1 – 700 MB

Part 2 – 700 MB

Part 3 – 264 MB

Crack

Bushido Blocks is a puzzle game for Android under GPL license,  inspired by block-bashing games such as Bejeweled, Diamond Dash and Tap Blox.

Bushido Blocks Screenshots

Tap matches of three or more blocks to slice them with your katana. The more blocks you can slice in one go, the more time you gain on the clock. Special blocks eliminate whole rows of blocks but don't give you any extra time, so use them wisely.

Links:

• GitHub project
• Bushido Blocks on Google Play
• Music (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Code License: GPL

Content License: Unknown

In a pretty surprising move the source-code of the idTech3 based games Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were released under the GPL by Activision and Raven Software. You can find the original source drops here and here.
The content is obviously still propitiatory (e.g. you need to buy it), but some people have already plans to upgrade the source as OpenJK (most likely back-ports from ioQuake3) and make a Linux version most likely.
Would be also cool if a nice stand-alone FOSS 3rd person sword-fighting game would come out of this... but the detailed player animations will likely be the biggest road-block.

Ahh well... and since I hate posting something with no pictures or videos I include the pretty nice new Flare 0.18 release:



It includes some pretty nice new features too:

• 10 Equipment Slots, up from 4 (and easily configurable)
• Starting "Class" choice (beginner's power/item kit)
• Environmental/Ambient Sounds on maps
• Much improved handling of Animations, Effects, and Sounds
• New Powers: Stealth, Traps, Thrown Weapons
• New Item Bonuses: XP gain, Gold Find, Item Find, and more
• Improved support for various input devices
• Two new starting quests

That's all for now :)

Ok I admit it... I am a bit of a 0 A.D. fanboy! But the new Alpha 13 release is also great again, and deserved an update post:



Also pretty cool is the new OpenMW 0.22 release, that finally features player and NPC animations, and thus starts to look more like a functioning game:



Other unrelated news:

• To progress on their standalone version, the developers of The Dark Mod are looking for support in their sound department mostly.
• That non-stop programmer "TheDushan" has started porting the Torque3D engine to Linux. Pretty amazing progress if you ask me :)

Julius out!

Developers of free and open source games!

The Libre Software Meeting in Brussels is looking for talks about the "Free Gaming World".

An ideal place to introduce your project, talk about how to work with other people on open source game projects and meet other free software developers!


The deadline for submission is 31 March 2013!

Some previous talks, if you're not sure what to expec or what they expect from you:

• How do blind people play (computer) games
• Arthur Huillet: Anatomy of a role playing game (FreedroidRPG)
• Games engines done good

Today I have a real "underground & secret" game: no website, no description, no nothing really... just a forum post and some cool game-play videos:





It seems to be called "Brood Hunter" and is quite obviously a Gloom inspired Quake1 mod.

However given that it most likely used the GPL Darkplaces Engine (same as Xonotic) and since game-play looks great, I have to do some wishful thinking here and hope it will be released as an open-source game so that we can work on replacing the remaining non-free Quake1 content at some point :)

Oh and I also stumbled upon an open-source Daikatana remake, using a heavily modified Quake1 engine. YES, that Daikatana!

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:

• 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.

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:

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!

Saints Row: The Third

• Developer: Volition
• Publisher: THQ
• Genre: Action
• Release Date: November 15, 2011 (US)

Saints Row: The Third

Years after taking Stilwater for their own, the Third Street Saints have evolved from street gang to household brand name, with Saints sneakers, Saints energy drinks and Johnny Gat bobble head dolls all available at a store near you. The Saints are kings of Stilwater, but their celebrity status has not gone unnoticed. The Syndicate, a legendary criminal fraternity with pawns in play all over the globe, has turned its eye on the Saints and demands tribute.

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.0 Ghz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
• Memory: 2 Gb
• Hard Drive: 15 Gb free
• Video Memory: 256 Mb
• Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8600 / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• Network: Broadband Internet Connection for Online Multiplayer
• DirectX: 9.0c
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7
• Processor: Intel Core i5 @ 2.66 GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 @ 2.8 GHz
• Memory: 4 Gb
• Hard Drive: 15 Gb free
• Video Memory: 1 Gb
• Video Card: nVidia GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• Network: Broadband Internet Connection for Online Multiplayer
• DirectX: 10
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• DVD Rom Drive

 

Download Saints Row: The Third – Direct Links

Part 1 – 700 MB

Part 2 – 700 MB

Part 3 – 700 MB

Part 4 – 700 MB

Part 5 – 700 MB

Part 6 – 700 MB

Part 7 – 700 MB

Part 8 – 700 MB

Part 9 – 700 MB

Part 10 – 700 MB

Part 11 – 700 MB

Part 12 – 700 MB

Part 13 – 167 MB

Crack

www.elj-games.blogspot.com