Not too much happening here on our blog, but in light of the recent changes in freenode ownership we decided to host our own IRC server. 

You can access the #general channel on irc.freegamedev.net (SSL only, port 6697). For now it still bridges back to the old #freegamer on freenode. 

Other already available channels are: #opengameart, #libregamewiki, #libregamenight, #supertuxkart, #hedgewars, #flarerpg and some others. Feel free to add your own and we can also bridge it. 

The easiest way to access it is via our very nice webchat at https://freegamedev.net/irc/ (even supports channel history, so just pass by from time to time). 

For the XMPP users there is als a gateway to all channels, for example just use #general@irc.freegamedev.net as the MUC address. 

See you on IRC :)

Quietly in the background a group of open-source and Linux enthusiast websites (full disclosure: including FreeGamer ;) ) has developed a new platform for promoting open-source games: http://www.linuxgameawards.org/

One of its regular features will be a monthly award and a related promotion drive for the winner on all affiliated sites.


As a start, our community came up with the first 10 nominees for the January 2014 award and you can now vote for your favorite game of those here.

P.S.: One of the nominated projects, SuperTuxKart, had a new release today also. Don't forget to check it out and vote for them if you like it.

As an anti-spam and pro-convenience measure, you can now log into the FGD Wiki using your FGD Forum phpBB account!

Please test this and comment on this post or start a thread if there are any inconveniences. :)

We're interested in a major re-structuring of the wiki by the way, suggestions are welcome.


By the way, you might not have noticed it but we also welcome guest posts! See this thread for information.


And if you feel like spreading the word about our community a little, you're welcome to use these gfx/templates.

I know it's a corny title but, hey, it doesn't hurt to occasionally pay homage to the movement that preceded what we now know as 'open source'.

2010. Could be a good year!

We have a revamped FreeGameDev forum. It was a big spanner in the works when the previous forum got lost, but in the long term it may have been a blessing in disguise. Now the forum is better organized, using more recognised software, and has a very nice theme designed by Qubodup.

I encourage project maintainers reading this post to go straight to the Project Showcase & Collaboration area and share your hard work with us and the community so that more people can learn of your games.

The FreeGameDev Planet has also since returned, also looking better with a new theme by the dedicated Qubodup. And let's not forget the FreeGameDev Wiki, the place to point any budding open source game developer.

I'd also like some feedback on another idea - an open source games subreddit. This would allow easier submission of game updates or news from anybody. It is moderated, so shouldn't fill up with spam. Since it is part of reddit, it may also result in massively increased exposure for popular submissions. It can also be themed, but there's no point putting effort into that if it's not something that'll get used, so... feedback! :-)

I'd also like to thank Julius for some good articles during a quiet period for Qubodup and myself, and long may it continue - Julius' contributing, that is, not the quiet period! I like to think that the blog does serve a purpose and the more quality content the better.

Well, I hope you have a productive year, and that we get to enjoy the many open source game updates that are going to occur. There are some good ones already that have slipped in during the festive season, but that's for another day!

 - C

Update: The video can be viewed on YouTube (the part about us starts at 18 seconds).

Hello friends.

Today's post is just a quickie: I (involved in some stuff) and SiENcE (involved in both Iris 2 and OGRE) were interviewed by Cornelia Rettig for 3sat's neues (in German). We talk about open source and hobby game development, visit the Free Gamer blog, the FreeGameDev forum and wiki and show Iris 2, OGRE and SuperTuxKart.

I am ever so excited.

If I understand correctly, you are able to watch the full show inside a time frame of two weeks. Here's a direct link to a asx (windows media player steam file, Kaffeine was able to play it for me.)

You can read these news in the Iris 2 blog too! Also there's an article on 3sat's homepage and you can read an auto-translated English version (using google tools).

In case there's interest in an English version of a transcript of the show, I guess I could do it...... just tell so via the contact link at the top of the blog or via posting a comment in the blog or in the forum. A longer post by me is coming up soon by the way. :)

One step closer to world domi... ah, that joke is getting weak. :p

I was close to putting some kind of melodramatic title like "the beginning of the end" but it would have been, well, melodrama so opted for something more accurate. The blog is going into cruise control. Less posts, less frequently. Some time in the next week or so the forum RSS feeds will get integrated into the blog and this will basically mean the community gets to post news here and the blog itself will be more article focused.

My part in this, other than the actual integration work, will be that any game updates I find I will now post in the Game Announcements section in the forum. People who want to make a fuss about their games can post in the Game Showcase section. Projects that need help can post in the Help Wanted section. All three threads will be the focal point of the blog frontpage.

These days there's a lot of activity in the forums and it's a better place to go for info than the blog. Also there's plenty of project-specific news to be found on the FreeGameDev planet.

So, here's the last "game update" throw of the dice from the various places I've visited in the last 2 weeks.

There's tons of action in the Apricot game blog. There's not much point in me summarizing it, there's lots of screenshots and explanations of the cool things they are implementing that should make creating 3D games using Blender much easier (relative to how easy it is now).

Teeworlds, formerly known as teewars, is now fully open source having released under a homebrew license that they wrote with consultation from some of the legal team at Fedora.

There is some really cool artwork being created for the really cool space strategy game FreeOrion, which is now at version 0.3.8 (renamed from 0.3rc8). There's more than just that one thread, but you'll have to look around a bit.

Cave 9 (freshmeat page) is a nifty looking 3d cave navigation game.

Developers are needed to port strategy game The Kings of the Dark Age to Linux. They will only make it open source if it can be ported first, and the project is current written in VB (ouch) so the port is basically a rewrite of the game in C++ or Python or anything other than VB.

Everything else I have is related to freeware games. Space Exploration dev 6 (fun little space exploration game), new Portalized video (that is just so f'ing awesome - more info on Portalized), Throw In 0.86 (kick-off inspired game in Blitzmax)

I'll finish up with a lovely video of one of the projects of the moment, JCRPG.

In case you didn't notice, there's a bunch of flags under the title of the post. As pretty as they are, they are not window dressing, no no, they allow you to read Free Gamer in different languages. I have an army of monkeys in my house tapping away on imported laptops and every now and again they succeed in translating Free Gamer so I decided to put the fruits of their labour online. (Thanks to Qubodup for this!)

SuperTuxKart now has it's own category in the FreeGameDev forums. Hopefully this will help the game's community and development as STK 0.4 shows a lot of potential.

The forums have been more successful than I ever expected. 200+ users, 5000+ posts, 500+ topics, and amazing hosts. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come and the community will burgeon from here on in.

TK-RemiX is looking for Python programmers. It is a 2D isometric action game using the maturing engine FIFE. The reason I'm pushing this here is they have some awesome graphics already (scroll down) and plenty of media contributors and this could quickly become a cool game but for their lack of a Python programmer. Now I have come to understand that Python programmers are really common in the world because Python is apparently really easy. So this imbalance, a project with lots of great artwork but nobody to put it into action, is not something we can allow to continue, is it? So let's find somebody capable of turning this project into a game!

Hellloooo! Available Python Programmers!!! ARE YOU OUT THERE?!?!

Lots of activity amongst the FreeGameDev crowd. Qubodup has created an amazing new forum skin, so participating in the forums has never been a more pleasant experience than it is now, and he's still tweaking away. A new feature, Wikiwatch, a sort of planet for wikis, was added.

Now I just need to improve the blog (include announcements rss, update links, generally nicer layout) and FreeGameDev is go. 5.... 4.... 3... etc. ;-)

In terms of game news, it's gone a bit quiet, fortunately for me.

Glest got shadows. Purty. :-)

The OpenClou! team have put up their first model concepts, as seen on the Sourceforge project. Lovely!

Bloodmasters will soon be open source. It's a 3D top-down arcade shooter with plenty of blood. Will report on it more when it is. Yay for me. :-D

I wanted to put a screenshot up but Blogger is being lame... will put it up later. Edit: Done!

Bridge Builder 2006 is now available for Linux from here. It's only freeware (it'll be "eventually open source"). I spoke with the authors briefly so I'll strong arm them into believing. I'm sure I can think of a suitable way to coerce them into accepting Free Software is best. ;-)

For purists, there's still Construo and Bridge Constructor but the former isn't really a game and the latter is way behind in features, and both are somewhat abandoned.

Is your game violent in Rambo-esque proportions? Well you can label it with a suitable rating. Check out TIGRS and PEGI. Discuss in the forums here.

There is now a Game Announcements section on the forum. Anonymous posting is allowed (but moderated) and any form of FOSS game news is welcome. The idea being is that if you want to publicize a game in any way, post the update there. New versions, new demos, new tournaments, new news, whatever. It is also fully RSSed so, well, if you have a website, include it. Let's get lots of Free Software gaming updates to the world so everybody can know about it.

You may notice a 'Chat' irc link above - #freegamer on irc.freenode.net - another community experiment. IRC has always been a popular medium for collaboration so we'll see if that works for Free Gamer too. ;-)

Good news for *nix users (Linux, BSD etc) who have wanted, but been unable, to play SoulFu - somebody has posted a modified download of SoulFu (~1.5.1) which should compile and run. YMMV. It didn't work for me.

Vega Strike 0.5 finally hits beta. Anybody who has read this blog before should know all about VS and how awesome this version is looking. Love space games? Go help test it.

Qudobup aka Uber-Q has been collecting links of new open source games he has come across in the FG forums. It's in the News Flash bit on Game Announcements (linked above). More tomorrow... hopefully! :-)

As you probably don't know, May 25th is the 1st birthday of Free Gamer. :-D

To signify this momentus occasion, and because I've always wanted to do this, I'm going to run the first official Free Gamer awards!

The purpose of the awards is to not only recognise the best the open source game scene has to offer, but also inspire those striving to bring us new and original free games, so I'm looking for ideas and feedback on how to organise the award categories. I especially don't want a predictable set of categories (Wesnoth and Frozen Bubble shouldn't win everything they go in for) and I definitely want to acknowledge upcoming games as much as the popular ones. I'm thinking that the categories could be based more on game aspect rather than genres i.e. most original, best storyline, best artwork, etc. I also don't want too many awards so they stay fairly meaningful - but not too few so they are not predictable and recognise more than a couple of games. Of course, all this needs planning...

So, with great pleasure, I am happy to announce the unveiling of the official Free Gamer Forums, kindly hosted by freeforums.org who provide an awesome service for, it seems, no gain whatsoever.

Discussion on the format of the awards is welcome both here [in the comments] and in the forums where I have started a thread for discussion on the award categories.

My hope is that the FG forums can become a little hive of activity around open source gaming and provide a great resource where developers and players alike can share and help eachother to consolidate the vibrant (if a little disorganised :-) open source and free gaming scene.

My plan of world domination for the awards is to have 2 weeks for votes to be cast, which should be enough time to effectively canvas the open source game playing community. That gives us 10 days to come up with and finalise the voting categories.

Also if anybody wants to create some cool graphics to hand out to the award winners, please volunteer because I am (you might be surprised to know) quite a busy person. :-)

I did have some game news but I'm saving it until tomorrow. ;-)

There's a new Sauerbraten download and this one is looking beautiful. Just check out the screenshot... wow! This update introduces reflective water, performance improvements, bug fixes, and lots of other little features.

Well the time has come to upgrade the Free Gamer site. Things to expect:

• Tags
  Blogger beta introduces tags so now I can tag all my posts. What will this mean? Automatic listing of article types plus game name tags - so you can get a list of e.g. all reviews or e.g. all posts referencing game X. I'll be going back through my posts and tagging them all appropriately to adhere to this.
  
  
• Sortable Games List
  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it yet, but using an AJAX table I'll have the games in a proper list sorted by genre, type, etc etc. I'll still maintain my own little top-ten but a full list where you can order by what you are looking for will make browsing the list much easier. Plus it'll be on a separate page so the information should be more direct.
  
  
• Smaller Front Page
  The front page at the moment is somewhat massive. Only the latest article will be in full on the front page, with other recent articles summarized with links.
  
  
• Free Gamer Logo
  I'm going to come up with one. Or if somebody else submits one, I'll take that too. ;-)
  

The idea is to make the site:

1. Easier to navigate
2. Easier to read
3. And by virtue of the above, more useful as a resource

If anybody has any concerns or ideas, please speak up!

That downside to all this is that, due to the nature of the blogger.com templating system, during the implementation period things might break or go weird or not work. This isn't because I'm erasing the site and removing the list or trying to kill newborn puppies. It is simply a consequence of trying to get the best out of blogger.com which frustratingly involves doing a lot of update development directly on a live site.

Sorry for the lack of posts... damn laptop died and it's taken several days to sort it out. Between that and an unusually time-sapping week last week, it took the wind out of my free gaming sails.

Service will be resumed shortly.