as3sfxr-b: evil (flash) sound machine

as3sfxr-b

[Flash version]
[Code]

Before was: as3sfxr
Before before was: sfxr

OpenDungeons: Huge Progress

OpenDungeons finally released version 0.4.7 of their Dungeon-Keeper like game, now with a new UI, better team colors, and many more animations. Very exciting to see the project develop! Download the new release here

The Peragro Tempus project also kindly enabled DAMN asset managing for the OpenDungeon's media repo, which could really help with getting artists to contribute in the future (go to the DAMN link, then browse, and you should see the OD assets).

Blender Game Engine Air race

We recently featured another air race kind of game, but this on has much more eye-candy:

BGE_Airrace ocean demo

And believe it or not, but it is made with Blender3d 2.49b's game engine (update to 2.5/2.6 planned at some point)! Another video with a nice terrain you can find here (beware crappy sound). And an in-game track editor is under development too!

You can have a look at the development of it and download some old versions of the .blend over at the Blender artists thread. But don't expect visuals like above, as the awesome Blender artist Martinsh just recently started to overhaul the graphics like that.

So where is the catch? Well licensing is a bit unclear... in a recent BlenderNation news posts the main developer stated: "This air-race related project is a non-commercial open -source freeware and source .blend file will be released for common good", but I am not sure in how far this will extend to the new art assets, and a clearer commitment to a Creative Commons license and an actual release of the source .blend would make me feel more confident about the licensing status ;)
But hey... at least I assume it was completely done with FOSS software (e.g. Blender3D)!

PyWeek 12 is upon us! - Also: Python Game Book wiki and Spielend Programmieren

Take this for not doing your own "thing, number" logo! ;)

PyWeek 12 is a game challenge/competition. It goes for a week. It starts on 2011-04-03.

It's kind of open source: code needs to be visible, FSF license list is recommended, open source license appears not to be required though. See rules for rules.

Screens of PyWeek11's entries

Here's the initiator's blog (+feed) - in case you're the stalker type. I know I am. :)

PGB and SP banners/logos

Horst, a Wien-based friend of FOSS hosts the Python Game Book wiki and Spielend Programmieren ("Programming by Playing") which is a wiki used for his courses teaching kids to make games using open source tools and libraries. There might be a guest post by him on this blog sooner or later.

Some cool kids on his YT channel.. I hope you like das German.

PSA for psychodelic PyGame Hirnschoner

ManicDigger & ArdorCraft - Open Source Minecraft-likes

Manic building on a ManicDigger server

ManicDigger started as a third-party client for Minecraft Classic. According to the FAQ only Windows is supported but if you have Mono, you can do the following:

Get nightly binary (.zip: warning, it is a .rar), unpack.
mono GameModeFortress.exe

Thanks to gustavo for the instructions!

Must.. build.. house..

Unfortunately ManicDigger has the "most commonly used textures (grass and dirt) are ugly"-feature (just like Cube2/Sauerbraten for example).

ArdorCraft

ArdorCraft runs in Java (Ardor3d) and I got it running with its webstart file. I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that development halted four months ago.

ArdorCraft Dev [mute]

Even more ArdorCraft screens

By the way, Notch (Minecraft lead dev) just posted his first (technical) article about terrain generation. How is this open source related? Weeell.... not that much, except for the following scrap of text (from here):

Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.

So it's future open source, right? :D

Besiege - 3D RTS (Java/Ardor 3D)

Besiege

Besiege is a space based real time strategy game where you conquer planets to let them produce new ships (and eventually research new technologies for you). Somewhat inspired by Eufloria and Galcon.

The description resembles Qonk.

The project did one thing that I think is very, very right: BIG SCREENSHOT ON FRONT PAGE.

The ardor3d game runs on Linux this way:

java -Djava.library.path=native -cp lib/*:Besiege.jar net.playbesiege.Besiege

Besiege 1.0 Beta gameplay with sound

Dev-corner: Primer to texture creation

So you got this shiny 25 megapixel camera from your grandma last Xmas, and are getting bored making photos of your cat with it? Put it too a good use and make some environmental pictures and upload them to the burning well!
Wait, you don't have a rich grandma?... well take some photos from the website above (all public domain) and convert them to some nice textures to use in games ;)

And of course FOSS is to the rescue and provides you with all the tools you need:

Most importantly THE GIMP of course! Which is the premier open-source image manipulation software, that doesn't need to hide behind other commercial programs starting with Photo and ending with Shop (the other major FOSS contenders being Krita and MyPaint both in that order aiming more at digital paining then image manipulation. Oh and check out Alchemy for a funny sketching app.).

Creating a seamless texture

So what you will normally want to do is take a picture that shows a relatively flat surface with an interesting pattern and not too strong shadows (a cloudy day with a lot of diffuse lightning is best is you want to take photos yourself).

Based on this you take a small part and try to make it seamless, e.g. make the edges fit to each other so that it can be tiled endlessly on a 3D surface in a game.

The guys at OpenClonk have a pretty nice tutorial about the manual process.
However nowadays there are also some smart algorithms available as GIMP plug-ins that try to do the job for you (with better or worse results, but it is for sure a lot faster). Here is an example with a short tutorial of what I did in less then 5 minutes with the perhaps most advanced of these plug-ins: Resynthesizer. Another, which looks good too but I have not tried is Texturize. However the latter does not remove your ex-girlfriend from your favorite holiday shots, so 1:0 for Resynthesizer :)

Making a normal map for your texture

So your are working on the next super MMORPGFPS super Counterstrike killer with next-next-next-gen graphics? Well then your texture (don't go for anything lower that 10,240 x 10,240 for your toilet door textures!) needs a normal map of course!

Gimp normal map plug-in

But don't worry, there is a GIMP plug-in for that too!

So there you have it... start making some texture packs and upload them to OpenGameArt!