Libre Software Meeting Call for Papers

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

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Brood Hunter?

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!

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Meet the Developer - Steven Thornton

Uclan Games Design course recently conducted a QA session with 
Steven Thornton, Games Designer at TT Fusion based in Wilmslow, Cheshire.

Big Thanks to Steve for hooking up on Skype and sharing his experience
as a games designer.
Steve is an MA Graduate from Uclan Games Design, so it's a great encouragement for students
to hear about his work in the industry and to hear what can be achieved.
Steve shared his knowledge of the development pipeline in creating design-based Pitch and
Games Design Documents.

Steve now has three years experience participating in team projects and working in a group environment as well as on individually driven projects.
In addition to a his knowledge of game balance, mechanics and design principles in solving
creative problems at work, Steve also participates in public speaking, verbal presentation and general organisation.

It was great to hear his answers to student questions on his role as a Games Designer.

See the YouTube footage here:

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Red Eclipse 1.4 and a missed birthday

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!

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The Castle Doctrine: New Jason Rohrer MMO

Jason Rohrer is a quite controversial independent game developer with a track record of thought provoking games. His latest offering (in alpha state for 50% off sale with public domain source code included) The Castle Doctrine is a MMO about "burglary and home defense". Better than I could do it here shortly, these two (1, 2) articles give you an idea what the game is about.

Build defenses to protect your family or is it just another puzzle to solve?

The interesting twist is that you are (can be?) both a home intruder and responsible for building defenses for your own home. In a sense it is thus a player created puzzle solving game if you look at it from a more game design (abstract) point of view. It however also rises some ethical questions about how you deal with the theme of the arms race between intruders and home defenders. In either way, it sounds like a fun game though :)

On an unrelated note, one of the guys behind last year's successful FOSS board game Kickstarter project A Las Barricadas, is now looking for financial subscriptions for him to create more FOSS art (CC-by) and to take some art classes the same time. If that sounds like a good way to spend your hard earned cash, check out some of his previous works here.

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Are We Alone? Atmospheric 2D

Are We Alone screenshot: Safe on Earth

Let's Play Are We Alone?

Are We Alone - a space game where you travel from planet to planet, between star systems in search of intelligent life - has been released on Github under MIT license.

It was made for Ludum Dare 22 "alone" and is a quite atmospheric piece.

Code License: MIT

Content License: Unknown

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Double presentation by Alumni for UCLan Games Design

There was a double treat in store for UCLan Games Design recently when two of our Alumni,
Paul Bannon, Environment Artist at TT Fusion and Moh Z. Mukhtar of Playdemic
BOTH came to give a presentation together.
This was a fascinating and valuable insight into the worlds of two of our graduate game artists,
now working in two very different areas of the industry.
Paul is a 3D artist and he showed some fantastic examples of his current work
and talked about the required skills in his role and how to prepare a portfolio for best effect.
You can see Paul's website here

Moh demonstrated some of his amazing 2D art for Facebook game,
'Village Life' which he designed and executed for Playdemic.
His artwork for the game is so rich in colour and a lovely 'chunky' drawing style,
but Moh also does a lot of his own concept art which students
were able to see and ask questions.
Moh's website can be found here

Below are some shots from their Presentation
in the UCLan Games Design studio

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