AGS: Adventure Game Studio open sourced

Better late then never they say... so today I bring you the news that the grand-daddy of point and click adventure game creation software, AGS, has been open-sourced recently.
For AGS there are literally thousands of fan made games available (picture taken from this one), and even though most of them (all?) are not FOSS, it is definitely nice to have the engine and the editor now under the pretty liberal and GPL compatible Artistic License 2.0.

Cashflow for Open Game Projects via Flattr without investment

Flattr allows you to place a "click me because you appreciate me" button on your site and when somebody clicks it, you get a bit of money.

So far you had to invest at least 2€ to be part of the service. Now you can use it for free.

So every project that is a one-person project or has a donation infrastructure: please add flattr to your site.

If neiter fits: start thinking about how you would share donations with the team if you got any and add a flattr button when you're done. :)

Thanks to Grumbel for reminding via his post.

Inside a Star-Filled Sky (Public Domain For-Pay) + Video Review + Jason Rohrer on open source

Inside a Star-Filled Sky (IaSFS? InaStFiSk?) is a game. And art. [You want a game?=art discussion? Go to page 9! ;)] This art runs on OSX, Linux and Windows.
So you move around in procedurally generated mazes in real-time, shoot enemies, pick up stuff and change between levels. Sounds like.. GoblinHack so far (the graphics are softer though).
But.
The mazes are people.
Or pixelated monsters for that matter. Or upgrades.
You control a thing inside another thing. the thing is a maze.
The game costs at least $1.75 because it's pay what you want + fees.

I was lucky to get Jason to answer two of my questions.

Q: Is IaSFS in the public domain?
Jason Rohrer: Yes, it's all in the public domain (which is why no license file is included).
Q: Why do you release your games as open source? Why does open source matter (to you)?
Jason Rohrer: I release all of my work as open source because there's no reason not to.  People mostly "hide" their source code out of fear, but I think that fear is unfounded.  In the game world, releasing source code is almost unheard of, except for decades-old abandonware projects.  Long ago, I used to harbor the romantic hope that some other coder would benefit from reusing or at least studying my source code.  But over 12 years of releasing all of my source code, that has happened only rarely.  Instead, the main benefit has come from making my work as portable and as long-lived as possible.  Binaries break eventually as platforms change, and they cannot be repaired.  A source distribution can survive and remain functional much longer.  My passion for open source has transitioned from idealistic to pragmatic over the years.

IMHO Jason is a very interesting guy to listen to [video search "Jason Rohrer"].

About public domain: There is no PD statement in Jason's code as far as I can tell but I was told via email that it is PD. UPDATE: fortify dependency has been removed. The game code contains (depends on?) the non-free fortify.
I could upload the game and share the link. It'd be legal. I would feel guilty though. So instead I offer you my help at buying the game if you can't use the payment method available. If you can transfer to a German bank account or are located in/near Berlin, Germany, contact me and I'll buy the game for you if you somehow give me the money you want to pay.
I guess we need screens...

Freedom is Fun

Happy festive season to all those who are celebrating, and commiserations to those who are missing out or have not been blessed with a nice Christmas period.
Many thanks to Q for being a custodian of the blog. It would surely have died long ago but for his endeavour and I deeply appreciate his ongoing efforts.

NYC in Sauer

I have a queue of interesting things... like this lovely screenshot of a NYC map for Sauerbraten that pushes the engine's performance.
There was a Christmas release of SuperTuxKart and it's full of goodies. Verison 0.6rc1 (an rc, thusly YMMV) offers (among a lot of new tracks and other improvements) improved physics with skidding, nitro, a better AI, and positional sound effects. Sounds super.
Gearhead2 is now completable as of the latest release, version 0.530, meaning that it is no longer a tech demo but a real live game. It's a futuristic / mech-based graphical roguelike and a very nice one too by all accounts.

UFO:AI Starchaser

I really liked this UFO:AI "Starchaser" interceptor (right). I'm looking forward to 2.3 which should be another impressive release for the project.
Vega Strike has had a lot of speech packs contributed in the last few weeks. To preview them you'll have to head on over to the VS forums (sorry, no direct links). I'm sure this will make the next release of the game more atmospheric. Whilst core development seems a little cool at the moment, the community contributions are as active as ever and I predict an explosive release sometime in 2009 that makes people go, "Wow, that's what open source can do." I also mined this nugget from the Ogre forums when procrastinating the other day (hellcatv is a lead VS dev, VS is prospectively getting ported to OGRE, and that thread is about a feature that looks particularly useful for transitions between space and planetscapes). Yes, that is rumour-mongering, and I'm proud of it!
Scourge is getting nicer lighting, there's a poor quality video on vimeo of it in its infancy (the effects have since improved). There was a bump with the 0.21 release, which got pulled and replaced by 0.21.1, but now that's sorted out development momentum has returned and already 0.22 looks promising.

I don't monitor nearly as many projects as I used to. Are there any other impressive screenshots you guys have seen lately? Any other projects looking promising for nice 2009 releases?

Plutocracy, Cheese Boys and Goblin Hack 1.16

Cheese Boys breaking the fourth wall

Cheese Boys is a humorous post-apocalyptic action adventure. The current two-level implementation, that features dialog and fighting already contains a lot of strange fourth wall breaking humor (although it is quite different to Fallout's.)

Goblin Hack 1.16

Goblin Hack (GH) 1.16 is now out with new features, including music by Pascal Provost and new level kinds. Apparently there even is an end game level now, which I assume 0.17% of all GH players will reach. (Ever finished Nethack? Not me. :) )

Plutocracy rev 499

Plutocracy is

a multiplayer 3D RTS game focusing on merchant trade and domination by economic means, although warfare and piracy are always an option. The game has a 1600s Caribbean theme, is played on a real globe, and aims to replicate realistic economic transactions.

I fell in love with it's graphical style, which reminds me of Populous III. I haven't had the chance to play it with anybody else and there are no bots, so I can't say anything about playability, besides the fact that it's easy to lose your units out of sight.

DccNiTghtmare 0.3, ASC 2.20

DNT: inspiration source in the shelf

DNT: post-apocalyptic santa

DccNiTghtmare (DNT), the RPG with a dyslexical title, a post-apocalyptic setting and The Sims-like graphics, is 0.3 Versions old (download here).
To my great joy, there are already three solvable quests and a bunch of collectable items. The main thing, however: humor. In your journes you can either choose the light path and install GNU/Linux on the computers you pass by or infect it with the dark force of ruinix. You can actually do this in the latest version. I like where this is going, if this open source/proprietary thing gets implemented well, the game will have completely different playing styles.

Update: 0.3.2 of DNT has been released and it runs! [video] Also check out this DNT tutorial in comic form.

Advanced Strategic Command's latest stable version is 2.2.0. Some of the changes include new terrain and object graphics and changed unit definitions. Unfortunately it won't run on my system for now, so no screens from me this time.

Nongame: Killer

The source is "what you want" and hosted on github. Perhaps this could be ported to Haxe/Fixel.

The developer has an interesting "support me" implementation. Exclusive updates and postcards. :)