Slashdot Mirror

Sod video games, I've got the whole lot here in one handy wheel.

Simply give it a spin and there's your culprit.

Three of my own open source games have "Medals" implemented in them. I may be wrong, but other than online scoreboards, I don't believe any other open source games support such a system. Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid was likely the first of its kind to do so.

Similar to Xbox Live and PSN, the player is rewarded for performing certain tasks, such as finishing a level, finding a secret, etc. The Medals come in a range of values: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Ruby.

It was largely something I did for fun and proof-of-concept, but also formed an interesting social experiment, since I was interested to see just how many people actually would just read the source code and cheat their way to earning all the rewards. So far, it appears that no one (or very few) have actually done so. But since the game is open source, there is no way of me from authenticating that a person really have completed a level or anything else, other than eyeballing the order and speed at which they have earned the medals.

For those interested, you may sign up for the medals at Parallel Realities:

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/medals/index.php

Currently, Metal Blob Solid, Virus Killer and Legend of Edgar support the system.

Really what you need to do is find something that you want to do. [...] Add a feature to a program you use regularly (an IM program, for instance), write a program that would make your life easier, or fix a random bug from some project's bug tracker.

First you narrate how you created and adapted some really cool games, then you conclude how the question asker could adapt some boring software packages. I'd like to suggest to the question asker that he picks up your first advice. There are plenty of open source games and I would suggest the (relatively) straightforward and very addictive games of Parallel Realities, two brothers creating really cool arcade-like games. Some years ago I did a write-up on how to adjust their Starfighter game to include an additional weapon.

Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid

Project: Starfighter

Virus Killer

All are 2D software rendering with screen modes of 640x480 or 800x600. They've proved fairly popular in the past...

Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid

Project: Starfighter

Virus Killer

All are 2D software rendering with screen modes of 640x480 or 800x600. They've proved fairly popular in the past...

Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid

Project: Starfighter

Virus Killer

All are 2D software rendering with screen modes of 640x480 or 800x600. They've proved fairly popular in the past...

Blob Wars now for Windows

And does it still include copyright artwork and music being distributed without the permission of the authors?

• Battle for Wesnoth, a turn-based strategy game with some great single-player campaigns.
• Vega Strike, the game Elite would have been if it had been made for today's hardware (honourable mention to Oolite, which faithfully recreates Elite but with updated graphics).
• Nexuiz, a superb FPS with completely new artwork, levels, and game design based on an incredibly heavily modified version of the Quake 1 engine.
• FreeCol (and, of course, the classic FreeCiv), open source clones of the old Colonisation and Civilisation games, with large numbers of updates (and distressingly good single player AI).
• Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid, a complex platform game, full of gratuitous blob violence[1]. A sequel, this time in full 3D, was released last month.

With complex and polished open source games in almost every genre being available, it's quite surprising how much people spend on commercial games from companies that treat them like criminals. Wikipedia has a good list - I've not played more than a small fraction of them.

[1] This doesn't quite count as open source. The game is all GPL'd, but a number of images were things the author 'found on the Internet' and are used without a valid license. It was removed from the OpenBSD ports system last week because of this, as the author refuses to address the problem.

• Battle for Wesnoth, a turn-based strategy game with some great single-player campaigns.
• Vega Strike, the game Elite would have been if it had been made for today's hardware (honourable mention to Oolite, which faithfully recreates Elite but with updated graphics).
• Nexuiz, a superb FPS with completely new artwork, levels, and game design based on an incredibly heavily modified version of the Quake 1 engine.
• FreeCol (and, of course, the classic FreeCiv), open source clones of the old Colonisation and Civilisation games, with large numbers of updates (and distressingly good single player AI).
• Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid, a complex platform game, full of gratuitous blob violence[1]. A sequel, this time in full 3D, was released last month.

With complex and polished open source games in almost every genre being available, it's quite surprising how much people spend on commercial games from companies that treat them like criminals. Wikipedia has a good list - I've not played more than a small fraction of them.

[1] This doesn't quite count as open source. The game is all GPL'd, but a number of images were things the author 'found on the Internet' and are used without a valid license. It was removed from the OpenBSD ports system last week because of this, as the author refuses to address the problem.

Games just take too long to make these days. Look at GTA IV, that took years and cost close to $100M apparently. A British studio can't afford that, they just simply don't have the budget. The UK might be able to churn out something low key and amazing, but it probably won't do as well as the games that the US and Japan create.

Let's look at the movie industry quickly, the most recent film I saw was Iron Man which had an all star cast (and Gwyneth Paltrow) and amazing special effects. You're simply not going to get that from a British studio because of the lack of a budget. The UK does provide some real gems though, such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, for a more reasonable budget, but I'm not sure how well they did outside the UK.

Everything I know about games programming is either self taught or read from tutorials on the web. My brother and I have been working on Blob And Conquer* for over two years now and, to be perfectly honest, it's been a fucking nightmare. Games development is seriously hard work and the Universities don't really give you enough education.

*Shameless plug that has nothing to do with anything

If you like platform games, try Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid. There's a 3D sequel too, but the only machine I have with competent 3D support is a Mac, so I won't get to play it until the Mac port is done.

Stop posting crap on Slashdot and get on with Blob and Conquer. The game's not going to code itself you know.

Particularly if I'm spending most of my time replying to your messages.

Why not try,

There's

Project Starfighter

Blob Wars

Virus Killer

Give them a try. After all, they're completely free.

There's

Project Starfighter

Blob Wars

Virus Killer

Give them a try. After all, they're completely free.

There's

Project Starfighter

Blob Wars

Virus Killer

Give them a try. After all, they're completely free.

I agree that 3D is over-used. It doesn't *have* to be used to create fun games -- all of these play on Linux, and most (maybe all?) play on Windows and other platforms as well.

SuperTux is a Mario Brothers "clone" that's really quite nice. Apparently it was the Linux Game Tome Game of the Month for March 2004, which is like Extreme Makeover for Linux games. OpenGL acceleration is nice (gives me about 30fps extra on my AMD64 3200+ with nVidia FX5900XT card), but it runs pretty decently without it. You should note that to make Tux run or shoot fireballs in the game, you need to hold down the left Control key... I didn't know that and ended up cheating with the level editor. I finally discovered the key-mappings, and I'm currently slightly addicted to it... :)

Pingus is a cool, open-source, penguin-themed (of course :) Lemmings-like game that doesn't require any kind of acceleration, just a decent system. There aren't many levels available yet, but it's a good-looking game and fun to play around with.

Project: Starfighter is also pretty good, although I find the levels a little too hard for my liking. Hardware acceleration is pretty much required, unfortunately.

And there's always the venerable and *highly* addictive Frozen Bubble... that game has wasted so much of my time... and I've enjoyed every minute!

I've been really impressed -- there seems to be an explosion of good, free games for Linux lately, though it could just be that I'm finally finding out about them. Although I don't have too much of a problem with 3D, I knew Neverball was getting to me when I started dreaming about it...

you get my vote ;)

btw Project StarFighter might be worth a try, it isnt as fast paced as xkobo, but i like it a lot.

...i nearly always install on new systems:
CoreWar: simulation game where a number of warriors try to crash each other while they are running in a virtual computer.
Battle for Wesnoth: fantasy turn-based strategy game.
BZFlag: multiplayer 3D tank battle game.
Crimson Fields: tactical war game in the tradition of Battle Isle.
Crossfire: cooperative multiplayer graphical RPG and adventure game.
Enigma: inspired by Oxyd on the Atari ST and Rock'n'Roll on the Amiga.
FlightGear: Flight simulator.
FreeDroid: clone of the classic game "Paradroid" on Commodore 64.
Frozen Bubble: puzzle-bobble clone.
Globulation 2: Real-Time Strategy.
LinCity: city/country simulation game.
LBreakout 2: breakout-style arcade game in the manner of Arkanoid.
NetHack - Falcon's Eye: mouse-driven interface for NetHack that enhances the visuals, audio and accessibility of the game, yet retains all the original gameplay and game features.
netPanzer: online multiplayer tactical warfare game designed for FAST ACTION combat.
Pathological: enriched clone of the game "Logical" by Rainbow Arts.
Project StarFighter: xy-axis star fighting game.
SuperTux: classic 2D jump'n run sidescroller game.
XKobo: astpaced multiway scrolling shoot-em-up.
XRick: clone of Rick Dangerous.
XScorch: Scorched Earth clone.

Have fun!

Lately, I have been seeing more and more high-quality Free Software games, many of which would benifit from powerful graphics cards:

Neverball and Neverputt
Battle for Wesnoth
Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid
Project: Starfighter
Pydance
Freedroid and FreedroidRPG
GLTron
Armagetron

Many of these are as high-quality as any proprietary game.

(As far as I can tell, you are using "commercial" as a synonym for "proprietary".)

Lately, I have been seeing more and more high-quality Free Software games, many of which would benifit from powerful graphics cards:

Neverball and Neverputt
Battle for Wesnoth
Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid
Project: Starfighter
Pydance
Freedroid and FreedroidRPG
GLTron
Armagetron

Many of these are as high-quality as any proprietary game.

(As far as I can tell, you are using "commercial" as a synonym for "proprietary".)

Just go here

Parallel Realities

*no really, that's what I'll spend the money on.

A HREF="http://www.libsdl.org">SDL has hundreds of free and excellent games which are written in C. They compile for any platform that has the library available for it. Why not try Project Starfighter, a good example of fun games written with SDL.