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Until the original poster (or someone supporting him) provides his replay, or a mathematical proof of flaws in the code, I don't see any reason to continue this discussion. If on the other hand this is a false bug report filed in the User forum, as it certainly appears to be, then I guess we have a right to be annoyed.

If anyone has evidence of the RNG being broken we will be happy to look at the evidence, but there will be no evidence, because the RNG is not broken.

What a bunch of pricks. If you're on their side against the users, you're a prick too and should probably stop contributing to open source projects. There WAS a broken RNG and they just weren't having any of it because they KNEW they were right.

Q&A site about game development: http://gamedev.stackexchange.c...
Open source game: http://www.wesnoth.org/

It may still be too advanced for 11, but Wesnoth allows people to build custom campaigns.

This may be advanced, but worth a shot: Game Theory

Game Theory doesn't have anything to do with games that we play. This is going to be things like the prisoners' dilemma and decision theory. I.e. a lot about mathematics-based economics and very little about actual games. You might as well suggest that the kid bone up on history. It's more accessible and study can inform how games should work.

You might look for books that link existing games to history or science. They might help awaken interest in those subjects in him. This can help with game development, as it can make the games more realistic. Also, if game development is more like the desire to be a cowboy or a firefighter than a genuine career choice (always possible at 11), history and science have more general benefits.

No it isn't. One is the flip side of the other. The toolchains involved are nearly identical. So is the project organization, number and quality of artists involved, social structure, etc etc etc. It's actually easier to enumerate the differences.

From http://www.sintel.org/about/

“Sintel” is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation

In november, the Netherlands Film Fund approved on a substantial subsidy for Sintel, enough to extend the project to 10 months, with possible 1 or 2 extra artist seats in the final months.

With the highly anticipated extra funding from the Amsterdam Cinegrid – also funding a 4k resolution version – Ton finally could extend the team with 5 artists and a developer in March 2010.

I don't see how any of the Blender Foundation productions are comparable.

The only open source game I know of that have money to pay for artists is The Battle for Wesnoth but even they are unlikely to get financial backing from several foundations/institutes.

It seems to work fine for Battle for Wesnoth

Dude.... it's a shitty game. Not much to "work" with and goes to prove TwoBit's point.

It seems to work fine for Battle for Wesnoth.

The reason not many games are opensource is that game developers habitually don't treat development seriously, thus don't care about harms of closed source. E.g. they're fine with shoveling out some crappy code and then basically abandoning it with only couple patches afterward.

Wesnoth has some of the most beauutiful C++ out there (yes, there is such a thing as beautiful C++). If C++ is what you want to work with, I recommend you start looking at their stuff. Play the game first, of course, so you can start to get a feel for what sorts of things it does. Then you should be able to start guessing where things in the code may be. Step through the code with a debugger too, of course. I find that "ok, I'm gonna try to make the code do this", i.e. starting with a specific goal, setting breakpoints, and stepping through the code is the best way to get comfortable with an unfamiliar codebase, no matter its size.

I also like a piece written by the original developer. He talks about how he had worked on various games which were unsuccessful, and what he learned subsequently and what he then did in preparation so that Battle of Wesnoth would be successful. I thought it was a pretty good short read of how he went from projects that fizzled out to a successful one with millions of downloads.

Have you tried The Battle for Wesnoth?

http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Description

Slashdot doesn't comment on the mod scene much because it is mostly limited to commercial software since it is mostly limited to good games. You take a game that has a solid engine, with lots of good looking assets, and then add to that the ability to customize it easily through XML or included editors or what not and you find that people often flock to modifying it. They start from a strong base, making it much easier to create a useful, fun, mod. You don't have to redo everything, the game is already good. You just, well, modify.

Such a game (which is open source) already exists. It's called Wesnoth

P.S. Was this flame/troll?

Yeah, sorry, I realized my mistake as soon as I hit submit. That was supposed to be a separate thought, and to boot I was in a rush so I forgot to finish it. Let me try that again:

As long as the game doesn't give an unfair graphical advantage to the PC or console version, I don't see why some real time games couldn't work. Of course, this is highly unlikely to be the case with commercial developers (who mostly focus on getting the most out of each system graphically), but indie devs could pull it off.

Just as a point of reference, Battle for Wesnoth has an iPhone port that I believe allows you to play online multiplayer with the full desktop version. So mobile-to-PC multiplayer is more than just a prospect at this point. A real-time game with similar demands could be done.

I don't see why some real time games couldn't work. [...] Just as a point of reference, Battle for Wesnoth has an iPhone port that I believe allows you to play online multiplayer with the full desktop version.

If you go RTFWebsite, it says

The Battle for Wesnoth is a Free, turn-based tactical strategy game

Real time != turn-based.

As long as the game doesn't give an unfair graphical advantage to the PC or console version, I don't see why some real time games couldn't work. Of course, this is highly unlikely to be the case with commercial developers, but indie devs could pull it off. Just as a point of reference, Battle for Wesnoth has an iPhone port that I believe allows you to play online multiplayer with the full desktop version.

My 6 year old daughter plays "Battle of Wesnoth" multiplayer with me and her mother almost every night.

If you want to get your kids a good game with strategy and not too much bloodshed, you should check out http://www.wesnoth.org/

It seems like that's not the point. The goal of having students write games isn't to turn them into game programmers, but to show them that programming can be fun, and then they can use their new skills to solve all sorts of problems.

I agree. For a couple of years, I have used The Battle for Wesnoth as a practical example of open-source development. Its markup language falls somewhere between HTML and real programming and thus has been working very well for students with non-technical background who typically run very far when programming is mentioned. The students form teams and create a mini-campaign, using version management, wikis and other typical tools (I've used Trac for that).

Also, it is similar in web development in the sense that it promotes/needs three separate skillsets - visual (the result should be aesthetically pleasing), technical (the result should work and follow standards) and verbal/creative (the result should tell something and do it in a correct manner). Thus, it can be used to teach various skills, stressing one or the other as needed.

xmoto is nice, but there's so much more :)
some i have played and did like enough :

http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://www.openttd.org/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://wz2100.net/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://chromium-bsu.sourceforge.net/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5
https://sourceforge.net/projects/koules/ (original page seems to be down)
http://neverball.org/

http://tremulous.net/files/

Tremulous is a very unique FPS. Two sides: Humans and wall-climbing aliens. Check it out.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Wesnoth is a hexagonal turn-based-strategy. I find it quite fun, though at times the random number generator can be annoying. (Don't ask...)

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

If you've got any relatively new Windows games, check out PlayOnLinux. It manages multiple versions of Wine, and the installation of games. I've got it on an Ubuntu box, and it works great for stuff like Diablo II - old classics. ;) Apparently it also works quite well for a bunch of newer games - the list of supported ones is about 200 long.

And if you're looking for flash based games, there's two sites that are absolutely the best:
http://www.miniclip.com/
http://www.armorgames.com/

Honourable mention - Penumbra. (The survival horror series, with native linux versions. Around $10 each, but right now they seem to be bundling all three.)

Thus demonstrating the distance between Open Source and Free Software in a way RMS never could.

Actually, speaks much more about the distance between software and art.

As every open source fan knows, there's no point in buying a software product in itself. There is a point in paying for art and high-quality entertainment, however. I buy games because they're the form of entertainment I enjoy the most.

I don't pay for tools to do my work -it's pointless, because the tools to do the work are already out there, free-as-in-beer-and-speech. I am willing to pay for experiences, though.

There's absolutely no reason why game companies couldn't do what id Software is doing: The (retail sales) profit comes from the data and the game experience, not the software. Gamers don't generally care about engines, they care about the game experience. There's already so many great open-source components that you could build awesome games around them and not spend a bloody penny on the technology licensing. Maybe the open source engines don't yet employ the latest and greatest technological tricks, but you sure can build solid games around them.

I believe that in our global culture we have place for both art and entertainment that is "traditionally" copyrighted and "closed", and "free" art (like awesome GPLed games). But the game industry uses a lot of open source now, and I'm hoping one day game makers realise that there's no point in keeping engines closed - any more than, say, it makes sense to pay for a text editor, when there's bazillion open source ones out there for all conceivable uses.

Absolutely. But it's not a freedom (unless you conflate the meaning of "freedom" with "right").

I never said it(murder) was either a right or a freedom, I was merely explaining why the activity is legislated against. You were the one that said "thinking about it, murder is freedom for the murderer".

I'll need proof that there are no commercial artists who would stop creating once they stop being compensated.

I probably can't give you proof of that, since you modified artists with commercial. When I used the word artist in the statement you quoted, I backed it up by the next statement referring to people planting flowers in their yard. Perhaps you don't consider that artwork, but as they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I can however give you proof of artists creating because they are driven to do so, regardless of monetary compensation, but I shouldn't have to, as a quick perusal of many websites across the internet should make that very clear. If not, take a look up and down the street while you are out one day and see all the cars with aftermarket products that enhance their looks. I'll admit that some look tacky, as do the plastic pink flamingos, but you can see that people create art all the time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most people create art in some form or another, even if it's just a simple arrangement of furniture. Before we had TV, many people spent their time doing crafts such as quilting, knitting, woodwork, making bird houses out of gourds, etc. In fact, there are so many examples of people creating art for the pleasure of doing so, instead of making a living doing this, that I have a hard time understanding how we will run out of new artworks to share, as our civilization is built around this simple fact. As I said earlier, we are only in danger of running low on high budget artwork, but we will only run just so low on that. The money that is saved by not having to support such art as that will bring it back to a more sustainable level where more people are happy.

Current art creation rates have been dependent, for years, on culture penetration.

We have just the created the most valuable tool that allows for the deepest culture penetration known to mankind. The internet and ability to share files are having a larger impact on our culture than the spice trade and trade in native artifacts across the world ever did.

Again, I'll need some evidence.

Have a child. Raise him or her. Will you hang his/her drawings on the refrigerator? Will you take a picture of it to share with your friends?

To top all of this off, take a look at this:

http://wesnoth.org/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (cause civilization should be free ;))
http://www.simutrans.com/
http://www.globulation2.org/

Art, and the human desire to create will die when the last man dies. We are never in danger of losing this, as this is why we live. I pulled most of those links from a quick browsing at http://happypenguin.org/ , but you can look around more places for more things. I for one would be willing to pay an ISP to maintain access to these works. If others are willing to pay for access to the works then we'll not be in danger of losing them. We are only in danger of losing what we don't want, presuming that we don't lose our civilization to some catastrophe. We have nothing to fear by the removal of these monopolies that inhibit our creativity. This is what these people who control those works and regulate the creation of new works have done their best to make you believe.

None of your examples are of games. There are no good, free, fun, games.

You forgot the best example of all. There is even a Mac version for jimicus and a Linux version for the rest of /.

None of your examples are of games. There are no good, free, fun, games.

elvis sylph

Not true.

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/WesnothPhilosophy

[...] not least of all because it actually has fairly original gameplay (it's not a clone of some other game)

I like Wesnoth, and have wasted weeks at a time with it, but it was based on Master of Monsters.

Also, check this out: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/WesnothPhilosophy

Let me be the first to say that I for one welcome our weak, slow or dim goblin overlords.

It's interesting that you can log in to the official multiplayer server with your forum credentials. A future possibility might be a ranking system, and approximately even matches; that's one feature of Warcraft III that I like quite a bit.

We always say that the one thing holding back Open Source games is the lack of man-hours devoted to all the artwork. Let me quote http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.6/ a little:

• Many mainline campaigns have improved storyline prose and new cutscenes or epilogs.
• More campaigns now include references to events in the overall history, adding depth and richness to the narration.
• Our composers have added five new original background tracks: [...]
• The game graphics have been improved with a whole new range of unit portraits. Many more units have full animations and team coloring.
• Forests get more variety with graphics for spring/summer, fall and winter deciduous forest terrains.

How impressive that really is... well, I guess the proof is in the pudding. But wesnoth has people working on things other than code.

I'm looking forward to playing this when I have the time :)

Given the right leadership and drive, I would really like to see an MMO spring up around an unlicenced universe (not one of the done-to-death and copyrighted to hell ones like Star Wars or LoTR) but one that is perhaps by an obscure author and in the public domain.

Why not one that already belongs to F/OSS? the Wesnoth universe is quite rich, story-wise, and the setting's lack of legendary uber soldiers (read: Jedi) would make it perfect for a MMO, in my opinion.

It started when I reformatted my drive and started using Linux exclusively and gave up TV about 10 years ago. Up until then, I used to buy games and had game consoles around. I last remember playing Metal Gear Solid like a man obsessed and getting a sound beating or two playing Starcraft online.

On Linux, there were plenty of games - GNU Chess, Same Gnome and so forth. There was no buying any games for Linux at that time, so I learned to like these games a lot. I imagine people must have had a similar experience with Microsoft's Solitaire.

When I got married, my wife needed a Windows machine to access work applications, so we had a Windows machine and I could purchase games again if I were inclined. But, it just didn't occur to me to buy games anymore. I found free games to be more interesting in some respects because they didn't have money for graphics, so they focused more on other things. This isn't knocking professionally created games. In my experience they're great, I just wasn't looking for them at this point.

I tried playing games that won The Interactive Fiction Competition because I remember playing Zork back when I was young. I couldn't get into text adventures anymore, but I think it is worth exploring.

I had played Civilization before too. So, I tried freeciv, which led to other free turn-based games like Battle for Wesnoth and even returning to older games like Nethack.

I then went on to try independent games that you had to pay a small amount for, like those made by Positech.

I also tried Second Life and similar and found them to be glorified IRC chat rooms.

I'm getting into this history because I think it raises an interesting question. Why would anyone buy Halo III when they have never played the the first one? Particularly, if someone can buy the earlier editions for a fraction of their original cost now, and they would likely enjoy them as much as most people did the first time they played them, why not start there?

You may not be as extreme an example as I am, but I bet there are older games, free games or low-priced independent games that you have never played and would like. So, why are you buying the newest WOW expansion set (and paying the subscription fees) or HALO 3 - as soon as it comes out? Is it that you are so involved in these games? I can understand that because the one game I have purchased was Sid Meyer's Pirates - again, partially because I had played it before and liked it a lot. But, I don't want to assume that is true of everyone.

What about a new game? It's one thing to get the new Grand Theft Auto. It's another to get a totally new game. How do you decide to go with something just released - rather than buy something older that you haven't played before? Is it about having the newest and greatest in graphical features? What's the appeal?

Maybe you are such a hard core gamer that you've played most new games. But given the amount of time they require - is this really so? Maybe it is playing with friends, a la Quake. Maybe it's checking the review on Gamespot or Slashdot. Since I don't play them, I don't know. So was wondering if someone can offer a clue.

I guess part of my question is that I am looking at new things to try. I know there are a lot of good games out there that I haven't played. So, why would I be interested in these new models of game production or even new games? What do you suggest? What games do you think everyone should know? Is there a great game out there that you think most gamers have missed?

For example, I remember reading about one game in Slashdot where you are a pencil or something and you role around and things stick to you - something from Japan. I've also heard someone that taught fo

There used to be server problems in http://www.wesnoth.org/ MP server. Problem was that windows clients were dropping out of server randomly because of network problems.

Problem was in server side but only windows clients were affected. Problem seemed to be that windows limits maximum packet size (default kernel buffer size for sockets) to 8kb as default which cause windows clients getting a lot larger latency than linux clients. It was about 4 times longer login time for windows vista client than linux client from same lan. (8-10 seconds for linux and 30-40 seconds for windows) So somehow server/router was preferring transmission of large packets to linux clients which cause windows clients losing connection when they didn't receive data fast enough.

Of course bfw is bad example because problem might be in multiple locations like SDL. But at least one thing is sure that 8kb is way too small for high bandwidth connections. (http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/tcptune/)

That sort of thing is a big part of The Battle for Wesnoth. You recruit an army and level up each individual member. Death is permanent, so there is a lot of strategy involved when trying to decide how to make use of your high-level characters without getting them killed. See here for more info.

It a good simple game, available for most all mainstream os's. My 9 year old grandson plays it with me twice a week. His mother regulates his time. http://www.wesnoth.org/ the warthogs are dead....

And http://www.wesnoth.org/ [wesnoth.org] has been slashdotted into oblivion...

If you're on Ubuntu, it is available through Synaptic if you want to try it. A presentation is also available on Wikipedia.

And http://www.wesnoth.org/ has been slashdotted into oblivion...

Freeciv
Battle of Wesnoth
UFOAI (although this is in perpetual alpha)

http://www.wesnoth.org/

What about gaming?

Yeah, what about it? Wesnoth rocks and many old game engines are "free" already (well, Open Source for now). Companies could keep the content proprietary if they like and charge for serving it from their servers, I suppose. Meanwhile you could play with your own homemade content... Sounds good to me.

I agree. FOSS and Games do not go well together, but maybe we should rethink how we produce games.

What FOSS does really well is taking a central idea (usually from one developer) and having lots of interested people tack on features. As you say, this doesn't work for traditional games because we need a core set of features, then polish.

For one thing, there are broadly two types of game - "competitions" and "stories". (Usually, but not always, being represented as multiplayer and single player, respectively). If you look at a quality game like Warcraft III, you get both. I like Warcraft III (and StarCraft too) as an example because if you look at the single player campaigns, they are really just extrapolations on the multiplayer. The campaign designers took all the gameplay and rules from multiplayer and changed the rules slightly in each mission to create a compelling single player game.

It's clear that the "story" mode is going to be very hard for FOSS to pull off. So we should focus on the multiplayer or "competition".

Perhaps the "FOSS game" model needs to be more like traditional software - the focus is on the engine and the gameplay rules. The work revolves around creating a game engine, with all the interested parties contributing ideas including gameplay mechanics. People can contribute artwork in the same way - on a very peace-meal basis, because we aren't actually putting a story together. Just a playable multiplayer game.

If there's enough interest, eventually you get enough attention to be able to start writing stories. Maybe you let individuals create their own separate stories in a unified "world", so you don't have the entire team arguing on the story line. Perhaps you start replacing pieces of artwork, making them more consistent over time.

What I'm trying to describe is a game which starts off very rough (though public) and evolves over time like a FOSS project, as opposed to a planned linear development.

I think the closest I have seen to this model is the game Battle for Wesnoth. This game has gained considerable traction and is now in the later stages of my above model. They've iterated over the artwork a few times, have very professional-sounding music, have loads of campaigns, and it's starting to feel very polished. Technologically speaking, it's about 10 years behind commercial gaming, but it's a great example of community-driven game development.

And I must admit, after playing it a bit, really fun and addictive (and I've never liked turn-based games before).

Just a few that I know of:
The Battle for Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/
FreeCiv http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Tremulous http://tremulous.net/

People tend to avoid free games so here are some links: http://wz2100.net/ excelent RTS. http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/ Quake like FPS with fancy graphics. http://www.warsow.net/?page=home Fps with emphesis on acrobatics. Freespace 2 open http://fs2source.warpcore.org/install.html . http://www.wesnoth.org/ a very highly rated turn based stratagey game.

• 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.

Either way the effect is the same -- you'll get your gaming without DRM, because they'll protect the game in an alternative manner, using all sorts of things that also piss you off. Monthly fees, phone home activation, and micropayments sound like great ideas to you? Then please, continue boycotting DRMed games to send a message. The message the industry receives might not be the one you think you're sending, though.

That's okay. I will simply not play any game which pisses me off. There's plenty of alternatives, such as Battle for Westnoth or Nethack. Crash and burn, industry.

Computer games are in the "nice to have" -category. They aren't necessary or essential. If the games industry stubbornly keeps on pissing their customers, said customers will simply find other forms of entertainment, and the industry will go bankrupt. And frankly, if it stubbornly continues in a course for which its customers have spelled out their displeasure, it deserves to.

I'd pay for a new Battle for Wesnoth campaign. I'd love to see a bazaar arise, where multiple organizations provide images and story ideas, while all working on the same backend.

No Battle for Wesnoth love?

As the article mentions Google ended up funding a number of Gaming projects. There are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects for a total of over 40 slots.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (projects), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (projects), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (projects), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (projects), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (projects), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (projects), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (projects), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

My own project Thousand Parsec got 8 slots for a number of critical features. One of the coolest is a 3d client, which should make the games much more interesting to look at.

We will also finally have a few more interesting games to actually play, including a clone of Risk in Space and a very interesting game called DroneSec. Finally, we should have some opponents for you to play against as 2 AI clients being developed for our premier RFTS ruleset.

Linux Games..

http://savage2.s2games.com/main.php
http://www.eve-online.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://www.flightgear.org/
http://www.freeciv.org/
http://www.sauerbraten.org/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://wz2100.net/
http://www.cubeengine.com/
http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
http://www.wormux.org/
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
http://www.ufoai.net/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://tremulous.net/
http://www.eternal-lands.com/
http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Perhaps you could stop with the "No games for Linux" BS already as you obviously have your head up your ass.

The reason there is a vibrant indie gaming scene is the relative ease of development, accessibility and ubiquity of the Windows platform. Sure if Linux can take over and become the default OS, the indie scene might move over there, but suggesting that in the meantime people should limit their gaming consumption exclusively to proprietary gaming systems is really stupid and counterproductive.

Linux has independent games. The indie scene has already expanded into penguinland. Which is good, since - in my experience - getting older games to work on Linux is far easier than getting them to work on Windows; even some of Microsoft's own games (such as Crimson Skies) seem to have trouble on newer Windows machines. Whether this is because of OS incompatibilities or shitty coding in said games I couldn't say.

I know I posted roughly this comment in the last GSoC Slashdot announcement but I've been told the information is really useful and some people might have missed it.

On the note about how GSoC effects our project you should take a look at our web stats since we where announced as a GSoC mentor organisation. The increase has been massive!

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool tu rn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the cla ssic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine whic h lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework fo r building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of mul ti-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the ori ginal open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a

I know I posted roughly this comment in the last GSoC Slashdot announcement but I've been told the information is really useful and some people might have missed it.

On the note about how GSoC effects our project you should take a look at our web stats since we where announced as a GSoC mentor organisation. The increase has been massive!

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool tu rn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the cla ssic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine whic h lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework fo r building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of mul ti-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the ori ginal open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a ruleset editor which will make ruleset development significantly easier in the future.

As well, the Open Source Office funded one student in a Summer of Code style outside the program. The student successfully completed the project and we hope the code will soon be rolled out.

Because of the success of our GSoC, our project has actively started to engage with educational instit

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a ruleset editor which will make ruleset development significantly easier in the future.

As well, the Open Source Office funded one student in a Summer of Code style outside the program. The student successfully completed the project and we hope the code will soon be rolled out.

Because of the success of our GSoC, our project has actively started to engage with educational instit

Wesnoth provides a good template for FOSS game development, with their ongoing threads on tile design, art direction, music development, sound effects, etc that are the game-art geek equivalents to the more usual programmer's development boards.

See, for instance, http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17985 for a music thread or http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=18&sid=63c7d2dfdabda6e0fb7b78b91e80bcc2 for the art forum.

You get 20 page threads on redesigning the sand tile graphics or how to tweak a particular piece of music. That attention to detail for the art/design side of things on top of the graphics is really necessary for a modern game.

Wesnoth provides a good template for FOSS game development, with their ongoing threads on tile design, art direction, music development, sound effects, etc that are the game-art geek equivalents to the more usual programmer's development boards.

See, for instance, http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17985 for a music thread or http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=18&sid=63c7d2dfdabda6e0fb7b78b91e80bcc2 for the art forum.

You get 20 page threads on redesigning the sand tile graphics or how to tweak a particular piece of music. That attention to detail for the art/design side of things on top of the graphics is really necessary for a modern game.