uDevGames Source Code Available

Geert Poels writes "Kiki the Nanobot was the deserved winner of the uDevGames Mac Game Programming Competition. Entrants had to submit their game along with its source code. Provided with open source licenses like MIT, GPL, ... and written using OpenGL, some games will prove a fairly easy port. The source code to the 41 entries have been prepared and are being made available for download. Last week, GameSpy made a round-up of '02 Mac gaming by publishing a 2-page editorial 2002: The Year of the Mac Gamer."

Comments

Black Shades

[Time Doctor]

Some friends and I already ported David Rosen's incredible Black Shades to Linux. Which is reasonably similar to my last port, Orbital Eunuchs Sniper.

Further info and clarification

[Griggs]

This story is a bit old, the source code has been available for some time now. Nevertheless, its a truly amazing resource to have the complete source for 41 games. You can also see all the uDevGame 2002 source code here, and read postmortems by the winning developers.

open source games are kind of like socialism

[xluserpetex]

it's a nice idea, but doesn't really work out to well.

i've not been to impressed with many uDevGames. i think maffia is the only one, and that's just amusing. a lot of the rest (including that nanobot one) are okay at best. maybe i'm spoiled by consoles and commerical games, but the graphics on all of them are pretty lame. open source may be a great way to make everyday applications, but not really a good way to make a game, at least a commercial-quality game. the resources just aren't available. sure you can probably get enough people to actually write the game, but you people willing to dedicate countless hours designing the characters and the levels and such. and the motivation just isn't there when there's no money involved.

Re:open source games are kind of like socialism

[TheEnigma]

You should learn to enjoy the game instead of being fixated on the surface quality. Kiki is a great game. I don't know what complaints you could have about the graphics.

Clearly you have totally missed the point. This was a 3-month make-a-game contest in order to get people to be creative and contribute to the community. Did you try Astro Squid? Or Raptor? If you are prejudiced against 2D action games, well, that's one thing, but the graphics quality of those is quite high.

Now, Mac and other game developers have access to 3D code, input code, game logic code, and more, to help them get started on making their own games.

I don't deny that there is a shortage of artists for open source games, but what do you think people can manage in three months? Also, have a look at PlaneShift, the Crystal Space game -- amazing art content.