Valyria Tear 0.6.0 released

I have to admit that we are a bit slow on reporting the news on FOSS gaming projects with we actually host ourselves via the freegamedev.net forums. Valyria Tear is sadly no exception, and their new 0.6.0 release has been out a few days already. Sorry to all whom this may concern.

For those not in the loop, Valyria Tear is based on the engine of Hero of Allacrost and aims to be an all FOSS jRPG. To give you a better idea of the game-play, here is a (slightly older) cool video of it done by some Linux enthusiasts:



(Thanks also to Rootgamer who reminded me of this news).

If you like the new release, give them some praise on our forums!

Manx TT Superbike

Developer: Sega AM3/Sega-AM4/Tantalus Interactive
Publisher: Sega

If there’s one genre where Sega dominated back in the mid 90s that would have to be the 3D arcade racer and Manx TT Superbike was no exception.

I’m just going to say it: The arcade feel and gameplay of Manx TT Superbike is perfect! The speed, the flow, the racing it’s extremely fun and addicting with that “one more race” factor. 

Adding to the wonderful gameplay are the colorful graphics, these are not all that great on a technical level due to low polygon models and 2D trees and buildings, but are still very pretty to look at thanks to mix of colors and general summer/spring feel of the game, however, I did notice some slight frame rate hiccups now and again, though nothing too serious.

The soundtrack is mostly composed of rock tunes which do a good job at getting you pumped and ready to go, though when I reached speeds of upwards of 190MPH my bike starting sounding more like a vacuum cleaner… that was kind of weird.

Unfortunately for all the praise I just gave the game I have one major issue, there’s only two tracks! Oh sure there’s also a mirrored version of said tracks and I admit, it’s kinda neat seeing these from a reversed perspective, but really, once you master the regular version it’ll likely only take you one or two tries to dominate its mirrored counterpart.

There are a few other modes like the superbike challenge or the time trial modes, but really these add very little in the way of replay value, so far the best the biggest drive I get to replay it (other than the gameplay that is) is to beat the dreaded superbike, an NPC player with an overpowered bike, that’s faster and handles better than anyone else’s.

Overall, I freaking love the gameplay here, but really, there’s only enough content here to last you two days if that. With that said, this is my default Saturn game, it’s the perfect title for when you have 5 minutes to kill, but anything over that and you’ll likely get tired of the same two tracks over and over. A shame too, there was potential for an A+ here.

Pros:

- Attractive, colorful graphics
- Fast and addicting gameplay
- While a bit limited, the Soundtrack is pretty nice

Cons:

- Only two tracks (four if you count the mirrored tracks)

- Very little replay value once you finish in first place
- Bike models are very low poly

Final Grade: B-

I generally don't like mid 90s CGI covers, but on the other hand I am a sucker for pleasing vibrant colors and this one is chock full of them!

Inside you'll find a pretty barebones manual, it starts off by telling you something about Norse kings gutting their defeated foes to please Odin and I'm really not sure how any of this is related to bikes. Outside of that weird introduction it explains you how to play the game and what each mode does, though it doesn't tell you too much, likely because there's not that much to talk about to begin with. It also doesn't really help the manual is in black and white with extremely minimal decorative art on the bottom right and left corners.

I did like the "coming soon" section as it showed off the box art for Torico, Mass Destruction, Saturn Bomber Man and Fighters Megamix, though a few screenshots would've been nice

Overall the manual is a bit disappointing, but the cover is pleasing and it does come in a sturdy late-life plastic Saturn casing, so it's not all bad.

Packaging Grade: C+

Fundraiser: Fantasy Creature under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike

Free the Monsters! is a collaborative Indiegogo campaign to create and share five fantasy creature 3d models under CC-BY-SA 3.0

5 3d models and 10 works of concept art will be released if the goal of USD5000 is reached.

Perks include t-shirts and voting rights. Voting will be based on short creature descriptions. The top 10 will be turned into concept art and of those, the top 5 will be turned into 3d models.

Two additional creature concepts and models for each additional USD2000 will be produced.

Justin Nichol will be creating the concept art. You can find his past contributions to the free and open pool of game art on his OpenGameArt profile page.

Jonathan Williamson - partner at CG Cookie (aka Blender Cookie) - will be creating the 3d models.

Review: Tzolk'in

Tzolk'in is a worker-placement set-collection game with a funny name from Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini, published by Czech Games Edition. It's a more complicated version of the popular semi-gateway game Stone Age, aimed at heavy gamers. It plays up to four - and appears to be best with four or three - and is supposed to take 2 to 3 hours, but in our group took 4 or so hours each time. This was not a bad thing: unlike other games during which you want to claw your brain out with a dull spoon when the game goes on too long, this game was interesting the entire time. While waiting for my opponents to make their moves, I was thinking about my own moves. I couldn't completely plan my moves, since I could not know the moves that would be left to me by my opponents. And sometimes my opponents really did take too long.

Tzolk'in is played on an unusual board with interlocking rotating gears representing the Mayan calendar or something.

Source

Pretty, huh? This gimmick is actually necessary. The gears are all rotated one notch each round, which would be too much bookkeeping otherwise. Here's the gist of it: The game has 26 rounds (as does the central gear). Four times during the game you have to pay maintenance costs on your workers.

On each round, each player places or removes workers from the gears, but not both. On each round you place workers on the lowest spots in any of the gears. You must take the lowest spots available on each gear if you place on that gear. Placing multiple workers costs an increasing amount of money, so it is cheaper in terms of money (but not in terms of time) to place less each round. If the lowest spot available is not the actual lowest spot, you again need to pay extra - this costs you money, but you will more quickly reach the positions with the higher payouts. After each round, the gears are rotated and the workers move up to increasingly higher payoff locations (unless they fall off the board, which never happens).

When you take workers off the board, you either get points, resources, more workers, or the opportunity to use your resources: move up in the tracks (in the above image, the tracks are on the top and center right) that give you higher payoffs on the gears or points or extra actions, buy buildings or monuments that give you points (in the above image, the buildings and monuments are on the bottom right) or reduced maintenance costs , etc.

Three tracks are scored twice during the game (including a bonus for first place on each track). One of the gears (the blue one above) has locations that score points during the game (each location on this track can only be used once during the game). Buildings you buy during the game score as you buy them. Monuments score based on items collected or board positions by the end of the game. Player with the most points wins.

There are five different resources and scant opportunities to swap them around. Maintenance requires you to constantly support your workers, but there are ample opportunities to get these maintenance costs, so it did not present the kind of difficulty that it does in Stone Age or Agricola. Getting at least one extra worker seems pretty important, but owing to the amount of money you have to spend to place them it didn't seem to be as critical to get all of your available workers as it does in Hansa Tuetonica. After two plays, it looks like there are different paths to victory to explore; we chose different paths but the top scores were not too far apart. And they were all challenging.

There is not much player interaction except taking the spaces that you know others want, but those are nearly always the spaces you want anyway. There is some competition for bonus points on the three scoring tracks, but again not too much. This could be because, as new players, we are still learning the systems, playing against the board rather than the other players. As the game becomes more familiar, competition for certain actions, tracks, and buildings are likely to heat up.

I highly recommend that you DO NOT play this game with new players or with casual gamers, as they are likely to be quite confused. For gamers, so far I like what I've seen. The theme is not entirely absent due to the artwork and the necessary gear shapes in the board, but it's also not too present (so I can ignore the supposed "gods" theme attached to some of the tracks) and I had no idea what my actions were supposed to represent as far as real world activities. It's just a series of systems of: place, collect, compete, and maximize your points.

In our games, Mace concentrated on the gear that gave out points during the game and I concentrated on buildings and monuments; both of our choices were influenced by our starting position bonuses. I lost to him by 7 point from a single track in the final scoring.

Stephen Cameron: Space Nerds in Space Interview and Crew Gameplay Video

A 15 minutes long video profile of Stephen Cameron was published on YouTube by Jack Younger - hacker (presumed) at TX/RX Labs.

Stephen Cameron Video Profile

The video includes an interview of Cameron's about his latest project Space Nerds in Space including inspiration and actual authentic gameplay video footage of the crew (highlights at 08:30).

Video thumbnails

Some of Word War Vi's history also is covered in the video (4:00).

Do I need to spell it out? Press that like button if you can! :)

Source: Announcement on the FreeGameDev forums

Fundraising for GPL game Plee the Bear

This is a guest post by Julien Jorge, developer, artist and musician behind the open source indie games Plee the Bear and Andy's Super Great Park, here to present the fundraising campaign he launched for the former.

Some years ago, with the help of three of my friends and anonymous people on the web, I have created Plee the Bear, a great platformer in which you play an angry bear whose son has been kidnapped by god. Here is a guy hard to brave! You sure will jump in this amazing journey to find and rescue your son. Because you want to rescue him, don't you? Or to slap him? Maybe both….

The game was a spare time project for a long time, then we recently decided to create a real, full, complete, fun and original version out of the prototype. We have thus created our company, Stuffomatic, published a first game and now we are launching a fundraising campaign for Plee the Bear!

The prototypes of the game have always been released for Windows and Linux as free software, available under the terms of the GNU GPL and the CC by-sa licenses. The latest version contains three levels of the storyline and four mini-games; and has already generated very positive criticisms (e.g. on The Linux Game Tome). Players loved the fun, the graphics and the music; other indie developers were pleasantly surprised by the technical skills and the details of the game; and people in the free software movement appreciated the overall process and the quality of the resources, remarkable for a free game.

All these feedbacks motivated us to complete the game and to launch a fundraising campaign to help the development. The campaign is organized in order to implement the new contents of the game one after the other, each time with a new fundraiser. So, for the initial one, the feature you are welcome to support is a complete refresh of the existing work. You can see the details on the project's page on OpenFunding but let me show you how the game will look:

To be compared with the current release:

(The screen is larger in the new version, it's not just Plee who is smaller…) 

The animations will also be reworked. For example, here is a comparison of the changes in the animation of Plee walking. The old version is on the bright stripes, the new one is in the black stripes:

If you are a game developer, you may have already used some free resources from websites like OpenGameArt.org or Freesound.org. If you are a gamer, you may have played games using the resources of such websites. In both cases, you are certainly interested by our process consisting of releasing each part of the game under a free license. Actually, we have recently started to supply OpenGameArt.org with our assets.

So, if you like our project:

• give us some money for the next development steps,
• give us feedback about the process to help us improving it,
• share this announcement with your neighbors.

This way, we will all go toward a fun and good game :)

Yakuza

Developer: Sega
Publisher:  Sega

I remember reading a magazine preview of Yakuza back in the day labeling it as “Sega’s GTA”. Now considering how I stopped caring for Rockstar’s flagship franchise once the series evolved to 3D I ended up ignoring Yakuza, expecting it to be more of the same. Boy was I wrong!

You play as Kazuma Kyriu, once the most feared yakuza member in the entire Tojo clan, but fell into disgrace after being wrongfully accused of murdering his own boss and spending 10 years in prison. When he’s finally, Kazuma discovers the Tokyo clans are on the brink of civil war due to the disappearance of 20 billion yen from their hidden stash.

As the game begins you’re prompted to explore Tokyo’s fictional Kamurocho district, which is a series of neighborhoods filled with bars, strip clubs, stores, thugs, gangs, yakuza and just about everything else you can imagine. While the general area is relatively small when compared to other sandbox games or even RPGs it makes up for it by being so damn interesting and detailed. Every neighborhood feels different from the last, you can read magazines, watch commercials and have a few drinks, all of which are from real products and brands though most of them are exclusive to Japan. Still, I recognized a few western products like Jack Daniels whisky. You can’t really interact with random NPCs though, nor can you steal or even drive a car, as when exploring Kamurocho, most of the action is relegated to select areas with specific tasks or NPCs to talk to.

There are a ton of shops you can visit, many of them with their own mini-games which can range from baseball batting cages, gambling or even hostess bars where you pay for the time and opportunity to court a woman (wait, what?). These are pretty fun at first, but a lot of them quickly become stale or the rewards are simply not worth the time/money investment especially in regards to the hostesses, I ended up spending nearly 100K on one of them with the ultimate reward being the implication Kazuma slept with her… big whoop.

When you’re not exploring the town it’s likely you’re engaged in combat, this can happen as part of a story/side mission or by random thugs accosting you, which happens way too often. The combat is really fun, playing like a 3D Streets of Rage, you can perform combos, grab your enemies or even use weapons which can be bought or found lying around on the floor and as you beat thug after thug you gain experience points which can be spent on learning new moves or just generally improving your stats. 

Unfortunately as fun as the combat is, it happens way too often to the point of it almost feeling series of random encounters. In one instance I was attacked by three groups in the same street! To make matters worse there’s a loading screen between battles, streets and shops, slowing down the pacing quite a bit. Combat isn’t perfect either as I often ran into camera issues where I couldn’t see myself and/or the enemies, also, it could’ve benefited from a lock-on feature as I often found myself punching the air simply because I was facing the at the wrong angle. 

The story for the most part is pretty good, even if it hinges quite a bit on the soap-opera side. It features plenty of interesting and unique characters, but many of them, as well as the situations themselves are often so over-exaggerated that it feels like I’m watching a Naruto anime (at one point your character punches someone through the floor). My real gripe with its story however lies with the complete lack of self-restraint towards the later chapters, it throws you a bunch of plot twists and everything just keeps escalating to point where it simply becomes a bit too ludicrous for my taste, though I did enjoy the relationship between Kazuma and his friends, especially detective Date.

It even features a pretty impressive cast of well-established voice actors such as Mark Hamill (Batman: TAS) and John DiMaggio (Futurama) but you wouldn’t have guessed it by the performances we got, with the exception of Mark Hamill’s Majima everyone sounds so bored and lifeless. If I had to guess I’d say all of the actors were given zero voice direction, but hey, that’s just my opinion.

Graphically I was pretty impressed with Yakuza, the city is beautiful to look at both artistically and on a technical level with tons of Neon lights, billboards and dozens of NPCs leading their daily lives though at times I did notice some light texture warping and seeming, I’m surprised to see this is still an issue for a late PS2 game.

On the sound department is certainly doesn’t win any prizes, apart from the previously mentioned voice acting there are only a handful of songs and I got tired of the battle music way too fast. I also noticed a few ambient sounds looping every 3 seconds or so especially when visiting K-mart, but these were in the minority as almost every other place did a good job at disguising this.

Overall I feel Yakuza is a much better game than I originally thought, while it can be seen as a GTA-style game I would argue it has just as many differences as it has similarities. The story, combat and exploration are fun, but they’re all poorly balanced, with too much combat, a plot that goes overboard towards the end and an abundance of mini-games where the rewards are hardly ever worth the time invested.

Pros:

- Fun combat
- The city is small but interesting and very detailed
- The story is pretty good for the most part
- Plenty of mini-games to keep you entertained

Cons:

- Gameplay becomes repetitive after a while

- Loading screens are a bit too often for my taste
- Towards the latter chapters the story jumps the shark
- With so few worthwhile rewards, the mini-games feel meaningless

Final Grade: B-

The box shows our main character with his back turned to the viewer and displaying his Yakuza tattoo. While the idea itself is a bit on the boring side the nice use of color in the tattoo makes up for this turning it into a pretty eye-catchy box art.

When reading the manual I was surprised at the lack of backstory information or character backgrounds, all you get is a short paragraph that sounds more like a tagline than it does an actual backstory. 

On the flip-side the booklet goes into great detail on how to play the game. It gives you a ton of information, screenshots, tips and NPCs to talk to. On the rim of each of each even numbered page is a different Yakuza styled tattoo, while the designs end up repeating themselves they do a good job at making the manual feel unique and part of the experience, unfortunately the entire booklet is in black and white though, so while it makes for a nice read the eye candy is a bit muffled.

Overall this is a pretty nice package, I liked the cover image and while it doesn't come with any extras a lot of effort was put into the manual, a shame that it comes in black and white and lacks backstory information.

Packaging Grade: B+

Reflection

It's at times like this ... when I've just sold one apt and bought another, when I've just sold one car and bought another, when I've just had minor surgery (corrected a deviated septum) and it's made me fatigued the whole week, when I've just started a dizzying new relationship, when I've been told by one person that I'm the most religious person they typically hang out with and by another that I'm the least religious person that they typically hang out with, when I've just had several discussions analyzing the choices I have made with my religion and whether they are the right ones, and when I want to do what's right, do God's will, be a better person for myself, and be a better person for the rest of the world, that I need to take some time for reflection. And look at this: here comes Yom Kippur. Yehuda

New Alien Arena, with included alpha-demo of in development commercial spin-off

Yes, it looks like the developers behind the long running idTech2 based AlienArena are going make a more slower paced & 'tactical' spin-off and try to sell it. As before the engine will stay open-source (GPLv2), but the assets for the spin-off will stop being free-as-in-beer.

Here is the official launch-trailer of the new update and the alpha demo:


Beside the new game-play mode, they have also finally updated the menu, and the new version of it is rather spiffy. You can see it in action and more of the regular game-play in this recently uploaded random YouTube vid (warning: goofy British accents and profanity). GamingOnLinux also recently had a small preview-article.

Last but not least (while we are on the topic of idTech2 based games), a small game-developer's advertisement of a new project currently unfolding in our forums. If you know your way around Quake(2) based engines and/or pixelish art, please join the effort ;)

Flock 2013, OLCP Games, Gamification through Badges on Linux

There were some game development related events at Flock Fedora Contributor Conference, August 2013 in lovely Charleston, SC, US.

Trigger Rally Map Workshop 

So far my contributions to Fedora were merely a few wiki edits but my conference proposals were well-received.

Free Art Game Making presentation slide

I ended up speaking about making games using free art and leading a Trigger Rally level building workshop (video).

Fedora badges

At the conference, I learned about Fedora's badge program and that it is connected to Mozilla Open Badges.

Lemonade Stand (OLPC) Sugar "activity"

Another discovery: Lemonade Stand, which is an educational game developed by people from FOSS@RIT, who work on bringing Mozilla Open Badges to the OLPC.

Game development appears to be getting more and more of a foot in the door at free software conferences, so I encourage people working on open games to apply as speakers at conferences, talking about technical and social aspects of free, open source game development project leadership and contribution. (Not just at FOSS events, why not at general game dev events as well?)

If you have any relevant talks from recent events to point out, please do so in the comments!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Hyperstone Heist

Developer: Konami
Publisher:  Konami

As a kid I used to love the Ninja Turtles (the 80s-90s cartoon, in case you’re wondering), I remember a friend of mine had Turtles in Time for the SNES and we were hooked. Much to my surprise, I only discovered its Genesis/Mega Drive counterpart well into the 00’s.

So with that said, how does it compare to the mythical turtles in time and how does it stand on its own? It’s okay I guess.

The game opens up with an awesome cheesy intro, the Shredder who has attained a powerful artifact called the Hyperstone, using its power he magically shrinks Manhattan Island and announces his plan to take over the world (what else?).

You then take control of one of four turtles and face off against Shredder, Krang and their hordes of robotic food soldiers in a very by-the-numbers beat’em up. I don’t really like how there’s no in-game prompt for each of the character’s stats, sure I’d likely still end up playing as Rafael, but I’d at least know his strengths. 

On the gameplay side I’ve always found the turtles games too simple for their own good and this one is no exception, for starters there are absolutely no weapon pickups, to make matters worse, your moves are also rather limited, you have the basic moves, a throwing technique and a special short ranged attack that consumes health. Considering Final Fight and Streets of Rage were old news by the time this came out, you would think Konami would’ve added something to stand out from the crowd. The boss fights are pretty fun though, they provide a pretty good challenge and demand a bit of pattern memorization, though it has an odd boss selection, you get Rocksteady but no Bebop. You also get to fight Tatsu, remember him from the movies? He’s something of a novelty, though personally I’d pick Bebop over him any day.

Hyperstone Heist is also short… really short, it has a paltry 5 levels, one of which is a glorified boss rush mode. Oddly enough some of the levels run a little too long for their own good, repeating the same scenery over and over. It probably would’ve been better if the game featured 7 medium sized levels instead. I also don’t really get the progression, one moment you’re in New York and the next you’re in a pirate ghost ship (huh?). 

Graphically the game is quite pleasant, the characters are well animated and the mix of colors for the enemies and backgrounds is a bit dark, but works really well, you can also select whether you want the turtles to resemble the cartoon or their comic book selves, which is a pretty nice touch.

The soundtrack does a good job at complementing the graphical style, it uses a lot of the same tunes from Turtles in Time making for a pretty interesting comparison of the Genesis and the Snes’ sound chips. Unfortunately the voice effects are pretty high pitched and scratchy, but that’s my only complaint in this department.

Overall I can’t help but feel Hyperstone Heist doesn’t live up to its potential, it looks good, sound good and it has a perfect hit detection, but by the time this was out the genre had already evolved and I feel Konami didn’t get memo.

Pros:

- Engaging boss fights
- Graphically it looks pretty good
- Some nice tunes

Cons:

- Very few character moves, no weapon pick ups

- Only 5 levels and one of them is really just a boss rush mode
- Even by beat'em up standards the gameplay becomes a bit repetitive when compared to other games of its time

Final Grade: C+

Unfortunately, this is one of those rare cases where I only own a loose cartridge so I can't really review the packaging.

I will say I like the cartridge art, it has a nice use of colors and the turtles look just like their cartoon counterparts.


Packaging Grade: N/A