Friday, May 27, 2011

LibriVox Hacked

The public domain audibook project LibriVox got hacked (not the first time it seems). There was no open announcement yet [edit: here's the blog post] but as a forum user I received an email:
A hacker broke into the LibriVox forum and got access to our completedatabase including emails and encrypted passwords. We have locked them outof the system, and we’ve fixed the vandalism, but they still have ourdatabase.
In the interests of full disclosure, here is some extra information:(1) The database contained every piece of communications sent through theforum, including all private messages. This information is now in thepossession of the hacker.
(2) All forum passwords in the database are encrypted. However, if yourpassword was very simple, it will be trivial for the hacker to break theencryption using "brute-force" techniques. They will likely attempt exactlythis, so if you use the same password on any other Internet service, youshould immediately change your password at those services.
We are very sorry that this happened, and once this is sorted out as bestas it can be, we’ll be doing a more thorough security review.
Well, I'm glad they are open about this. A great time to update the passwords I use to more secure ones. :)

I would like to appeal to the community to look out for each other and report strange activities like spam posts or random content deletion to site admins, pointing out this recent hacking. Everybody who had a LibriVox account and used their password elsewhere should change it ASAP, especially if moderative or administrative accounts are involved!

... Let me just add a little bit of positive open content news though: I was looking for car blinker sounds, contacted three Freesound contributors and got permission from all of them to re-distribute under CC0, which I did on OpenGameArt. j1987 even added a "all my sounds are public domain" note. :)

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

PARPG Infrastructure Sprint: Content Creation Refactoring


A PARPG Content Creation Refactoring Sprint was announced on May 23, 2011. Here are instructions on how to join and help:
  1. Register at Assembla
  2. Add and resolve tickets
  3. Join the #parpg channel each Sunday at GMT 8PM

Monday, May 23, 2011

Let pixel maps do the talking


New Pages of Adventure graphics.



OpenGameArt is looking for a hosting sponsor. The target is a dedicated server with following min. specs:

  • Quad core, 64 bit CPU
  • 4GB RAM
  • 500GB hard drive space
  • 1TB monthly transfer
  • 1 gigabit connection
  • 64-bit CentOS, RedHat or Fedora
  • Root access and Autonomy

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Assorted strategy game news

Quick Sunday afternoon rundown of recent strategy game updated...
0AD got a new beta 5 release, which improvements in rendering & AI code, a completely new faction (Iberians), and a new map:


MegaGlest also got updated recently (Version 3.5.1), bringing various fixes and performance improvements. Furthermore I can report that both the sable and the development version of Battle for Wesnoth have been updated, and I strongly recommend everyone (who has not played this game for a while) to retry this classic in the newest development version.

EvolutionRTS, a nice looking (but sadly CC-by-NC-ND licensed) game based on the SpringRTS engine also saw an update to version 1.3 this month (check out this gameplay video).



Hmmm, what else? Ahh, UFO:AI was ported to Android, and and the change of Warzone2100 from SDL to qt (which is not exactly a game framework) raised some eyebrows, but will probably make the game more easily portable and better integrated into your favorite desktop.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Newton Physics Open Source!


Funto's edit of the FGDWiki* made me realize that Newton switched to the free-as-in-freedom zlib license

I did not follow development on the HPL1 (Penumbra: Overture) engine but this might mean that there are no closed dependencies any more.

*having a forum account will allow you to edit this wiki!

Friday, May 20, 2011

LanPower Game Key v2



On 2. July, the second Free-as-in-freedom USB Game Key will be released by the French-language based team LanPower.


The GameKey light serie 2 is a compilation of portable FOSS games, mostly compatible with both Windows and Linux.


English, German, French, Italian and Spanish translations are available for the GUI. If you would like to add your translation to the mix, here are the translation files: English | French. (contact: asso.lanpower AT free.fr)

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Sound Walk #1: BOFH

This is a 0:46 soundwalk of BOFH. Music not turned off.



[download ogg vorbis]

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Naev Sound and Xonotic Map Devolution

Spoiler alert regarding a video of a NAEV mission that shows off the sound capacities of the game. The project relies on OpenAL Soft.

You should come for the sound [10MB vorbis rip]* or for the HD version.
Effects to notice:
  • Positional sound (basic for OpenAL)
  • Doppler Effect (depends on velocity)
  • Air absorption factor (sounds like you’re under water)
  • Reverb (also helps make it sound like you’re underwater)
  • Speed of sound changes (depends on nebula density – also for sounding underwater)
* It'd be great if more project took so much care of audio licensing so there could be f-a-i-f game sound walks. Great distraction from urban noise. Game soundtracks are disturbing though mostly.



An amazing screens-video of the different stages of modernizing/Xonoticisizing CBCTF1 - Space CTF to Newtonian Nightmare was posted.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

FlightGear at LinuxTag 2011

Gluon at LinuxTag Berlin 2011

I took a quick look at the Gluon Talk and the games booth at LinuxTag 2011 and thought I'd share some pictures at least. :)

FlightGear Flight Simulator at LinuxTag Berlin 2011

FlightGear Flight Simulator at LinuxTag Berlin 2011

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Remember Iris2?

Iris2

We haven't typed a word about Iris2 in over two years! There are quite some new bugfixes to the 3D UO client.

The latest stable release (rev 3395) is one week old.

Iris2 was updated to use Ogre 1.7.2, it now runs stable on Windows.

This old video is still pretty much up-to date

The project mainly suffers from lack of community interest and aid in creating or converting free assets or hosting servers. :) A few trees seem to be hard enough (but there's more).

RunUO appears to be a popular server suite.

I made a feed of the Iris2 wiki news.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Open Source Games Still Alive

Octower!

BAM! Word War Vi runs on Pandora! (Have a feed!)

Split-screen!

BAM! Egoboo alive, kicking and now has a pretty website! Lazza made a feed!
Code!

BAM! jClassicRPG development continues!

Monday, May 09, 2011

Gluon Creator

The Gluon project is

  1. A 2D game creation IDE
  2. A game player which is supposed to become cross-platform, including mobiles and tablets
  3. A site/community/server which will feature ratings, tags, avatars, achievements, etc.
Read more about the vision here and about the history in this Amarok blog post.



Gluon team member Leinir will appear at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany with his English-language talk Social Game Distribution. Hm... anybody got spare tickets? [got some thanks to ben!] :)

Goblin Camp


Goblin Camp is a roguelike citybuilder, inspired by Anno 1404, Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Keeper.
0.15 is the most recent version (April 23).

I looks cute and fun and there are Win & Lin releases. I also watched part of the well-done tutorials:


To be honest: I'm shyed away by the apparent deep micromanagement and by my prejudice against roguelike controls.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

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.

Saturday, May 07, 2011

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.

Friday, May 06, 2011

Pax Britannica: One-button RTS!

Pax Britannica

Somehow I found out about Pax Britannica a while ago and found it to be an addicting game, even though I only played it agains AI so far.

The resource is time and your task is to decide what to build, while fighting happens automatically and no movement controls are given. In fact all you can do is press a button and the duration of that press will result in different actions. Up to four players or 1-vs-AI are supported.


The license is MIT although I don't know whether it applies to art as well.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Libre Graphics Meeting 10-13 May 2011, Blendswap v3, OpenArt


I'm looking forward to the LGM this year. Bart, admin of OpenGameArt will talk about running libre graphics projects.

You can view previous year's talk videos here.


Version 3 of Blendswap is live! But the site has some server load problems.


OpenArt, Moosader's own take on game resource sharing has been updated and has content under CC0 and CC-BY v3 licenses. It received a visual update a while ago.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Graphs & Virgins: Evil Cult

Evil Cult [latest version]. One of my favorite games. A 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) turn-based game with little micro-management so far (I consider this a huge plus).

The developer recently posted a blog update. You can follow him on Twitter. Much development discussion is going on in this thread.

I made two videos of the gameplay: a 5x time lapse and an Let's Play for your pleasure.

Evil Cult 5x speed
Music by (c) Natlyea


Regarding 4x games: There's an ongoing Master of Orion 2 rewrite. Latest activity in the repository: Mon Apr 11 11:55:42 2011 +0200. Here's a custom news feed if you want to follow the project. (I won't be adding custom feeds to the planet for now).

I also created a news feed generator for FreeOrion.

Monday, May 02, 2011

CC Fantasy Portrait Marathon Update!

Remember Justin Nichol's CC Portraits Marathon? There's an update [kickstarter|justin's blog]!

I had an injury earlier in the year which kept me preoccupied, and then school started. The pace should be much quicker from this point on and I apologise for the delays. In any case, I have these 10 and about 23 others to complete (with 2 additional portraits of my choice to finish the 35 I guaranteed). I intend to complete the bulk over the next month and a half, and will try to post the fruits of my labor every Wednesday from this point forth, so if you don't see anything from me one wednesday, feel free to bug me.










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