Dedication's What You Need

...if you wanna be a record breaker! Oooo ooo... </singing>

One of the great things about Free software games is that people are free to dedicate themselves to whatever makes them happy. Check out this ship, the Atlantia, created for a Vega Strike mod [not yet published].

Speaking of Vega Strike, the musings over the last couple of weeks suggest a new 0.4.x release [the current engine] later on in the year. I don't think the real juice [the 0.5 OGRE-based engine] will come until 2007, but when it does it will be good. Check out the screenshot to the right, a sample of planet shaders that VS developer klauss is working on. More images here.

That's simply beautiful.

There's a new dungeon game in town. Sadly it is a Doom 3 mod so it's not really free, but we know what happens with iD engines so there is hope! The game is Dungeon Doom and hopefully it will evolve into a stellar Free game in the future.

Another interesting mod [UT2004 this time] is Air Buccaneers. It looks innovative but again is based on a non-free engine. I wish people would create mods for free engines like Sauerbraten. Can you imagine the syndicated power of mod developers being focused on Free Software engines? If only I could control people's minds, the world would be a better place.

I tried a few games today.

Secret Maryo Chronicles is a high resolution remake of old-school Super Mario. It's fun for a bit but I don't have the patience to learn levels like I used to when I was younger. The game has no music and the way Maryo responds to controls doesn't quite feel right. Some parts of the game look great while others look distinctly amateur, but it has a lot of potential.

Ri-Li is a cross between a wooden train set and Snake. It's probably more aimed at kids, but the gameplay seems to get very hectic very quickly. Also I could swear that the train does not always go the direction you tell it to go. I tried pressing before junctions, pressing at junctions, pressing both before and at junctions, or just holding down the direction, and it felt hit-and-miss.

Then I tried Pang Zero and Don Ceferino Hazaña. The gameplay of both games revolves around throwing up a dagger or spear to pop balloons (?) that bounce around the screen and kill you on-touch. It's like a simpler version of asteroids. Don Ceferino is the more entertaining and polished of the two, even if the gameplay is essentially the same, with a nicely presented story despite the awful spilleng mistakes.

The Don Ceferino website is all in Spanish. I hate to say it, but the language of the Net is English. If you want maximum recognition and traffic, you had better translate your musings. Otherwise obscurity and International exile loom for your project.