I was tempted, out of laziness, to say I had nothing to talk about... but that's just not true. :-D
The guys over at the Daimonin project have been making noises with another pre-release. Daimonin is an open source isometric 2D MMORPG. I got quite addicted to it at one point before my addiction to this blog kicked in, it can be quite an absorbing little game despite the lack of amazing 3D superficial sexy graphics. I'm not sure that the next version brings any graphical improvements but it's obvious they have been working hard on tweaking the gameplay.
Meanwhile the Battle for Antargis lead developer has been investigating probably one of the bigger challenges to face open source game developers - artificial intelligence. (Cue joke about lack of intelligence of the decision to create open source games.) It is very hard to create an AI that is not simple, let alone ultimately predictable. I remember so many games of yester-year that ended up being played in a way that took advantage of glaring AI weaknesses. Or even games that let the AI cheat to make it seem better (Civilization anyone!?) which I always felt was a major cop out by the developers. It's great to see the BoA guys taking it seriously.
Simutrans 0.99.11 is available for download. These days lots of little pedestrians and cars frequent the towns in Simutrans which looks cool IMO. If you transport lots of passengers with trains, fewer cars are on the roads. You can do the artificial environment a favour! ;-)
In the next few days I might do a piece on TA Spring mods or on open source development tips, or do both...
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