open-source posts

The Humble Indie Bundle - a pack of six games available for whatever you want to pay for it - has now ended its deal, raking in over $1 million in a single week. This alone is impressive, but what is also cool is that about 30% went to charity. The developers made a detailed breakdown of all money received as well as money received after merchant costs (credit card fees, Paypal fees, etc) that can be viewed separately.

Along with this news comes another surprising tidbit. Out of the six games featured, four will be releasing their source code to the general public for budding game developers to pick through. The four games that are releasing their code are Aquaria, Lugaru HD, Gish, and Penumbra. Only Lugaru HD is currently available, but the other developers are busy converting their goods to open-source and will be releasing them soon! This is great for freeware communities, as all of these engines are worth working with.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

There are a plethora of excellent 2D shooters, from Soldat to Counter-Strike 2D. They all owe a debt, however, to the phenomenal and under-appreciated Liero, one of only a few classic freeware indie games. Liero is long dead, but it lives on through the open-source OpenLieroX, and through the magic of netplay and mods continues to grow in new and exciting ways. There are few freeware games that deserve a permanent spot on one's computer. Cave Story, Warning Forever, Spelunky, and Iji are some of these freeware constants, and so is OpenLieroX.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

There's just something about designing your own goodies that no strategy fan can resist. Games like Sword of the Stars or Galactic Civilizations 2 let you design your own spaceships for use in combat, but spaceship design is a common feature in space 4X games. It's not seen often in real-time strategy games, but unit design is definitely there, and the case-in-point for this loveable feature is Warzone 2100. One of the earliest RTS games to support the custom units feature, Warzone 2100 is a blast from the past, and best of all, free and open-source. With a double whammy of free and retro, you can't really go wrong.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Gamers have been clamoring for a genuinely great western-themed game since Lucasarts' seminal Outlaws. While some have come close, none have quite reached that level of excellent gameplay merged with an engaging and believable story. While Smokin' Guns has no story, it's certainly one of the best western shooters around, and is a good contender to steal that title from Outlaws. It's rippin', roaring', take no prisoners western multiplayer action for absolutely no cost. Well, except for maybe your life. This game is addicting like only the best multiplayer shooters are!

Sometimes you just have to sit down, get some drinks, and plug away at an addicting strategy game. Exercise your mind, either against computer or human opponents. I know this need very well, and as I haven't featured many strategy games on Freeware Friday, I present to you Battle for Wesnoth. It's an open-source strategy game that is one of the best freeware releases you can find, strategy or not. However, unlike Freeciv, it can be played in nice, bite-sized increments.

A new version of the Sauerbraten game, a game designed to showcase the power and flexibility of the open-source Cube 2 engine, has been released. It has so many new additions that we can't list them all, but they include things such as new multiplayer maps made by the community, a new community-made campaign, a new soundtrack, and plethora of other improvements. For the full changelist, hit up the Cube 2 forums. You can download the game for Linux, Mac, or PC by visiting the SourceForge project page. For more information on the Cube 2 engine and what makes it more unique than other, similar FPS engines, check out the engine's site.

[Via Blue's News]