This time it's Cardinal Quest, an addictive little open source dungeon crawler.  The source is downloadable from here.  I managed to make it down to the 5th level of the dungeon before getting pwned in the face by a succubus.  Good times. :)

Yesterday was kind of a big day for OGA development, essentially the last major feature push before 2.0.  You won't see any earth-shattering differences, but you might notice that things are a little bit nicer.  Here's what we did:

It was pointed out to me the other day that it might do us some good to expand our forums a bit in terms of the number of discussion topics available.  Obviously, our forums aren't going to be everything for everyone, as OGA has a very specific aim, but it's also true that there are a lot of areas that pertain to game art (particularly relating to FOSS) that we aren't really touching on.  So, here's where I need you guys:

Hey folks!

If you haven't checked out OSARE for a version or two, now's the time to pick it up and give it another go!  pfunked has been hard at work getting things like spells, ranged attacks, a minimap, and the action bar working, and consequently OSARE is now a fun and addicting experience.  In particular, making zombie heads explode makes me cackle with righteous glee!

You can check out a YouTube gamplay video here:

Hi folks!

Just wanted to say a big thank you to GameBoom for agreeing to host OGA.  What this means for the site is that the $200/month I was paying out of pocket for hosting can all go toward additional art commissions.  The machine we're on right now is every bit equal to the old one (if not a bit beefier in terms of processor power), and it's hosted by a great group of people (as opposed to the spam-friendly host I used to have, which was on email blacklists and had hours of unannounced downtime).

OGA now supports Flattr boxes on individual art pages!  If you'd like to let people Flattr your artwork, click on "My Account" at the top of the page, click the "Edit" tab, and then fill in your Flattr UserID.  It's that simple. :)

Hey folks!

Just a heads up.  We're going to be giving out badges for the weekly challnges from now on.  There will be a unique badge for each challenge (silver for participants and gold for the winner), and if you don't enter into the challenge, you'll miss out on that badge. :)

Here are the badges for this week's Minibosses challenge:

Hi folks!

Just a quick heads up.  On the home page, immediately below this post, are two new blocks.  One of them lists the top submitters in the last 30 days, and the other one lists the most popular art in that same period.  I've removed the old "most popular" block, as it was self-reinforcing and pretty much always showed the same stuff. :)

Anyway, this is a competition, and unless you're in first place, there are people ahead of you.  Are you okay with that?  No?  I didn't think so.  Better submit some art! :)

Bart

A couple of days ao, I wrote a blog post in which I advocated for the creation of easy-to-use, integrated content editors in Open Source video games.  I got a lot of interesting replies, and I'd like to address some of them here.

I'd like to step up onto my soapbox for a moment and address something that I find somewhat lacking in FOSS games -- namely content creation and editing.  In one sense, FOSS games have a leg up on the competition because all open source software is innately moddable, which is kind of the point.  However, the practical reality of software moddability is that it's extremely dependant on the tools you provide.