FreeGameDev

Hi,

I am very interested in what will become out of the games that were open sourced during the humble indie bundle sellout and also want to help out once a community forms around a game.

So did anyone see any community forming around the open sourced versions of aquaria, gish, lugaru or penumbra or some discussions on other forums about it? Or maybe does anyone of you actually want to start some own fork as well?

I think it is pretty cool that they open sourced it, but guess there is lots of work involved before any of those games become playable again - probably with the exception of gish. If the people interested in helping out those games just would show themselves in the thread it would be a big step to start working on it as well.

bye,
remaxim

From what I've observed, at least with penumbra and lugaru, is that the people who actually did anything with the source so far were already part of the community, mainly (ryzom seems to be the exception here, it drew in a lot of FOSS community members, but it wasn't part of the bundle). Also, the staged releases of source seems to have been attracting less attention each time, if you look at the timeline, Ryzom attracted most attention from the foss community, Lugaru got a similar amount of attention, then penumbra, then Gish and aquaria (but those are really recent releases, so we'll see..)

I'd really like to see something made with these releases, but somehow I doubt it. We already have loooads of engines, and while the HIB games are really nice, they are "complete" and thus little can be improved upon..

someone (i think megagun) on irc started work on free placeholder gfx for gish :
* http://mooses.nl/freegish/screenshots/freegish.jpg
* http://mooses.nl/freegish/

Well, I guess I am most interested in gish and aquaria.

Gish because it seems so easy to replace the missing art and soon can be used to get some more innovative gamplay or at least new maps. Also playing the game online against or with other people seems to be a very interesting feature to add IMO.

Aquaria because it seems to have an amazing editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsT6otdcTv0 and pretty solid 2D engine already
I guess I am most interested in someone adding some physics features and make a platformer game out of Aquaria (without any water) ... some kind of open source little big planet I guess :P (well that is just a thought obviously)

You re right about having enough engines already, but I think that it is still pretty much worth it in those cases and also in case of Lugaru (just to make the game actual freeware xD). No idea about Penumbra as I didn't really try it yet.

About the attention after the open source releases: I don't think that the attention is really that important, but rather the long term commitment of the people taking over ... I guess we will see in some months (if we re lucky) which project had the most luck

make some placeholder gfx for aquaria and an example level suitable for platform,
then i'll invest a few hours trying to give it simple jump & run physics

the better the placeholders look, the more time i'll put into the physics

This is not really a showcase or collaboration thread. Game ideas with Aquaria engine? Or just general chat about the Indie bundle?

@Charlie: True, atm it is only discussion, but I hope that it evolves into a collaboration thread. Feel free to move it where it belongs though.

@Ghoulsblade: Yeah, atm I try to get it work before I can start doing placeholder gfx ... if anyone has any experience with building aquaria, feel free to help