Game AI, a restrospective analysis

This is an interesting article I missed, published some days ago in AIGameDev blog. We are talking about serious AI here, don't expect to achieve the same goals in short time.
Im really eager to see what innovations will bring 2009 in the field of cooperative AI, one of the critical areas that I have in mind for my project.

10 best open source games

Spanish blog Linuxjuegos, dedicated to open source games, has published its annual list of 10 best open source games of 2008. The requirements are being open source (obvious) and have published a version during 2008.
In case you cant't read spanish: here are the winners:

10. Sauerbraten
9. Planeshift
8. Wormux
7. Teeworlds
6. Glest
5. Nexuiz
4. Super TuxKart
3. OpenArena
2. Battle for Wesnoth
1. Frets on Fire

I copy&paste the whole list of proposals and points, as it is a good reference in case you are looking for some good free games. It covers all genres: MMORPG, 3D RPG, strategy, FPS, etc.

Frets On Fire - 141
Battle for Wesnoth - 108
OpenArena - 86
SuperTuxKart - 83
Nexuiz - 80
Glest - 64
Teeworlds - 61
Wormux - 58
Planeshift - 55
Sauerbraten - 54
X-Moto - 53
Secret Maryo Chronicles - 50
PokerTH - 48
Yo Frankie! - 47
Warzone 2100 - 46
AssaultCube - 43
Torcs - 41
Warsow - 37
UFO: AI - 33
Numpty Physics - 32
Frozen Bubble - 26
Gbrainy - 20
SCOURGE - 19
Performous - 19
FreeCiv - 19
FlightGear - 18
Open TTD - 15
Alien Arena - 12
Hedgewars - 10
Freecol - 9
eBoard - 9
Eternal Lands - 9
Vdrift - 9
Vega Strike - 8
DCCnitghtmare - 8
Brain Workshop - 7
OpenCity - 7
Egoboo - 6
Phun - 6
Scorched 3D - 6
Lkstat - 6
Tetzle - 4
LordsAWar - 4
OpenAstromenace - 4
PiX Bros - 3
Tetravex - 3
OpenAlchemist - 3
Vavoom - 3
Bygfoot Football Manager - 2
NAEV - 2
BzFlag - 2
Nimuh - 2
Lincity-NG - 1
Atanks - 1
QnetWalk - 1

Unity coming to Windows

I have friend who is always talking to me about how good is Unity. Unity is a tool for game development, with some commercial license whose exact terms I can't find after a few seconds in the site. The major drawback is that it is only for Mac. But today he greets me with this new: it iwll be soon available fo r Win platforms. Not yet for Linux, so it is not "true cross-platform" as they say, but it is an step forward.

A lot of interesting work is taking place in Worldforge project. As I mentioned, latest Cyphesis version implements (at last!) persistent world and big efforts are being put in making Ember a really useful world editing tool. I am eager to see what the upcoming versions will bring, though I consider that still a year is required before Worldforge could be a serious option.
Also, it is unclear what will happen with Indri, which is supposed to be a much better, easier to script, game server, built with the experiences acquired during Cyphesis development.

The basics: floats

This article in Gamasutra reminds me the begining of programming learning process. Usually when we work with high level engines we forget the underlying foundations. The article makes justice to the forgotten float data types, so much used in game programming.

Eternal Lands 1.8

I have followed this game since a few years ago. So, I can say that I have experienced its evolution and probably you will remember that I have mentioned it here a couple of times. Eternal LAnds is a free 3d MMORPG with a large user base and a long history.
Why do I mention it if it is not a game development related topic? Because Eternal Lands is one of those projects that shoudl inspire the rest of us to work, no matter how difficult seems our goals. Take a look at it, play for a while and say to yourself: it can be done!

Gamestates

This previous week I have worked reorganizing my project's gamestate code. Gamestates are well explained here, article which is the base for this tutorial. I guess there is no need to explain the job of gamestates in my game, but I will explain later how I am implementing the dialog system.