Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Rigs of Rods goes Open Source and Glest 3.2

Rigs of Rods is going open source. How cool is that?



Rigs of Rods (also known as RoR), is a truck, car, airplane and boat simulator. You can drive, fly or sail in total freedom in an open environment. What makes RoR different to most simulators is its unique soft-body physics: vehicles chassis and wheels are simulated in real-time as flexible objects, giving the simulation an extremely accurate behavior, while allowing the vehicles to be simply specified by their structural composition, as a network of interconnected nodes (forming the chassis and the wheels). Crashing into walls or terrain can permanently deform a vehicle in a realistic manner. In addition to its unique soft-body physics, RoR also features an advanced flight model based on blade element theory, allowing the accurate simulation of any airplane, base on their physical dimensions and wing airfoils. It also features an accurate buoyancy model based on elemental pressure gradients, enabling boats with complex hulls to move realistically in the swell.


Thanks to Mantar for the heads up. Here's a video showing just how cool it looks:





Well Glest 3.2 is out. Which is interesting given I proclaimed official Glest development dead* and Glest Advanced Engine to be its successor. It's like I just made it all up. Only I didn't, there was a thread where the official Glest developers stated that GAE would become official Glest. The link now goes to an inaccessible page. However, I'm not the only one who found it and logged it. Sadly Google obviously hadn't, since there's no cache available.



* FYI "Glest is dead, long live Glest!" is a play on "The King is dead, long live the King!" I didn't mean it was actually dead.



So, either the good news is that the main Glest developers have returned, or that the Glest team (new and old) has decided to make things look a little more cohesive, or somebody is playing a practical joke on me and posting grumpy anonymous comments implying that I am inciting trouble. Either way, it's great to see a new Glest release.



Glest 3.2 brings Lua scripting support, a new tileset, and tutorials as its primary features. I think more was expected, but given the lack of activity, the developers decided to push out a toned down 3.2 release instead.



Freelords tech release 0.03 has been released. Ignore the website, which says 11th Feb 2008, it's a typo. New graphics and new features, although it is still not quite playable yet.



Some other releases that piqued my interest: Neverball 1.5.0, Tennix 0.7.0, Vacuum Magic 0.9.





In the article reviewing simulation games, I lamented a lack of documentation for Simutrans. I was a bit off, there is plenty. It's just a bit scattered. For those who want to try it, I suggest starting with the wiki and specifically this page on transportation basics. There are also several errors in the article that stem from me writing it ad hoc and not proof reading properly, but I'm too lazy to correct them.



In the comments somebody offered to help out with FreeTrain development, the didn't leave any contact details and didn't get in touch. Still looking for help from C# developers for FreeTrain. Please leave details or email me - freegamerblog at gmail.



There did seem to be a bit of a negative slant from some commentors on the article in general. There were those lamenting that there is no depth (5 playable games not enough for you?) and those lamenting that Lincity-NG was not enough like Sim City 2k (no-win scenario, if it was a clone there would also be complaints). Come on guys and gal! Lighten up a bit!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, thanks for clearing up about Glest. As I posted in the last FreeGamer Blog entry comments, I was very confused too about that post on their forums (it was there, I can confirm that - but I had the feeling that nobody cared about this MAJOR news) and your blog entry.

Andrew said...

Rigs of Rods looks great, however the physics makes the vehicles look like they're made out of cardboard, I'm sure they'll get around to fixing that though.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure about Glest. The 3.2 beta was more than half a year out. The final is not really different. Maybe they just wanted a stable release in the end. A bugfix release is also planned before end of week.

Maybe then they give over to GAE.

Anonymous said...

I had this theory, too. But then, why is the official announcement in the Glest forum gone? And why did nobody really care about this? Really, there's absolutly nothing on the official Glest/GAE sites/forums about this issue.

Anonymous said...

I don't believe people were complaining about 5 playable games, more that there are so many incredibly similar games. There are commercial Tycoon games for dozens of businesses, but open source developers are just making a bunch of train games. One or two train games I think would suffice.

qubodup said...

There is an unfortunate disposition in a man to attend much more to the faults of his companions which offend him, than to their perfections which please him. Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Wikiquotes helps me being a smart arse. Yay for internet! :D

And saying TTD is like Simutrans is like saying that Nexuiz is like Tremuous? - So I assume.

Anonymous said...

I know, it's a bit offtopic, but does somebody know what is going on with Widelands? Their site is offline for some days now.

Anonymous said...

Rigs of Rods is quiet interesting. I have to test it more thoroughly, but my first impressions are good. I hope to see a roadmap soon, and some more infos about the ongoing developpements on that game.

Anonymous said...

Aparently main development of Glest is switching to maintenance and bug fixes according to martiño's post in Glest 3.2.0 Release thread. They will continue to fully support GAE development as well.

QUOTE from martiño: I don't think we will develop glest in the way we used to do before, this is, adding new big features, however the project is far from dead, we will keep on updating if with bugfixes and improvements when it makes sense, and we will provide full support to the GAE team.

Also Glest 3.2.1 was released. I could not find changelog however.

KIAaze said...

This is great news! :)

Source code for those that do not want for the 0.36 release:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rigsofrods/

The full svn checkout seems to be about 450MB due to dependencies+media according to the forums.

Anonymous said...

Hey awesome! Rigs of Rods is fun, thanks for telling me about it! It's rare to see car games these days where you can actually control the left, right blinkers, as well has the hazard lights! It's a commonly ignored detail that I think makes the game a whole lot better, especially for people who roleplay while playing games like this!

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