Being a web-browser game no install needed, just a recent web-browser and you are ready to go, playing against bots and shooting while you are at it. Check it out www.banditracer.eu. It even got a track editor so you can build tracks with the tiles I did and textured by Dovilė Lapinskaitė, the cars is also done by her, looking great!

All stuff made by me are under the CC-BY 3.0 license so feel free to use them in your project if you like.

Also checkout mine and CruzeR’s side scrolling vector art assets for making fantasy side scrolling games. I would like some developer feedback on that, what should be included in such an asset pack and more..

I’ve been curious for a long time on what makes FLOSS games fail in the areas of User Experience/Interface (UX, UI) and graphics, visual coherency, why they push second-hand gfx next to ace grade gfx. In my search for an answer I decided to start a project of my own to gather some first hand experience.

The aim for this project will be to collect as much content as possible for a small and simple game, at the same time; avoid neglecting any UI or UX related issue. No need for ace grade gfx just visual coherency. To be able to finish this project in a reasonable time frame, I first decided on what type of game and which kind of theme it would have. My decision are based on personal preferences what kind of “simple” game would I enjoy? It fell down to a Tactical Role-Playing Game in a fantasy setting, like Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. Mind you, I’m only gathering content for it no code what so ever, that is for a willing developer to do if he or she find the time and will to do so.

Here I’ll give to you the mockup game;

Realp - Book of Tiny Bits

In my estimation I already got enough game content to be able to make a game mechanics test. And this in a very short time span. The question now is what do lead developers and project leaders miss when they do the same job. My answers at this moment would be; Time to communicate (beside the obvious; connections)  here are some questions I find important:

• How does your contributor work?
• What does he or she need, to do the things you want done?
• Are the contributor able to work independently or does he/she need continuous guidance?
  • If so how could you remedy that?

Don’t mind the 2D, it will be in 3D as might be seen in the SVN. The 2D images everywhere, is my way of communication with contributors, in this case tidbit the 3D modeller.

How did/do I go about this project?

Well to know what content you need you must decide on a couple of things, some of them I already told you about (What kind of game). To list some of these decisions, here are some of the features I have in mind;

• Procedural map generation
• Movement by points of interest
• In-game scripting of unit behaviours

These help me understand what is needed; Without them I would miss much of the small things. So I actually think of this ‘media pack’ as a full game, that way I hope it will be easier to adapt the media to other projects too.

For those who want a preview you can head over to the SVN and look at some odds and oddities pasted there. In short I’m going for a “full” media pack, doing all content that would be needed for a game

More to come soon.

*or was it C++? I’m no dev so why should I care?

Added intro screen

Any and all comments are welcome and much-needed, I have hit the wall. I’m think of replacing the pentagram with a cog, as it’s supposed to be steam punk with magic I might do a pentagram turn into a cog or vice vers.

Latest version as of 2009-02-15

edit/update:

Some icons and logo work for bughunter2’s gambit.

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