More Driving Force

The driving game FOSS scene is quite healthy. With actively developed games like VDrift, SuperTuxKart and Ultmiate Stunts, and relatively complete games like ManiaDrive, Stunt Playground, and Torcs, there's quite a decent choice. But there is always room for more! :-)

Motorsport aims to become the most "realistic simulation of wheeled vehicles". It's been going since 2003 so there's a lot of development history and it looks like it's got a bright future with several consistent developers moving it forward. It is unclear whether this will end up as a racing game or a stunts game or maybe just a generic driving game, but it looks fascinating and has lofty goals.

Stunts 2005 is a fan remake of the classic Stunts game from yester-year. To be fair, a lot of the FOSS driving games seem to take inspiration from Stunts aka 4D Sports Driving. Anyway, Stunts 2005 comes with it's own level editor but development seems to have halted after the initial release. Since I can't play it here I can't make any observation on how complete the game is.

Also worth noting is that the SuperTuxKart guys are working on another release that will include updated AI among other things, although updated physics I think are being pushed back to a subsequent release.

Blah blah blah holiday. :-)

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Hero of Allacrost

Hero of Allacrost

Hero of Allacrost is a Free single player 2D RPG game that's been in development for some time without any real release. Posted in the Wesnoth forums (rather than their own) is an update on the status of the game which is looking like it could see at least a playable demo release in the near future.

I must admit that after the initial flurry of activity that followed the initial talk about this game in late 2004 and early 2005, it seemed to have suffered the usual "my dream game" death that afflicts a lot of early start-up Free games. However it looks like the main developer(s) was patiently plugging away and congratulations on what looks like shaping up to be a fine game.

A while ago I mentioned Stunt Playground, a free stunt car racer game that was released under the GPL. Well, the same guy Walaber has released another freeware (not GPL) game - a rather cool looking 3D trampolining simulator called, er, Trampoline. Check out the website for screenshots and video links. Sadly it is Windows only.

Slightly off-topic, I was thinking about ways to make my Google ads campaign pay out a little better. I get ~250 (to ~300) views a day and make about $4 a month from this. I've been trying to redesign the site a little for a while. Breaking down the pages (i.e. have the games list on a separate page) might help as might presenting the posts as a summary linked to a separate article page. However my primary concern is not making money but presenting good information - i.e. I don't want people annoyed by ads or having to click too many times. Have we got any readers with good tips or advice? Site improvement ideas not releated to Google ads are welcome!

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