Hello, open gaming fans! In this week's edition we look back at all of the news and stories in 2014 that we covered for open source and Linux games!
Gaming hardware
We've covered quite a bit on this topic in 2014. We started the year with OpenPandora, which further opened its hardware by releasing its designs. We looked at the Oculus VR, who acquired and open sourced their networking engine, and later in the year they released a software development kit. The Raspberry Pi is on the list, with emulating retro OSs. And we covered a few controllers, like the one from Steam, the Microduino-Joypad, and Gamebuino: an 8-bit 'maker movement' Arduino console.
Open source and Linux games
We continued to see an increase of games available on Linux, especially on Steam, but also by other distributors and native Linux games.
Once in a while, we stumbled upon true open source games. The first one we covered was Open source OpenXcom v1.0. And of course, we can't leave out the FOSS ChuChu Rocket clone we've all been waiting for. And, Google released the free and open source game Pie Noon to the Google Play Store in order to highlight multiplayer-gaming for the Nexus Player, an Android TV device.
Start your open gaming engines!
Games need an engine to run on, and this year we saw a few of them released. The first one was Game Develop, the easy-to-use, no-programming game engine, which failed to fund its Indiegogo campaign back in May, and is now open source. Unity, another well-known engine in the gaming world, opened up and released its source code. We also looked at Chukong Technologies who launched Coco2d-x game engine.
Platforms: Ouya and Valve, Steam
OUYA, an open source gaming console, was in the news a few times this year. We covered OUYA asking its players to become makers, and OUYA had hit 1000 games and counting in November in 2014. Steam celebrated its second birthday on Linux and made the news again just recently, with Valve taking on Twitch with Steam Broadcasting. Steam Broadcasting makes it possible to live stream your games.
Other remarkable gaming news
Just because it was fun, interesting or even remarkable, we covered some other gaming news. The first was DARPA who created games to aid open source software testing. "One of the games, Circuit Bot, lets players create robots to run missions in space." And Konami Code Necklaces for sale on Etsy! Plus, Minecraft's intention of open sourcing the game but selling it instead to Microsoft. We also covered a story on Youth Digital, a group who teaches kids how to make games with open source tools and MIT who offers a MOOC on game design.
Thanks for joining us this year for our new open source and Linux weekly roundup. We look forward to continuing to bring it to you in 2015!
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