Tremulous
Chris introduced me to a pretty cool game called Tremulous. Its a free and open source, team-based first person shooter. The game features two teams, humans and aliens, and the aim is to build and protect a base. I am not sure I quite got the hang of it, I managed to shoot and kill Jack, who happened to be on my team….oops.
Tremulous is licensed under the GPL, although it includes code from other projects that was released under other GPL-compatible licenses. Most of the game media is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
The release of the game as free and open source software has meant that programmers can modify the game and game engine. This has meant that a growing number of players are releasing patches for the game in order to remove bugs, add features to the game or modify the game play itself.
Its well worth a look. I am going to need a bit more practice I think.
Second Life viewer available under GNU GPL
January 15, 2007 by Chris · Leave a Comment
The Second Life Viewer source code has been released under the GNU General Public License, the most well known and widely used [[Free_software]] License. Read the press release. I haven’t had a really close look at the code, at a glance it looks like you would have to install some non-free software to build the client or disable the sound. Its tempting to build it but I think I’ll wait a while, someones likely to build an Ubuntu package though I’m not sure they’ll be able to distribute it. You can download Second Life binaries free of charge and play it online for Mac OSX and windows, the Linux client is still alpha. I’ve used 2 previous versions of the Linux client and they seemed fine so if the thought of compiling source code isnt your thing then download that version.
Wikipedia: [[Second_Life]]
Second Life (abbreviated SL) is an online virtual world provided by Linden Lab which came to international attention in late 2006 and early 2007. Through a client program, subscription-based users interact with other users through avatars, providing an advanced social network service.
While SL is referred to as a game, it, in general, does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. Users, who are often called “Residents” amongst themselves, explore, meet other users, participate in individual and group activities or “events”, buy items, virtual property and services from one another. Long-term users learn new skills and mature socially, climbing a virtual hierarchy.
In Second Life, some people earn a living, some big companies have their own islands and hold global conferences, you can wander around and run into well known celebrities and Harvard Law School offers portions of its course in the virtual world. Read the [[Second_Life]] article on Wikipedia for more information and statistics.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the use of virtual environments in education some of them use dungeons and dragons escapist fantasy MMORPG’s, Second Life is better than that, rather then assembling your gang of undead necromancers and troll warriors to go slay the elf godess for her +50 charisma breastplate and hoard it from your guild members, you do cool stuff like create things and add value to the world.
For people that follow Planet TALO you will have seen that Jokay has been actively exploring the use of Second Life in education for quite some time now so make sure you visit her blog and check out her research. She’s developed some really interesting activities and built up an area for training.