Archive for category Must Have Freeware
Retro Sound Effects Generator
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Must Have Freeware on March 4, 2008
I’ve been using this nice little program to generate the sound effects for Attack of the Meeplings
It’s very easy to use. Simply select a style, such as explosion, shoot, power-up etc.. and hit randomise a couple of times until you get the sound you like (or hit mutate if you only want a minor change.) You can also play around with all the parameters of the oscillator if you really want to understand the program in a little more depth.
The program is also open-source.
Freeware Game Highlight – Castle of the Winds
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Must Have Freeware on February 25, 2008
It’s been a while since I posted a free game, so I thought I’d mention the game that is largely responsible for inspiring Caverns of Underkeep
That game is Castle of the Winds – A graphical roguelike made by Rick Saada and published in 1989! That’s right, the game is nearly 20 years old, and guess what? It’s still fun and playable today.
Many roguelikes are complicated affairs with esoteric shortcut keys and a level of depth that can be hard for the newbie to fully grasp. Castle of the Winds (to my knowledge) was the first roguelike that bucked the trend in this regard and employed the new (at the time) windows 3.x interface to allow easier inventory management and provided buttons (as well as shortcut keys) to streamline the gameplay experience.
Castle of the Winds is a dungeon crawl at heart, there’s somekind of plot, but I forget what it is – Something about some bad guy doing bad or something?
You can get the full version of Castle of the Winds 1 and 2 from Rick Saada’s website
Additional Links
Read more about Castle of the Winds at Wikipedia
Read a 2007 interview with Rick Saada at Gamasutra
Freeware Game : Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Must Have Freeware on January 22, 2008
If you think the next installment of Caverns of Underkeep is taking too long – then you can blame it on Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw and his free Adventure / Space-sim Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment.
This game is a hybrid of sorts, with a well blended mix of genres that remind me just how cool some old-school adventure game hybrids really are. Favorites such as Superhero League of Hobokan and Quest for Glory (Both Adventure/RPG crossover games) rank very highly with me.
Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment is a comedy sci-fi – So if you loved the Space Quest series and want to have a bit of a chuckle at the many, many in-jokes and references to popular science fiction, including Star Trek and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and don’t mind a bit of interstellar trading to fund your adventures in space. Then I would highly recommend Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment.
Best of all, it’s completely free. And while you’re at it be sure to check out Ben’s other games too.
Freeware Game Highlight : Cave Story
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Indie Games, Must Have Freeware on December 17, 2007
I first heard about Cave Story probably about 6 months ago, and everyone was ranting and raving about how good it was – So I downloaded it, played it for 15 minutes, couldn’t work out what was so great about it and deleted it.
Then Matt from loose Leaf Games told me that it was one of the best recent gaming experiences he’s had. So I decided to give it another whirl.
Matt was right, I was wrong – Cave Story is *THE AWESOME* I didn’t even get out of the first cave the first time I tried it , but it soon picks up as a simply amazing adventure/platform game that is unapologetically retro to the days of 16 bit.
The controls are a little confusing at first so I’ll post them here. Press Z to jump and X to shoot (once you find the gun) and press the down arrowkey to interact with objects. You can also shoot in the up and down directions by holding that direction and firing. Run the DoConfig.exe to see some of the other controls.
It reminds me alot of two games I was rather fond of in my youth. Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Lord of the Sword.
Cave Story was developed entirely by one guy and took 5 years as he was just working on it part time. So I guess a sequel is a long way off? – Wikipedia has a good entry on Cave Story if you’d like to know more about the game.
It’s a small download at only 1 mb and will probably run on almost any computer you have lying around. You can read more about Cave Story and download the game from the Acid-Play website (which features quite a few freeware games) here.
Freeware Game Highlight : Dark Disciples
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Indie Games, Must Have Freeware on December 8, 2007
I’m having a bit of fun with an old school turn based RPG called Dark Disciples – I sure do like my turn-based games 
This game stands apart from the crowd of freeware RPGs, where most are either dull or only short demos that never actually get completed.
The interface is pretty good, and the NPC dialog is neither too wordy, nor are they just moving signposts (as in some console games that will go unnamed) parroting the same sentence over and over.
I’ve only been playing for about two hours, and the game seems a little hard at the moment. But you can save anywhere, and apparently the author has encouraged multiple pathways to solve puzzles, so maybe I’m just thinking a bit too much with my sword and not with my head.
If you like RPGs and don’t mind a bit of old school style give Dark Disciples a shot – Hey, it’s free.
Echoes
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Indie Games, Must Have Freeware on December 4, 2007
As well as being a song by Pink Floyd. Echoes is a totally cool freeware 2D shooter. Yesterday I posted that I was thinking about doing a 2D shooter for my project after Caverns, and Echoes has the exact control scheme I had in mind – which is good, because now I know it works
The controls are basically an updated version of Robotron which I’ve never actually played. Movement and directional fire are de-coupled from each other. You can either use the mouse for movement and the keys for directional firing or (my favourite) mouse for directional firing and keys for movement.
This game is very, very good. I usually rate 2D shooters by how many curse words come out of my mouth and Echoes gets a score of about 4 cwpm (curse words per minute) – I only wish it had a more relaxed mode, so you can kinda chill out for a bit longer before the difficulty ramps up. I also like the mini-tasks in the game like ‘get 150k points without moving’ and ‘get to level 7 without using any powerups’ which apparently unlock a bonus game. I haven’t got to unlock it yet, but I’m trying!
Lots of things to remember when I come to code my own shooter.
Must Have Freeware – Paint.Net
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Must Have Freeware on July 23, 2007
In what might become a series of posts, I would like to let everyone know about some really good freeware applications that could just make your life easier/better/more productive/land you more chicks.
The first application I would like to introduce is the image editing software Paint.Net
Paint.Net is very simple to use, if you’ve used any other graphics program you can just jump right in. It supports all the common tools and file formats that you would expect to see in what was originally developed as a “Better Microsoft Paint”. But it also has advanced features such as layers, unlimited undos, red-eye removal and many filters and effects.
It also loads up very quickly, and because of that has become my default image editor.
The program isn’t intended as a total replacement for Photoshop. But for the hobbist, student, webdesigner or indie game developer it should definately be added to your collection of tools.
There are also some interesting posts on Rick Brewster’s Blog where Rick mentions that Paint.Net is ‘profitable’. He doesn’t quantify exactly what ‘profitable’ means, Paint.net is after all a freeware program – but he does accept donations, and he does have ads on his website. Rick also views income from Paint.Net as supplementary to his day job, but from his posts it seems that we can infer there are people out there who will pay for a free service if they get value out of it.
I would also recommend browsing the Paint.Net Forums – particularly the tutorials section to get started with Paint.Net