Game Bytes is our monthly series taking a peek at the world of gamedev on GitHub—featuring game engine updates, game jam details, open source games, mods, maps, and more. Game on!
Game news
Wizard simulator KeeperRL hits 1.0
After 11 years of development, KeeperRL is celebrating the big 1.0 and is now out of early access. Billed as “the ultimate evil wizard simulator,” KeeperRL is a roguelike base builder that lets you dig into the earth to expand your dungeon and build up to intimidate the countryside with a fortress. The 1.0 release introduces minor villains, new workshops, new items, and many other improvements. So, tent your fingers evilly and check out KeeperRL on Steam.
HaxeFlixel port of Canabalt 🏃🏻♂️🏢
Canabalt has returned to the web! @AdamAtomic‘s 2009 Flash game didn’t invent the endless runner genre: it set it on fire. While it has remained available on various other platforms, it’s back in your browser with an official port by @ninjamuffin99. He tells us that it’s a very faithful port, since it was built with HaxeFlixel, a descendant of both Flash’s ActionScript and Canabalt‘s original Flixel framework. Start your daring escape now, or check out the source on GitHub.
Megacity Metro struts Unity’s stuff
The Unity team has released Megacity Metro, a demo for building a game in Unity with a little bit of everything: large scale multiplayer, cross-platform clients, prediction netcode, and server-authoritative gameplay. The open source demo is an interesting peek behind the curtain. If a game uses a lot of what Unity has to offer, what does it look like? Megacity Metro is one impressive answer. Head over to the project site or repo to learn more.
Return to Area 51
Classic first-person shooter Area 51 was originally released in 2005 for Playstation 2, Xbox, and Windows. The preservationists of Project Dreamland have since shared source code “found at a garage sale of a former THQ developer.” Work is now ongoing to see if the game can be built and run on modern systems. Get yourself ready to pay a visit to “Groom Lake” by checking out the project on GitHub.
Engine watch
Defold 1.7
Defold, the all-in-one cross-platform game engine and editor, has shipped version 1.7. Defold 1.7 includes a new API for converting world to local coordinates, getting and setting sprites’ vertex attributes, and many bug fixes. There’s much more to the release, but you’ll have to read the Defold 1.7 release notes to get all the details.
Mods, maps, tools, and more
The Mirror
The Mirror is an all-in-one game development environment, built atop Godot Engine. The no/low-code engine and editor promises to help you “edit a game with friends in real-time.” The project just went open source on March 15. Read the announcement, then head over to the repo to get started.
Discord Embedded App SDK in developer preview
Discord has unveiled a new embedded app SDK. Now in a preview, developers will be able to create multiplayer games and other social activities in an
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