COMMUNITY Free Software Projects An up-to-date overview of free software and its makers Projects on the Move Even admins get bitten by the gaming bug. Frets on Fire lets you train for an air guitar competition. Or try the free business simulation clones Transport Tycoon, Simutrans, or OpenTTD. BY CARSTEN SCHNOBER hen future historians look back five function keys, playing chords is ac- part of Guitar Hero can rehash the music on our civilization, they might tually quite intuitive. files for use with Frets on Fire. To access Wfind it difficult to explain the The notes you must hit are gleaned the songs from the commercial game, the phenomenon of rock fans playing air gui- from the tune of a rock song chosen program’s internal import function sim- tar accompanied by dance-like moves. when you launch the game. Unfortu- ply needs an Ogg Vorbis encoder. De- With air guitar enthusiasts in mind, a nately, copyright restrictions prevent the pending on your CPU, the computation- group of Finnish programmers developed game from using popular hits; instead, ally expensive process might take a cou- software that provides guidance and the open source community has donated ple of hours to complete. training in a kind of tongue-in-cheek air hundreds of self-composed songs that The development team comprises pro- guitar competition. any virtual guitar hero is bound to enjoy. grammers from a range of disciplines. The developers, going by the name Un- The main programmer, Sami Kyöstilä, is Frets on Fire real Voodoo, are not the first to have im- an information technologist and is re- Frets on Fire [1] (Figure 1) brings preci- plemented air guitar mastery in software. sponsible for 3D graphics; game play is sion to your air chords by replacing the RedOctane [2] published part 1 of its Gui- the responsibility of Joonas Kerttula; and air guitar with a computer keyboard. tar Hero video game back in 2005, using Tommi Inkilä contributes the musical The main menu even reveals a set of rec- its own pseudo–guitar-styled device as a parts. Although the graphics and sound ommended poses. controller. As a commercial manufacturer, features of various operating systems ac- Keys F1 through F5 simulate the RedOctane included popular songs from cess multimedia hardware in different strings on a guitar. In the 2D shooter rock legends of the past de- ways, the Python language genre, the player typically maneuvers an cades on the game gives the team a plat- object or character up and down and DVD. form-indepen- from side to side through a two-dimen- Users with dent ap- sional world with the goal of shooting the first or proach. attackers or moving around obstacles. In second Linux Frets on Fire, the player collects points by pressing the right keys at the right moment as notes rain down. However, the game doesn't simply copy old ideas. In fact, the creative use of the keyboard deserves praise: If you pick up the keyboard with both hands and place the fin- gers of your left hand so they touch the Orlando Florin Rosu, Fotolia Rosu, Florin Orlando 94 ISSUE 103 JUNE 2009 Free Software Projects COMMUNITY Figure 1: Frets on Fire picks up on the 2D shooter theme, but instead of blasting enemy space ships, the object is to hit the Figure 2: Simutrans lets the player set up a transport network to take right notes on an air guitar. people and goods to their destinations. users simply need an SDL-compatible 2) but withdrew from the project in chitecture; other packages send the play- sound card and an OpenGL graphics 2004, handing over development to a ers to monochrome worlds, or even to card; on Windows, the program relies on team of programmers. Mars. Makeobj, also available to down- DirectX. Frets on Fire also is available for Simutrans supports a full range of ve- load from the Simutrans page, gives you Mac OS X, and other Unix systems can hicles – planes, ships, trains, streetcars, scope for creativity by letting you add join in the fun if they have drivers for trucks, coaches – and the corresponding PNG files to create your own paks. the required hardware. infrastructure to transport passengers and goods. The game starts in the year OpenTTD Simutrans 1880 and will take you up to 2050, re- The OpenTTD project [4] (Figure 3) also The MicroProse computer game manu- flecting historical development by not is approaching a new release. Again, the facturer had the idea 20 years ago to cre- letting you use transport technologies software emulates Transport Tycoon, but ate virtual railway landscapes. In 1994, before they became available in the real the motivation for the project was the in- MicroProse released Transport Tycoon, world. Fueled by the progression of time effectual artificial intelligence in the origi- similar to Railroad Tycoon released four and influenced by the infrastructure set nal game that spoiled the fun for many years earlier, wherein a model railway up by the player or competitors, new in- gamers. However, the developers are fan became a railroad tycoon, set up a dustries arise and in turn create new quite happy to use the proprietary Trans- transport network, and did battle with goods that need to be transported. port Tycoon graphics. computerized competitors. Recently, developers have been modu- OpenTTD offers insights into artificial Now MicroProse has released both larizing Simutrans. The system platform intelligence programming. Beta version original versions as free downloads, but displays various graphics packages – 0.7 includes an AI interface, NoAI, that two other free projects are working to- called paks – onscreen that define the lets users integrate their own develop- ward not just emulating Transport Ty- game’s visuals and can also redefine the ments into the game. The API allows de- coon but improving it. In 1997, Hansjörg cost of certain means of transportation velopers a free choice of programming Malthaner created Simutrans [3] (Figure and goods or completely disable them. language, although the OpenTTD devel- The basic package, opers recommend Squirrel. Pak64, was created by OpenTTD and Simutrans are open to Malthaner and is the help, and both projects need translators. default package to Whereas OpenTTD focuses on artificial which new features are intelligence, Simutrans focuses on gam- added. For larger build- ing logic and visuals, providing some- ings and vehicles, you thing for anyone interested in game pro- should opt for Pak128, gramming. n recommended for high- resolution screens. INFO Also, the Simutrans [1] Frets on Fire: homepage offers nu- http:// fretsonfire. sourceforge. net merous add-on paks. [2] RedOctane: Some let you play in a http:// www. redoctane.com/ comic book world or in [3] Simutrans download: Figure 3: Like Simutrans, OpenTTD is a clone of the classic environments that re- http:// www. simutrans. com Transport Tycoon game and uses the graphics supplied with the flect Japanese, British, [4] OpenTTD: original game, but with a new artificial intelligence package. German, or Baltic ar- http:// www. openttd. org/ en/ JUNE 2009 ISSUE 103 95.