0 A.D. Alpha 25, the very impressive free and open source RTS is closing in on the next release and it's entering a Feature Freeze soon to focus on stability. The last release back in February took a very long time, partly as some major internal upgrades were done so now they're hoping to be a bit more regular.

In June they're proposing to enter Feature Freeze, to then focus on bug fixes. So what to expect from the upcoming 0 A.D. Alpha 25? In a blog post they noted a few new features coming:

• Single Player Campaign Support:
  The ability for 0 A.D modders to create their own single player campaigns will be added. Alpha 25 will only include the base functionality for this with full campaigns scheduled to be added in later iterations.
• Improved Multiplayer Responsiveness
  A technical improvement that players may ‘feel’ rather than see, this is another progressive improvement step to smoothing out multiplayer gameplay and enhancing unit pathfinding. Before commands in multiplayer were processed twice per second, now five times like in single player.
• Ongoing Balancing Changes
  Numerous changes to balance of the game by way of micro adjustments to various civilisations, buildings, and units.

Head over to their wiki and you will see there's quite a bit more including better animal AI behaviour, domestic animals will flee when attacked, structures can be toggled to auto-produce units, improvements to tutorial and random maps text and more.

I actually played a bunch of it recently and wow - it sure has come a very long way. Reminds me of the early days of Age of Empires but free and open source.

Check it out on the official site .

Two interesting projects we've not covered here before are UltraStar Deluxe and the newer UltraStar Play, both open source games aimed at karaoke fans. You've likely somewhere heard of SingStar, an exclusive PlayStation series. Sadly, it was shut and so it's mostly lost. Thankfully though, as usual, open source to the rescue!

UltraStar Deluxe has been going for a while now, with an aim to create a similar experience. It's been going strong but there hasn't been a release of it since 2020 and going by the GitHub page, not much development activity for the last year either.

Another more recent project appearing is UltraStar Play , which we're told is "the youngest of UltraStar games, currently in development and available for desktop (including Linux) and mobile (Android already available, iOS planned)" and that in response to SingStar shutting "UltraStar Play fills this gap by allowing everyone to create their own sing-along version of songs. And it removes the need to buy USB-microphones via the Companion App such that you can use a regular smartphone as mic (see the Companion App).".

It's not pretty but it does the job.

Note: while UltraStar Play is open source, the project itself relies on the proprietary Unity game engine.

It's not finished but it's perfectly usable and should be fun enough to get a party going. With the UltraStar Play Companion , you only need a phone to use as your microphone so it's quite cleverly thought-out.

Short on time and want to try something new? It's Free Game Monday™! Come check out Fate of Dynasty which is open source. Originally created for the Global Game Jam 2021, it was created over 48 hours and shows a great example of what a small team can do.

"Fate of Dynasty is a short lore exploration puzzle game inspired by walking simulators such as Gone Home, Dear Esther, and Layers of Fear. Figure out how to perform the ritual to put an end to the tyranny of the ruling dynasty."

Watch video on YouTube.com

Check it out free on itch.io , Steam and the source code is under the MIT license on GitHub .

Wine, that glorious bit of tasty open source software has a new 6.8 development release now available.

For newer readers and Linux users here's a refresher - Wine is a compatibility layer built for operating systems like Linux, macOS and BSD. The idea is to allow other platforms to run games and applications only built and supported for Windows. It's also part of what makes up Steam Play Proton . Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

Here's the highlights of what's new in this release:

• Libraries installed into architecture-specific subdirectories.
• Secur32 library converted to PE.
• Support for Map object in JavaScript.
• Various bug fixes.

Also of note are 35 bugs marked as solved. As per usual: some are bugs being fixed now, some were fixed a while ago and recently got noticed as actually being sorted. Some of the improved items include: Crysis Wars, The Sims Complete Collection, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, FIFA 11, Age of Empires II, Sacred Gold, Diablo 1, Star Citizen and more.

For the full bottle ingredients see the release notes .

Like a good bottle of wine - software and my puns improve with time. I never miss my winedow of opportunity. Please email all complaints to winepuns@gamingonlinux.com.

Developer Eric Engestrom has announced the availability of Mesa 21.1, the latest release for Linux open source graphics drivers powering Intel, AMD and more.

In the very short announcement , Engestrom mentioned Mesa will now be back to regular releases with a point release for bug fixes "every other week" which will see Mesa 21.1.1 on May 19. If you want stability, it's usually best to wait for at least that first point release.

As for what's new, as expected there's quite a lot including: RADV (AMD Vulkan driver) Variable Rate Shading, lots of RADV optimizations, Zink (OpenGL over Vulkan) saw a lot of expanded progress to bring it up to scratch and many smaller features and added hardware support.

See more about Mesa on the official site . How soon you get an update will be distribution dependent. Arch pulls it in quite quickly, while the likes of Ubuntu would need a PPA added like the kisak-mesa fresh PPA .

A fresh biweekly development release is out for the Windows compatibility layer Wine with Wine 6.2 bundling up more of the latest and greatest into a suitable release for you to try.

For newer readers and Linux users here's a refresher - Wine is a compatibility layer built for operating systems like Linux, macOS and BSD. The idea is to allow other platforms to run games and applications only built and supported for Windows. It's also part of what makes up Steam Play Proton . Once a year or so, all the development is bundled into a stable release.

Here's what's new in Wine 6.2:

• Mono engine updated to version 6.0.0, with DirectX support.
• Support for NTDLL debugger APIs.
• More WinRT support in WIDL.
• Xbox One controller fixes on Mac.
• Various bug fixes.

On the subject of bug fixes they noted 51 as solved, one of them dating back to 2007 - although a lot of older bugs were fixed some time ago, each release sees them noted as solved since being checked over. Some of the newer fixes include: Game Protect Kit protected games fixes, World of Tanks, Hitman: Absolution, Ryse: Son of Rome, Shadow Warrior 2, WRC 5 and multiple more.

See the release notes here .

OpenTTD, the free and open source simulation game based upon Transport Tycoon Deluxe is officially coming to Steam on April 1, and the Linux build will be available too.

Another fine example of a brilliant open source project! Based upon Transport Tycoon Deluxe, a business simulation game in which players earn money by transporting passengers and cargo via road, rail, water, and air. It's entirely free and doesn't need the original game as it has a full graphics replacement too but it can work with the original data files if you have them. This is a fully-featured game and it's popular.

Just a few of the enhancements it has over the original:

• bigger maps (up to 64 times in size)
• stable multiplayer mode for up to 255 players in 15 companies, or as spectators
• dedicated server mode and an in-game console for administration
• IPv6 and IPv4 support for all communication of the client and server
• in game downloading of AIs, NewGRFs, scenarios and heightmaps
• new pathfinding algorithms that makes vehicles go where you want them to
• autorail/-road build tool, improved terraforming
• canals, shiplifts, aqueducts
• larger, non-uniform stations and the ability to join them together
• mammoth and multi-headed trains
• different configurable models for acceleration of vehicles
• clone, autoreplace and autoupdate vehicles
• the possibility to build on slopes and coasts
• advanced/conditional orders, share and copy orders

The team had a few packaging troubles as getting a game up on Steam has a more involved process compared to direct downloads. Partly due to the Steam Linux Runtime being based on older libraries, which caused issues with the way the OpenTTD team automate their builds. Thankfully, after some discussion and others getting involved they found a way around it and so we can expect it on Linux at the Steam release on April 1. I've tested it myself from the Steam build and it works perfectly on Ubuntu 20.04 and Arch Linux.

Since it will no doubt be asked: why download on Steam anyway when it's been available in Linux distributions for years? The point is extra exposure, opening it up to even more people to see it and enjoy it!

Follow OpenTTD on Steam or download right now from the official site .

In need of a new fun physics sim? How about one that's free, open source and can be played in multiplayer? Rigs of Rods might be what you're after and they have a new release.

What actually is it? Rigs of Rods is a free/libre soft-body physics simulator mainly targeted at simulating vehicle physics. The soft-body physics system is based on mass-spring-damper theory. It's pretty much a sandbox vehicle playground, one you setup yourself with trucks, cars, cranes, boats, bridges, aeroplanes and much more.

Not the most beginner friendly game, with it needing plenty of modding and configuration to get it where you want it but it seems like a nice option for some physics amusement. As it turns out, we've never written about it here, despite it being around since at least 2005 - madness!

Watch video on YouTube.com

Seems the team has been busy since the last release over a year ago, with a major new release landing on February 2, 2021. Quite a lot is included too, and much like Pioneer (another open source sim), they've moved their UI system over to the popular Dear ImGui . Now they have a modern UI system in place, it should be a lot easier to tweak it and work with it.

Not only that though, here's a bunch of what else is new:

• Major cleanup of the codebase
• Upgraded the translation system to work with popular Weblate
• A new Quake-style console variable system
• Vehicle speedometer will now be based on wheel speed rather than vehicle speed
• Added the ability to configure the blinker lock range
• Added the ability to toggle hydro speed coupling
• Added support for OS-specific input mapping
• Added a game controls information panel
• Added thrust reversal for aircrafts
• Added the ability to individually remove vehicles
• Updated Xbox 360/One controller and G29 wheel input maps, added wireless PS4 controller input map

Plus the usual assorted bug fixes.

Find it on the official site and download it easily from itch.io .

As impressive as it is, hopefully someone will be able to hook up a good introduction / tutorial for new players getting into it. While it's been around a long time and there's beginner guides out there, having something in game for people to follow would really help.

Pioneer is another classic example of a long-running free and open source game doing well, with a brand new release up that overhauls plenty of important parts.

The Pioneer 2021-02-03 release has been a year in the making and implements their new UI system built on top of the powerful and open source ImGui . They also mentioned vastly improved combat with some aim assist, better trading, you can now actually rotate the camera with the middle mouse button for better camera control and plenty more.

Here's what else is new and you can see just how much went into it:

• New ship: Skipjack Courier from OKB Kaluri ( #4871 )
• New model: Escape pods (initially only to be scooped up, not purchasable) ( #4877 )
• Improve combat targeting by adding aim assist for player weapons ( #5037 )
• Complete overhaul of commodity prices, to be similar to Frontier ( #4831 )
• Redesign System and Sector Map View layouts ( #4852 )
• NewUI is dead, long live PiGui! ( #5032 )
• More lively station traffic control communications ( #4987 )
• Ship-specific atmospheric pressure limits ( #4958 )
• Add surface impact alerts #4891
• Captains log added ( #4795 )
• Show background stars in system view ( #5068 )
• Show surface starports in system view ( #5060 )
• Significantly reduce savefile sizes ( #5075 )
• New BBS advert for soldout commodity ( #5059 )

That's only what they consider to be major, there's a huge amount of smaller fixes and improvements across the whole game including a new unified colour theme and new icons, stars on the map showing up as bigger and brighter depending on their actual size in space, translation improvements and so on.

See more on the official site .