World News

May 2008

• New competition at TIGSource by Pater Alf on 06.05.2008
  TIGSource is well known for having created some of the most interesting game development competitions during the last few years (e.g. the "B-Games Contest" or the "Video Game Name Generator Competition"). This time they started a "Procedual Generation Competition". Main goal is to develop a game which uses procedural content generation to create new content every time the player starts a game. Procedural content generation has been applied to video games forever to create random content and to reduce the space requirements for games. Roguelikes are a genre that generally depend on procedural generation for level creation. But all in all the concept is still relatively unexplored, and it could be applied creatively to every part of a game to do some really neat stuff! Competition will run from May 5th till June 2nd (around midnight). Visit TIGSource for further details and complete rules.
• April in retrospect By Chroelle by Chroelle on 06.05.2008
  Well once more a month has passed, and I figured that this time I would write the news. The site has been buzzing with background activities this last month, where lots of little bugs and annoyances have been fixed and removed. April was also the month where the sun finally came through the clouds in the northern parts of Europe (where most of our crew lives). This of course also means that with the sun out, everybod leaves their computers and hold their hands over their eyes, trying to shake the winter snowblindness off and adjust to a new warmer climate. This of course also means a natural drop in activity and we expect that after having panicked te firt year it happened. During summer people have other things to do than add games and post topics on their favourite forum. They go to the beach and on vacation and wait for the fall to hit with its freezing winds and wet days, that drag you back into the comfort of a cair shaped like...you...(lets stick to that word) and a...

April 2008

• TAGAP 2 in development by Maz on 23.04.2008
  TAGAP 2 is currently in pre-production. It will be released as freeware over the Internet for Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. TAGAP 2 has no release date just yet, but is currently scheduled to be finished in "lesser time than the original". There will be a highly improved game engine, a 2-Player co-op mode and a brand new full-length soundtrack from TAGAP's critically acclaimed musician Petja Heiskanen. You can read the whole press release here.
• GSoC - Student applications evaluated by Maz on 23.04.2008
  This year's Google Summer Of Code gained almost 7100 applications from 98 countries! I could call that a success. Google is funding amazing 1125 student's work, for 175 open source projects! It sounds like google really gives a hand to world of freeware :) What comes to gaming and games, here's the applications for The battle for Wesnoth and BZFlag: Wesnoth: -Developing the Formula AI System and using it to create smart and pluggable AI by Bartosz Waresiak, mentored by David White -Formula AI and Dynamic Scripting by Douglas Hains, mentored by Rosen -A new map editor with a focus on clean design and then new features by Tomasz Śniatowski, mentored by Mark de Wever -Wesnoth Statistics System by Mykola Konyk, mentored by RustyRussell So I am cautiously hopefull we'll see an enchanced AI in Wesnoth as well as an user friendly map editor. And for those who have hunger for fame, improved online statistics system sounds just too good. Hopefully these will be pulled...
• TrackMania Nations Forever by eMTe on 17.04.2008
  From official website: Read explanation of Florent Castelnerac, Director of Nadeo studio, here.
• Site Performance? by Maz on 15.04.2008
  Hi deeee Ho peeps! As many of you know, a while ago our host had problems with their database servers. It resulted CWF being almost totally down for a weekend. We did receive a formal 'we are sorry' email a few days after the incident, (and after we had emailed them and stated it quite clearly that we will not continue paying for service which is constantly in troubles...) Well, it seems CWF has been up after the problems with DB servers were solved, but somehow I have sensed some performance issues with the site recently. It may be due to my own ISP (Internet Service Provider) who's having problems, or then surftown's servers are still not quite Ok. The point in this babbling was following request: If you encounter problems with the CWF website, (broken downloads, pages not loading, blank pages, errormessages tc.) please drop me a mail at Mazziesaccount@gmail.com ( Naturally you can also drop me a mail if your download/browsing experience worked as expected :)...
• Mr. Robot available for free by Maz on 11.04.2008
  MoonPod made their award winning indie game "Mr. Robot" available for free. It can be exclusively found on GameTap. The story of "Mr. Robot": Asimov is a lowly service mechanoid aboard the interstellar colony ship Eidolon. Carrying hundreds of frozen human colonists to a new world. When the Eidolon's computer brain malfunctions, it falls to Asimov to undertake a perilous journey through the bowels of the massive ship to save his robot friends and the precious human cargo. Solve puzzles. Overcome obstacles. Hack hostile networks. Evade crazed robots. Save the mission.
• Engine for Radakan chosen by eMTe on 09.04.2008
  Radakan's developers announced that they've chosen new lead programmer, MomokoFan, and decided to use jME as the game's engine, in which Momoko is expertised. He's responsible for the very first tech demo of Radakan. Not much can be told from it, but at least now we have the proof that real production has started.
• Google Summer of Code 2008 by Maz on 09.04.2008
  Google Summer of Code is an event, where many talented students compete in dark art of programming. The event is built on idea where open source projects work as 'mentors', Eg. provide a project for students to participate. The best student applications will be rewarded with stipends to do the code. As google put it: "Flip bytes, not burgers". Unfortunately it's now too late to sign up for this year's GSoC, but it might be just right time to check out what GSoC is all about for years to come. What is more interesting for us, mere gamers, is that there's quite a bunch of freeware game or game development tool projects working as mentors. The Battle for Wesnoth, BZFlag, OGRE, tux4kids... just to name a few. Mentor projects will consider the students' applications for some time more, and accepted proposals will be announced at Monday, April 21, 2008. I am anxiously waiting for the results...
• Zak McKracken - Between Time & Space by Pater Alf on 02.04.2008
  The long awaited sequel to "Zak McKracken & the Alien Mindbenders", one of the most popular adventures of all times, will be out on April 19th 2008. The game contains over 50 high-quality locations, accompanied with athmospheric music and filled with numerous, lovely animations and challenging puzzles. There's also professional voice acting including some popular actors and synchron speakers from german television (as it is a german production there will only be german voice acting). Most of the story is still secret, but it is sure that we will meet the evil Caponians again.
• Quest to End All Quests by eMTe on 01.04.2008
  Strange Visitor Productions announced new AGS adventure game. Balder, bald, greybearded and suffering from arthritis hero, after finishing tons of quests (seventy two quests to be precise) decides to put an end to all this and sets off for his last journey. Goal: to find out what higher power persistently forces him to solve other people's problems, rescuing princesses and defeating evil creatures. Game will feature answers to some of eternal questions (like what happens when quest hero gets old), most likely loads of humour, detailed graphics and voice acting. From first post I can tell it is halfway done and since production started in November 2007 one can expect it will be finished this year. Read whole post in AGS forums.

March 2008

• Summary of march 2008 in Maz's point of view. by Maz on 31.03.2008
  March, a month I have always liked. A month when sun reaches northern Finland again, after long and cold period of darkness. Usually march makes me really feel alive again :) However at this year march was not pure joy. Our younger kiddo started to keep us awake at nights again, after good, decently slept two weeks. So I have not managed to do half of the CWF jobs I had planned. I have also been a bit down, due to a bad health of one of my close relatives. But let's focus to what has been done instead of dwelling what was not accomplished. GHs and chroelle have been busy again with finding, testing and adding games. I cannot do anything but wonder how can thy keep up the speed day after day. Thumbs Up! eMTe has also finally had the news section he wanted on CWF. I promised I'll try to do it during march, and I did it, it was still 10 minutes before april arrived to Finland when I fixed last 'showstopper class' bug :p I am anxiously waiting to be able to read about events of...
• CWF opened freeware news section by Maz on 31.03.2008
  Today the CWF - Quality Freeware Games launched Freeware News project, gathering and displaying events of freeware world! Our beloved member eMTe has promised to be the editor, and we all count on him what comes to finding out the relevant happenings. If you hear an interesting news/rumors (or are a developer planning something major), you can contact eMTe via our forums, and share your information with him. It may well be that your news will be spreaded to the world via CWF Freeware news! In case you wish to join the editors team, please contact eMTe. He has the full responsibility over the news section. Oh, and as it is always the case with new features, there may be bugs you spot. Please report them all in CWF BugTracker. And finally, the whole CWF community wishes you'll have good moments reading the news :) Enjoy! -Maz
• Tired. by Maz on 28.03.2008
  I am sorry for late and short message, which may not even reach half of you :( It is late in Finland, I had busy and lousy day at work, and I need to get up way too early - hence short message. Our host seems to be in troubles once again. The whole day the database server has experienced problems, and our site has been unavailable most of the day. I am a bit terrified since at last spring their database servers were overcrowded and down regularly... However I just wanted to tell you, that at this time I am not to blame :D (Usually it's my "Cool New Feature" which still contains even cooler bugs...) I cannot tell you how long this is expected to continue, I have not received any word from surftown regarding their problems. I hope Chroelle knows better, and if he doesn't, then we should ask... I feel it is stupid and frustrating to pay for service which does not work. (Although I am not paying at all, Chroelle handles all of that ;) ) Now.. Good Night anyways.
• Two new interviews up by Chroelle on 11.03.2008
  Well today I found some time and finally got around to adding two interviews I got in over a week ago. Look to your right and find the interviews of Adam Dawes - creator of Highway Pursuit, and Pieter Simoons - creator of Leylines. Go look them over. Both are worth a read over.

February 2008

• Summary of feb 2008 - Maz's point of view by Maz on 26.02.2008
  A month has passed since my last summary. Progress has once again been made :) chroelle has been busy with the interviews, and we have gained some nice ones. You should check those out. (links at right, and at top bar). While youre looking at those you should also notice a few new reviews written by Scythe. i do envy him, he really has the talent to write reviews! PaterAlf has been continuing his hard work with game validating and uploading, and eMTe has been tracking down good new titles and opened bunch of new request threads for those. All in all, people have really contributed A LOT! HUGE thanks to everyone! (also to all of you who I forgot to mention. Me forgetting you does not make your work less valuable, it just makes m,e to look even more stupid...) Personally I have been busy with my family once again. Both of my children were ill, my work schedule was just crazy (had to do some overtime work...) and so on. However I managed to try and do some minor things, like...
• Download Policy Liberated =} by Maz on 20.02.2008
  Hi dee Ho peeps! Due to the request from our community, we have today started a test period. We do no more require registration in order to download games we host. There were many good reasons represented, and personally what mattered for me most was that forced registration is somewhat against the spirit of freeware. You can read the discussion here: http://curlysworldoffreeware.com/viewtopic.php?p=23163#23163 Why only a test period you may ask. Or you may ask what the test period means. We had (at least) 2 reasons for forcing registration. Firstly we hoped that could lure people to join in our forums. We did like the idea of wide community :) I know it is somewhat twisted to try forcing people to be our friends, but hey, that has been proven working on many other sites :D Secondly I am a bit afraid of how our servers can handle the unlimited downloads... Our well liked admin Chroelle has to pay the server bills, and he's not even now able to cover the expences by...
• Oh yeah, and one more by Chroelle on 16.02.2008
  Well I forgot to write here (I wrote other places) that we also got the interview with Mark Pay (developer of The Spirit Engine amongst others). It can also be viewed on your right.
• The New Satan Sam interview by Chroelle on 14.02.2008
  I got a mail today with all the answers from James Whiteheads interview. James made the game The New Satan Sam, which is one of this writer's favourite games in here, and I haven't even finished it yet. Go read the interview on your right, and be enjoyed. Time and effort was put into this. ;D
• Short Summary of JAN 2008 at Maz's point of view :) by Maz on 04.02.2008
  Hi dee Ho again peeps. Busy year it has been this far. As Chroelle mentioned, I've had my second son just before christhmas. Unfortunately the newborn does not sleep too well, and because my older son is awake at daytime, I and Milla (my wifey) do not sleep too much. I must admitt it has affected on how these sites are being developed, I've done no big improvements or features lately. Well, because of that, it is soooo goood to tell you that others have been/are active :) This site is going onwards, and we have more to offer for you at daily basis :) We have now approx 178 games for download - all of which have been played by our GameHunters squad. Huge thanks to all game hunters (and Chroelle). We have also got few reviews, and are hoping to get some more. And even though the number of reviews is quite limited at the moment, we do at least have ok descriptions for all games we host. We do also have a topic open for all games ever suggested to be hosted on our site. And if...

January 2008

• Screenshots loading slowly. by Maz on 23.01.2008
  Today I did clean of our cached screenshots due to some changes I did in the site's code. Thus it may take a while longer to load our screenshots than it did a while ago. I am sorry about that. However after a screenshot is loaded from our site first time, the created image is cached, and at next time the page should load faster. -Maz
• Prodigal interview up by Chroelle on 14.01.2008
  Well we finally got the Prodigal interview up as promised. Go read about the game making process of this mindtingling thriller game. Psychological terror for free! See our interviews on the right.

December 2007

• Merry Christmas by Chroelle on 23.12.2007
  I simply wanted to sum up sometings and wish you all a very merry christmas. This year we have grown considerably. We have gotten more members, up to 400 more visitors a day. We have added more than 100 games and gotten started on our interviews. All in all I hope that 2008 will bring us just as much fun, development and cammeraderi, as this year has. I would like to thank all members here for their participation in making our site so great! So once more I wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND IF I DONT GET TO WRITE IT - A HAPPY NEW YEAR. May it be the first of many celebrated here on CWF.
• Bug fixed (and bug found) and interview up by Chroelle on 18.12.2007
  Well we have now corrected the issue with the developers mailadresses, so in the future remember to switch out the with a @. We have also gotten a few more games added to the site since the last newssegment. After digging deep into some issues we had with the newsletter it suddenly dawned on us that only 30 members of this site had actually received it. We will try to get a X-mas edition out but we might risk having to push this one forward. ON THE POSITIVE SIDE WE CAN TELL YOU THAT MAZ (ADMIN) BECAME A DAD ONCE MORE RECENTLY, AND EVERYONE AT CWF CONGRATULATES HIM! Please also notice that the interview with Hurricans lead-developer Jörg Winterstein is up. Look to your right.

November 2007

• Developers emails by Chroelle on 26.11.2007
  We are currently expiriencing some problems with developer emails. We are trying to make them junk-mail-proof, so they will appear with an instead of the classic @. Unfortunately we hit a little trouble while converting them, so they are currently non-functional. We are at the same time correcting some errors in our gamedatabase, so please report any errors or bugs you come across in the feedback forum. We would like to hear from you so we can get the best site possible. I can also report that we are getting a steady increase in members and visits a day, so it seems we are finally on the move to bigger things. Come support your local freeware gamesite, not financially but by lending us your help with anything you an really. CWF is always hiring. :D