No joke: this is FreeDroidRPG's monthly progress report for March! Some of the more notable changes made throughout the month:

Programming department

• The Network Mapper in-game program has been added, replacing the unused Satellite Image program: It displays all the enemies on the current level on the automap for a short time. Remember, you need to have the automap enabled and turned on (default key TAB) to use the skill! Thanks to Miles McCammon.
• Through many changes to the code and much replacing of functions, performance and visuals in SDL mode are now fully on par with those of OpenGL mode. Thanks to Samuel Pitoiset and Arthur Huillet.

Graphics department

• The shotgun weapons now fire actual shotgun shells with pellets and spread. Thanks to Infrared.

Writing department

• Content was added to various signs throughout the game, by Matthias Krüger.
• John, a new character, has been added as well as a puzzle game involving teleporters. Thanks to Matthias Krüger.
• Some characters will now speak in a slightly different manner if the player is followed by the Red Guard. Thanks to Thor and Joseph.

Among the smaller changes are:

• The automap now updates when obstacles are destroyed; exits and entrances to underground levels are now displayed in yellow on the automap. By Miles McCammon.
• Unaffordable prices in shops are displayed in red, by Miles McCammon.
• A bug that caused obstacles not to be displayed on some operating systems was fixed, thanks to fluzz.
• It is now possible to take screenshots within the game, so don't hesitate to snap a few pictures and show the world the beauty of the game, or show any problems you encounter to the devs. Thanks to Miles McCammon.
• Heating for most in-game programs has been increased slightly, by Matthias Krüger.
• The frames in Tux's (the player model) animation are no longer reset when crossing a level border. Thanks to Józef Kucia.
• It is now possible to cycle between items on the same tile, like obstacles, in the editor.
• More behind-the-scenes changes for devs and contributors.

All in all 245 changes were committed.

That was March; as always, we want to thank every contributor, and call out to anyone else who wants to add or change something in the game to send in a patch to rb.freedroid.org.

-The FreeDroidRPG Team

FreedroidRPG has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2011.

If you are a student looking for an exciting project for the summer, there are many opportunities as part of Summer of Code, and FreedroidRPG is proud to present as many as 7 project ideas you can apply for!

Our organization profile describes all you need to know to be able to join.

Hello, and welcome to FreedroidRPG's first monthly progress report! Here we will try to give a short summary of the most notable features that were added throughout the month, as well as notable bug fixes. Let's get started:

Programming department

• A new way of commanding your army of take-over droids is available: Multi-Bot Broadcast. Now you can issue one command to all of your droids that are on the same map level, making management of a large number of bots much simpler. Again, thanks to Miles McCammon.
• Pedro Arana added different item qualities: each item can come in either good, normal or bad condition.

Graphics department

• Tux, the player model, has gone through a makeover, courtesy of Infrared: it is now taller, more handsome and more plump. Furthermore, new types of animations are now supported for different types of weapons.
• A new droid model, the Lawnmower, was recently added. Though seemingly cute and benign, it is known to be quite ferocious when angered, so... Keep off the grass!

Mapping department

• Slasher Mountains and the Worker mines, the levels south of the town, have been remapped by Xenux.
• The swamp has been retouched and finished by Matthias Krüger.

Writing department

• A new character, Will Gapes, has been added to the Hell Fortress with its own quest, by Kurtis Evan and Miles McCammon.
• Kevin's lawnmower now has a quest associated with it, thanks to Matthias Krüger.

A multitude of other, smaller changes have also been made this month:

• Breakable brick and glass walls (yes, we have that feature!) are now clickable and are highlighted when pointed at.
• When the player is invisible NPCs will not initiate a converation, as well as when the player has already initiated a converation.
• A materials tab has been added to the add-on crafting UI, specifying how much of each material the player has and how much is required to craft the add-on, by Pedro Arana.
• C-net, the town's community network, is now horribly meme-aware. Don't be tempted to run any programs you might find on it, or you might never be given up... Thanks to Matthias Krüger.
• Various performance improvements by Samuel Pitoiset.
• A bug with the configure script that linked to a SDL_mixer library, even if it doesn't exist, was fixed, by Alexander Solovets.
• Laser bullets are now faster (it is the speed of light, after all), by Matthias Krüger.
• Many spelling and grammar errors, as well as other linguistic unacceptabilities have been corrected in the dialogs; thanks to Miles McCammon, Matthias Krüger, and JK Wood.
• Many behind-the-scenes changes to make the developers' and contributors' lives easier.

All in all, 247 changes were committed.

That sums up February; we wish to thank everyone who has contributed, and urge anyone else who wants to change something to send a patch to rb.freedroid.org. Who knows, maybe you'll even find your name here!

-The FreeDroidRPG Team

If you have an Intel graphics chip, and are running a recent version of the drivers such as Mesa 7.9 or Mesa 7.10, you will probably experience a very high memory usage of the game, followed by abrupt crashes due to the system being out of memory.

This is the result of a problem inside the driver. Newer versions of the Linux kernel such as 2.6.38 will make the problem disappear, but if you are running an older kernel version than this you will need to apply the workaround described below.

Workaround: disable texture tiling. Install the tool "driconf", start it, and set "texture tiling" to "false".

This bug ticket contains more information.

A serious bug was found in FreedroidRPG 0.14, that would in some rare cases corrupt the savegames. FreedroidRPG 0.14.1 fixes this and improves Kevin's dialog.

Savegames from 0.14 will be compatible in most cases, but if you encounter breakage either on the map or when talking to Kevin, send the .shp and the .savegame by mail to this address to get it manually fixed.

The Microsoft Windows .exe file in the original package had a problem. The package has been remade and called _freedroidRPG-0.14.1_build2-win32.zip_. For those who downloaded the original package, an updated .exe file is available at the same place, it is called _freedroidRPG-0.14.1_build2-win32.exe.zip_.

Download FreedroidRPG.