News about the game

Frozen-Bubble 2.2.0 is released to fix some more small bugs, and add a couple of minor to medium features. Highlights:

• more options in LAN/NET games (continue game when players leave; disable player targetting)
• fixed abort during a multiplayer game with a player in lowest graphics mode
• much faster Internet servers listing (parallel discovery)
• add ability to record and replay games; also add ability to save frames from records, so as to create high quality videos of games [ on youtube | video file ]
• geolocalized nicks in server lounge

After discussion with some Frozen-Bubble package maintainers, a friendly but firm suggestion was made to open a public repository containing the development effort of Frozen-Bubble; it's now done and available in the Downloads page.

A minor release is soon (a matter of months) to be expected. It will contain bug fixes, translation updates, and a much awaited "feature" (has much of a bugfix though): it will be possible to continue playing after somebody left.

Frozen-Bubble 2.1.0 is released to fix all the bugs encountered in 2.0.0 (all reported aborts should be fixed) and add a few interesting small features. Features highlights:

• 1-player multiplayer training: ability to activate chain reaction
• world map: you can view the amount of playing players, which helps chosing a server
• world map: you see playing players as green dots
• network game lounge: you can toggle fullscreen
• network game lounge: the game creator can activate chain-reaction and set a victories limit through options
• network game lounge: you can request server info
• network game lounge: chat is timestampped
• multiplayer: you can view who's attacking you

After a lot of hard work and a lot of testing, FB2 is released on 27th of October 2006. This new release brings the following new features:

• new 1-player game mode: multiplayer training; uses identical game rules as multiplayer, generated malus bubbles are counted as points - what score will you be able to reach in the 2 minutes time frame?
• network (Internet) game: up to 5 players in a game (net game system has logic able to transparently handle players behind a NAT)
• LAN game: similar to network game except that no connection to Internet is made, substituted by polling the local network
• fully revamped graphics, including now 3d-based smooth penguin eyecandy
• revamped intro and 1p music into fully digital productions
• full joystick support: just move your joystick(s) or push buttons in the "change keys" dialog (analog joysticks handled as digital for fair play)
• realtime graphical effects in the menu screen (if your computer is fast enough)
• anti-aliased and localized messages

Now let's pray for the stability of the Frozen-Bubble Internet game servers (check the top of the page which contains an ever-updated aggregate statistical information about all servers).

Enjoy the nice teaser video of next major version, done by Ayo with Blender.

www.dailymotion.com/video/xb7ws_frozenteaser320x240

We hope it's released before Duke Nukem Forever.

Matths remixed the 1P-game music with high quality addons including a live echoed guitar. Results are very nice as usual with Matths, and you can download this music by moving on to the music section. Enjoy the listening!

By the way, we are sorry but... Frozen-Bubble did it again.

Amaury Amblard-Ladurantie rewrote this website to be compliant with W3C standards. Thanks to him, the website is now more accessible, and more robust. You may want to visit W3C's website if you want to learn more about the importance of standard browsing.

You can notice that the image on the mainpage has been updated, and now includes a teaser with a screenshot of the upcoming network version. Now let's hope this pushes us to the release, for real this time.

Ah - and I forgot to tell: Frozen-Bubble won Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards last year (but unavailability of the article on the web made me choose not to write a news item about it).

Joe Barr dropped me a mail the other day, said he was preparing an article on Frozen-Bubble, asking me a few questions. It was cool and I was happy to answer them - and I just noticed today that the article is published.

I have to say that it's probably the more enjoyable article on Frozen I've ever seen, it's neat and to the point. And Joe even kept my praise of Pixel - check it at the end of the article.

After the Editors' Choice Award, now is time for also winning the Readers' Choice Award :).

In the meantime, I've finally received via snailmail the Editors' Choice plaque.

After being in 2002 one of the most freely-cited projects of the LinuxJournal Readers' Choice Awards, in 2003 Frozen-Bubble was entering the awards competition on an equality basis, by being an available choice in the Games category. And guess what... it won the award :).

Frozen-Bubble participated in the Trophes du Libre contest, a french-organized international free software competition. 116 projects entered the contest, 3 were nominated in each category, Frozen-Bubble was in the Games category.

I (gc) went in Soissons hoping to win first prize of Games category, unfortunately, Vegastrike did... congratulations to them! I was given a plastic trophy to heal my sorrow.

Glenn Sanson has rewritten Frozen-Bubble in Java. You can now play the 1p-game directly from within your browser, if it supports Java!

Daily news: a network-enabled version of Frozen-Bubble has greatly advanced, written by chl. Soon available in official Frozen-Bubble!

Almost exactly one year after the first ever release of Frozen-Bubble, the team strikes back with a new release providing major features enhancements:

• a level editor has been added
• the 1p-game now comes with 100 levels (instead of 50)
• all the graphics have been re-designed
• the 2p-game features the chain-reaction mechanism (as an option)

We hope you will enjoy this new release.

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