(Octocat is happy!)

We finally managed to create a repository on github!

Furthermore the game has been ported to the new version of SFML2.0 and should compile with it now. Although we didn’t find the time to implement any new features, we hopefully can manage to get some hours free to build in fancy stuff.

In the meantime feel free to fork the project and play around with the code. We are looking forward to receiving newly implemented features!

A lot of thanks to all of you who still play the game and keep sending feedback and inspiration!

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Due to some bugs in version 0.7.3 it was necessary to release a new version of M.A.R.S.

The following evil insects have been removed from the game:

• The special FireWall is now selectable when cycling through the specials in both directions.
• The weapon Insta in Grave-Itation Pit works correctly now.
• Damage numbers are displayed again on local player’s ships.
• WT-Flamer does damage.

Go ahead to the DOWNLOAD SECTION!

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After a long period of absence we finally managed to provide you a new release of M.A.R.S.! In order to abbreviate the time of waiting for networking, we decided to implement some little features you can try and have fun with.

Feature Overview

New Special!

We built in a new source of incredible evilness: the Shocker! This electrifying thingy provides the power to smash your enemies (and friends) with mighty-looking bolts.

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New Weapon!

Now you can use the elementary force of water by equipping the H2OMG! With its enormous mass of bubbling bubbles it is the perfect weapon for those who want to get rid of every foe in sight.

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Note: You probably have to enable the Shocker and the H2OMG in the weapons menu to use them in game.

New Languages!

Two new translations arrived us within the last months, namely Dutch, Mongolian and Norwegian, summing the total amount of supported languages up to 19. Thanks to all the translators (Carlo von Ranzow, Team Gaval and IGLO.no)!

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New Game Option!

It is now possible to regulate the game speed manually! You can find a new entry in the Gameplay tab of the options menu. Have fun playing M.A.R.S. at different speed levels!

Bugfixes:

• The balancing of the weapons has been improved.
• Little spelling mistakes in some translations have been corrected.
• Through the use of a more recent sfml-version some things work better now (e.g. plug and play of gamepads while the game is already running).

Let’s go ahead to the DOWNLOAD SECTION!

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Thanks a lot, Team GaVaL!

It’s in SVN, so feel free to try it out!

Nevertheless we try to have an eye on everything that influences our game, such as some bug fixes in SFML.
Furthermore a new translation arrived: Thai. Thanks to Manoch!

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Therefore we decided to provide a new release that includes this beatiful language and improved features of SFML.

The most important thing related to M.A.R.S. is probably the fix of the well known “ATI-bug“, which made it quite hard to run M.A.R.S. under Windows with an ATI graphics card installed. In consequence the provided workaround is obsolete.

You can download the new version here.
Currently the Windows version, the generic Linux version and, of course, the ppa contain the new release. All other packages hopefully will follow soon.

Have fun with M.A.R.S. 0.7.2!

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This version now contains M.A.R.S. 0.7.1 and should run on both, 64 bit and 32 bit machines under MacOSX 10.6. He is still working on support for 10.5.

(Money must be funny in a rich man’s world!)

You soon will be able to buy cool items to show off your close friendship to M.A.R.S.!
With this post we want to introduce some of them to you, please feel free to give any feedback in the comments.

The T-Shirt

Unique in shape and color choice, this piece of clothing will suit you like a born space fighter!
With high quality material it should survive all GREAT WARS you will have to face.

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The Teapot

Nothing is more refreshing than a steaming hot cup of your favourite drink. Why bother with boring teapots of the rack?
Your colleagues and family members will jealously admit that with this cup you are the coolest person in the whole universe!

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The Key Ring

Ever lost your keys? Don’t worry, this very special item will ensure that this won’t ever happen again.
It even glows and flickers realistically, so your keys can’t get lost anymore!
This item comes without batteries.

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The Tabletop Game

Your current copy of M.A.R.S. isn’t working? Your computer is broken? No problem! Grab a friend and play M.A.R.S. in its overwhelming tabletop version.

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This intelligent designed game is supposed to provide both, physical and mathematical correctness and the neat optics of M.A.R.S. in one melting pot of fun and adventure!

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The rules for this masterpiece of analog entertainment are pretty simple: Just place the planets, the four ships and the ball on the grid and use the included calculators to compute their attractive influence on your ship. All movement is governed by the laws of gravity as in the computer game! Have fun computing velocity and acceleration on your own to finally kick the ball to your opponent’s planet.

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The Tabletop’s Special Features:

• a beautifully designed battleground with individual placable space objects
• unique styled and very glossy ships
• neat glass stones to represent fuel and life points
• magnetic inlays to play the game vertically on blackboards, fridges, etc.

With all that great supplies, “M.A.R.S. – a ridiculous shooter – The Tabletop” guarantees fun for the whole family!

(PPA’s are very cooool!)

It was quite a rocky road to go, but at least, M.A.R.S. is installable through your package manager.

Currently we provide packages for Lucid, Maverick and Natty. Simply execute these commands in your terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mars-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install marsshooter

If you want to surf on cutting edge, you may install marsshooter-svn instead of marsshooter. This will install the latest SVN-build on your computer. But this will be even more buggy, then the “stable” release

For those, how want to develop with SFML2, there is a package libsfml2-dev in this ppa, which will install the headers of SFML2 on your system.

But: We’re still in learning stage, so we would like to get a lot of feedback! And maybe, these packages won’t work always, so maybe M.A.R.S. won’t work after an update, but we will try to fix such issues as fast as possible! We will have to check, whether M.A.R.S. is still working after every SFML2 update…

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If you want to package M.A.R.S. for another distro, feel free to do so! Contact us (IRC, Forum, Mail) and we will post a link here!

(Bugs are Evil!)

You can grab the complete version here. If you don’t want to download all the data again, please feel free to get the patch and apply it to your copy of M.A.R.S. 0.7.0 manually.

Changes

• Italian is now updated.
• Hindi is now displayed correctly.
• No more white quads under older graphics cards.
• Game doesn’t crash anymore when the statistics key is pressed during the tutorial.
• The Special FireWall stops when the ship becomes frozen.
• Ships aren’t effected by the freezer when the PowerUp shield is active.
• The maximum number of kills in DeathMatch and TeamDeathMatch has been resetted to 100.
• Implemented an animation of the Player’s highlight when respawning.
• Ships’ radius has been increased a bit.