LINUXGAMES

There’s been some interesting entries of late at the Linux Game Publishing blog:

• Some gotchyas in porting from Visual C++ to g++: Examines common issues encountered while porting Windows-developed software to Linux
• Playing well with distros: Explains why LGP does not produce distribution-specific packages

There’s also this notice:

…we have permanently reduced the price of all of our games more than one year old by 10%. This includes favorites such as Majesty, Postal 2 and Cold War. The exception is X2: The Threat, as we just dropped the price of that by 30% a few weeks ago!

The LGP news is piling up. First, they released Shadowgrounds, the precursor to their previously announced next title, Shadowgrounds Survivor:

We have a surprise announcement for today! While we have Shadowgrounds Survivor due out at the end of the week, we are releasing its predecessor, Shadowgrounds, immediately, as a budget title! Get the story from the beginning today, and on Friday, find out what happens next!

Second, for the X2 & X3-related news:

A new patch is now available for X3: Reunion. This patch fixes the most serious issue reported so far, the memory leak that we have been looking for the last few months. If you have been having a problem with the X3 memory footprint, random crashes, or slowdowns, this should fix your problem.

A new patch is now available for X2: The Threat, which makes the sound pulseaudio compatible, and fixes some minor bugs.

X2 has a new version of the Demo available, with all of the improvements that the full [has]. We are also announcing a permanent price cut in X2, down from £30 to £20. Finally, we are announcing that X2 has now been added to our download catalogue. Resellers can download the files immediately, and are able to resell it as of midday tomorrow. Please see your favourite reseller for access. If you’ve been putting off checking out X2 and X3, now is a great time to take a look, with rental versions available as well as purchases!

Lastly, Majesty is back in stock:

For those that have been waiting, Majesty is now back in stock! With a new colour manual, and now with PenguinPlay support, order your new version today! If you already have a copy, and don’t want a new box, all the game features are available in the new Majesty patch which has just been added to lgp_update.

Linux Game Publishing has announced that X²: The Threat is now available and shipping to customers and retailers:

X2: The Threat is now available! Orders areshipping right now. If you want to try it out first, a demo is available for you to download here.Check out our resellers list for the bestprices!

The hardware review site Phoronix sent in the following:

On December 31 of 2005, the folks at Linux Game Publishing entered their X2: The Threat Linux port into its closed BETA session for accepted applicants. For getting a better understanding of what this game will require, once it reaches the retail sector, Phoronix has posted some benchmarks using the first X2 v1.4 Linux BETA 1. The cards used are an FX 5200, 6600GT, 6800GT, and a 7800GTX. It is reported, however, that there are some memory leaks and other problems plauging the performance. The article can be read here.