LINUXGAMES

Version 0.0.15 of FreeTrek has been released. This version enables and compiles in collision detection, turns compiler optimization off by default, and incorporates bug fixes and various code changes.

After the Linux Community pretty much took control of the Sierra Studios Focus Poll, they have now come back and are asking the community what they should port.The choices include: TeamFortress 2, HomeWorld, Pharaoh, Gabriel Knight 3 and Babylon 5. I am kinda leaning on TeamFortress 2 myself after playing TeamFortress Classic.Go vote for your favorite choice now.Thanks to Duncan Rowland for pointing this out.

The Linux Game Development Center has begun a tutorial column by Alexandre Courbot designed to help teach the development steps behind producing a game utilizing the SVGAlib and GGI graphics libraries. The first article covers GNU C Compiler, static binaries, shared libraries, and makefile basics.

LAGII version 0.1.5, an AGI interpreter for Linux which allows classic Sierra adventure titles to be played under Linux, is now available. Changes in this version include the loop-resetting bug being fixed; the source is available from here.

The Linux Game Tome updated with the news of the release of Pingus 0.0.15, the Clanlib-based Lemmings clone for Linux. Changes in 0.0.15 include:

- a nice looking particle system
- the capture rectangle now changes to red if the action can’t be applied
- some basic sound support, but no files are sound files are pressend
- the game runs now at a constant game speed
- Pingus can be run in multible resolution (-r 800×600)
- random maps are now possible, see
level4.plf

-
make install

is working
- Some music is available, but not yet integrated into pingus, it can be downloaded separately
- some event handling code from PenguinPlay is provided with pingus, but not used at the moment

The 515k tarball can be downloaded from http://dark.x.dtu.dk/~grumbel/pingus/pingus-0.0.15.tar.gz.

Judecca of LinuxQuake.com wrote in with the news that the Half-Life client runs in Wine 990523:

Here’s the quick and dirty way I’ve found to get half life running in linux with wine.

1. Mount your windows partition as the user you wish to play as
2. Get the newest build of wine
3. Make sure glide and Mesa are working (currently 3dfx is the only way i can get it)

Then the command line is as simple as :
( ) are optional

wine -nodga “hl.exe -console -width xxx (-game tfc) (+connect x.x.x.x)”

640 or 800 work well in width but i couldn’t get 512 even if it was built into my x server. I haven’t tried much single player but multiplayer works flawlessly on my machine with sound and everything. The only thing you cannot do is switch back to the menu. Good luck! I will be posting a how-to shortly.

note: if it appears to crash, your system is usually responding but the display is frozen, to get out of that switch to another VC type ‘killall wine’ then run another program that uses 3dfx like test3Dfx.

In an interview with Gamer’s Crypt’s Kazin, Dynamix’s Nels Bruckner stated that Dynamix is “thinking about” a client port for Linux of their upcoming multiplayer sci-fi ground combat title Starsiege: Tribes 2. Dynamix has stated in the past that they will be releasing a Linux dedicated server port of Tribes 2 upon release.

I noticed on the 3dFinger that John Carmack decided to give his thoughts on Linux. He points out that Redhat 6.0/GNOME is making Linux finally on the level where it can be a commmerical desktop competitor to Windows or MacOS. My personal favorite quote is this after he found an issue with the Matrox G200 GLX drivers in Linux:

The cool part is that this driver is completely open source. I downloadedthe project code, browsed through it a bit, and changed two lines of code tofix the bug. That RULES.

You can read the whole thing here and it is worth your time to check out.

UPDATE:
Carmack also updated his Q3 worklog with his latest changes to the source tree yesterday:

* dynamic curve level of detail
r_subdivisions determines the maximum level
of detail, r_lodCurveError determines how
quickly polygons are pulled out with distance
* devmap sets cheats 1, map sets cheats 0
* change weapon item upscale to 1.5 instead of 2
* always toss items forward, even if looking up or down
* draw ammo in grey while weapons are reloading
* change railgun shader while reloading
* fixed head models not showing proper skin
* skip all shell eject code when cg_brassTime 0
* fixed sound memory overallocation
* profiling and rearrangement
* fixed dead spectator bug

Sierra Studios, developers of such classics as the King’s Quest series and publishers for the more recent Half-Life, is running a poll on their main page asking “In what direction do you think Sierra Studios should expand their gaming expertise?”, with one of the options being “Linux Games”. As of right now, Linux is in second to last place with only 7% out of over 350 total votes. Vote and let them know that you want Sierra titles ported to the Linux operating system! Thanks Steven LaBounty.

Update: As of 10:30 CST this morning, the Linux Community has spoken and has taken a 75% lead over all other items in the poll.

Lutz Sammer wrote in to tell us that ALE Clone, a very good emulator for one of the best real time strategy games of all time, is now up to version 1.15pre5. Grab it here. Changes include:

• New extraction tool
• Better fog of war
• Command Queues
• Better tile drawing
• Wall building
• Correct rock and wood removing

ALE Clone utilizes the graphics and sound from Warcraft II, so the original PC copy is required.

Loki Entertainment Software updated their news page earlier this week stating that the version 1.1 patch for Linux Civilization: Call to Power will be available soon. Also, the Civ: CTP binaries for Linux PPC are in testing for imminent release as well.

The home page for the Snes9x SNES emulator has returned with hosting from an anonymous benefactor at 207.5.92.43. Snes9x developer Jkoot also notes that he has received advice regarding the legality of emulators:

Emulator programs themselves probably will not violateUS copyright law as long as they were fully ‘reverseengineered’ and the developer did not use anycopyright protected material in their development.

In case you didn’t grab it before Nintendo reared its ugly head, the 1.19a source tree is available from http://207.5.92.43/zips/s9x119asrc.zip.

The Quake 3: Arena news page has updated with word of a server commands howto written by Graeme Devine. The HOWTO explains how, utilizing Java examples, to write code that will communicate with Q3: Arena servers to determine their current status, which is intended for use in server browsers such as QStat.

Valve has released version 1.0.1.0 of the Linux Half-Life dedicated server. The 2.5 meg patch is not yet available to upgrade from 1.0.0.9, but you can grab the 80 meg complete 1.0.1.0 release from ftp.won.net if you have the time or bandwidth.

Freshmeat updated with the news today that DOSEmu, the M$ Disk Operating System emulator for Linux, version 0.99.12 has been released. 0.99.12 is a developer’s release, and thus may be less stable than the current stable release (0.98.6), but your mileage may vary. The compressed source tarball for 0.99.12 can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.dosemu.org/pub/dosemu/Development/.

Riptide has punched out another new version of X11Spy, his GTK+ Linux Q3Test server browser/launcher. X11Spy requires the console-based QStat compiled with Q3 support. Version 0.08 changes include:

- Added support for ~username/.x11spy directory.
- Added header defines for a default q3test directory and version info.
- Hard coded a default master list if master.dat does not exist, DefaultMasterList()

The 0.08 source tree is available from here.

NEStra version 0.62 is now available. The changelog for 0.62 is as follows:

- Mapper 11 and partial mapper 9 support
- Reload code after mapper switch (should fix -l problems)
- Fixed a MMC3 bug.
- Minor bugfix to mid-hblank updates.

Grab the new source tarball from http://nestra.linuxgames.com/nestra-0.62.tar.gz.

OpenGL.org is reporting that Precision Insight held a demo of their Direct Rendering Infrastructure in the Red Hat booth at Linux Expo. The demo was of a pre-alpha DRI build utilizing “SGI’s recent open source release of GLX, a beta version of Mesa 3.1, an alpha version of XFree86 4.0, and a 2.2 verison of the Linux kernel”. Precision Insight ran Quake 2 to demonstrate the capabilities of the DRI, which “ran smoothly and appeared to keep a constant frame rate at all times… geometry processing and rasterization was done on the GMX 2000 board so the CPU was running with plenty of bandwidth left over for other tasks”. The DRI source will be submitted to each of its component projects “by the end of June” as a Sample Implementation. Thanks to Kornel for the SITREP.

Wine 990523 was released a few days ago with the following fixes:

– Printing improvements
- X input and multimedia timers moved to service thread.
- More threading and locking fixes.
- Lots of bug fixes.

As usual, we want to hear all your success stories of games working under this version of Wine.

Our beloved John Carmack over at id Software has make another bunch of changes to Quake 3.

* enable scissor test properly
* archive r_lodBias
* cg_draw3dIcons 0 option
* data cheating protection
* userinfo renamed to clientinfo, added state and current server address
* don’t forward commands to a server when playing demos
* fixed NULL extension of dir command
* added one more shotgun pellet
* added CG_Shutdown for cgame cleanup
* fixed jitter in rising smoke
* increase minimum time before reusing an entity slot
* soundinfo reports current background streaming file
* changed IPX seperator to . from :, moved port processing to system independant code
* auto port scan wasn’t updating the net_port cvar
* attack button presses reset inactivity timer now
* increased the forced respawn time from 10 to 20 seconds
* show smp on gfxinfo, slight reformat