Cary Brisebois has released version 1.1 of X-based strategy game Settlers. Settlers is based on a German board game Settlers of Catan, and utilizes libsx. The new version 1.1 source (which fixes makefile problems with the previous release) is available here.
Natas has posted two screenshots of Loki’s Linux port of Myth II: Soulblighter. The port, currently in beta testing, will be available in retail stores throughout North America and Europe when completed.
Some interesting evening reading: LinuxToday is running a feature on Corel’s contributions to the Wine project… included is an overview of Wine’s history and goals. Also, Slashdot posted about twin articles this afternoon at Electronic Telegraph concerning the the intelligence of game AI and its stupidity.
Karl Mitchell wrote in to announce that he has compiled dexe’s (for use under DOSemu) of the classic ZX Spectrum games Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge. These titles featured a landscaping POV, which was quite an achievement on an 8-bit machine with a memory limit of 48k. The tarball’s for each are available at Karl’s Lords of Midnight for Linux page.
The FreeSCI project has found a new home at freesci.linuxgames.com. FreeSCI is an interpreter for running classic Sierra adventure games under Linux, such as the early Quest for Glory games and Space Quest series. FreeSCI is currently at version 0.2.1; the source is available here.
A few morning items to hit… Joe Groff has released version 1.14 of his Sega Genesis emu DGen/SDL. Changes include support for the Starscream (“I lead the Decepticons!”) version 0.26 assembler core, which fixes a save state problem, joystick support, and gzip’ed rom support…
XShipWars has reached the 1.0 milestone… the required client files (source, default image and sound sets) for this sci-fi strategy game are available at the XShipWars Linux download page.
Markus Oberhumer wrote in with word of his Python/Tk-based solitaire game PySol.The beta release of PySol is currently at version 2.91, and supports multi-level undo, save games, and 20 variations of solitaire. The 2.91 source is available at http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/download/beta.
The developers/webmaster at Cavedog apparently thought it would be amusing to make light of the fact that their newly released strategy game Total Annihilation: Kingdoms will not have a Linux port. On their “Top Ten Reasons to NOT Buy TA: Kingdoms” list, at number 10 is the rather terse statement “No Linux version”. Gee, thanks Cavedog…
Richard Jones wrote in with more XRacer updates to announce, as development is proceeding at a rather brisk pace:
XRacer has come along a long way since you mentioned it on Sunday. We are now 10 releases further on, we have a new website, a time-trial mode, keyboard and mouse support, lots of bug fixes and enhancements, ports to Solaris and FreeBSD. And that’s just the stuff I remembered. Get in and help code. Send me patches!
XRacer is at version 0.19 as I write this, which includes mouse support fixes and a test time trial mode. You can always grab the latest release off the main XRacer page.
Nicolas Brunel wrote in to the Freeciv mailing list to announce he is resigning his position as administrator of the Freeciv project. Brunel’s contributions to the development of Freeciv were indispensable, and his advice on project suggestions will be missed. Freeciv will now be administrated by Tony Stuckey, and newbie questions will be handled by Reinier Post.
Creative Labs has released version 1.01 of their 3D Blaster Banshee driver for XFree86. The card utilizes 3dfx’s Voodoo Banshee chipset; the 904k 1.01 tarball is availablehere.
Markus Hadwiger wrote in to let European Linux users know that the Parsec developers will be at LinuxTag ’99 June 26th and 27th in Kaiserslautern, FDR (Germany). There are also new screenshots available which show “our entirely new, fully scalable and configurable cockpit”.
Next-Generation is running an article on Loki Entertainment Software which includes an interview with Loki president Scott Draeker. Among Draeker’s responses is a good laundry list of what makes Linux a better gaming platform than Windows, so be sure to check it out. Thanks LinuxToday.
Curtis L. Olson announced to the Flight Gear mailing list to announce the release of Flight Gear 0.6.1. Flight Gear is an open-source flight simulator; relevant changes in 0.6.1 are:
* Minor tweaks to the Astro sub section contributed by Durk Talsma.
* GUI updates contributed by Norman Vine.
* Fixed a problem with ambiguous constructors in the fgText class.
* Updates to JSBsim contributed by Jon Berndt.
* Created a tile load queue so that we only load one tile per frame.
* Updates to JSBsim contributed by Jon Berndt.
* Created a tile load queue so that we only load one tile per frame. This isn’t entirely satisfactory, but it replaces the one big pause when crossing a tile boundary with several shorter pauses.
* Fixed bug with passing PUI keystrokes on to glut.
* Fixed a bug in tilecache size which caused occasional tiles to drop out when more than one row is scheduled “simultaneously”.
* Changes to scenery building tools to handle sliver detection and resolution.
* Fixed several other minor bugs in the scenery creation tools.
* Added urban area support to scenery creation tools.
* Made the parallel scenery building tools a bit more robust if a requested client machine happens to be offline by pinging it first to see if it is alive.
* Added support for libgpc’s new hole tracking interface.
* Tony Peden contributed a c172 flight model replacement for the Navion. Still needs to be debugged a bit before it is usable.
Grab the 846k tarball at ftp://ftp.flightgear.org/pub/fgfs/Source/FlightGear-0.6.1.tar.gz.
id designer Graeme Devine updated his .plan this afternoon to update the community on the imminent release of a new Q3Test build and a new map designed for tournament play (for use at, maybe, QuakeCon):
We had the Ion Storm guys over last week to play a little deathmatch, and while I won’t say who won between Romero and Killcreek, I can tell you it wasn’t the male of the species. But boy, can those Ion guys talk smack.The reason we asked them over was to have them check in on the status of ourtournament map, which we hope to get out there soon with the next version of thetest (to give you all time to practice on it before QuakeCon, you are going toQuakeCon right?). We’re also looking at a /lot/ of bug fixes, changes, and tweaksso we’re gearing up for your feedback. I’ll let Chris Hecker speak for glsetup,but we’re looking to get that updated and support for 3Dfx in there.Soon can be defined as soon. And that’s probably not this week.
I saw on CF TF about a X-Windows front-end for the Linux Half-Life Server. It is still a beta, but has many features including:
easy-to-read auto-updated table of current clientskicking a selected client
changing maps with mouse clicks
restarting the server upon a crash
crash info (backtrace & logfile) are saved for Mike’s benefit
executing custom .cfg files for maps
Visual alerts upon crash
Watches for SZ_GetSpace repeats, kills server if this condition occurs
Download your copy and email Rob if you have any questions or comments.
QuakeGod yelled across the room about a rather interesting thing he saw on PlanetCrap concering John Carmack’s views on Open Source Games.
I have certainly thought a lot about that, but I can’t make a strong enough case for it to the other owners of id.
If you want to voice your opinions on this subject, I suggest you post your comments there. This is a week old but still very interesting to read.
We are very excited at LinuxGames to report the following news about the Heretic II port. Two types of ports are going to be released. Number one port will be a server only port which will be free. The second more critical port is a client/server solution that is being built on the existing linux server code and will be a commerical product. Ravensoft was not at the liberty to state who the company doing the porting is.
Many thanks to Christopher Rusin for this incredible news.
Thanks to St. Andrews server admins, we have temporarily lost the home of the Half-Life HOWTO. But thanks to Tim Fletcher having another account, it is back and can be viewed here.