Michael Simms of Tux Games sent in the following:
Tux Games is proud to announce the release of its new Demos CD, available nowfrom http://www.tuxgames.comThis CD contains all of the demos released so far by Loki Games, and also aplayable demo of Hopkins FBI by MP Software.
Tux Games is selling this product at a break-even price of $7.50 (includingshipping anywhere in the world), as a service to the Linux gaming community.
Alexandre Julliard has announced the release of Wine version 20000130. Changes:
The Wine 20000130 source tarball hasn’t been uploaded to Metalab yet, but it should be available shortly:
Steve “sCary” Gibson updated the Shugashack with further clarification from Epic Games’ Cliff Bleszinski regarding the upcoming Unreal Tournament bonus pack. The pack will be around 15 megs, and will contain 7 new deathmatch and 4 new CTF maps:
Hans de Goede has announced Xmame version 0.36b15.2. Changes in this release of the multi-arcade machine emulator:
Xmame 0.36b15.2 Source:
http://x.mame.net/download/xmame-0.36b15.2.tgz
Blue noted today that Salon.com posted a feature article on the classic single-player dungeon epic, Nethack. The article concentrates on the connections between the open source software movement and Nethack, noting ESR’s support for the game and the difficulties involved in applying the open source philosophy to game development. Also mentioned is how indebted the gameplay of titles such as Blizzard’s Diablo are to Nethack, bringing up the oft-mentioned “style over substance” argument that often appears when modern titles are compared to the games of yesteryear.
Version 1.0.2 of RealTimeBattle, an AI bot combat game, has been released. Changes:
RealTimeBattle 1.0.2 Source:
http://download.sourceforge.net/RealTimeBattle/RealTimeBattle-1.0.2.tar.gz
As reported by the Loki Portal Page, Loki Entertainment Software’s Linux port of Heavy Gear II has entered beta testing. Unfortunately, the current version of the beta does not include screenshot support, but after this issue is patched look for shots of the upcoming mechanized squad combat game here.
Lee Smith has released version 1.60 of ProQCC, his Quake 1 QuakeC compiler. This release is also the first to include the source code, which has been made available under the GPL. Current features include:
ProQCC 1.60 Source:
http://probasic.sourceforge.net/proqcc-160-src.zip
ProQCC 1.60 Linux Binaries:
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/quake/utils/quakec/proqcc-160-linux.tgz
Jacob Kolding sent in the following response from Bungie Software regarding a Linux port of Halo, their upcoming sci-fi third-person team action game:
At this point I honestly can’t say yet. We are looking at Linux as a viable platform but havn’t at this moment decided on what type of ports we are going to do if any.Allen Turner
Bungie Software
Technical Support
Bungie’s Myth 2 was ported to Linux by Loki Entertainment Software; Halo is currently being developed for MacOS and Win32.
Geert-Jan Van den Bogaerde sent in a reminder that A Talent For War’s 4th Space Sim Developer Chat with the developers of Parsec and Terminus (2 space combat simulations that are being developed for Linux) is today. The chat will be at 1800 UTC (1:00 PM EST), and will be on irc.gameslink.net #space-sim.
Freshmeat updated to announce they will soon be launching Server 51, an open source project hosting service similar to VA Linux’s SourceForge. The site is currently in alpha testing, but you can get a preview at http://server51.freshmeat.net/.
Terry Warner of Linux.com’s game section wrote in to note that the site has undergone a redesign, which includes daily news in a new sidebar. Furthermore, a Quake 3 Server HOWTO has been posted to aid server admins in setting up a dedicated daemon for Q3 deathmatch.
Taura wrote in to announce the release of XShipWars version 1.33a. Changes in this release of the open-source space strategy game include:
XShipWars 1.33a Download:
http://fox.mit.edu/xsw/dl_lnx01.htm
Stomped’s JCal posted an interview with Monolith CEO Jason Hall concerning this week’s LithTech, Inc. announcement. The interview delves into the rationale behind the creation of a company dedicated to the 3D engine, the concept of a 3D Game Operating System, and Dr. Gregory Whitten’s background.
Flemming Frandsen wrote in to announce the release of a new version of NiL Isn’t Liero, his open-source 2D real-time action game featuring worms. Changes:
NiL 000128 Source:
http://download.sourceforge.net/NiL/nil-000128.tar.gz
id Software lead designer Graeme Devine has posted the newest entry in Gamespy’s Developer Week series of articles. Graeme’s article covers flaws in the gameplay structure of current generation persistant game worlds (i.e. Ultima Online), including the oft-discussed problem of preying on newbie players, or Player-Killing.
Slashdot’s Rob Malda posted a general request to the Slashdot community today: “What games do you most want to see ported to Linux in the next few months?”. Malda notes that his personal choices are Blizzard’s sci-fi RTS and upcoming RPG, Starcraft and Diablo II; my response is reprinted below:
Linux is finally gaining enough momentum to where publishers are comfortable allowing third parties (mostly Loki, and recently Tribsoft) port existing Windows titles that have sold well initially as Windows-only games. What I’d like to see (and the day I think is fast approaching) is more in-house simultaneous ports for Linux. The end goal, eventually, is original, top-tier quality, gaming content for Linux that isn’t necessarily available on other platforms, but is developed on and for Linux for its own sake…
SGI’s Jon “Oddhack” Leech posted several clarifications on Slashdot regarding this week’s OpenGL Sample Implementation source release:
It’s not obvious that anybody will necessarily assimilate anybody. Let me be perfectly clear that we are not doing this to “kill Mesa” or anything idiotic like that. Mesa has a lot of good stuff in it and, unlike the Sample Implementation, there are some open source Mesa hardware drivers available today. On the other hand, the SI does some things that Mesa does not, and almost all closed source hardware drivers are based off the SI – so companies who choose to open source their own drivers in the future will be able to do so now.There are a lot of ways we may be able to share code and work together, and we’ve been in touch with Brian Paul about this for quite a while. None of us know exactly how this is going to work out, but we are talking and we all realize it’s important to work this out.
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I don’t know how you could consider it not open source; please read the license.Being “GPL-compatible” is a red herring. Mesa is now under the X license, and the Sample Implementation we just released is under a license designed to be compatible with the X license, in both cases for the same reason: so that the code can be incorporated into XFree86. XFree86 is, if you will, “GPL-incompatible” and that is a conscious decision by the XFree86 project.
If you have questions about our licensing, please check the FAQ. It goes into a lot more detail.
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Well, there are certainly a few warts on OpenGL that in retrospect would have been done differently. Without trying to be inclusive:I’m sure other people would have different lists. OpenGL is not a perfect API, of course – but we think it’s pretty darned good.
- Texture borders are not supported on almost all hardware and in retrospect wouldn’t have been a great loss.
- Texture objects were introduced in OpenGL 1.1 to replace the previous notion of putting textures in display lists. The idea was that display lists could be automatically optimized depending on their contents, but it was difficult for app writers to understand what they needed to put in the lists, and the optimizations weren’t done onmany systems.
- Some additional flags/hints on vertex arrays could prove very useful for geometry acceleration.
John Carmack also wrote in to the Utah-GLX mailing list with his impressions of the source release:
>I’m more interested in another question… Does this mean NVIDIA is free to
>release source for its upcoming much-hyped driver? As I recall the main
>obstacle was NVIDIA’s use of proprietary SGI code.
>
>Dan
I think this would allow them to, but I don’t think they intend to. If anyvendor did decide to do that, I think it would be a very, very good thing.I’m also not sure if the sample implementation that was released is thesame codebase that vendors used to build their ICD’s. That might stillhave a completely different license.
I really don’t know what is going to come of this… There are a handfullof things that mesa is known to not do exactly to spec, like antialiasingand trimemd nurbs, that might be able to be lifted from the sgi codebase,but mesa is likely drastically faster than the sample implementation.
In any case, more open source is a good thing…
Jens Thiele has released version 0.9.9 of The Urgent Decision, an open source strategy game. The changelog is available here; interested parties can read what is needed to improve the project’s GUI at the GUI contest page.
The Urgent Decision 0.9.9
http://www-ti.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~thiele/tud-0.9.9.tar.gz
Hans de Goede wrote in to announce the release of Xmame, the X11 multi arcade machine emulator, version 0.36b15.1. The changelog can be read here, and the new source tarball is located at