LINUXGAMES

The war of words between Epic Games’ andMonolith over their respective engine technologiescontinued today, as Monolith CEO Jason Hall fired a few salvos in aninterview withRPOV by making more claims of superiorLithTechlicensing support when compared to Epic’s UT-enginelicensing logistics. Tim Sweeney promptly responded on theUnreal Technology site by analyzing the morecontroversial aspects of Hall’s statements point-by-point. In my opinion, consideringEpic has shipped a retail Linux title, and also was considerate enough to open-source thenon-rendering code portions of the binary, Tim should have higher karma with the community…especially in light of how Monolith relegated Jeremy Blackman’s initial LithTech Linux portwork to the backburner for so long… in any case, feuds between developers are rarely productiveor good in general for either party.

• The Slovenian site Slovenska Quake III Arena has posted an brief interview with id’s Robert Duffy concerning the recent security-focused 1.16i release… (thanks Blue)
• The QuakeWorld Forever site has updated with a new design; here’s some background info on the project (thanks Nelson Rush):
  

  The QuakeWorld Forever project (“QWF” – http://qwf.challenge-world.com/ ) isa project dedicated to securing the QuakeWorld multiplayer system based onthe 21/12/1999 Quake1 source release, while staying completely open-sourceand abiding by the GPL and also attempting to stay backwards compatible withoriginal servers. Currently this is acheived by using an open-sourcecryptography library called GNUGP, including a custom win32 port of it’sfeatures.

• Robert Duffy fired off a .plan update last night with an extensive list of common issues being encountered using the latest Q3A patch.

A new site joined the Telenation family this week; SoF Operations aims to provide news and information related to the upcoming mercenary-themed first-person shooter from Raven Software (being ported by Loki), Soldier of Fortune. Coupled with the site’s launch are exclusive concept art shots and a rendering of the Red Guard opposition force.

Abit Computer Corporation, a motherboard manufacturer, has announced the launch of the Gentus Linux distribution (whose website seems to consistently crash Netscape with Javascript enabled…), which brings “direct support for UDMA/ATA/66 drivers” to the table, as well as a performance utility set. Also of note is that the press release specifically mentions Loki and the growing Linux gaming market as a factor in their decision to support the Linux community. The distribution itself does not yet appear to be available, but presumably it will be released for download in the near future from here.

UPDATE: Jacob Walcik wrote in noting you can download the ISO from here.

Version 1.4.2 of LxDoom has been released. In this version, there is nothing new, just various bug fixes, some portability improvements, and a fix for some problems with the network code notbeing compiled right on many systems.

LxDoom Downloads:
Source: lxdoom-1.4.2.tar.gz
Patch: lxdoom-1.4.2.diff.gz

Version 0.1.5 of The Meilleur Jeu De Role Du Meunde has been released. MJDRDM is a single-player role playing game inspired by games like Lunar: The Silver Star Story and Grandia. There are three screenshots available (notice the png format):

• character waiting for an action
• magics selection menu
• special selection menu

MJDRDM Source: Mjdrdm-0.1.5.tar.gz

Version 1.10 of Hu-Go! has been released, both a Linux binary and a source code package. Changes in this version include:

• Debugged key modification in the .ini (due to a modification in allegro that I hadn’t see)
• Slight modifications in iso support (Solid Force now run in Bios mode)
• Some Hucards are now detected as split rom and runs well

downloads:
source: hugo110s.zip
binary: hugo110b.tgz

Development version 0.96.0 of XRacer has been released. xracer.annexia.org sums the changes up best:

This version is extremely broken. It’s the first version where you can draw an entire track in Blender, export it (if you have a C-key), and import it as a complete track (including scenery and textures). The track shape is described as a single mesh, and the import tools generate an efficient BSP which maps from the pilot’s position to the correct point in that mesh. Tracks are no longer constructed from “segments” and are no longer limited in shape. A track could now be an arbitrary shape: a wide open area or a track which divides into several alternative routes are both possibilities.

XRacer download: xracer-0.96.0.tar.gz

Taura, XShipWars Project Captain, wrote in to announce that Version 1.33c of XShipWars has been released. Changes in this version include:

• Main menu system has been changed to the `page system’. If you are upgrading from a previous version of XShipWars and have custom made a main menu, please read the file MMCHANGES before you start.
• The XShipWars client data files are now distributed seperatly. Make sure that you download xswdata1.33c.tgz from the same location you obtained this source. In the future, you will need to download xswdata#.#.tgz whenever one exceeds the version of your curent one.
• Added improved intercept routine to the ShipWars server
• Added async shared images support to the XShipWars client
• Jemhaddar Battleship and new HST Star photos added to imageset
• Polaron beam and pulse weapons added to default OPM

XShipWars download: fox.mit.edu/xsw/dl_lnx01.htm

Version 0.3.0 of the Civilization/Risk clone Demolization has been released. This version is a complete rewrite of 0.2.9 and the intro has been temporarely removed. Now that this has been done, further development should be much easier and faster.

Demolization Source: Demolization-0.3.0.tar.gz

Version 9a0219 of DarcNES, a classic console system emulator, has been released. Changes in this version include:

• Changed the nes bank 4 and 6 I/O hooks
• Fixed FDS mapper to compile again
• Fixed some problems with the PCE timer
• Changed the PCE VDP interface not to use procpointers
• Added clipping sprites to the right side of the screen to the PCE VDP
• Removed the old (disabled) ROM type identification routine
• Fixed the battery file handling to not use a cheap hack to get the filename

DarcNES Source: dn9a0219.tgz

Loki’s Sam Lantinga sent in the following SDL-related announcement:

The SDL application pages now have a platform and functionality ratingsystem available. Check out the new pages at:

http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/games.html
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/demos.html
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/apps.html
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/libraries.html

If you are the maintainer of an SDL project, please send me e-mail withupdated functionality information.

If you know who the maintainer of an unrated project is, please send theme-mail (nicely) so they can update an application entry.

If you want to add an SDL project to the list, please send the followinginformation to slouken@devolution.com:

1. Name of project
2. Short one-line description
3. Project URL
4. Supported platforms
5. Completion rating for each platform
6. Contact e-mail (publicly visible)

The completion rating is as follows:

• 100% – Works perfectly
• 75% – Compiles, runs, ready for testing
• 50% – Compiles, but has known bugs
• 25% – Work in progress, may not compile

SDL is getting quite a plethora of applications, libraries and games.

Check them out! :)

Justin Smith has released version 0.3.3 of his puzzle game Xpuyopuyo. Changes:

• Comments are read properly in key config

XPuyoPuyo 0.3.3 Source:
http://chaos2.org./xpuyopuyo/xpuyopuyo-0.3.3.tar.gz

The Linux Game Modification Center has launched; the site aims to provide user mod-related services to the Linux FPS community. Currently the site features links to other mod news sites and a note to mod authors interested in porting (although this would be unnecessary for Q3A mods using .qvm’s) their projects to Linux.

Avault updated this evening with word that Raven Software has declared a feature freeze on their imminent mercenary-themed title Soldier of Fortune, indicating that the Win32 version is not far from release. The Linux version is being developed by Loki Entertainment Software; it is not currently known how quickly the Linux release will follow the Windows version.

Version 1.9.6 of the Civilization II clone Freeciv has been released; the CVS changelog is available here. Also of note is that the stable 1.10.0 release will be made available on Monday barring problems with this beta version.

Freeciv 1.9.6 Source:
ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/beta_version/freeciv-1.9.6.tar.gz

Mathieu Pinard of Tribsoft (who are currently porting Jagged Alliance 2 to Linux) sent in the following:

We are looking for some part-time programmers to work on Linux gameports. The ideal person would be a college or university computerscience student located in the Montreal area (Canada).

The requirement is knowledge of Linux/Unix programming, plus knowledgefor at least one of the following things:

• 2-d programming (like X-Window, LibGGI, MGL or libsvga)
• 3-d programming (Glide or OpenGL)
• Network programming

People interested can contact us at job@tribsoft.com.

id’s Robert Duffy made a .plan update to note the release of a new Q3A patch:

Q3A 1.16i Beta is now on our ftp site. This is a small executable only patch that enhances security. It is available in three flavors, Win32 ( a .zip file ), Linux ( a .gz ) and Macintosh ( a self extracting archive ).

3D Downloads Mirror

On a related note, Xian “Disruptor” Antkow fired off an update requesting channel service suggestions from Linux IRC admins (for a possible resurrection of 3DNet and Q?):

Linux Stuff:

If anyone knows where I can obtain some good channel services for bahamut(the Dalnet IRCD — chanserv, nickserv, memoserv, etc…) please drop me aline.

Disruptor can be e-mailed at xian@idsoftware.com.

Dennis Payne has produced a new article for his monthly Open Game Source column; this month’s installment analyzes Troll Bridge, Payne’s Legend of Zelda-style adventure game. Payne spends the majority of the article on the content creation tools he’s developed for Troll Bridge, such as the sprite conversion utility and screen editor; updated versions of his tools are available from here.

Kai Sterker wrote in to announce the release of Adonthell version 0.2; Adonthell is a project to develop an open source RPG with a plot similar to Tolkien’s epics. Changes:

• use of the SDL library instead of GGI
• working sound system with some fairly cool tunes
• working cutscene engine

Adonthell 0.2 Source:
http://adonthell.linuxgames.com/cgi-bin/dwnld.cgi