LINUXGAMES

Bob Zimbinski of the Linux Game Tome updated the site to announce its return after an extended hiatus:

At long last everything’s in order and the Game Tome is back online. Whew. I sincerely apologize for the long downtime, but life and bad code conspired to keep this site down much longer than I anticipated. Now though, we’re happily settled into our new home here at SourceForge and things pretty stable. Please do let me know if you encounter any bad links, error messages or other untoward behavior.

Prepare for a whole mess of updates Real Soon.

• Primer has created a Nvidia XFree 4.0 Drivers for Linux FAQ that can be updated with user-submissions.
• NVIDIA’s Nick Triantos sent in his XF86Config for those having difficulty configuring XFree86 4.0 with the NVIDIA drivers (note: you’ll have to modify the settings in this config for your system, such as monitor timings). Nick also noted that the current drivers already support the GeForce 2 GTS, which is nearing release.
• Will Weisser has written a shell script that determines if your system’s driver installation is correct.

• Terry Warner has updated Games.Linux.com with a new preview of Vicarious Visions’ upcoming space sim Terminus. Moreover, the Adrenaline Vault has posted their Terminus preview as well. Screenshots of the Linux version are available here.
• MaCaBrE of the Loki Portal Page wrote in to announce the he’s launched a new section devoted to Loki’s upcoming SimCity 3000 port.

Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer has released version 4.20 of his card game collection PySol, which now sports 287 varities of solitaire. Changes:

• 14 new games, including HexADeck and Memory type variants
• some new great-looking cardsets
• much improved statistics dialog
• added a “Recent games” menubar entry
• fixed the detection of Straights in Poker type games
• fixed a problem when changing the card background

PySol 4.20 Source:
http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/download/pysol/pysol-4.10-src.tar.gz

The new Anarchy Online news site AO Daily has posted an Interview with Marius Enge from Funcom. The 20-question interview covers the game’s world, group play, characters, quests, weapons, and more.

Miguel Angel Blanch Lardin sent in a release announcement for Arianne RPG version 0.3.6.2. Arianne is an effort to develop an open MMORPG with 2D and 3D client support. Changes:

• Added player spin speed control
• Added saving the data you have to write to connect to the server
• Added a better text of why you can connect
• Removed the main image due to some copyrights problems with the author

Arianne 0.3.6.2 Source:
http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/krondor/1148/Source/Arianne_RPG-0_3_6.tar.gz

Version 1.4.4.4 of LsdlDoom has been released. Changes include:

• Fixed x86 assembly to compile on non elf targets
• Fixed segfault with demo’s and netgames
• Fixed autoconf check and link order for SDL_mixer
• now searches the directory where it’s supposed to be installed for WADs
• tries 8bpp first, then falls back on the default depth instead of doing it backwards

LsdlDoom source: lsdldoom-1.4.4.4.tar.gz

There are four new reviews covering Loki‘s ports of Heavy Gear II and Eric’s Ultimate Solitaire.

• Linux World‘s review Mech mania earns the pole review postition because of the subtitle: Heavy Gear II, from installation to mass destruction. It covers installation, mech controls, weapons, team play, graphics, and sound.
• The HG2 review from Canux gets the second slot today just because I like Canada and they used the word “plethora” in the first paragraph. This review has some screenshots and and overview of the game. It also covers training missions, Instant Action mode, Campaign mode, and game controls. The review concludes giving HG2 an overall score of 7/10.
• The third HG2 review comes from Tucows Linux. It covers the enimy AI, single player modes, mech options, and game control. This review gave a 5/5 score, just like every other Loki game they’re reviewed :)
• The fourth and final review is from Maximum Linux and covers Eric’s Ultimate Solitaire. Since this is a print-only magazine you will have to pick up the April/May edition to check it out.

Shalon Wood wrote in to note that the Universe project has updated its site at http://universe.pele.cx/; Universe is a project to create an open-source strategy game similar to Masters of Orion. The project is now based upon the Postgresql port of the ArsDigita Community System; moreover, if you’re interested in helping with development, you can read what’s needed and how to join the dev mailing list here.

Nick Triantos from NVIDIA wrote in with some information regarding installation problems with the recently released video drivers. First off, they are trying to help people out with installation problems via IRC. To take advantage of this, join #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net. On top of that, Nick reports that there are about three main problems that users are commonly running in to:

• If you see X errors when you run quake, remove the last piece of MesaGL from your system:
  mv /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 /usr/lib/libMesaGL.so.1.2
  ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2
• If you are having compile problems building our kernel module, add the following to the DEFINES= line:
  -D_LOOSE_KERNEL_NAMES
• The last problem is people who see 0kb of video memory. Either it’speople who didn’t read the readme, or a problem that they are still debugging (via IRC).

Jason Spangler, president of Wombat Games, sent in the following press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wombat Games, Inc.
5555 North Lamar Blvd Suite J103
Austin, TX 78751-1036

Contact: Jason Spangler, President
Phone: 512-451-7665
Email: press@wombatgames.com
URL: http://www.darkzion.com/

Wombat Games Announces Dark Zion, A Unique Online WorldBest-Selling Fantasy & Sci-Fi Writer Tad Williams Serves As CreativeConsultant

Austin, TX – April 26, 2000 – Wombat Games, Inc. today announced Dark Zion, amassively multiplayer online world in which players will have unprecedentedcontrol of their world compared with current online games.

Dark Zion is a player driven world: players will explore, build cities, createclans and governments, wage wars, breed insects, and discover the lost secretsof the world of Dark Zion as they create a story of their new civilization.

Tad Williams, New York Times and London Sunday Times best-selling author offantasy and science fiction, is serving as creative consultant on the project,contributing to the design, story, and overall feel of the world of Dark Zion.

In addition to Tad Williams, the development team includes Rick Delashmit,former lead programmer of Ultima Online (TM), Jason Spangler, former leadprogrammer of Ultima Online: The Second Age (TM), Todd McKimmey, formerdesigner from Ultima Online (TM), and Glenn Israel, artist from AlienIntelligence.

Dark Zion is currently in development at Wombat Games and will be releasedfor the Windows, Linux, and Macintosh platforms in the future. WombatGames is currently searching for a publisher or partner for Dark Zion.

Wombat Games will release parts of the game as open source, and has alreadyreleased one library as open source.

More information can be found on the Internet at http://dzvault.ign.com/ andhttp://www.darkzion.com/.

Version 0.1.1 of Armagetron has been released. Armagetron is a very simple Lightcycle game, similar to glTron. It features 3D graphics, sound, and Internet play. There are screenshots available at pluto.spaceports.com/~zman/armagetron/screenshots.html

Thanks to Remenic Q. LeBeau for the heads-up on this one.

Armagetron downloads:
source: at_src_0.1.1.tar.gz
binary: at_lin_0.1.1.tar.gz

Stan Shebs wrote in to announce that snapshot 7.2.97 of the turn-based hex strategy game Xconq has been released. Changes include:

• much improved NW Europe Campaign game
• still more Civ emulation including Trident images from FreeCiv and per-side research on Macs
• smaller bug fixes
• interface enhancements

In addition to the new version, there are also two new screenshots available from the first turn of the Northwest Europe Campaign game:

• screenshot 0
• screenshot 1

Xconq source: xc7.2.97.tgz

Jeff Freedman wrote in to announce that Version 0.25 of the Ultima7 game engine Exult has been released. Changes:

• improved sound
• lots more animation support
• playability is starting to become a reality – can now solve the Trinsic murder, and answer the Mayor’s questions to get the password for leaving town

Exult source: exult-0.25.tar.gz

Version 0.2 of the Allegro-based Asteroids clone Rasteroids has been released. Changes include:

• Fixed `make install` bug
• Fixed Screenshot function to take shot of whole screen
• Fixed Bullet event firing code to make keypress = bullet fired, no more delay

Rasteroids downloads:
source: rasteroids-0.02.tar.gz
static binary: rasteroids-0.02-static-i386.tar.gz

Version 0.0.19 of TORCS has been released. Changes include:

• Background images (one per track)
• Pit stops for refuel; only the player is able to refuel, but the other drivers will be modified soon
• A menu screen with an editable box allows you to choose the amount of fuel
• The player is debugged
  • reverse gear now works
  • manual transmission works
  • front wheels drive car now works
  • a lot of grip was added
• display bug (selected text) was corrected along with other minor bugs

TORCS Downloads:
source: torcs-0.0.19.tgz
patch from 0.0.18: torcs-0.0.19.patch.gz

The Adrenaline Vault posted a preview of the upcoming space combat sim Terminus. The preview covers some background on the game’s setting, the Newtonian physics flight model, navigation and combat.

Version 3.2 of the Mesa 3D graphics library, an alternative OpenGL implementation, has been released (thanks Sam Hart); changes include:

• fixed memcpy bugs in span.c
• fixed missing glEnd problem in demos/tessdemo.c
• fixed bug when clearing 24bpp Ximages
• fixed clipping problem found in Unreal Tournament
• fixed Loki’s “ice bug” and “crazy triangles” seen in Heretic2
• fixed Loki’s 3dfx RGB vs BGR bug
• fixed Loki’s 3dfx smooth/flat shading bug in SoF
• updated docs/README file
• use bcopy() optimizations on FreeBSD
• re-enabled the optimized persp_textured_triangle() function

Mesa 3.2 Source:
http://download.sourceforge.net/mesa3d/MesaLib-3.2.tar.gz

Mesa 3.2 Demos:
http://download.sourceforge.net/mesa3d/MesaDemos-3.2.tar.gz

• Version 0.4 of Boson, a QT-based real-time strategy game, is now available, and can be downloaded from here.

• Nils Trzebin wrote in to note that he’s released a new Boson Music pack; all six tracks are available as a single download from

  http://www.rebellion-scs.de/boson/loads/Downloads.zip

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software sent in the following press release regarding a new Linux RPG:

Exile III: Ruined World
A Fantasy Role-Playing Game for Linux

Spiderweb Software and Boutell.com proudly present Exile III: Ruined World!Exile III: Ruined World is an epic fantasy role-playing game for Linux,featuring a fascinating plot, detailed and enormous world, and an elegantgame system and interface.

The surface world is ruled by the Empire, and it has been as long as anyonecan remember. As long as you followed the rules and kept quiet, it was agood life. But stand out, not fit in, say the wrong thing, and thepunishment was swift, sure, and horrible. You were cast into Exile, a hugeseries of caverns far below the surface of the earth, there to live out therest of your days in misery.

Now, at last, an escape route from your underground prison has been found.You are the brave soul chosen to lead the first expedition to the surface.You hope to find a way for your people to return to the light of the sun.Instead, you find a ravaged world, rapidly being devoured by mysteriousplagues of monsters. You will have to act quickly. If not, the underworldwill be the only place left where humans can live.

What makes Exile III exceptional? Well, it features …

• Involving, intricate plot, with 200000 words of story!
• An enormous, changing world. Do nothing, and things evolve around you.Refugees move from town to town. Villages will be destroyed. Characters willdie. Monsters will gain territory.
• Detailed, open ended system. Don’t want to go on adventures? Do odd jobs.Save up and buy a house. Go on one of dozens of side missions. Explore anenormous outdoors with well over a hundred dungeons and towns. Just gothrough people’s houses and rummage through their stuff!
• Pleasing, professionally done graphics and sound.
• Carefully designed interface, with comprehensive online help, adventurejournals, and design with an eye towards enabling you to do everything withthe minimum amount of fuss.

Although Exile III is a sequel to the award-winning shareware games Exile Iand II, it is designed to be completely playable as a stand-alone game, withabsolutely no experience with previous Exile games required.

Exile 3 for Linux requires glibc 2.1 or later to run. This translates tohaving Redhat Linux 6.0 or later, or a similiar version of Linux. Exile 3for Linux will be released Spring, 2000. You can find more information athttp://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/exile3/linuxexile3.html.

Contact: Spiderweb Software, PO Box 85659, Seattle WA 98145,Spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com.
WWW: http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
Port By: http://www.boutell.com