LINUXGAMES

• NVIDIA has announced the imminent release of the GeForce 2 GTS, their next-generation 3D chipset. The press release also includes a laundry list of features:
  • Second generation transform and lighting engines
  • Hardware full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA)
  • NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR) – multi-operation per-pixel rendering engine
  • Integrated TMDS transmitter supporting flat panels up to 1280 x 1024
  • Up to 128MB of high-speed double data rate frame buffer memory
  • AGP 4X and PCI support
  • Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® and SGI OpenGL®
  • Optimal performance for current and future CPUs from Intel and AMD

  Furthermore, Sharky Extreme has a preview of the GF2 GTS up, including the all-pervasive benchmarks.

• Unreal Universe has obtained a few screenshots of Unreal Tournament running on a Voodoo 5 5500 with 4x full-scene anti-aliasing enabled.
• 3dfx updated with word that Juha Valkama’s Voodoo3 3500 TV project has produced usable drivers; they can be downloaded via CVS (instructions here).

Matt Matthews has put together a first look at the recently released NVIDIA 3D Card Linux Drivers. The article covers a brief history of the drivers and then takes a look at the difficulties involved in using the new ones. He presents results from the TNT2 32Mb AGP and the GeForce 32Mb AGP and compares them to results from the Voodoo3-3000 and finishes by making some conclusions about what we’ve been given.

NVIDIA has released their long-awaited drivers for XFree86 4.0. These drivers promise performance far beyond previous drivers for NVIDIA cards. Finally, Linux users with TNT, TNT2, and GeForce cards should be able to take full advantage of their hardware. Among other features, these drivers support full 32-bit rendering, S3 texture compression, and the GPU on the GeForce cards.

You can grab them at www.nvidia.com/drivers/xfree86_40.html

Look for an article on the performance of these drivers on here on LinuxGames very, very soon. (Note from AlKini – the article is up at www.linuxgames.com/articles/nvidia_first_look)

This summer looks like it’s going to be an interesting slug match between the 3D industry’s heavy hitters:

• Several people wrote in to note that ATI has announced the specifications for their next-generation chipset, the Radeon 256 graphics processor. The press release states Radeon will sport 30 million transistors and supports up to 128 megs of 200 MHz DDR memory. Furthermore, Linux support at or soon after shipping is hinted at:
  

  RADEON 256 provides industry-leading accelerated support for all major graphics APIs, including DirectX 7 and OpenGL 1.2, as well as all major operating systems including Windows, Linux and MAC.

• The Shack updated with word that Matrox has announced details regarding their upcoming G450 chipset, which is an enhanced version of the previous G400 line.

Both ATI and Matrox current-generation cards (the Rage Pro and G400) are supported under Linux with open-source drivers developed by the Utah-GLX team.

Olivier Cahagne wrote in with some rather fascinating news: Havas Interactive posted to Da Linux French Page’s job section to request the aid of a Linux programmer:

Nous recherchons un developpeur ayant une bonne connaissance du monde de Linux en vue de terminer le portage d’un jeu video sous Linux. Il devra surtout s’attacher à produire des librairies graphiques et sonores succeptibles de marcher avec la plupart des distributions de Linux.

In English (please let me know if there’s anything inaccurate about the translation):

We’re looking for a developer having a good knowledge of Linux, in orderto finish porting a video game on Linux. He’ll first have to produce graphicand sound libraries that would work on most Linux distributions.

Havas Interactive produces educational and entertainment software through several divisions, which include the powerhouses of Sierra On-Line (publishers of Tribes 2 and Team Fortress 2), and Blizzard (developers of Diablo 2 and Warcraft III). Now, it’s quite possible this position was created to aid the Tribes 2 Linux port currently in development, or to work on a port of a Knowledge Adventure edutainment title, so don’t start salivating at the prospect of Diablo 2 on Linux quite yet :).

SDmitry wrote in to announce the launch of RuLiGS, a Linux game news site for Russians. The site requires a Cyrillic font (and knowledge of the Russian language, obviously); SDmitry states:

Now all Russian Linuxoids can readnews about games for Linux in theirnative language.

Nathaniel “AgentGray” Kealen updated the Heavy Gear 2 News Network site to announce he is shutting down the site. Kealen’s update includes a history of his involvement with the Heavy Gear 2 community, and concludes with his thoughts on recent HG2 developments:

What now? Well, there’s only a few die-hard gamers left. It probably doesn’t even total five hundred. Granted this may be inaccurate becase I’m going byonline presence. How many people out there just play the single-player game? some life has been brought back into it with Loki’s Linux release of the game(which is great by the way). Some of the minor bugs were fixed like the missle lock sound, and I find the game to run a lot smoother on my Linux box than itdoes on the Windows machine. I’m sorry to close this site when the game is starting to gain popularity in the Linux community. (Oh, and the winners will stillreceive their copy from Loki. You guys should be expecting that soon.)

However, Kealen has also included several links to other HG2 resources on the net, including:

• Anaheim Weapons Systems
• Battlemasters
• Dream Pod 9
• Loki Entertainment Software
• Terra Nova Cartographic Society

If anyone is interested in creating a replacement HG2 site, particularly with regards to supporting and reporting on the new Linux version, feel free to contact me.

Two Quake 3: Arena news items today:

• PlanetQuake’s Hellchick visited id Software’s offices recently to obtain more information on the upcoming Q3A Mission Pack; her article on how the add-on is shaping up can be found here.

• The Q3F team has released two dozen more shots of maps that are in development for the teamplay-oriented class-based mod. Furthermore, version Beta1c should be released on Saturday, May 6th to fix various gameplay issues.

Shodan from Station Terminus sent in the following news regarding the limited edition of Terminus:

The contest for the 100 limited edition copies of Terminus is finallyover with. The last of the 100 vacancies were filled at 6:45PM PSTSunday night. Anyone who submitted their information after this datewill not be included in the list, however, there may be some vacanciesafter Vicarious Visions goes through the list and confirms each order.Some people may not have pre-ordered, or simply cannot be reached, sodon’t give up just yet.

If you did make the list, once Vicarious Visions has confirmed yourorder, you will be notified via email. I would like to thank everyonewho participated in this contest for taking the time to submit their

Miguel Angel Blanch Lardin wrote in to announce that version 0.3.6.1 of the Arianne RPG has been released. Changes in this version are that the server tries to resolve the name of the user host instead of writing just the IP address and the file where the info from the server is stored can be specified. He also writes that the team has decided that the combat system will be Final Fantasy-like with more strategic load.

Arianne downloads:
Arianne 0.3.6.1 patch: Arianne_RPG-0_3_6_1.tar.gz
Arianne 0.3.6: Arianne_RPG-0_3_6.tar.gz (you need to apply the patch to this)

The news page for Pirates Ho! has been updated stating that although the weekly site updates haven’t been appearing for a while, development on the project and others has been still going strong. We can expect some new images and “other goodies” within the next week or so.

Also mentioned in the news update is that the next IBM’s developerWorks SDL Pirates Ho! Article, part three, has been made available. This article focuses on the story development and graphic design of Pirates Ho!

Version 0.3.6 of the OpenGL table tennis simulator Cannon Smash has been released. This version includes smoother shading.

Cannon Smash source: csmash-0.3.6.tar.gz

Version 1.33g of XShipWars has been released. Changes in this version are that it supports setting of weapons yield and improved economy support as well as support for (and dependancy on) the new YIFF 2.07. Be aware that that you have to upgrade to YIFF 2.07 before you upgrade to this new version of XShipWars.

Downloads:
XShipWars downloads:fox.mit.edu/xsw/dl_main.htm
YIFF 2.07: yiff2.07.tgz

Loki Entertainment Software has released version 1.2.2 of their Setup installation utility, which is utilized in their commercial game ports (and was also used for Epic’s Linux UT installer). Changes:

• Use portable code generation (for EV4) on Linux/Alpha
• Catch the case when gnome-config isn’t available or executable
• Added an extras directory containing the “makedesktop.sh” script
• Only offer the desktop menu option if there is a “binary” option
• Limited the number of characters in the “current file” label
• The play option is only available if a symlink was created by setup
• Added the “nouninstall” product install option
• The “arch” attribute for options allows multiple architectures
• Documented the “size” attribute for the option element

Setup 1.2.2 Source:
3D Downloads Mirror

Andreas Henningsson wrote in to announce the release of Race version 0.2.0. Changes:

• twoplayer splitscreen mode
• pit for refueling
• fuel and speed meters
• keyboard configuratior
• many new tracks
• joystick support
• Better menu graphics
• possibility to improve engine and shield
• cars get damaged and must be repaird
• desert theme

Race 0.2.0 Source:
http://netti.nic.fi/~race/race-0.2.0.tar.gz

Christoph Hess wrote in to announce the launch of Linux 4 Fun, a German site devoted to providing Linux game news and reviews. To coincide with the site’s launch, Hess has produced a short review of Railroad Tycoon 2.

Linux Magazine has posted an extensive review of Railroad Tycoon 2: Gold Edition, the locomotive management sim. The review includes a screenshot, installation notes, a summary of gameplay, and a cautionary tale about attempting to play over a remote display.

Shodan of Station Terminus sent in the following news:

Vicarious Visions, the developers of the soon to be releasedspace-sim/rpg Terminus, are allowing 100 people a chance to get alimited edition copy of Terminus. Each copy will be numbered and willcome with poster signed by the development team.

In order to get this limited edition copy you must emailjoe@stationterminus.com with your name and email address. Then go tothe Vicarious Visions Online Store(http://www.vvisions.com/online-store_frame.htm ) and pre-orderTerminus. Once the limit of 100 entries has been reached, the list willbe sent to Vicarious Visions who will then send the limited editionboxes to the pre-orders matching the information on the list.

*It is imperative that the information you send tojoe@stationterminus.com be identical to that which you use to pre-orderTerminus.*

There are currently 62 spots left so hurry up and enter, then gopre-order!

In response to a query from Stefan Dirsch, Loki president Scott Draeker sent out this SITREP on Soldier of Fortune and configurable violence settings:

>Anyone who knows, if the Linux version of SOF will be the Full or
>Low Violence version? Is the Windows version of SOF ever been sold
>in Germany? I wonder why it’s not on the “index” …
>
>On http://www.ravensoft.com/buysof.shtml I can find three different
>versions of SOF:
>
>- Soldier of Fortune Full Violence SKU (US Only)
>- Soldier of Fortune Low Violence SKU (US Only)
>- Soldier of Fortune Full Violence SKU (UK and Europe, exluding France and
> Germany)
>
>Stefan

SoF for Linux will be the full version. There is a parental lockoutfeature for those who wish to play the less violent version.

As for Germany, there are several levels of prohibition. I wouldanticipate SoF to go beyond being indexed and be banned. Anyone sellingthe product there would be subject to criminal sanctions.

There have been several additions to the OpenUT project site by Andy Piper over the past few days:

• .ini file section added
• revision 1.1.1 of the FAQ
• more links
• third-party utils reorganised
• UTCP now hosted :)
• updated logo (a small addition ;)
• links through to documents in CVS
• Added IpDrv library to upgrade 413 to 413a

OpenUT is an effort to improve the features and performance of Unreal Tournament under Linux based on a partial source release by Epic.