LINUXGAMES

Gamespy’s James Hills recentlyinterviewedLoki president Scott Draekerconcerning the current state of the Linux gaming market before theupcoming LinuxWorld Expo. Of note isScott’s revelation that Loki will be attending next year’s E3, a first for the Linux community.

Alistair Riddoch wrote in to announce the release ofthe WorldForge project’sAcorn Demo version 0.1. Therequired media and source code is available at

http://www.worldforge.org/website/rules/acorn/download

Alistair also pointed the installation and player’sguides; you can view a screenshot of the current uclient here.

• BioWare updated the officialNeverwinter Nights sitewith a development situation report for the AD&D RPG. Mention of the Linux port’sstatus is also made:

  There has been significant progress on the Mac and Linux ports of the game as well…

  Thanks to Nick Sanders for the news.

• Joost Loijens from Gamespy gleaned additionalinfo on NWN’s progress during his visit to the BioWare offices.

The FreeCraft site updated withconcept art shots for what willpresumably be additional replacement art for the Warcraft II engine implementation.

• Andy Piper wrote in to announce that theOpenUT has added a mod compatibilitysection, where playersand OpenUT developers can report on issues encountered when attempting to runvarious Unreal Tournament modifications in Linux.

• On a similar note, version 1.40 of RocketArena: UT has been released, after a long hiatus for the duelist mod. Be sureto download the no umod version (3D Downloads | FilePlanet) to be able to run it under Linux. Mongo has also added a knownissues page to aidin the development of a stable release.

Vicarious Visions has released theversion 1.62 patch for the sci-fi simulator Terminus. Changes:

• Fixed save game loading with stored ships
• Default canisters scannable when loading older save games
• Fixed docking with ship that contains many thrusters

Terminus 1.62 Download:
http://www.vvisions.com/terminus/downloads_frame.htm

• Loki’s Andrew Henderson let us know thathe posted a replyon Slashdot inresponse to comments made regarding the recently completed port of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Andrew explains why SMAC is only availablefor Linux x86, states that FreeBSD can probably run SMAC without issues, and thanksthe community of beta testers called upon during SMAC’s development (“Well over a hundred bugs that were in the Win32 version have been fixed in the Linux version”).

• Loki also sent in word that they’ll be attending the summerLinuxWorld Expo (booth #412), where they’ll bedemonstrating their latest ports (as well as the Cobra Flight Simchair); furthermore,Bernd Kreimeier and Michael Vance will be holding a discussion on”Porting Games to Linux” on August 17.

Computer Games Online put up a brief look back at thehistory of the LithTech 3D Engine (whichbegan life as Microsoft’s DirectEngine); an early LithTech title,Shogo: MAD, isbeing ported to Linux by Hyperion Software.Moreover, Hyperion is also tasked with porting the current LithTech code base to Linux, whichthe article makes brief mention of.

nlin wrote in to theLGDC mailing list withadditional information on the new features in version 2.0 of the free 3Dmodeler Blender:

It is a self-contained development and run-time environment formodeling and controlling interactive environments.

First of all, Blender allows you to model 3D objects, rooms, etc. just likeany 3D modeler (3DSMax, etc).

Secondly, and this is the new stuff with Blender 2.0, Blender allows you toclassify polygonal meshes as being sectors (i.e. rooms), props (staticobjects), or actors (dynamic objects). Then, a run-time engine appliesphysics and user-defined behaviors to the objects.

Execution of the game takes place within the Blender environment itself.Therefore, Blender (for the time being) is best viewed as a self-containedengine and environment for developing and creating interactive content.Running games created with Blender requires you to run Blender, as sort ofa run-time wrapper. Blender does not yet, IMHO, appear to be usable as alibrary which can be called from external programs (although Blenderdoes have a built-in scripting language for doing some programming).Therefore, depending on your goals, Blender may or may not be for you -if you want to play around with creating interactive content in a visualdevelopment environment, Blender is the way to go. If you want to experimentwith new low-level rendering, voxel, or visibility algorithms (BSP, portals,octtree), you will need (as has always been the case) to write your own3D engine because Blender’s engine has made specific design decisionswhich are – for the moment anyway – difficult to change. (I wrote thecompany asking if they could provide a plug-in interface to allow low-levelaccess to some of the engine’s internals, but have gotten no response yet.)

My upcoming book, “Linux 3D Graphics programming” (available for pre-orderon amazon.com now from Wordware Publishing), has 2 Chapters on using Blenderfor creating games, as well as other information useful to Linux 3D graphicsprogrammers.

• The Corporation (a rather unique name for a gaming site) has posted a two-part interview with id’sGraeme Devine, currently working as the resident designer for the Team Arena and Doomprojects. The interview (Part 1 | Part 2) focuses mainly on the featuresand gameplay changes in the upcoming Q3A mission pack, the aforementioned Team Arena. I’mfinding it difficult to get terribly excited about TA, but this statement from Graeme came closeto swaying me:

  Quake III team arena is the best Quake III ever.

  Well… ok.

• Robert Duffy, id’s toolcoder, was interviewed by Hypothermia, which covers howDuffy was hired by id, more on Team Arena, and some insight on working with Carmack.

• Miguel Angel Blanch Lardin sent in anupdate concerning the Arianne RPG’spoll to determinethe project’s logo. Furthermore, Miguel states they are on track to releaseversion 1.0.0 sometime in August.

• Patrick Mullen let us know thatthe Duke of URL has posted areviewof Yet Another Linux Distribution, Kondara.
• Ingo Ruhnke fired in notice ofan extensive articleon general game design by Eskil Steenberg. The piece, titled “Balance”, examinesthe mechanics of game design at several levels, and includes this intriguingcomment:
  

  Starting at zero one has to ask why do we play games? If we dont know that, can we really build any good games? The answer is simple: Reality sucks. and to make a game is simply to take reality and remove everything that sucks.

• Slashdot posted a discussion on the future of the non-action 3D FPS.

Loki has just updated their site to announce thatthe Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack (which includes both Alpha Centauri and the Alien Crossfire expansion pack) has gonegold and will begin shipping shortly. Loki has also released the SMACdemo(README)which allows Linux users a chance to sample gameplay from AlienCrossfire before the full game becomes available. The full retail version of theCivilization-esque sci-fi game can be pre-orderedfrom http://store.lokigames.com/.

Sid Meier’s Alien Crossfire Demo:

• Loki
• 3D Downloads

Mirrors

Loki Entertainment Software has releasedthe version 1.05 patch for Raven’s mercenaryaction game Soldier of Fortune.Changes include:

• Respect gl_ext_multitexture
• Protocol compatible with v1.05 Windows client
• Pure Server option added
• Auto-downloading fixed
• Audio stuttering between levels fixed
• Audio volume tweaks

Moreover, the READMEincludes the following warning:

This patch breaks compatibility with v1.04 password files. You areadvised to remove your previous password file and set your parentalcontrol settings again. The password file is located at~/.loki/sof/password.

Old save games and demos are incompatible with this patch.

Soldier of Fortune 1.05 Download:

• Loki
• 3D Downloads

Mirrors

Well, we’ve redesigned the site for a (if memory serves) fourth time since LinuxGames started in the spring of ’98; hopefully this design will load much faster for all of you. Also, news is now contained in daily blocks, which should aid in determining what’s been added since your last visit. Furthermore, there’s been some enhancements to the comments, such as threading. Hopefully everything is working correctly; however, if we’ve missed something (or if you have a suggestion), fire off a bug report to news@linuxgames.com. Finally, to all our readers, thank you, as we’re doing all of this for you and the community :)

Also, special thanks to Matt Davis, who is responsible for much of the current look.

Hans de Goede wrote in to announce the release ofxmame version 0.37b5.1; changes:

• Everything from mame 0.37b5, no mess yet!
• The asm m68000 core is currently broken, so don’t use it! ,on the brighter side of things, neogeo games seems tobe working with the C-core now.
• Fixed the segfault when exiting the xgl version.

Hans also notes:

Just a quick mame only release. This will be the last release for awhile since i’m going on holliday. I also didn’t have the time to put inany contributed patches, but don’t worry I have them queued.

Several new games are supported in this release of the multi-arcade machine emulator, such as Mortal Kombat 3 and Rampage: World Tour. The entire list is available here.

xmame 0.37b5.1 Source:
http://x.mame.net/download/xmame-0.37b5.1.tgz

• The Rocket Arena: UT siteupdated with a SITREP on the Unreal Tournamentduelist mod’s status. According to Mongo, the current codebase is in beta testing, and fournew maps are currently indevelopment (screenshots of which can be found here).
• The Unreal Fortress site postedscreenshots from three new maps (Daylight, Maximum 16, andRosencrantz). Furthermore,several low-res in-game screenshotsfrom the yet-to-be-released class-based mod are also available.

Computer Games Online has theirreview of the space RPG/sim Terminus up, which begins by echoing the game’s similarities to the classic titles Elite andWing Commander: Privateer. The author then goes on to state that the limitationsimposed by the games’ two military games make them inferior to the pirate ormercenary campaigns, which offer far more flexibility. Moreover, the Newtonian flight model andmultiplayer options are also examined.

Thomas Gufler wrote in to note thatversion 2.0of Blender (the “gameBlender”) hasbeen released. Originally a 3D modeling/rendering/animating program, this new release addsa game engine, which features physicsand a logic editor.

Blender 2.0 Download:
http://www.blender.nl/download/index.php

Zocks has posted a preview (English) of Descent 3, the 3D flight action game being ported to Linux byLoki. The article, based on the recent beta test,includes five screenshots. Furthermore, Zocks now has a dedicated Linux section, whichcan be reached at http://www.zocks.de/tux/.

The client-server Doom source modification csDoomupdated its site to announce that, after some coaxing by John Carmack, the nextrelease will be under the GNU General Public License:

The csDoom project is based on ZDoom 1.22 which is not released under the GPL, but I incorporated quake world code… QW is released under the GPL and I must release csDoom under the GPL too. I have the right to not release it under the GPL, if I rewrite all QW code! Carmack said: “It is a waste of effort to go and rewrite perfectly good code.” and he was right of course. I asked some questions then and John Carmack convinced me that it’s good to share my work so others can build upon it. The next csDoom version will be released under the GPL!

The current csDoom release, version 0.62, can be downloaded from here.