LINUXGAMES

The Citadel has posted two MPEG’s ofBlack and White from this year’s recently concluded ECTS:

• Black and White @ ECTS – Intro
• Black and White @ ECTS – Gameplay

Developers from Lionhead have stated there will be a Linux port of Black and White, although details on when it will be available have not yet been made public.

Marko Harjula wrote in to let us know that the initial planning has begun for an “OpenSim” project on the CombatSim.com forums. Gilman Louie (who worked on Falcon 4.0 while at Hasbro/Microprose), appears to beleading this effort to develop an open-source flight/general-combat simulator; however, actualdevelopment has yet to begin.

The Foundation crew put together a binary release of their multi-player space game if you don’t feel like compiling.
Foundation 0.2.0 binary:
http://foundation.sourceforge.net/foundation-0.2.0-i386.tar.gz
Foundation 0.2.0 source:
http://foundation.sourceforge.net/foundation-0.2.0.tar.gz

Volition’s James Hague respondedto requests for a Linux port of Summoner, a fantasy RPG, in the Summonerforums last week:

Nah, there are people here who like Linux. I think it’s more an issue of it being difficult to put a tremendous effort into a port–Summoner is an absolutely huge game–for what’s not really a game consumer’s OS. You know?

Not too promising, but not a flat-out no either.

Ben Woodhead wrote in and let us know thatversion 1.3.1 of Steve Baker’s Portable Game Librarywas released. The changelog can be found here; the newsource tree is available for download from

http://plib.sourceforge.net/dist/plib-1.3.1.tar.gz

• Although its technically not a game per se, the O’Reilly Network has posted a tutorial for programminga black hole simulator using OpenGL.
  Source: LinuxToday

• Linux.com has posted an article on “Building A Better Gaming Machine”, which goes over the various components that would be included in an optimalLinux game box configuration (thanks Linux3D).

In an interview withGamespy concerning the various competing game platforms and API’s, Raven Software’s Jake Simpson states that future Raven titles, like Heretic 2 and Soldier of Fortune, will be designed with porting in mind:

Obviously for us here at Raven, we are following id’s lead of multi platform games, so OpenGL is a no brainier[sic].

Two puzzle game releases:

• Version 1.0.0 of Intelligent FRAC, a packing game similarto Tetris, was released by Michael Glickman. It currently supports either SVGAlib or X11 rendering; the source is available from
  

  http://members.fortunecity.com/acelin/ifrac/ifrac-1.0.0.tar.gz

  Thanks to Freshmeat for the news.

• The Game Tome noted the release of 7colors version 0.10 (shot), a GTK-based puzzle game involving color-changingrhombi. Source.

For those of you attempting to run the UnrealTournament mod StrikeForce under Linux, samppa has posted an installation and configuration HOWTO. Strike Force is a squad-based tactical mod;information regarding other UT modifications and Linux can be found at the OpenUTsite.

Some other Doom-relatednews:

• Doomworld’s 10 Sectors contest (which I’ve unfortunately neglected to mention until now) ends Friday; entrants are required to create a Doom 2 level using ten sectors or less. The prize is a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP card; you can map with Yadex if you plan on level editing under Linux.
• Team TNT, who created the episodes in the last commercial Doom product (Final Doom) from id Software, have announced that their upcoming ZDoom-based megawad will be called Daedalus: Alien Defense (the former title was Doom2000).

Florian ‘Proff’ Schulze wrote in to announce the release of PrBoom 2.1.0. This release is a result of a merger between PrBoom, LxDoom and lSDLDoom. He also notes that this version of PrBoom greatly improves compatibility with original Doom levels and demos, also with that almost all original demos, and all MBF demos (included the Tools Assisted Speedrun demos) work. The source for this is not out just yet, but will be soon. In the meantime you can get the RPM version at their website.

A new version of Cannon Smash the GL accelerated tabel-tennis sim for Linux and Windows was released today. Changes:

Changes have been made to enable move target without moving left hand, to reduce the number of key strokes for moving target, to add a slow motion effect at the beginning of replay mode, to change the shape of the target circle, to display the hitting point, and to add a simple mode.

glElite, a GL clone of elite, has today it’s first source (engine) for non-cvs users! Teddy releases are located at this sourceforge page.
Teddy source 1.22:
http://download.sourceforge.net/glelite/Teddy-src-1.22.tgz

Various id-related updates:

• Speaking of network outages, Christian “Disruptor” Antkow made a.plan update Friday to warn about downtime for id, whichwould have affected web, FTP, and Q3A master services:
  

  Planned network outage

  I’m going to be doing some maintenance work on our internet servers androuters this Sunday, September 17th between the hours of 2pm and 4:30pm CST.

  Our router should be down for no more than 30 minutes starting around 4:00pmCST. If you have difficulty accessing the Quake III master server, this is why.

  DNS will be disrupted during this maintenance period.

  -Xian

  However, Xian later updated his .plan to state that only DNS work would take place todaydue to European league play:
  

  Router maintenance will be rescheduled for a future time (probably at some ungodly hour in the morning during the week). It was brought to my attention that a lot of Europeans play league games on Sundays.

  Maintenance on our DNS server will go ahead as planned however. DNS will be down between 2pm and 4pm CST on Sunday, Sept. 17th. This should not affect your ability to access the Q3A master.

• Colin Phipps, who also maintains LxDoom,released version 5.0 of BSP, anode builder for Doom and its various source ports. Source.
• Dan Olson (of HHexen fame) sent word that he’s working on reverse engineering Commander Keen 4, one of id’sclassic titles before the Doom-era(LG staff member Marv wrote up some background info on the Keen serieshere).Dan also points out that Anders Gavare had beguninvestigating a possible portof Commander Keen 1-3, whose site includes his experiences attempting to reverse-engineerthe original games.
• Finally, while we’re on a nostalgia trip, here’s an August 1996 Wiredarticle byMarc Laidlaw entitled “The Egos at id”, which covers the final development stages of Quake 1.The opinions and caveats expressed by the staff members as Quake prepared to ship providean intriguing perspectiveon the recent announcement that id would be returning to the Doom series for their next project.

Just in case there are those of you who haven’t heard, SourceForge, which hosts a considerable amount of open source gaming-related projects, will be down beginning at 2200 Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, September 22nd, through 0800 Pacific on Saturday, September 23rd (this is, of course, subject to change). The downtime is part of a physical server move to facilitate near-term expansion; remember to keep this in mind if your project utilizes (or if you use a project hosted at) SourceForge.

Loki has released an updated demo for their Linux port of SimCity 3000 (README).Changes:

• fixed crashes related to really new glibc versions (e.g. RedHat 7.0)
• fixed crashes related to the end of scenario
• allows full 10 years of play
• fixed the query tool

You can download a 7 meg patch or the full (fixed) 176 meg demo if you haven’t already.

SimCity 3000 Demo Download:

• Patch – (Local Mirror)
• Full Demo – (Local Mirror)

Mirror List – http://www.lokigames.com/products/sc3k/demo.php3

User Friendly and Loki Entertainment have announced a Quake3:Arena Skins and Mapping contest. 1st Place gets any two games from Loki, two User Friendly books, signed by Illiad, and a Dust Puppy. 2nd Place gets a game from Loki, and a Dust Puppy. Honorable Mentions in all categories also get Dust Puppies. Winner Announced on October 13th at ALS. Submissions go to quake@userfriendly.org

Rules:

1. Must have a UF theme.
2. Use of copyrighted UserFriendly.Org images is permitted for purposes of this contest only.
3. Map submissions must be compatible with Quake III, and be Deathmatch style.
4. Size and player numbers are open, and map must be be playablein Quake III.
5. Materials must be original and not copyrighted.
6. Anything vulgar (nudity, swearing, Miranda in compromisingpositions, etc) will be disqualified. Use the brains we know you all have.

1. Design & UFiness: (Is it crazy like Dali or Rembrandt realism?)
2. Architecture: (Do the laws of physics apply to your lighting? Do your colours, textures and buildings look real?)
3. Originality: (Is it same ‘ol, same ‘ol, or are you more creative then Geiger?)
4. Playability: (Will there be boredom suicides? Or will it contribute to the productivity virus?)
5. Balance: (Do your players all have fifty guns and zero health? Or are you in Quake harmony?)

1. UF Design: (Are you Illiad’s hand double? Do your skins look like UF characters?)
2. Playability: (Would you, could you on your box?)
3. Style: (Do you have any? Are your colours and shading smoother than Stef?)
4. Sounds & Animations: (Lesser of the four but you get the drift.)

Update (Sat Sep 15 11:35:44 2000) by keerf: Loki has issued a press release regarding the contest here.

Another new version of Asteroids3D today. Changelog is here.

Asteroids3D 0.1.153 source:
http://www.pitt.edu/~stuart/a3d/asteroids3D-0.1.153.tar.gz

Dave “anarchy” Dynerman of Team Reactionlet us know that they’ve released Linux versions of Quake 3Jailbreak in .zip format. In addition to the expected fixes and new content/features,Team RXN has made the source codeto their Q3A mod available (the Linux Q3A SDK is available from here). Q3JB is available with bot support or without (downloading the botpackages adds around 15 megs to your download); as zip files lack an installer, the modEULA is provided at their site.

Quake 3 Jailbreak 1.0 Download:

Team Reaction Mirror
3D Downloads Mirror

The Linux Gurus have posted a review of the sci-fi space combat simTerminus. The review covers the game’s impressive graphics and sound, as well as the typical areas of installation, game play, training, scenarios, campaigns, and equipment available in the game – overall, a very positive review.