LINUXGAMES

TTimo updated the QERadiant.com news page to announce that the next release of hisGTK+-based Q3 level editor GtkRadiant willbe made available “sometime next week”:

We have had Id’s Q3Radiant 200f for a while now and are working on building a version 1.1-TA of GtkRadiant which will contain the latest changes from Id and the usual bugfixes and new features. This will come with a setup and some editing media (entities file, .md3 and editor textures) for Team Arena mapping.

Nathan Hand submitted a preliminary 3D acronymglossary to the DRIdevelopment mailing list this week, which has been addedto the project’s site documentation. The current draft can be found athttp://dri.sourceforge.net/glossary.html.

Loki’s Bernd Kreimeier sent in the following:

id has approved the public Beta1 release of the Q3A 1.27Linux dedicated server and the Linux client. See READMEfor details and known issues.

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake3/linux/
ftp://ftp.lokigames.com/pub/beta/quake3/

and the respective mirrors.

Furthermore, id’s Robert Duffy updated his .plan with additional info:

I am off on vacation starting Sunday for a week or so and will obviously be in-active in the mod forums. I do plan to get active once I get back. I’ve been looking at as many mods as possible lately, we are starting to ramp up on DOOM pretty quickly but I wanted to sneak some time to see what all was there. The Q3F stuff looks really nice and next month while I am visiting the Wolfenstein guys I hope to hook up with the Urban Terror guys just to see what all they have planned. WFA looks great and Rocket Arena is as usual sucking up a lot of playtime. There are some more single player things that look interesting as well. I still have about 300 to look at but that is all good stuff.

A FAQ should be going up soon that provides some work arounds for Team Arena and the point release. All in all it has looked really good. We will be releasing a patch at some point to address anything serious that comes up and we also want to provide the ability to allow mod makers to reference an existing fs_game path for mod creation. This will allow mods to be based on Team Arena.

I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday.

Quake 3: Arena 1.27 Beta Mirror:
http://www.3ddownloads.com/?directory=/linuxgames/loki/beta/quake3/

The ever-prolific Patrick Mullen of theDuke of URL let us know that they’ve posteda review of the just-releasedXFree86 version 4.0.2. The review includes benchmarks for Q3Awith Voodoo 3, Voodoo 5, and GeForce2 GTS cards, and looks at the various new features XFree86 now bringsto the table.

id Software’s Todd Hollenshead made apost to theQuake3World Team Arenaforums this weekregarding a Q3A/TA Linux 1.27 binary release ETA:

I know they’re working on it, but I don’t personally have a date from them. We’re assisting where we can, so hopefully soon. Sorry I don’t have any better information than that as of this moment.

While you’re waiting, Gamespot has posted several MPEG-formatmovies of TA gameplay.

Stan Shebs wrote in to announce the release ofXconq version 7.4.1. Xconq is a general turn-basedstrategy game system with a large variety of warfare settings; changes in 7.4 include:

This release features Hans Ronne’s new Tolkien-inspired game”Lord of the Rings”, Keir Novik’s “Carrier Battles” and “Coral Sea”game, ability to see all units in a stack, more flexibility whenstarting up network games, better feedback when units can’t dothings, isometric map display (Unix only), and many Mac interfaceimprovements. There are also a number of smaller changes, see theNEWS file for details.

Xconq 7.4.1 Download:
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/xconq/xconq-7.4.1.tar.gz

3D Rage has a previewarticle up for the IndremaLinux-based L600 console system, which doesn’t really say anything that hasn’t been addressed before, although it examinesthe specifications more closely than others have in the past.

Stomped interviewedWarren Spector, of ION Storm and Deus Ex fame,about gaming in the year 2000 and beyond.

In addition, Stomped talked to the self-styled”CliffyB“, level designer for Epic(the authors of Unreal Tournament), on the same subject.

Auran (who developed the 3D RTS Dark Reign) fired in word that the Beta 2 release of theirtheir AURAN Jet game authoring system, whichthey have stated in the past will includeLinux support, will be released on January 31, 2001.

Voodoo Extreme caught up with Brian Hook, who helped orchestrate3dfx’s initial rise to prominence by writing the Glide library, and asked for hisopinions on thedemise of his former employer.

Eric LaMunyon wrote in noting that the 3dfxgamers.commessage boards, where support for Linux users was provided, have been taken down.

The author of DGEN/SDL, a Genesis emulator ported from Windows which also compiles on BeOS, has been interviewed over at LinuxEmu.

Lee Anderson wrote in to let us know thathe’s posted his reviewof Heavy Gear 2 atGamesmania. Anderson evaluates the single player campaign,the control system, and gear customization; several screenshots are also included.

Dynamix’s Dave Georgesonstoppedby the TribalWarforums with a situation report for Tribes 2:

Howdy, folks…

Just dropping you a line to let you know:

a) I’m not dead and not ignoring y’all. Just working hard, focusing, and trying to get stuff done so we can reopen the beta.

b) The beta period is not over yet. We will be reopening it soon to resume testing after a shutdown “hiatus” where we are closing a ton of bugs and improving performance/gameplay.

c) I have no release date info for you. Despite having a firm intention of hitting a specific date, I’m not even hinting at when that date is except to my upper management (who require more than hints. ; )

d) I’ll be in touch when I can. Just letting you know we’re still working hard here.

Dynamix also supplied TribalWar with a mock movie-style Tribes 2 poster, which can be foundhere. Finally, if you’re not sick of themby now, another T2 preview is up at 3DGameGear.

Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote in to announce the release Heroes 0.8 (Screenshots). Heroes is a Nibbles-style game with five game modes. Heroes features 12 original sound tracks, 94 levels (with 10 different tile sets) plus a level editor. Changes/Fixes for this release are:

• –without-mikmod was not always taken into account (since 0.6)
• the key configurator was not working properly (since 0.6c)
• memory leaks (since 0.7b)
• segfault due to the help reader (since 0.7b)

Download Heroes 0.8
http://heroes.sourceforge.net/download.html

Miguel Angel Blanch wrote in to letus know that version 1.0.0 of the ArianneMMORPG system has been released. This version is a complete rewrite of the oldsystem and therefore has a stronger core but isn’t exactly playable. You can,however, chat and move over the terrain to get an idea of where the project isin development.

Version 0.7.6 of the FlightGearFlight Simulator has been released. Changes include:

• Added night ground cover lights with user controllable densities on a per texture basis. Lights have a bit of a “fog punch through” effect.
• Support added for “shaped” instrument panels.
• Added support for virtual panels that are larger than the screen space which can scroll.
• Added waypoint and route flying support to the autopilot and HUD.
• New highly detailed runway textures with accurate markings.
• Added a basic piston engine model, with support for rpm, egt, cht, mp, and mixture.
• Many tweaks and improvements to the c172 instrument panel.
• Corrections and additions to the airport and navaid database.
• Added an external interface to the property manager so you can “telnet” into a running copy of FlightGear, cd through the property tree and examine and even change values, all from a remote computer.
• Improvements to flight model initialization.
• Added a load/save dialog box for saving/restoring your current flight.
• Added a visibility= command line option for setting intial visibility distance.
• Rewrote the tile caching scheme so it is now more flexible, more dynamic, simpler, and more robust.

FlightGear 0.7.6 source and downloads: www.flightgear.org/Downloads/

Version 4.0.2 of XFree86 has been released. A full list of changes can be found in the release notes; the highlights include:

• Mesa updated to the latest stable (3.4) release
• Increased ATI support including: ATI Radeon driver adapter support added; Multi-head configuration support added; Non-Intel platform support improved
• Improved DRI support for the ATI, 3Dfx, Intel, Matrox, SiS and Sun chips.
• The DRI is now also available on Alpha platforms
• Render support has been added. This extension to the X protocol, uniquely XFree86′s allows image composition and anti-aliasing text.
• Significant enhancements to the Internationalisation support in Xlib
• New xfs updates, including font path verification, and options.

As always, be sure to go through the README and Installation Notes before upgrading.

XFree86 4.0.2 Source and Binaries: ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.2/ (mirrors)

Starbuck Zero wrote in to point outan article @NewsForge entitled “Linux gaming parity: Don’t hold your breath”.The editorial, written by Grant Gross, examines the currentstate of Linux’s quest for acceptance by developers and publishers as a gaming platform.

Loki’s Andrew Henderson let us know that the officialKohan: Immortal Sovereigns site has launched; the pressrelease describing the site’s content can be foundhere. Kohan is alsofeatured on the cover of this month’s Linux Journal (whichalso has articles describing OpenAL andSDL); TimeGate Studiosis co-developing the fantasy RTS with Loki for a simultaneous release on Linux (Loki’s Kohanpage is located at http://www.lokigames.com/products/kohan/).

Precision Insight’s Daryll Strausswrotein to the DRI project’sdevelopment mailinglist to address concerns about the 3dfx driver’s future after theacquisition of 3dfx’s coreassets by NVIDIA was announced:

There’s not a lot of official comments we can make about 3dfx, mostlybecause we don’t actually know much.

Our contract with 3dfx actually expired a while back. They’ve beenworking internally on the driver, mostly on the SLI/FSAA issues.

We have a second customer that has been paying us to develop the 3dfxdriver. That work is also coming to a close, but it resulted in thecomplete rewrite of the core driver that you see in the tdfx-3-0branch.

We really have no knowledge of what nVidia is going to do in the futurewith 3dfx hardware and software. We continue to talk with nVidia on andoff. So, far that hasn’t resulted in any development contracts. Luckilydocumentation for the V3 and glide for the V5 is available, so anyonewho wants to develop these drivers independently in the future may wellbe able to do so.

That’s about all there is to say. After the amount of time I put intotheir hardware I’m sad to see 3dfx go. Compared to most vendors, theywere good about supporting Linux, in providing source and documentation,and paying for development. I personally think more competition is goodfor consumers, but it is a rough market to survive in. We’ll see whathappens with the remaining hardware manufacturers.

Also, an archive of(RealAudioformat) Monday’s conference call held by NVIDIA to answer investorquestions regarding the deal has been made available. Finally, the announcementFAQ has once again been posted.