LINUXGAMES

Tux Games’ Michael Simms made aposthere at LG last night to address customer complaints about the copies ofShogo: MAD theyreceived:

Tux Games is aware that some copies of Shogo shipped without CD keys. We are replying to these as fast as we can (yes there were quite a few). If you do receive a copy of Shogo from us (or from anyone else) without a serial number then please contact MacFly@titancomputer.de

For the comment about the delay to shipping Shogo, yes we are aware of that. We were waiting for some time to receive Shogo. The first order was ‘lost in the post’. All copies that were ordered were shipped within 24 hours of our receiving stock, and we ordered our stock on the day it became available. Unfortunately this is really the best we can do, we cannot ship stock we dont have. I am sorry to the person that feels he had a bad experience ordering from us, we do our best to get stock out as soon as we can, but we are to a certain extent at the mercy of the publishers and the carriers.

As to JA2 that people have mentioned. We are still awaiting stock of this game. We have been told that it is in transit to us. Again, we cannot ship to people what we do not have, and we will ship out as soon as we get it.

This is also the first we have been told about Sin, so we will get our order in for this immediately, and again, as soon as we receive stock, we will ship it.

ZOCKS is running acontest(English machine translation)in which subscribers to theirnewsletter can winAnarchy Online merchandise for answeringquestions related to their site’s content, or winning a weekly lottery (thanks to Christian Zanderfor clarifying this).

Also, they’ve posted an article(English)on the recent demise of flat ISP rates for German Telekom customers.

Bill Adams sent in a report(http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/state-o-glide.2001-02-26.txt) regarding his efforts to compile and utilize the Glide 3.x CVS treewith the legacy versions of XFree86, the 3.3.x series. Billconcludes:

The puchline, to save you fromhaving to read this whole thing, is that Voodoo3 + XFree 3.3.x usersshould stick with glide2. I would not even bother installing glide3as it will just mess things up.

Dan Warren sent in a utility he wrote for those of you who wish to create fun names for use withLinux QuakeWorld. The initial release of linqne can be downloaded from

http://www.3ddownloads.com/?file_id=138581

Michael Simms sent in this quick note:

Tux Games will be appearing at UKLinux Expo 2001 in London on July 4th and 5th. Come and visit us atstand 171 on the main floor!

Loki’s Sam Lantinga let us know that you cannow vote for Simple DirectMedia Layer developmentfunding at LinuxFund.org; SDL is utilizedin many open source game development projects:

http://www.linuxfund.org/development/project/?id=41

You can register to vote for SDL, and other projects, here.

Titan Computer issued the following press release today which mentions that, along with Jagged Alliance 2 andShogo: Mobile Armor Division (which began shipping earlier this year), the Linux version of SiN is now available for ordering:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

We would like to inform you that we have just released our latest Linux Games:

Jagged Alliance 2
SIN
Shogo MAD

You can find more information on our website (www.titan-computer.com).

Ashridah sent in the following:

Debian users are finally able to apt-get nvidia’sdrivers (after a fashion) when Christopher L Cheney(ccheney@debian.org) uploaded his first version of hisnvidia packagesever since the drivers were released by nvidia, debianusers have had to suffer through paging throughmountains of documentation, but now, it’s as simple as

# apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src nvidia-glx-src

then just build the normal packages (provided you havea normal kernel source tree) and it will give you afully working install, that can even have Mesa’sheaders and utilities upgrade without problems!

should make for the shortest howto ever (barringtroubleshooting :) )

Edge Gaming Network had an e-mail exchange withid Software’s John Carmack (thanks to the newly re-named Shacknews) aboutthe NVIDIA GeForce3(the site for which now having more substantial information than just the MacOS press release):

EGN: Do you think that the Geforce 3 has reached the limit where we can’t get any better in quality? What is the next step?

JC: We desperately need more color precision at each pixel. A typical rendered pixel in the new engine may be a composition of 20 textures, and every multiply in a graphics algorithm loses some precision in the final output. It is often possible to get output granularity worse than from a 16 bit image.

Moving to 64 or 128 bits per pixel calculations is the most important thing for the next generation of cards.

EGN: How does the GF3 compare to all other video cards on the market right now?

JC: I haven’t evaluated other aspects like 2D and video playback, and cost is definitely a factor, but from a pure 3D standpoint, it is just plain better at everything.

Also, NVIDIA has issued their general GeForce3 pressrelease, which quotes Carmack’s praise of the card (unfortunately the PR emphasizes theDirectX 8 and Xbox features).

Moreover, previews of the GF3 are being posted today, including these two:

• Anand Lal Shimpi – http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1426
• Dr. Tom Pabst’s – http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q1/010227/index.html

Eskil Steenberg wrote in to announce the first release of Verse. To quote a short blurb on the website about what Verse is:

Verse is a network protocol, for three-dimensional, client/server graphic applications, designed to let anyone build and distribute a 3D “world” on the Internet (or any other TCP/IP network, of course).

Verse itself has been under development silently for 20 months. It has two full time developers who are funded by a Swedish Company. The project itself is not very vaporous. They do have alot of code, but are waiting for a community. To see Verse in action (aka screenshots), check out the screenshot page at http://verse.sourceforge.net/shots/screenshots.html.

Download:
http://verse.sourceforge.net/misc/download.html

AO Forge has 1600×1200 resolution screenshots from the currentbeta build of Anarchy Online, the sci-fi MMORPGbeing developed by Funcom (note: these shotsare from the Win32 version, as Funcom hassaid the Linux versionwill likely not be seen until the game is released):

• Shot 1
• Shot 2
• Shot 3

Version 0.5.2 of Cannon Smash, a table-tennis game, was released; changes include:

• Optimization of simple mode for non 3D-accelerated machines
• A fix for game balance
• Improves protocol for Internet play.

Cannon Smash 0.5.2 Source:
http://download.SourceForge.net/CannonSmash/csmash-0.5.2.tar.gz

Evil3D.net has an updated version of theirMandrake 7 andNVIDIAHOWTO to takeinto account the releases of XFree86 4.0.2 andNVIDIA’s version 0.9-6 drivers.

A new version of OpenRPG has been released. OpenRPG allows people to play paper-and-dice role-playing games over the Internet. Changes and or fixes in this release include:

• New network code.
• New Windowed Interface.
• New text block/die macro editor. These two nodes are almost identical in 0.8 and will be only one node in future releases.
• Node Whispering.
• New encounter node (its just text nodes and a group node now).
• Numerous bug fixes.

Download:
http://www.openrpg.com/download.php?op=mydown&did=11

The dev team @ Realm Interactive wasinterviewedby GA-Source over the weekend about theirrecently announced project to developa 3D massive multiplayer sequel to the classic BBS game Trade Wars. The questions concern theirinitial design for the game, dubbed Trade Wars: Dark Millenium (Note: I had trouble getting Mozilla to load the interview page, and ultimately resorted to using Lynx; your mileage may vary).

UPDATE: Zocks’ Jera let us know that this is just a reprint of the official game FAQ.

EuroGamer has an articleup previewing the NVIDIA GeForce3. Various features are examined, including the nfiniteFX engine; also, ATI’s current Radeon line is compared to this new 3D monstrosity.

Dan “theoddone33″ Olson, the author of HHexen and other projects, madea post on the3D Realms message board entitled “theoddone33′s Guide to Releasing Source Code”, which enumerates the advantages of releasing old game source code, while acknowledging that companies have a rightto decline making their intellectual property freely available:

#1. Source releases benefit the community.

With very few exceptions every source release has resulted in at least a Linux port of the game and at most a greatly enhanced product. Young and experienced coders alike can look at the source and see a bit of how professional game programmers do things. John Carmack, who was probably the first to release source, did it because he wanted to see what cool things the community would come up with. He’s continued that tradition and cooler and cooler things keep popping up.

#2 Source releases benefit the company.

Due to all the community enhancements, ports, and whatever else, people with no previous interest in the game will suddenly be trying to find a copy to buy. People who use Linux exclusively will now be buying the game if they do not already own it. Customers will be happier because their game will work on X operating system that it was not designed for. The company will be looked highly upon by members of the community who have always wanted to do ____ with the game but couldn’t before.

#3 Source releases do not decrease the money-generating power of the game.

Source releases *always* result in greater interest in the game. There is no exception that I know of, and I doubt that any of you can point one out.

#4 The community does not ‘deserve’ the source.

A game’s source belongs to those who own the rights to it. Releasing source is purely an act of goodwill by the company that owns the source. However, refusal to release source does not necessarily mean that the company has no goodwill toward the community.

There are some conclusions that can be drawn from these 4 facts.- 3DR does not deserve to be hounded for the source to Duke3D and beta material (though I have no clue why you want that anyway)

- “We’re not releasing source because Duke3D still makes us money” is an invalid reason to not release source. “We’re not releasing source because we don’t want to” is a perfectly valid reason.

- Whether or not Linux is a commercially viable OS is irrelevant. 3DR would be getting something for nothing by releasing source.

Whether for valid or invalid reasons 3DR has refused to release source. Unless they change their mind, petitions, stories about car dealers, and flames are all pointless.

Kwirk’s Quest version 0.1.4 has been released; changes include:

• Added mouse support.
• You can move and select targets with the mouse.
• Misc speed improvements and bugsfixes.
• Added new images for cursors.

Kwirk’s Quest 0.1.4 Source:
http://www.kwirk.cx/src/kwirk-0.1.4.tar.gz

The staff of IntelGamer.com conducted aninterview withthe Tactical-Ops mod team about how far theirUnreal Tournament mod has come since lastsummer, and what they aim to accomplish with future releases.

Speaking of AO shots, Gamespy has two additionalscreenshotsof Anarchy Online, which is in itsthird phase of beta testing.