LINUXGAMES

The rather addictive action puzzle Quadra has been updated to a new version, 1.1.8. Changes include the following:

* New handicap system.
* Improved support for themes.
* Source code comments partially translated to english.
* Added some support for statistics.
* Still more work cleaning up the distribution.
* HTTP proxy support.
* Various bugs fixed.

Quadra 1.1.8 Source:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/quadra/quadra-1.1.8.tar.gz

Several people have e-mailed in stating that Loki has announced the shipping of Postal Plus. This is the full original game with the Special Delivery expansion pack. You can purchase it here from the Loki Store.

• Gamespy posted anew previewof Return to Castle Wolfenstein, theremake of Wolfenstein 3-D being developedfor id Software by Gray Matter andNerve Software. The preview makes mentionthat the chances for a retail boxed Linux port are nil; fortunately, id’s Timothee Besset portedthe RTCW multiplayertest in his spare time, and indicatedthat he should be able to do the same for the retail release.
• In addition, their hosted site3DActionPlanet has posted aarticle giving some historical backgroundfor some of the weapons featured in RTCW.
• Achtung! Wolfenstein received aSITREP recently from Gray Matter:
  

  With the map test, the QA department at Activision, Id, Gray Matter, Nerve, and friends and family, there are a lot of eyes looking and playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein right now. It’s a wonderful thing and it will go a long way to making the game as robustand solid as possible. Right now we’re still in the Beta phase fixing bugs, tweaking cut-scene cameras and adding story polish where needed. I can safely say this game is getting the attention it deserves.

• For those administrating RTCW multiplayer test servers, version 0.8.0 ofWolfStat, which compiles statistics from games played on the server in question,was released (the site seems down at the moment however). Moreover, another tool for admins is theWolfenstein Admin Bot, which should aid in kicking team-killing playersfrom your server.
• There’s a RTCWdeveloper diary by Gray Matter’sGreg Goodrich up at IGN.
• Finally, one of our readers was kind enough to convert the E3 RTCW trailer to MPEG format, which you can nowdownload from here:

  http://www.3ddownloads.com/?file_id=152821

Speaking of Loki, president Scott Draekercommented toNewsForgeon TransGaming’s newlyannounced venture:

Draeker’s response to Gupta’s quote on how TranGaming is making the traditional approach obsolete: “Sure it does, in exactly the same way that deleting Linux and running Windows makes porting games to Linux obsolete.”

Draeker adds: “The reason people use Linux is not because it’s a great way to run Windows software. If you want Windows software then you should be running Windows. Our customers use Linux to run Linux software.

“When Loki ports a game we don’t use emulation or other tricks. We are creating a native Linux application. That’s the only way to take advantage of the features and stability that Linux offers. No Windows software, no matter how well emulated, can do that … Linux users demand more than Windows software can offer.”

Loki Software has released version 1.2.0 ofKohan: Immortal Sovereigns, the fantasy RTS withcompany-level tactical control(shots). Changes include:

• adds features to the lobby chat/server browser, such as automatic AFK and additional filters
• adds an elapsed time display in-game
• adds logic to deal with abuse of clumping
• adds a significant amount of information to observer mode
• WARNING: films made in previous versions of Kohan will no longer work

You can grab a demo of Kohan via Loki’s Demo Launcher.

The patch is available via Loki Update.

Introversion Software has released a version 1.01 patchfor Uplink, theirfuturistic hacking game (shots).Changes:

The main bug fixed is the “Log Deleter V4″ bug which has been reported on the forum.This was causing some save games to become corrupt after using that software tool.People who had this problem will find they can now load those save games without any problems.There are a couple of other minor problems fixed as well.

You can download a demo of Uplink here.

Uplink 1.01 Patch:
http://www.introversion.co.uk/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?patchlinux1_01.zip

HardwareZone.com conducted aninterviewwith BioWare’s Trent Oster, Scott Grieg, andBrent Knowles, where they discuss the upcoming AD&D-based RPG. NWN is being developed for multiple platforms,including Linux (thanks Neverwinter Vault).

FYI: The general public Tribes 2 in-game forumshave been closed bySierra. Fortunately, private tribal in-game forums will continue to operate asbefore. Thanks to TribalWar for the heads up.

Version 2.4.13 of the Linux kernel has been released; changescan be found here.

Kernel.org Mirrors:
http://www.kernel.org/mirrors/

Linux 2.4.13 Source:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.13.tar.gz

Version 4.0 of the Mesa 3D Graphics Library, an open sourceimplementation of the OpenGL API, has been released.Changes include:

• Mesa 4.0 implements the OpenGL 1.3 specification
• GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip extension
• GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp extension (aka GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp)
• GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat extension
• added OSMESA_MAX_WIDTH/HEIGHT queries
• updated glext.h and glxext.h files
• added some missing GLX 1.3 tokens to include/GL/glx.h
• GL_COLOR_MATRIX changes weren’t recognized by teximage functions
• glCopyPixels with scale and bias was broken
• glRasterPos with lighting could segfault
• glDeleteTextures could leave a dangling pointer
• Proxy textures for cube maps didn’t work
• fixed a number of 16-bit color channel bugs
• fixed a few minor memory leaks
• GLX context sharing was broken in 3.5
• fixed state-update bugs in glPopClientAttrib()
• fixed glDrawRangeElements() bug
• fixed a glPush/PopAttrib() bug related to texture binding
• flat-shaded, textured lines were broken
• fixed a dangling pointer problem in the XMesa code (Chris Burghart)
• lighting didn’t always produce the correct alpha value
• fixed 3DNow! code to not read past end of arrays (Andrew Lewycky)

Mesa 4.0 Source:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mesa3d/MesaLib-4.0.tar.gz
Mesa Demos 4.0:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mesa3d/MesaDemos-4.0.tar.gz

Speaking of, LGP sent in a FAQ in response to reader questions they’ve received over the past week or so. There’s still no mention of what titles are being ported, but they do provide some more background on their endeavor.

StarTux fired in this response from Linux Game Publishing concerning their recently announced operation:

We have been in formation for the last 6 months or so, and have beennegotiating our first two contracts in that time. When the time wascoming close to our first product announcement, we made our openingannouncement.

We are a privately held company, and every director has been adedicated Linux user for a number of years. We aren’t a corporatetrying to ‘cash in’ on Linux, we are gamers that want more games.

We know that the market is terrible for all tech companies right now,and Linux is not immune to this. We intend to bring a steady stream ofgames to market and keep you all entertained. We are NOT targettingthe AAA titles, we will leave that to Loki. We beleive that this is aflawed business model at this time, as the costs are too high. We areaiming to publish A grade titles (and B grade that we enjoy playingourselves) and we are also very much interested in helping open sourcegroups get their games into stores, and in helping commercialcompanies produce original titles for Linux (especially titles thatare not available for windows).I will give you a little information we have not yet given out yet, inthat neither of our upcoming titles are First Person games. Both havewon various ‘Game of the Year’ awards. One is from 2000 and one from2001.

LinuxWorld.com posted a news item stating that Sony has announced that a Linux-enabled version of the Playstation 2 will be released in the U.S. A similar version has already been released in Japan this past spring. No release date has been set yet, but it is supposed to be announced soon.

Gamespy’s Jeff McBeth sent in word that they’veconducted an interviewwith Transgaming’s Gavriel State about theirrecently announced WineXrelease with Mandrake Linux. At one point, Gavriel addressesthe question of their impact on native ports:

I absolutely disagree. As you can see from the above, we ourselves are now also in the business of creating Linux optimized games which include Linux only features. For TransGaming, WineX is a tool that allows us to deliver licensed game far more quickly and efficiently then ever before. It also gives us the opportunity to provide Linux users with the ability to run games when a publisher is unwilling to license any Linux version of a game.

We’ve said it before, and I will say it again: we will not encourage our users to vote for games that other publishers have ported or are already porting.

One of the core strengths of the Linux community is diversity. We think that there is room in the market for a number of different approaches to the problem of bringing more games to the platform.

Earlier this month, one of our vaunted staff members, Mike “Briareos” Vance, wasinterviewed by Linux Weekly Newsfor an article concerning gaming on Linux. The article enumerates the various options Linux usershave for gaming on their platform, as well relating recent developments in our niche market.

TransGaming, makers of WineX, just launched their new Web site and announced “The Linux Gaming Revolution…Powered By TransGaming Technologies.” This revolution appears to consist mostly of the recently-announced Mandrake gamers edition, which includes the “special” version of The Sims. It’s still not very clear if this version of The Sims is a port using Winelib, or some other version packaged with an end-user version of WineX. The new TransGaming site lists November 9th as the shipping date for this new gaming-oriented distro.

The second feature of the TransGaming site is a subscriber section. In this section, subscribers can vote on which features and/or games they want Transgaming to work on next. They can also get support from TransGaming on games that they “officially” support: Starcraft, Alice, and Baldur’s Gate 2 among others.

Speaking of Loki, Martijn de Meulder wrote in to let us know that good ol’ Amazon is sellingmany of Loki’s older ports for $9.99. The list includes HG2, SoF, Myth 2, and SimCity 3000. If you recall, EBGames.com was also selling many Loki titles for $9.99, so I checked back to see what the status of that was. Well, it looks like they’re down to $6.99 over there for a few of the titles (Descent 3, Heretic 2, Myth 2). So, it’s time to stock up. After all, there’s only 70 shopping days left…

Speaking of Holarse and Postal, Bernd “comrad” Ritter wrote in to let us know that Holarse has published a beta report / preview of the “cult classic” Postal Plus, the upcoming Port from Loki. The preview is in German, natch, so Babel Fish it if need be.

Version 0.99.4 of the laserdisc arcade game emulator DAPHNE has been released; changes include:

• fixed VLDP hardware acceleration problem
• Super Don Quix-ote should now be totally playable
• changed sound code so samples are only loaded if they are needed by the current game
• fixed small memory leak in VLDP when parsing new video
• caused VLDP to clear ‘parsing status’ line so you no longer see it when changing video files
• input can now be remapped
• default keys correspond more fully to MAME
• hotrod joystick support added
• improved PR-8210 interpreter so it translates commands based on elapsed CPU cycles
• DAPHNE can now run at any requested resolution from 640×480 and up
• flickering video overlay fixed
• LD-V1000 strobe timing implemented for Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace
• LD-V1000 “get current frame” and skipping functions improved to be more accurate
• added PR-8210 audio channel commands
• improved VLDP so you can now mix video files that are of different framerates and encoding types

DAPHNE 0.99.4 source: daphne-0.99.4-src.zip

I’m not sure what to say about this, but the German Linux gaming site Holarse decided to interview me. They sent me reader-submitted questions regarding Linux gaming and I did my best to not sound like an idiot. My thanks to comrad and the rest of Holarse for giving me the opportunity. Now that it’s over with, I have one question for everyone else — did LG really appear in Antitrust?