LINUXGAMES

Version 5.5.4 of the multiplayer amorphous blob combat game Liquid War (screenshots) has been released; changes since version 5.5.2 include:

• fixed keyboard issue under X
• fixed network problem when joining games
• fixed minor network and GUI bugs
• implemented small chat system
• seven new maps

Liquid War 5.5.4 downloads: @ www.ufoot.org

Version 0.9.9 of the GTK-based game server browser XQF (screenshots) has been released; changes include:

• added Voyager Elite Force support
• changed default Quake3 protocol to 67
• you can now select Quake3 and Wolfenstein’s protocol
• added 20sec timeout for wget (nice if Gameaholic is down)
• added Tribes2 server statistics
• fixed Tribes2 and Quake3 masters
• added support for LAN broadcast queries
• improved master support handling
• added preferences tab for Quake3 memory settings
• new Catalan translation

XQF 0.9.9 downloads: www.linuxgames.com/xqf/download.html

Version 20020710 of the free Windows implementation Wine has been released; changes include:

• DirectSound 8 and DirectInput 8 support
• OLE improvements
• support for font downloading in Postscript driver
• ALSA sound driver
• portability fixes
• bug fixes

Wine 20020710 source: Wine-20020710.tar.gz

Erick Feiling wrote in to point out that OSnews has interviewed David Dawes, XFree86 developer and Tungsten Graphics employee. The interview touches on funding for the ATi Radeon 8500 support, the mission of Tungsten Graphics, the age X protocol, and the future of XFree86.

Jorrit Tyberghein, maintainer of Crystal Space, wrote in to remind everybody of the contest that’s still going on:

I’d like to remind everyone that there is a Crystal Space based contest going on with prizes $500, $250, and $200 for the first three entries. The deadline for this contest is august the first of 2002 so you still have one month. Check out http://crystal.sf.net for the contest rules.

Bernd from Holarse wrote in to announce the closing of gamesforlinux.de:

Ralph Schmeisser from gamesforlinux.de is now quitting his website as he doesn’t have anymore time left to do the work such a page requests. Not to lose the articles and reports hosted on g4l, and to continue to provide them to the community, Holarse offered him to join the Holarse team and to work as free member on holarse. We have now merged some of the reports from g4l into the Holarse pages. Also, ygriea (sebastian wolf) is joining Holarse (also coming from g4l). The gamesforlinux.de domain will soon be redirected to holarse.net

Bill Kendrick of NBS wrote in to announce the a new release of Tux Paint. Changes and or fixes for this release include:

• The long-awaited “Save” and “Open” commands have been added
• The first glimpse at the “Shape” tool. (Only outline shapes, so far… filledshapes coming soon!)

Download: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/

Version 1.12 of the turn-based fantasy strategy game Dominions has been released. Changes and fixes include:

• Huge memory leak when using non default map modes fixed
• You no longer risk loosing wished for power after a battle

Dominions 1.12 demo downloads:
http://www.illwinter.com/dom_downloads.html

RedLynx has released Phobia III – Edge of humanity for Linux. Phobia III is a alien slaughter game, which is a freeware (sourceless) game. This version has gotten some new graphics as well as new guns, aliens, and new levels. For more information about the game you can go here: http://www.lynxlabs.com/phobiaIII.

Download: http://www.lynxlabs.com/phobiaIII/download.html

Version 0.5.4 of the Pygame-based Dance Dance Revolution clone pyDDR has been releases. Also there are 4 new screenshots (1, 2, 3, 4). Changes and or fixes for this release include:

• Support for song lyrics (with translation line) has been added, with a ‘showlyrics’ option.
• Crossfading song banners work in the song selector, and also show on startup.
• Load time has been dramatically improved, but there is now prerender time for smoother gameplay.
• Configuration options ‘showbackground’ (turn off for better framerate) and ‘arrowspin’ were implemented.
• Sprite priorities were fixed.
• The announcer ‘none’ can be used again.
• The following utilities are new/updated:
  • findbpm (tap out beat times),
  • lyrictag (write STEP file lyric data),
  • and DWI2STEP (updated; much more accurate).

Download: pyddr-0.5.4.tar.gz

Linux Game Publishing wrote to announce that they have released four new screenshots (1 |2 |3 |4) of their Majesty Gold port-in-progress. As always the thumbnails are available and will be updated as new screenshots are released.

José Fonseca posted to the DRI developer and user mailing lists that Keith Whitwell has pronounced “ready for testing” the r200-0-1-branch of the DRI source tree, the driver for the ATI Radeon 8500 cards. Consequently, binary snapshots of the development code are being made available in the bleeding edge download directory. The readme says, in its entirety:

Known problems:

• Some front buffer or z-disabled apps have stopped working. Unfortunately, this includes the q3 menuscreen. Fix due shortly.
• TCL isn’t enabled, no performance tuning has been done.

This last bit means that the driver is not yet set up to use the GPU on ATI Radeon 8500 cards.

This is no doubt the first fruit of the Radeon 8500 driver work announced about a month ago. That work was announced to be open source and sponsored by The Weather Channel.

If you have a Radeon 8500 and would like to help out the development of this driver, please download and test it and report all problems to the dri-devel mailing list.

• Bleeding edge snapshots directory
• R200 binary snapshot readme

Version 4.81 of the card game collection PySol (screenshots: 1 | 2 | 3) has been released. This version fixes some bugs in the Spider-type games.

PySol 4.81 downloads: @ www.oberhumer.com

Version 2002_06_24 of the 3D game engine Cube (screenshots) has been released; changes include:

• improved SP
• improved networking
• new lighting model (additive, overbright, colours)
• minimal scripting language

Cube 2002_06_24 downloads: wouter.fov120.com/cube/files.php4

Version 1.0.4 of the Atomix-like game Marbles (screenshots: 1 | 2 | 3) has been released; changes since version 1.0.2 include:

• fixed the forgetting of the user profile
• fixed crash when exiting
• fixed no level switch when finished level with last move
• fixed the ghost marble when restarting the level
• the score is now properly modified for the various difficulty levels

Marbles 1.0.4 source: marbles-1.0.4.tar.gz

David Hedbor wrote in with the following announcements:

Today Eon Games released a beta version of the PurpleBlaster demo (screenshots).

Also, the upcoming port for Sharp Zaurus of Pyrogon‘s Candy Cruncher (screenshots) was just announced.

Joshua wrote in to pass on the good news that the people at Visoly Inc. plan to release the source to the software that links Flash Linker Advance over a USB cable:

I wrote the people that do the Flash Linker and Flash carts (for Gameboy Advance backup, home-brew development, and non-commercial roms of course) about their soon to be released linker which adds usb as a connection option instead of having to use the printer cable.

Their response? “We will supply source code for users to make their own (Linux) version, sosooner or later there will be a Linux port, no worry.”

Version 1.12.4 (second 1.13.0 beta) of the open source Civilization clone Freeciv (screenshots) has been released; changes include:

• several worklist bugfixes
• small bug fixes
• fixed server crashes

Freeciv 1.12.4 source: freeciv-1.12.4.tar.bz2

DJ Art has released version 1.33 of his modified RtCW SDK source files. This source is configured/modified to compile under Linux. There is a README.linux file included in the source archive that includes more details.

Linux RtCW SDK 1.33 Source: Wolf-source-1.33-dj.tar.gz
Makefiles only: Wolf-source-1.33-makefiles-dj.tar.gz

Update: id has officially released version 1.33 of the RtCW SDK source in a Linux package.
Local copy: @ 3DDownloads

Thanks to zakk for the heads-up.

Version 1.35 of the Super NES emulator ZSNES has been released; changes include:

• linked the EAGLE engine to the filtered GUI option and fixed guassian interpolation which has been broken since version 1.71b
• lots of updates to Linux/SDL version, including sound fixes, video code updates and other misc bugs
• fixed gamma in PNG snapshots
• added several new goodies to the GUI, which include a second water effect, and an experimental smoke effect
• other misc. bugfixes and additions

ZSNES 1.35 source: zsnes135src.tar.gz