LINUXGAMES

Icculus posted an Unreal Tournament 2003 patch announcement. This patch brings UT2003 up to version 2136. The easiest way to update this is with loki_update, which is included in the updater/ directory of your UT2003 install, but you can also download the patch directly.

The full changelog and mirror list is available here.

Download: http://unreal.epicgames.com/linux/ut2003/ut2003lnx_full2136.sh.bin

Update: For those of you having problems with glibc, mostly Debian Unstable users, read the posts below this bug report.

A new version of XOG, 2D arcade-style vertical shooter, has been released. Features included in this game are as follows.

8 levels of shooting madness, each with it’s own theme, enemies and bosses.
3 bonus levels : Boss attack, EX, and EX2.
6 player weapons for massive destruction.
70 individual enemies, each with their own attacks and movement.
10 screen-filling bosses and 8 mini-bosses.
30 original music tracks ranging from classical to fusion jazz and techno.
Score attack mode : Challenge each level individually, and earn awards based on your performance.

Download the Demo

Over the years we have had a lot of people write in offering to help out withthe day-to-day operations of LinuxGames. For the most part, we’ve done ourbestto politely say that we wanted to keep our staff list as short as possible toencourage quality contributions by those of us involved. We feel that thefew of us that started the site, with the generous help from the other peoplethat we’ve brought on, have been able to handle everything relatively well.

The day has come when we need to ask for help. All of us on staff havegrown and taken on additional responsibilities outside of Linux gaming. Someof us have graduated from school, some have moved on to jobs that consumemore of our time, and some have married.

So, we are asking for your help. If you feel that you can consistently donatea considerable amount of time to help us out, please contact us atnews@linuxgames.com.We can use help with all of our content: daily news,(p)reviews, and articles. In your email, provide some sort of credentials so wecan determine what your qualifications are, what you’ve done in thepast, and why you could be one of the best candidates for us and the Linuxgaming community.

Yes, YOU!

A new release of GLAsteroids has been released for the lovers of Asteroids who wish to try it in a 3d world.This release tied up some possible code vulnerabilities and added a save option in the SETUP menu.

Version 0.5 of Glaxium has been released for the general public enjoyment. New features and changes with this release include the following:

New weapon that can destroy volcanos (from powerUP level 4)
New models (missile and diamond which is now a capsule)
Capsules of invulnerability available
New 3D special effects (invulnerabilty, power up)
Number of mixing audio channels set to 22 (no more sound overload)
level of details modifiable and configuration saved
New board
Tanks bug fixed… Now they really attack.

ScreenShots: 1, 2

Teg, possiblity one of the greatest Risk clones that I have personally played, has been upgraded to version 0.11.0. Changes with version include:

Added GNOME 2 support (Removed GNOME 1 support)
Added GGZ v0.0.6 support (Removed GGZ v0.0.5 support)
Included theme M2, and made it as the default one
Added Brazilian translation by Antonio Augusto Todo Bom Neto
Translations are up-2-date
Added Metaserver

Version 0.8 of the OpenGL block-shifting game Falling Block Game has been released. Changes and or fixes for this release include:

• GUI launcher added
• New “B-Type” gameplay mode added
• Several graphical bugs that caused pieces to appear inside-out on some machines have been fixed

Download: @ sourceforge.net

Version 2.43 of the Infocom/Z-machine game interpreter Unix Frotz has been released. Highlights of the changes and or fixes for this release include:

• Dumb interface has been added as a compile target.
• Rewrote most documentation. Fixed typos in the rest.
• Fixed a problem with command-recording which caused “[999]” to be appended to every line in the file.
• Correctly fixed the Ctrl-Space bug. The previous fix broke NetBSD’s newly-updated curses library.
• OSS sound is fixed, thanks to Torbjorn Anderson!

Download: frotz-2.43.tar.gz

Bill Kendrick of NBS wrote in to announce the a new release of Tux Paint and of Stamps also (the ‘rubber stamp’ images). Changes and fixes for Tux Paint include:

• Czech language support
• translation updates
• KDE and Gnome launcher installation fixes

Updates for Stamps include:

• few translation updates
• US Sacagawea dollar coin
• and some nuts

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

A rework of original Sasteroids game SDL Sasteroids has been updated to version 1.99. New features with this version include powerups, new enemy asteroids, new sounds, misc. fixes to the firingsystem, and several suprises.

Another update today from the offical NeverWinter Nights: Linux Client page. This time the subject is ‘Mouse wheel support’.

Mouse wheel support is an interesting issue right now. Support for the wheel varies on different distributions of Linux. In the end, we want the mouse wheel to work for all users. Also, we have made progress on music and sound effects. The current audio developments are starting to add to the immersive experience of the Linux Client. And since we can’t give you a screenshot of sound, we have some screenshots of Fire Giants for your fear and trembling.

For the XMame lovers out there, a new version of Cxmame, a console frontend for XMame has been released. The major bug fix for this release include “Ncurses GUI now redraws itself after exiting the game in a terminal”

Josh Green wrote in to point out this post by Jens Owen stating that the DRI project has updated the open source ATI Radeon 8500 (R200) drivers with full support for that hardware’s GPU. You may recall that back in early July the first snapshots of the driver became available, but without the ability to send transform, clipping, and lighting (TCL) operations to the GPU. As support for this hardware becomes more robust and the video hardware takes on more of the computations, users of the R200 cards should see improved performance.

Be aware that this is only an alpha release, and so may still have bugs that may cause instabilities in your system. You may download the binary snapshots from the snapshots page.

A bit late on this post, but a post from October 18 on the NeverWinter Nights: Linux Client page has this news to offer.

We were working with sound this week and looking into somevideo card compatibility issues. I also was a bit surprised when Imanaged to get moving grass and wind effects up and running. Screenshotsshowing the moving grass have been added.

The first beta of FreeCiv 1.14.0 has been released. Numerous changes have occured since 1.13.0 including the following:

Unique city names, you no longer can name your cities the same, and you can enforce unique city names globally (optional).
A new map generator (generator 5) which creates pretty fractal maps.

You can load savegames from the server prompt.

You can save client commandline defaults.

Specialists are taken from content citizens first, instead of from unhappy citizens first. This makes it more difficult to quell unrest using taxmen and scientists.

You now start with no technologies by default, and angry citizens are enabled by default, although they will rarely make an apperance. The algorithm used for calculating the effects of tax settings has been changed. It is now no longer possible to get 100% effect from 60% choice of tax

A new, historically more correct version of the rulesets included. There is an option to require several turns of rapture/celebration before it takes effect. See “show rapturedelay” in server.
The sequence of some end of turn activities have been regrouped. Several AI improvements. It should now build and buy units and buildings slightly more intelligently.

Many internal code improvements that will lead to more features later.

/fix and /unfix commands to stop modifications after game has started.

The server commands “rulesout”, “log”, “freestyle” and “crash” have been removed, while “rfcstyle” now toggles between rfcstyle and freestyle.

civ2 ruleset now more accurately reflects civ2 deity level defaults. A truly massive amount of bugfixes.

FreeCiv 1.14.0 Beta 1 Tar/Bzip
FreeCiv 1.14.0 Beta 1 Tar/Gzip

From a post on VE3D,Martin Robaszewski, who is part of the America’s Army team has stated that they are working on Linux client and server port of American Army. Thanks to Drakker for sending this in.

Version 1.8 of FooBillard, a OpenGl Billard game has been released. This version changes include the following:

– realtime rendered cubemap ball reflections
– jumpshot code (experimental – not activated yet)
– random seed at startup
– bugfix: “rg on/off” text for lensflare menu
– table theme moved to display menu
– menu and cmdln option entries for cubemap reflections
– cmdln option for cubemap reflection resolution
– 2 GL_LIGHTs instead of one
– rgstereo aim (specify left/middle/right eye for aiming (menu and cmdln))
– player data of both players displayed
– bugfix: intialize scores, when starting a new game
– now also possible to run non-installed (from anywhere in the sourcetree)

Linux Game Publishing‘s Michael Simms sent in word that they are now accepting applications for the Majesty (Screenshots) beta test.

Just to announce that Majesty Gold Beta 1 is now open for candidates.Anyone who wishes to join please go tohttp://betas.linuxgamepublishing.com to apply.

Wily Yuen sent in word that John Hall’s book Programming Linux Games has been made available for download in LaTeX and PDF on his site.

From the Readme:

This is the complete LaTeX source for the book Programming LinuxGames, published in 2001 by No Starch Press in cooperation with LokiSoftware, Inc. Although the text is copyrighted by the trustees ofthe now-defunct Loki Software, I received permission to release thissource before the company tanked.

You can find the LaTeX source and PDFs at: http://www.overcode.net/~overcode/writing/plg/

Brian Paul, primary author of Mesa, Tungsten Graphics employee, and all around nice guy, posted to the Mesa3d-dev list today about an update to Mesa’s compressed texture interface.

Even though there is no specific compression/decompression code inMesa CVS at this time, I’ve tested the system with one compressiontechnique and it works well. I’ve been in contact with someone at S3to get permission to implement S3TC compression in Mesa and the DRIdrivers. Still no word on that.

The list archive doesn’t have the message yet as of this posting, but will hopefully appear soon.