LINUXGAMES

Bill Kendrick from NBS wrote in to let everyone know he will be talking about and demonstrating Tux Paint at two user groups in January. The dates and urls are below:

Tue. Jan. 14th
North Bay Linux Users Group (NBLUG), Sebastopol, Calif.
http://www.nblug.org/

Wed. Jan. 15th
Sacramento PC Users’ Group (SacPCUG), Sacramento, Calif.
http://www.sacpcug.org/

Guillaume Pratte and Philippe Arsenault wrote in with a new game announcement:

We would like to announce a new game called Musical Invaders. It is a musical learning game that can be played with a MIDI keyboard or with the computer keyboard. The goal is to play the notes as they appear on the screen in order to perform a song. Musicians can compose their own songs and distribute them on the Internet, creating opportunities for players to try out new levels.

The game is available under the GPL here:

http://www.dmi.usherb.ca/minvaders/en/downloads.html

The game uses ClanLib 0.6 for the graphics. Documentation for the 2D Graphical Engine created for the game is available here:

http://www.dmi.usherb.ca/minvaders/documentation/group__GraphicalEngine.html

Ivan Toledo wrote in with word of a new game he is developing called Torneo De Artes Marciales. The game is a fighting game based off file format used in KOF91. The game currently is in the beta stage right now, but it is playable (some issues in the game still remain).

Download: http://alumnos.utem.cl/tdam

Sebastian Wolf wrote in to announce his new program YanC or “Yet another nV Configurator”. YanC is a small tool which can be used to change nVidia-specific settings (almost) as easily as with the Windoze-drivers. Settings that can be edited are, AGP-Support, the Cursor Shadow, the nVidia-Logo, for Digital Vibrance Control and, of course, TwinView.

Also YanC offers the possibility to run your OpenGL-applications with your favourite settings for antialiasing, anisotropic texture filtering and vsync to blank without difficult command-line operations.

Download: http://yanc.sourceforge.net/index-en.html

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

• A choice of themes
• optional music
• low CPU-usage mode

Download: @ sourceforge.net

Version 0.5.8 of the Pygame-based Dance Dance Revolution clone pyDDR has been released. Changes and or fixes for this release include:

• the game now forces 44khz stereo 16bit for misbehaving song files
• if ‘file’ is not specified in the step file, it is searched for.
• added pgup/pgdn support to song selector to jump 5 songs per press
• Thanks to Colin for help and/or patches with the following:
  • songselector improvements
  • dwi2step won’t crash if GAP appears before BPM in DWI file
• Thanks to Joe for patches/help with the following:
  • optimizations to judging class
  • lyrics now in different colors
  • a few text drawing optimisations
  • included new utility, stepshrink, to shrink empty notes on stepfiles
• DWI2STEP now doesn’t care if .DWI is capitalised (thanks alex!)

Download: pyddr-0.5.8.tar.gz

From us at LG, we would like to wish all of you the best for you and yours during this holiday season. May it be safe, joyous, and peaceful.

Andreas Umbach has announced the official release of GLTron 0.62. Changes include:

• better & faster shadows
• red outlines on the recognizer
• better 3D sound effects
• sound effects for player’s lightcycle
• sound effects for recognizer flying overhead
• support for ‘switching songs’ (add your own music)
• mp3 support
• joystick support
• better 2d map (3 sizes)
• more intuitive config options

This release is identical to 0.62-pre4 except for a small fix for joystick calibration. GLtron can be downloaded here.

Daniel Heck announced the release of Enigma 0.60. Enigma is a puzzle game inspired by Oxyd on the Atari ST and Rock’n'Roll on the Amiga. Changes include:

• Nearly 40 new levels,
• Improved graphics,
• Many new game objects (ice, magnets, white marbles, …),
• Mouse speed can be changed in the options menu and during the game (left and right arrow keys),
• Sound and music volume can be configured,
• Enigma now remembers which levels you already completed,
• Faster screen updates, and
• Softscrolling in some levels.

Enigma can be downloaded here, and some screenshots are available here.

Even though we’ve reported on it three times before, I’ve never personally taken a look at the game. It looks quite nice, I hope to try it out once they have an OS X package available.

Andy Southgate wrote in (a long time ago) to let us know about his gameInfernal Contractor II (screenshots). The game is a top-downracing-in-the-office simulation.

Infernal Contractor II downloads: www.mushware.com/x11

Matthew from Linux Simulations wrotein to announce that he posted a mini-review of Pontifex II.

Version 2.4 of the Breakout-style arcade game LBreakout (screenshots: 1 | 2 | 3) has been released; changes include:

• simplified range check for ball velocity vector
• increased ball speed for ‘Medium’ and ‘Hard’
• decreased corner sensitivity and improved corner reflection
• bugfixes

LBreakout 2.4 source: lbreakout2-2.4.tar.gz

Version 0.6.5 of the 3D table tennis sim Cannon Smash (screenshots: 1 | 2 | 3) has been released; changes include an Internet play bug fix and a new effect to show when to hit the ball.

Cannon Smash 0.6.5 source: csmash-0.6.5.tar.gz

Version 0.62 pre4 of the Tron-inspired 3D lightcycle game GLtron (screenshots) has been released; changes include:

• better & faster shadows
• red outlines on the recognizer
• better 3D sound effects
• sound effects for player’s lightcycle
• sound effects for recognizer flying overhead
• support for ‘switching songs’
• mp3 support
• joystick support
• better 2d map
• more intuitive config options

GLtron 0.62 pre4 downloads: gltron-0.62-linux-pre4.sh (packaged w/ Loki installer)

This version is slated to become the final 0.62 release, unless a critical bug is found in the next 12 hours. So, pound on this a bit and email Andreas Umbach if you find anything.

Version 20021219 of the free Windows implementation Wine has been released; changes include:

• DLL linking now done through import libraries
• new tools to make Winelib easier to use
• many Direct3D improvements
• improved Windows compatibility of the regression tests
• bugfixes

Wine 20021219 source: Wine-20021219.tar.gz

Version 0.6.1 of the turn-based strategy game project Attal: Lords of Doom (screenshots) has been released; changes include:

• AI is working in adventure mode
• new graphics, especially for decorations
• improved scenario editor
• code cleanup
• bugfixes

Attal 0.6.1 source: attal-0.6.1.bz2

Version 0.8.2 of the shufflepuck game TuxPuck (screenshots: 1 | 2) has been released; changes since version 0.7.91 include:

• added menus
• opponents have been tuned so that they can actually be beaten
• added primitive opponent selection using the commandline
• compiler warnings and some minor issues were fixed
• bugfixes

TuxPuck 0.8.2 source: tuxpuck-0.8.2.tar.gz

Several people have written in pointing out the release of the new UT2003 Linux Patch, version 2166. The very long changelog can be read in full, if you desire, here

[update by Matt]
According to this post on the DRI mailing lists, this patch allows UT2k3 to run without S3TC, and thus DRI-enabled cards may now have a chance to play. I haven’t had an opportunity to test it, but perhaps some of our readers could try it out.

Mirrors: 3D Downloads

The weekly drama(sorry) of the Neverwinter Nights: Linux Clienthas been posted. Things are looking up for a release eariler next year.

Dec 20 2002] This will be the last OS update for the year 2002 as we are off on our Christmas break. Our next OS update is scheduled for Friday, January 10th, 2003.

Despite all of the excitement around sound and The Two Towers, work on the Linux client this week consisted mainly of finishing up some display issues. Resolution switching, full-screen modes, and other mode switching was pretty flaky, but is working fine now. Sound-wise (Samwise?) we are gutting and replacing code like mad and look forward to the the final integration in the new year. There will still be about a week or two of work to make the final changeover.

Seeing The Two Towers will probably come first, though.

A new release of XQF has hit the streets with the following changes.

Serious Sam support (requires SMS gametype via ~/.qstatrc). Does not currently support any masters.
Fixed -game parameter for Half-Life
RTCW voteflags decoded in properties pane
Visual marker in the map column to show if you have the listed map installed on your computer. (Q3, RTCW, UT, Rune, UT2)