LINUXGAMES

The last we heard about cut-scenes in the Linux Neverwinter Nights client was that Tux Games is shipping a version of the client with a stand-alone video player that willplay the appropriate video based on your location in the game. That was following information stating that there was going to be no native support forthe video because the Bink codec was being used for the videos and no Linux port of it existed contraryto previous statements. So, going on a tip from Matthew Johnson, Iemailed Mitch Soule at RAD Game Tools, the developers of Bink, and Mitch had this to say about a Linux version ofBink:

Yes we are working on it now and is should be shipping in the next couple weeks.
…
The cost will be the same at PC which is $5,000 for a one game license.

So, with a Linux version finally shipping, I wrote to a developer at Bioware to see if they had plans to include native support for playing cut-scenes, butI haven’t heard back from him yet. What do you think? If Bioware has to pay $5k to license Bink, do you think it’s worth it at this point?

Just a single new announcement this time around:

• 3d Battle Go , an OpenGL arcade version of the ancient chinesegame “Go”:screenshot,download

(thanks Luke Biewald)

But a few more that I ran across at the Game Tome:

• Arkhart 0.1.4, an original RPG:screenshot,download
• noeGNUd 0.7.0, an alternate ascii/2D/3D UI for nethack (and slash’em):screenshots,download
• Soccar 0.5.2, a soccer game played with cars:screenshot,download

And the rest are new version announcements:

• Advanced Strategic Command 1.13.6, a multiplayer turn-based strategy game:changelog,screenshot,download
• Armagetron 0.2.1, a 3d Tron clone / lightcycle game:changelog,screenshots,download
• BoyCott Advance/SDL 0.2.8 R1, a Nintendo Gameboy Advance emulator:download
• BZFlag 1.7g2, a multiplayer 3D tank game:screenshot,download
• LBreakout 2.5 b2, a Breakout-style arcade game:changelog,screenshot,download
• Pontifex II 1.25, a bridge designing and building sim:screenshots,demo
• Tux Paint 0.9.11, :changelog,screenshots,download
• Tux Typing 1.5.1, an educational typing tutor game:changelog,screenshots,download
• UFO2000 0.3.60, an X-COM: UFO Defense remake:changelog,screenshot,download
• Vendetta Test 3.2.7, an MMORPG set in space:screenshot,download
• Wine 20030618, a free Windows implementation:download
• xmame/xmess 0.70.1, arcade and virtual machine emulators:changelog,download

Version 1.30 of the Neverwinter Nights client (screenshots) has been released. This update includesthe changes listed in the patch details and weighs in around 40MB.

1.30 Update Download Locations:

• @ nwdownloads.bioware.com
• @ LG / 3DDownloads

Secondly, Michael Simms from Tux Games wrote in with this interesting bit about the in-game movies for NWN (which, as previously reported, weren’t going to beavailable to the Linux client):

Tux Games will ship NWN with mpegversions of all the cinematics, meaning you shouldnt need to bother withemulators to play them. Whilst they dont trigger directly from in thegame, we are including an additional program to make them run on requestdepending on your position in the game.

[order NWN from TG]

Jon from S2 wrote in to let us know that they have released a gameplay trailer forSavage, their upcoming “Real-Time Strategy Shooter.” The trailer shows both the FPS and RTS aspects of Savage with a lot of in-game video over a menacing score.

Savage Trailer download mirrors:

• @ S2 Games
• @ Fileshack
• @ LinuxGames / 3DDownloads

Also, Tux Games has been taking pre-orders for Savage on their Website. The price is $47US. Before anybody gets cranky in teh comments, I’ll remind you that the deal was (and still may be) that if you pre-ordered directly from S2 that they’d let you in the beta test. So, it’s up to you how you’d prefer to pre-order the game.

Update: In the comments below, Jon from S2 (“slothy”) wrote this: If you pre-order from ANYWHERE for any amount down… just email or fax some proof of your pre-order to us… and we’ll get you in the beta..

The Freecraft project, formerly an open source RTS engine capable of playing Warcraft 2, received a cease and desist letter from Blizzard earlier this week. Apparantly, both the name of the project and the engine were deemed to be too similar to names and concepts owned by Blizzard. As a result, the project has been shut down, and all source releases have been removed from their now nonexistent SourceForge site.

The Freecraft project has been around for a long time. Formerly titled ALE Clone, it was one of the first few open-source efforts to clone commerical games that I can remember. It’s a shame to see the project end this way after all the time and work put into it.

Update:

A new Freecraft-based project has been started, called Project Inferno. This project aims to continue the development of Freecraft, after removing the options for Warcraft 2 compatibility. Project Inferno has no website as of yet, however the developers can be contacted in #projectinferno on irc.freenode.net.

As announced on Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights For Linux page, the official, non-beta Linux client of NWN has (finally!) been released. The game requires a Windows NWN CD or an installed Windows NWN (or see below).

Following the announcement, TuxGames made their own announcement that they plan to ship their Linux-friendly version of NWN starting Monday. They will also begin shipping the strategy guide, world builder guide, and the expansion pack: Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide.

Transgaming released the latest version of WineX yesterday (dubbed “Magrathea”?), including a new release of Point2Play.

WineX 3.1 features:

• Support for additional games that include Morrowind and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Additional speed improvements and graphical modifications, with Battlefield 1942 graphic features reflecting these changes. All previously missing graphics features in Battlefield 1942 are present
• Overall performance in most Direct3D games has been enhanced by 10 to 15% (and higher in some cases)
• Support for the installers of many newer games, including those often used by many Microsoft titles
• Improved detection of distributions that use newer glibc versions but are not capable of running some games due to glibc limitations
• i810 and other mono only sound cards, playing in game mono sounds, should no longer freeze

Point2Play 1.1 features:

• the ability to manage multiple versions of WineX
• the option to use TransGaming’s theme or work with existing desktops themes
• the advantage of being fully resizable
• the choice of starting games from the command line

Transgaming subscribers can download copies at Transgaming’s website.

Dana Olson wrote in with this brief announcement:

Here’s an interview with LGP’s Mike Phillips. The article touches onwhat LGP is currently working on, but focuses on the recent release ofMajesty Gold.

Please, folks, don’t ask the man to speculate on deadlines any more!

Some gamers over at the Gentoo forums have set up a petition calling for Valve to release the source code to Half-Life , and consider creating a native Linux client for Half-Life 2. While petitions have had only marginal success in the past, many gamers see them as a way to express the strength of the Linux market to gaming companies. The post announcing the petition can be found here, while the petition itself can be signed here.

Also of note may be the Tuxgames petitions page, which already has over 1500 signatures of those who would be willing to buy a native Linux version of Half-Life.

As if the Internet heard our cries of sorrow, icculus.org is now back up, under new hosting. If you can’t get to it, allow some time for DNS propagation.

Update by Alkini, Mon Jun 16 16:08:16 CDT 2003 — In case youre DNS hasn’t updated yet, the IP is 66.219.41.214

Hope all of you are having a good weekend; if you have any plans to do any professional fishing, I hope you’re being especially careful.

First, some Quake-related news:

• Quake3 running on XDirectFB with hardware accelerated DirectFBGL (screenshot) — thanks -Dell’Aiera Pol-
• Reality Interactive wrote in to announce that the have “released a non-playable technology preview of a full-featured,OpenGL-based game implemented entirely in Java.| The interesting thingis, it runs full screen at 60+ fps on modern hardware, and is nativelycross-platform. The demo includes both a Windows and a Linux version outof the box, and runs a Quake-compatible game demo. “
• LordMorgul wrote in to announce TrueCombat beta 1.0, realism mod for Quake3 (screenshot)

New Announcements:

• Blocks 3D 1.1, a 3D Tetris clone: screenshot, download
• Enrapture Demo 0.3 beta, an Elite-inspired space/roleplaying game: screenshots, download
• The N.M.E.S. Mezzanine Boards are up. NMES is a linux video game console work-in-progress. (WARNING: arguably objectional popup issues on this site)

New Releases:

• Armagetron 0.2.pre3, a 3d Tron clone: changelog, screenshot, download
• Civil 0.82, a turn based strategy game: screenshots, download
• Crimson Fields 0.3.3, a tactical war game similar to Battle Isle: changelog, screenshots,
• DirectFB 0.9.18, a thin graphics library: changelog, screenshots, download
• Emilia Pinball 0.3.0, a pinball simulator: changelog, screenshots, downloads
• FlightGear 0.9.2, an open source flight Simulator.: screenshots, downloads
• FooBillard 2.7, an OpenGL billiards game: changelog, screenshot
• FreeLords CVS-20030608, a turn-based strategy game: changelog, screenshot, download
• GCompris 3.1, a children’s educational suite: changelog, screenshots, downloads
• GXMame 0.33, a GTK-based MAME frontend: changelog, screenshots, downloads
• LBreakout 2.5, a Breakout-style arcade game: changelog, screenshot, download
• Mah-Jong 1.5.6, a multiplayer and networked Mah-Jong game: changelog, screenshots,
• pyDDR 0.7.0, a Dance Dance Revolution clone: screenshot, download (yes, all of these are down until icculus.org rises again)
• Pygame 1.5.6, a game-authoring Python module set: changelog, download
• ScummVM 0.4.1, a classic 2D adventure game interpreter: changelog, download
• SDL Sasteroids 2.0, a rework of the original Sasteroids game: download
• Simutrans 0.81.33exp, an economic and transport sim: changelog, screenshots, downloads
• Slash’EM 0.0.7E1, a graphical Nethack variant: changelog, screenshot, downloads
• TeamSpeak RC2-2.0.29.47, : changelog, download
• Tickletankle 0.7, 2-player real-time tank game: screenshot, download
• Tower Toppler 1.0.2, a Nebulous rewrite: changelog, screenshots, download
• xmame 0.69.1, an arcade and virtual machine emulator: changelog, download
• XQF 0.9.12, a GTK-based game server browser : screenshots, download

Article:

• Orbz 2.0 – Better Than The Original? @ LinuxHardware.org

/me wipes his brow and hopes that there aren’t too many borked URLs.

-zborgerd- wrote in a while back to point out that there are new Kyro drivers available.He also points out rumors that since the new drivers are reportedly using the same codebase nowthat PowerVR may be getting ready for new products in the near-ish future.

PVR message board thread relating to the new release

Yes everybody, icculus.org is down. There has been some hosting issues, from what I gather, and unfortunately there may be a substantial amount of downtime before we see them again. We’ll keep you posted if/when we hear more about the situation. No, this has nothing to do with a counter attack of ours aimed at TimeDoctor.org.

The Linux port of America’s Army, version 1.7.0, has been released. This is a stand-alone graphical installer and weighs in at 316MB.

America’s Army 1.7.0 Download: armyops-lnx-170.sh.bin (courtesy of Eon Games)
Local download mirror: LinuxGames / 3DDownloads
More mirrors:

• @ ftp.stenstad.net
• @ guinness.devrandom.net
• @ treke.net
• @ www.sh.nu

Update: there was apparently some confusion about this release; it is a client release only and will not run as a dedicated server.

Jon Shiring from S2Games wrote in late last week to announce three news items regarding their upcoming “Real-Time Strategy Shooter,” Savage:

First, we’ll be going to Beta Stage 3 next week, adding another 2000testers. People should go sign up at beta.s2games.com if theyhaven’t yet.

Second, if you pre-order Savage, you will get a reserved spot on thebeta: www.s2games.com/savage/pre-order

Finally, there was a newsforge article this week that gave Savage BestGame at E3 : newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/06/02/118256&mode=thread&tid=8

Jon’s “next week” target for “Beta Stage 3″ is actually this week, so we’ll keep you updated as we hear more news.

Tux Games has announced that they were able to locate a few copies of Loki’s port of Tribes 2 and SMAC, both previously unavailable at every known reseller. The stock isn’t expected to last long, so if you’re interested in copies of either game, this may be your last chance to get a copy.

Linux Game Publishing sent in this announcement:

LGP is today announcing three new titles! Get ready for retro arcade action with Hyperspace Delivery Boy, play a great new version of the classic with NingPo MahJong, and challenge the toughest snowboarding slopes in the world with Soul Ride.

Each of these titles is now complete and we are acceping beta tester applications at our beta testers website.

As previously reported, the Soul Ride engine was GPL’d but the game data remained a commercial item, so I’m assuming that this announcement from LGP means that they’re doing an “official” port that will be boxed and sold with the original game data. Update: LGP’s Mike Phillips has confirmed that he will, in fact, be feeding all of the Soul Ride code back to the CVS repository at SourceForge and the main goal of this project is to clean it up for a Linux-specific release.

We also previously reported that Eon Games (developers of Candy Cruncher and Hyperspace Delivery Boy) was looking for beta testers for HDB, but I’m not sure what the result of that was. Update: Again, LGP’s Mike Phillips clarified that the goal of both the HDB and NingPo MahJong projects is to polish them a bit more and stick them in nice Linux-specific packages.

Alex Deucher wrote in with this announcement / request:

This is to announce the availability of a mergedfb option for theradeon driver. In mergedfb mode, there is a single framebuffer with 2linked viewports looking into it. This should enable HW-acceleratedOpenGL on both heads among other things. The code is largedly based onthe mergedfb work for the sis driver done by Thomas Winishhofer.The options for the radeon driver arethe same as those for the sis and mga mergedfb modes. Also thanks toJens Owens and Jonathan Thambidurai for planting the idea in my headthat this was possible with the radeon driver, and to all those whoadded Clone mode support to the radeon driver which made addingmergedfb support much easier.

Get the lastest diff’s and 4.3.0 binaries here:http://www.botchco.com/alex/radeon/mergedfb/final/

All the .c/.h files are available here:http://www.botchco.com/alex/radeon/mergedfb/