LINUXGAMES

Our very own hosted XQF, the popular game server browser/launcher for X11, has been updated to version 0.9.13. Changes in this release include:

• New games: America’s Army, Savage, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty(wine)
• New splash screen and desktop icons
• GeoIP support allows filtering by country
• Server side filtering for Half-Life
• Updated Enemy Territory default protocol number
• Quake III gametypes for TrueCombat 1.0 and Urban Terror 3
• Additional gametypes for some RTCW and ET mods
• Added custom arguments for Death Ball and FragOps UT2003 mods
• Detection of cheating-death on HalfLife servers
• Added twilight to q1 and qw command suggestion
• Display team of player for RTCW, ET and Q3 mods that provide the necessary information such as OSP and TrueCombat
• Command line option –launch to automatically add a server to favorites, ping it and then launch the game
• The environment variable XQF_SERVER_ANTICHEAT is now set before launching a game when the server requires some anti-cheat software.
• Option to stop current song in XMMS when launching a game
• Experimental GTK2 compilation support
• New French translation

XQF 0.9.13 Download – [ linuxgames.com ]

A new version of HomeWorld SDL has been released. Changes in this release include the following items:

• Game no longer crashes during explosions.
• Configuration now loads properly from ~/.homeworld/Homeworld.cfg.
• Resolution changing now works properly in OpenGL.
• Saved game code has been changed to allow for better portability of saved games.
• SDL 1.2.6 no longer needed (any SDL 1.2.x should work okay).

Homeworld SDL 0.2 Binary
Homeworld SDL 0.2 Patch

The US Army has released version 2.0 of theirAmerica’s Army Linux client/server,which includes the new Special Forces Assignment and Selection section. A feature list can be found here. Theonly place to download it at the moment is HappyPuppy, but more mirrors should be added as the ksecs tick away.

America’s Army (Linux) v2.0 – [ americasarmy.com ]

“But if it came too easy it wouldn’t be worth all the time that it took…”

New Announcements:

• Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid 0.4, a platform game
• JuggleMaster 0.1, a cross-platform Juggling animator: announcement, screenshot
• Navy Seals 1.9, a Quake3 Mod: screenshots, download
• Neverball 1.0.0, a floor-tilting ball puzzle game (that uses GtkRadiant for levels!): screenshot, download
• Open Scene Graph, a portable, high level graphics toolkit: screenshots, download (thanks HeartSeed)
• SSC 0.8 , a bouncy ball arcade shoot-em up: screenshot, download

New Versions:

• ALSA 1.0.0pre1, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture: download
• Boson 0.9.1, an OpenGL C&C/Starcraft-ish RTS game: changelog, screenshots, download
• ClanLib 0.7.6, a game SDK: changelog, screenshots, download
• Enrapture 0.52, an Elite inspired 3D OpenGL game: changelog, screenshots, download
• FooBillard: 2.9, an OpenGL bill(i)ards game: changelog, screenshot
• Freeciv 1.14.1-beta1, an open source Civilization clone: screenshots, download
• GCompris 4.1, an educational childrens’ game/app: changelog, screenshots, download
• Exult 1.1 beta3, an Ultima 7 engine re-implementation: changelog, screenshots, download
• Mah-Jong 1.6, a multiplayer and networked Mah-Jong game: changelog, screenshot
• nethack-el 0.9.2, a port of Nethack to Emacs: screenshot, download
• pydance 0.8.2, a Dance Dance Revolution clone (formerly pyDDR): screenshots, download
• Pygame 1.6, a game-authoring Python module set: changelog, download
• Soccar 0.5.3, a soccer game played with cars: changelog, screenshot, download
• Wine 20031118, a free Windows implementation: download
• xmame/xmess 0.77.1, arcade and virtual machine emulators: changelog, download

Misc news:

• Daniele “Balrog994″ Collantoni from the GemRB project sent this in:

GemRB is an Open-Source Infinity Engine Emulator working with Unix/Linux, MacOsX, and Windows. The engine purpose was to port games like Baldur’s Gate to the Linux platform, but now the project is growing.

The new scope is to make an engine more sophisticated than the real Infinity Engine from BioWare. We are planning to implement various add-ons to make it more versatile and expandible.

If you are interested check out our site at gemrb.sourceforge.net

We are searching for skilled C++ programmers….

• After some initial hiccups and downtime, linuX-gamers.net has (re)launched
• O’Reilly’s Linux DevCenter posted an article, NeL: The Software Behind the Next Great MMORPG?, which talks about the upcoming MMORPG Ryzom using NeL as their game engine.
• The Linux Jedi Clan wrote in to announce their existence and their docs: WINE/WINEX HOWTO, JK2/JKA HOWTO

I apologize for not getting to the rest of the news that belongs in here, but my ‘net connection has been down at home all day and I don’t want to hold the rest of this back any longer.

Bioware has announced that Hordes of the Underdark (screenshots), the second Neverwinter Nights expansion, has gone gold. The announcement states that they expect to be shipping to retail stores in “a few weeks” but their site specifies December 2nd as the date that it will be in stores.

[preorder NWN: HotU @ TuxGames]

Update: GameBanshee has conducted an interview with BioWare’s Darcy Pajak (Assistant Producer) and Tom Ohle (PR Specialist), asking about NWN:HotU.

TransGaming put out a press release announcing the availibility of WineX 3.2 which adds support for, among other things, Max Payne 2. Looking through the rest of their site, I see that they’ve added some people to their board of directors, launched TransGaming.org (a “community-oriented site”), and released a development status / voting report. My question to you is this: do you think we at LG should be following WineX news more carefully than we are?

Illwinter let us know that Dominions II: The Ascension Wars (screenshots), their new turn-based fantasy strategy game, is now shipping. An official press release has been put out by Shrapnel Games, their publisher:

Shrapnel Games is extremely pleased to announce that Illwinter GameDesign’s turn-based fantasy epic, Dominions II: The Ascension Wars, isnow available and has begun shipping worldwide. Legions of hungry fansfrom around the globe are eagerly awaiting this title, judging by themassive number of pre-orders that Shrapnel received. In fact, hot on theheels of Space Empires: Starfury’s pre-release sales record, DominionsII has just set a new company record for pre-orders!

Dominions II can be ordered from TG for $40 or from Shrapnel Games for $44.95.

LGP has published more screenshots (sixteen total)of Ballistics, the racing game that they currently are porting and beta testing.

[pre-order Ballistics from TuxGames and be automatically allowed in to the beta]

Version 1.3.13 of the Quake 2/3-engine level editor GtkRadiant has been released by id Software’s Timothee Besset. Changes include the requisite bugfixes, Heretic 2 support, and the addition of q3map2 v2.5.10.

GtkRadiant 1.3.13 Download – [ qeradiant.com | BitTorrent ]

Ryan “icculus” Gordon posted the followingrequest last night:

We have an immediate need for more ArmyOps testers for the 2.0 Linuxclient. Those accepted will need to be available for intensive testing overthe next few days (and start immediately), and have a high-speed connection todownload several hundred megabytes quickly.

Time is of the essence; if you are interested, please readthis, which was writtenin regards to a previous beta test…it will give you an idea of what I’mlooking for in a tester. Then, write tobetatests@icculus.org and tell mewhy you should be a tester.

Beta testers that don’t suck are welcomed back without the need to reapply foreach version, which means you get to see the whiz-bang shiny new stuff beforeeveryone else.

The newest version of the US Defense Department-developed first-personshooter adds training/gameplay for Special Forces operations.

And we have some more news from LGP:

LGP is extremely pleased to announce we have agreed to publish three newtitles.
Gorky 17 byHyperion Entertainment
Knights & Merchants by EpicInteractive
SoftwareTycoon, also by Epic Interactive
These games are complete and ready forBeta, and we are accepting applications now!

Linux Game Publishing sent this announcement out:

LGP is happy to announce that the first of our new range of games, NingPo MahJong has now gone gold.This means that it has been sent to the replicators for production. From this date we expect to have NingPo in stock in 2 weeks.

A demo is now available, for those that want to give it a try.

You cannot currently order NingPo MahJong from us until it is in stock, but please feel free to check out our resellers who may offer the ability to preorder it.

“Two weeks”, tee-hee. In any case, you can preorder NingPo from TuxGames

S2 Games and iGames Publishing sent out a press release announcing a new Savage beta. This will be a free “major content update” to the game. If you’re interested, you need to sign up.

Shrapnel Games has released a demo of Dominions II: The Ascension Wars Demos. Dominions II is a turn-based fantasy strategy game where you are trying to achieve the ‘rank’ of god.

Download: PowerPC Linuxx86 Linux

A new version of Battle for Wesnoth, a addicitive fantasy strategy game, has been released. You can view the rather long ChangeLog for more details on this release.

Download: Source Code