LINUXGAMES

There’s a new interview @ PC.IGNwith id Software’s John Dean about Enemy Territory: Quake Wars’ botAI:

IGN: Will they pilot vehicles and hop in with multiple peoplein a vehicle?

John Dean: Yeah, they’re basically going to be able to do anything you as aplayer can imagine you would want to do or could do. They’ll drive around invehicles, they’ll team up, you’ll see a bot driving around in a tank andanother bot riding around in a turret blasting any enemies that they see.You’ll see bots flying around harassing ground units, harassing vehicles,attacking other air vehicles. You’ll see bots everywhere doing everything,anything you could imagine yourself doing.

PipeWalker version 0.2.1 is out. This puzzle game is clone of NetWalk: you need to merge all workstations on map to a single network and connect to the server.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

A bugfix release of the Quake 4competition mod Q4Max is out:

• chg: net_clientPredictWeaponSwitch defaults to 0
  If you experience bogus weapon switches, set this to the new defaultvalue.
• fix: “scoreboard bug” with spectators shown as in game after changingto spectator
• fix: spectimers no longer vanish after a serverMapRestart

Download: [ q4max.com ]

Version 0.3.0 of X-Moto has beenreleased.It’s a 2D motocross platform game with an emphasis on physics.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

The next id Software-produced titleslated for release is EnemyTerritory: Quake Wars, a multiplayer first-person shooter being developedby Splash Damage (who alsodeveloped Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory). ET: Quake Wars is set prior to Quake 2 and 4, duringthe initial Strogg invasion of Earth.

The biggest news is that a Windows semi-public beta test has begun;however, there are noplans to include a Linux build.

That said, Timothee Besset posted this update at the ETQW forums today:

I don’t want to commit to any schedule for the ETQW Linux client at thispoint. Most of my time is spent working on the game itself, on the Linuxdedicated server and on the network infrastructure.

Once those things wind down (in the upcoming weeks) I will start workingspecifically on the client. But fear not, ATI and NVidia have expressedinterest in getting a Linux client early, so they can review how it performsand get their drivers adjusted. When we release, we’ll release a high qualityproduct, just like we do on Windows.

In any case, don’t expect to find Linux binaries on the retail DVD. It’s hardenough for everyone to get gold masters done, there are enough things to checkand worry about, I will not place additional strain on the procedure by tryingto squeeze my additional set of files on there.

In the meantime, there’s the official ETQW community site, which hasgameplaydocumentation, FAQs, and news updates.

id Software has released a new Quake 4 multiplayer demo based on the recent 1.4.2 point release patch. The demo comes with three maps: Verticon (q4xtourney2), Over the Edge (q4dm7) and Speed Trap (q4ctf3).

It’s also noted that the demo is not compatible with any other versions of Quake 4, including the retail edition; you’ll only be able to play against other v1.4.2 demo users.

Download: [ idsoftware.com ] [ 3D Downloads ]

irrlamb is a 3D game that involves a lot of physics and challenging gameplay (thanks happypenguin.org).

Videos: [ View ]Download: [ google.com ]

Warzone 2100 version 2.0.7 has been released to fix several remaining crashes and add a few config options for convenience:

• Access to the new Lobbyserver (When joining a game, leave the IP field empty to get a list of available games)
• Screenshots are now saved as PNGs for better quality
• Configurable framerate limit (eg. for laptop users)
• Linux AutoPackage should work better
• Crash and security fixes

Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game that was open-sourced by Eidos Interactive.

Screenshots: View ] Download: [ wz2100.net ]

symbolica, a clone of a C64 puzzle game that’s primarily targeted to the Linux-based handhelds GP2X and N800, is now at version 0.8. A random level generator with custom random seeds has been added.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

It’s been a good while since we’ve mentioned this project, so here it isagain: Sauerbraten, which uses thesecond iteration of the Cubeengine, is an open-source singleplayer/multiplayer first-person shooter.Cooperative in-game level editing is also supported.

Screenshots: [ View ]Download: [ sourceforge.net]

The blog kahvipapuposted a three-part article profiling Linux games:

• Retrospectiveand First-PersonShooters
• StrategyGames I
• StrategyGames II

Each section has screenshots and a description of the the delineated titles.

A new build of LucasArts adventure game (and others) emulator ScummVM is available. Ch-ch-changes:

• Several new engines and thus new games supported:
• Sierra On-Line AGI engine (with the integration of the inactive Sarien project): The Black Cauldron, Gold Rush!, King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown, King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne, King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human, King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Manhunter: New York, Manhunter 2: San Francisco, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter, Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge and a vast number of fan-made games
• Delphine Software International Cinématique engine: Future Wars: Adventures in Time
• Coktel Vision Gob engine: Bargon Attack, Gobliins 2, Goblins 3, Ween: The Prophecy
• Adventure Soft AGOS engine: Simon the Sorcerer’s Puzzle Pack
• Dynabyte Software Parallaction engine: Nippon Safes Inc.
• Clipper Software Touche engine: Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer.
• Some already supported games for different platforms have been added as well.
• DXA movies (higher quality than MPEG2) can be compressed better now and can be used for the Broken Sword cutscenes.
• Added ‘Mass Add’ feature to the Launcher, which allows you to scan for all games in all subdirectories of a given directory (to use it, press shift then click on “Add Game”).

You can peruse the list of supported games and frequently asked questions at the website.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ scummvm.org ]

This year’s Into the Pixel collectionof game-related artwork has been posted in advance of E3 2007; among the pieces is View Over the PixelOcean, from Introversion’sreal-time strategy game Darwinia.

AssaultCube is an open-source team-orientedmultiplayer shooter which utilizes the Cube Engine. Currently at version 0.93,it features a small bandwidth footprint, a cooperative editing mode, waterreflections, player shadows, and more.

Screenshots: [ View ]Download: [ cubers.net ]

Two Quake 4-related items today:

• Version 0.78c of Q4MAX, a competition-targeted mod, was released for Q4 v1.4.2. New features: si_fps defaults to 90 for duels, and 60 in other modes, and mappers can now use abattlesuit powerup.
• A neat beta singleplayer map was released which pits the player and a NPCsquad against hordes of puking zombies: Zombietown.

Phoronix has posted two articles regarding open source graphics drivers. The first quotes Google’s Chris DiBona:

I would love to get either NVIDIA and ATI to actually give us the specs on the drivers we want or let’s just reverse engineer everything and do it ourselves. I would like to see you guys do that. Because I think that I am just so tired of this conversation and before what we would do is we would just do it. Then people would say oh well there’s free drivers out there, more people are using it, we’ll open source our drivers so the users will use our driver and at least get the best experience.

I’m assuming “us” in this context refers to the Linux community in general and not Google specifically.

There’s also a piece examining last week’s release of open source ATI drivers:

Last week the first open-source ATI R500 (Radeon X1000 series) driver had entered the world. This new driver (named the xf86-video-avivo) is very early into development, but a small set of developers have been working on reverse engineering this GPU class for the past couple of months. This driver does not yet contain any 3D functionality or support for features that most end-users expect. At this point, the driver just contains very basic initialization and set video mode support for a portion of the Radeon X1000 family. Even with this very basic R500 driver, we couldn’t help but to explore the Avivo driver for the past few days.

Aleph One 0.18.0 was released lastmonth; here’s what’s new:

• Support for transparent liquids in the software renderer
• Higher quality sound and music playback
• Net game lag/OOS improvements
• Support for multiple texture sets without MML or physics hacks
• Considerable improvements to the network microphone (including team net micsupport)
• Configurable volume/inventory/map zoom/fps toggle/chat keys
• An automatic check for updates when finding Internet games

Aleph One is an open source engine derived from the Marathon 2 codebase, which Bungie released along with thedatafiles for Marathon, Marathon2, and Marathon Infinity. There’s also a great deal of user-created content available.

Download: [ bungie.org ]

Version 1.24 of Vavoom has been released. Vavoom is a Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife source port that features a polygonal software and OpenGL renderer with colored lighting, translucency, freelook, a scripting language, and a pure client/server architecture. Changes include:

• Enhancements to the VavoomC scripting language
• Support for sprites with 16 rotations
• Internal blockmap builder
• Support for compressed GL-nodes

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ vavoom-engine.com ]

id Software has made the 1.4.2 Point Release for Quake 4 available. Changes include:

• Refined hitboxes,
• Optimized sound and network code
• Configurable fps caps
• Weapon balancing
• Server direct autodownloading
• Addonpak fixes
• Q4TV

More information can be found in the README; additionally, there’s an official Linux FAQ. It’s also mentioned that a new multiplayer demo is due for release in the near-term.

Note that you’ll need the 1.4.2 client to play with other users who’ve updated; the mod SDK is up, as always, at idDevNet.

Download: [ idsoftware.com ]

Epiphany is a multiplatform, GPL’ed clone of the game Boulderdash. It now utilizes the Simple DirectMedia Layer; the player must collect all valuable minerals scattered in levels, while avoiding being hit by a falling boulder or a bomb. Other changes in version 0.6.0 include code refactoring, autotools support, major bug fixes, and 10 new levels.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]