LINUXGAMES

The WineReview blog has posted a guide to configuring Wine, the open source implementation of theWindows API, to utilize DirectX 9.0c. The site also has other guides for installingWindows games in Linux.

AMD released a new display driver for Linuxlast week under the package name Catalyst; additionally, the version numberingsystem has changed to a year-month designation. Changes include support forupcoming distribution releases (RedHat, Red Flag, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE), and various bugfixes (mostnotably a compatibility fix for Linux 2.6.23). Additionalinformation can be found in the releasenotes.

Download: [ amd.com ]

We’ve mentionedthem before, but have since neglected to mention that Virgin America began flying in the USa few months back with the Linux-based Red in-flight entertainment system(here’s an older rundownof features from Engadget).

Earlier this year, VA conducted an opensource game competition, so I’m assuming at least some of those titles made it onto the aircraft fleet (if anyone has additional detail, let us know!). However, the Linux game that’s been attracting the most mediaattention is DOOM,as seen in this O’ReillyRadar blog post and last week’s 1upYours podcast (about 38 minutes in), where Newsweek’s N’Gai Croaldescribed the control scheme and experience.

Edit: Just noticed there’s a shot of some or all of the games at Flickr: Anagramarama, DOOM, Tower Toppler, Gem Drop X, and Primate Plunge.

Qualifying rounds have begun for the Freedomware Gamefest, which isthe first online event focused on freesoftware games. Titles being utilized include Nexuiz, OpenArena, Tremulous, and Armagetron Advanced.

Speaking of Nexuiz, the open source 3D deathmatch game is being promoted atseveral GameStop locations in theUS:

Interactive kiosks are currently set up in 10 different storesin 8 US cities. The kiosks give users 2 minutes to earn the high score bydoing the most damage possible to their AI opponents.

The highest monthly scorer in each location wins a $100 GameStop gift card.There will be new maps every month, and each player is allowed one game perday.

Game play is open to GS customers ages 13 and up, and ages 17 and above areeligible to win the monthly gift card for the high score.

Cities with the Challenge: Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh,Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

The store locations can be read here.

The Linux hardware site Phoronix let us know that they’ve completed their video analysis:

For the past month we had been running the 2007 Linux Graphics Survey at Phoronix where we polled users to find out what display hardware they use, what their driver choice(s) are, and their other preferences as it pertains to Linux desktop users on the visual front. We received over 20,000 submissions from this survey and have the results to share with you on this Thanksgiving here in the United States.

Augustus of LinuxHardware.org recently obtained new information regarding the Linux port of Unreal Tournament 3, the first-person shooter sequel developed by Epic Games:

While hanging out on IRC, I asked the big question of the day, “Has anyone heard from Icculus (ed: Ryan Gordon) on the UT3 server or client?” Here’s the dialog with Icculus that resulted from that question. And, while I had his attention, I had to ask: “Are you doing a Gears of War port?” Included in this post is the answer to that question as well.

icculus replied that UT3’s port has been delayed by middleware legal issues that necessitate code replacement, and that there is no client ETA at present. As for Gears of War, icculus noted that Microsoft (the publisher) didn’t seem interested in a port.

Tux Paint, an open source drawing program for young children, has reached version 0.9.18:

• “Magic” tools (blur, grass, rainbow, etc.) are now plug-in based, and loaded at runtime
• You can write your own new “Magic” tools, and test them quickly and easily!
• Pick from over 50,000 colors using a new color chooser pop-up
• A dozen new “Magic” tools have been added, including a calligraphy pen, water drops, foaming bubbles…
• The Pango library is now used to render the UI text, improving support for complex languages like Arabic
• Some new translations
• A new Input Method
• New brushes and stamps
• Bugfixes

The author, Bill Kendrick, also let us know that he will be speaking about Tux Paint at the Peninsula Linux User Group meeting in Redwood City, California, in December.

Download: [ tuxpaint.org ]

We all enjoy lists, and the linuxgames07blog has posted their top nine free Ubuntu Linux games, although there’s nothingparticularly distribution-specific about it.

Linux.com has conducted an interview with John Diamond of the Alien Arena 2007 project:

In 2003, following id’s release of Quake III as free software, Diamond began work on his first multiplayer science-fiction-inspired FPS. “The idea hit me that a deathmatch game with a retro sci-fi theme was be a cool game to play. I really hadn’t seen that done very often, if at all, and thought it would be tragic if the world did not have a game in which they could blow away little bubble-helmeted aliens and goofy robots. The result was Alien Arena, which was released in 2006.”

Screenshots/Video: [ View ] Download: [ planetarena.org ]

The version 1.2 client for QuakeWars: Enemy Territory has been updated by id Software’s Timothee Besset; here’sthe rundown from the Linux FAQ:

• voice chat support (OSS and Alsa backends)
• OSS sound: fixed the dsp device from s_dsp -> s_device
• s_noMic to skip the mic init / voice input
• by default, don’t require Ctrl+Alt+~ for console toggle
• r_useThreadedRenderer hardcoded to 0 – is not supported in the Linux build atm
• cleanup and simplify the frame timing code, hopefully fixing the fps banding problems
• fix showFPSBandings crash, com_showFPS needs to be enabled
• make SIGHUP shutdown more explicit, as it’s not a crashbut rather a requested shutdown (controlling terminal exited)
• set r_useFBODestinationBuffer to 0 when detecting an NVidia card(required for 5700 series otherwise performance degrades too much)
• misc updates to fix potential gamecode crashes
• add zpaks to the setups

There was also a server update recently to fix a threading issue. ETQW is a multiplayer-oriented first-person shooter developed by Splash Damage set prior to Quake 2 during the Strogg invasion of Earth.

Here are a few recent documentation updates and articles of note:

• Beyond3D, withassistance from Splash Damage, examined ETQW’sMegaTexture technology.
• A guest blog entry at the official CommunitySite explains the game’s Experience System, which bestows rewards andrecognition on players for their achievements and skill.
• The author of the previous article also maintains the ETQW 4 Newbiessite, which has updated guides for communication,scripting,teamwork,weapons,trickjumping,and VOIP.

Download: [ enemyterritory.com (mirror list) ]

Version 6 of Troopers: Dawn ofDestiny, a StarWars-themed total conversion for Unreal Tournament2004 which adds starfighter and class-based multiplayer combat, is now available:

Featuring all new weapons, and aiming system (say good bye to cross hairs).New vehicles, both ground and space, and new maps bringing you excitementright out of the movies. We’ll be seeing you on the front lines of a galacticcivil war, in a galaxy far far away…. over the barrel of a burning hotblaster rifle.

Download: [ ut2004troopers.com]

S2 Games’ Arun Demeure posted an updateon the Linux port of Savage 2, themixed-genre sequel to Savage: TheBattle for Newerth, at the officialforums:

I’ll be working my ass off now to finish the OpenGL port within a week or so,don’t expect it to be feature-complete by then but it should be fullyfunctional (I had some ‘fun’ looking into how I’ll make shadows/fog of warwork, and given the time that’ll likely take, don’t expect it by then). Onceit’s really usable though, you’d still expect a lag time for basic testing andgetting the infrastructure together (making sure it doesn’t cause yourcomputer to implode randomly, making sure patching works and figuring out howto get build releases ~synched with windows ones, etc.)

So trying to be realistic, I’d say ~2 weeks from today would be when youshould start bitching really really hard if there’s no publicly availableLinux client for all current beta players.

Here’s an educationalcomic that demonstrates the creation of a text adventure game programmedin Emacs Lisp.

Linux.com has an articleabout Multi-UserDungeon clients:

If you have found a MUD that you enjoyplaying, you’re very likely to also have realized the limitations of basicTelnet for playing games. Luckily, you can find a multitude of applicationsthat are specifically made to improve your MUDding experience

Speaking of DOOM engine sourceports, Vavoom is at version1.25:

It has a new inventory system, several new features andchanges to the VavoomC language and progs structure, rewritten graphicallauncher which is now also available on Linux and other platforms, and ofcourse other improvements and bug fixes.

Download: [ vavoom-engine.com ]

Version 0.3 of Odamex, a DOOM engine sourceport, was released. Changes:

• Lots of internal optimizations
• Improved doom2.exe demo playback and regression testing materials
• Improved server console and administration functions
• Odamex.wad is now built on 100% free resources
• Capture the Flag sounds added
• Wallhack parameter added to disable it (currently improves playability)

There’s also a WAD pack containing winning maps from an October leveldesign contest.

Download: [ sourceforge.net]

Phoronix has received details from AMD concerning their next GPU documentation release:

Back on September 6th of this year AMD shocked the open-source community by committing to the development of a new open-source display driver (this driver is now known as RadeonHD) and that they would be providing specifications to the development community. A week later, they set precedence by not only releasing the documentation to the developers but to the everyone! Their first batch of documentation covered the basics for the RV630 and M56 GPUs and was released freely to the public without any Non-Disclosure Agreement! However, they still have much more GPU documentation that has yet to be released.

The article goes on to mention that planning for open source 3D support is underway.

Planewalker Games let us knowthat the website for TheBrokenHourglass, their upcoming role-playing game, has a new score-focusedinterview:

This week on the Broken Hourglass website, we have a conversation withgame composer Rob Howard, who explains how he went about composingmusic for the world and how he was introduced to Turkish banjo. Theinterview includes an excerpt from one of the game’s characterthemes.

We received this press release earlier this month (apologies for not getting to it until now):

Sixth Floor Labs LLC, a Linux game development company, has launched their business today. Founded by Ethan Glasser-Camp and Carl Li, the company aims to improve Linux’s desktop feasibility through the creation of high-quality games. Games are “sold” to the Internet community through the “ransom model” — for one large payment, the product is released under the GPL and freed forever.

Sixth Floor Labs is offering up the next installment of their new game, Project: Alexandria. Project: Alexandria is a top-down shooter with an inertia-based physics model, like Asteroids. The first set of levels is already available on their website.

The next set of levels, called “the healbeam campaign”, consists of 8 levels and supporting assets — music, sound effects, dialog, and art — that have been developed over 8 months. The one-time “ransom fee” is $40,000, collected through the microPledges website. The company estimates a month’s work is all that is left to finish the campaign.

The Sixth Floor Labs is operating on the assumption that the open source/free software community has a difficult time producing high-quality games with the same facility that they have produced other software of all times. The ransom model allows the community to subsidize the production of games to offset the apparent difficulty that exists today.

The ransom model offered by Sixth Floor Labs follows in the footsteps of the Blender Foundation campaign, which raised 100,000 EUR in seven weeks, and the Free Ryzom campaign, which raised pledges for 170,000 EUR in twenty-five days.

The collection progress can be seen at http://micropledge.com/projects/project-alexandria-healbeam, and the first (already freed) level set can be found at http://www.sixthfloorlabs.com//posts/2007/11/05/Final_release_1__33__/.

Alexandria Download: [ sixthfloorlabs.com ]

The latest Linux Games Podcast episode is up. Podcast 10 is our Last Man Standing Episode!

Joining myself on this episode are Dustin “Crusader” Reyes, and Platinum Art’s Michael ‘calimer’ Tomaino guest stars to talk about Platinum Arts’s projects: Last Man Standing and Sandbox.

URL dump from this episode:

id software
In Hell Mod for Doom 3
Shambler’s Castle
HardQore
Asus Eee PC
XFX’s 8800 products page
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
GP2X
Ultima Underworld Video
Lord British’s House Tour on Youtube
Freespace 2 for Linux
Beyond the Red Line
The Babylon Project
Wing Commander Saga
The Blessed Engine

iTunes users can click the iTunes Only link below, or drag and drop the feed link to iTunes, or click Advanced – Subscribe to Podcast and copy the feed url there, or just hit update if you’ve already subscribed. The podcast is also in the iTunes Music Store. For any other podcasting programs, you’ll need to insert the feed url into it.

Enjoy, leave feedback here, in the new forum, on iTunes, digg us, and tell your friends!

Linux Games Podcast 10 Download: [ iTunes Only | MP3 RSS Feed | Straight MP3 | Straight Ogg Vorbis ]