LINUXGAMES

Hanno Böck has posted about his experiences with 3D support in nouveau, the reverse engineered open source NVIDIA graphics driver project:

nouveau, the project for creating a free 3D linux driver for nvidia cards, recently got first support for real 3D applications with gallium on some NV4X cards (see Nouveau Companion 36). Today I got it working on a friends machine.

Here you can see an openarena benchmark (also uploaded on youtube). It got 55 fps, which is far away from the nvidia binary driver yet (178 fps), but at least more than my r200 setup (32 fps).

It’s really impressive, but keep in mind this is still in early and heavy development, and not considered ready for general use.

Meanwhile, OpenTheBlob.com is a site petitioning NVIDIA to follow AMD’s lead and open source a 3D driver of their own:

While we are grateful that your company provides one of the best closed-source graphics drivers for Linux, it is not without its problems and prevents many users from having a truly free software platform. You have shown an open-source passion in the past when dropping the nforce-net binary blob in favor of the community-spawned forcedeth driver for Ethernet support on your motherboard chipsets.

Interested parties can also sign the petition themselves (as of this writing, there are 7894 signatures). Furthermore, there’s contact information and a sample letter for writing NVIDIA’s various customers about open support (thanks Phoronix).

JGame, an open source 2D game engine which utilizes Java, is now at version 3.3. The focus is on easing development of classic-style arcade games via a high-level framework (tutorial). Changes include:

• The OpenGL engine has been improved: it now works without non-power of two extensions.
• Multilayer parallax scrolling and view rotate/zoom.
• A new OpenGL game, Dingbat Attack.
• A number of bugfixes.

Download: [ 13thmonkey.org ]

Some mod releases:

• ETQWPro version 0.4, a competition mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars; ESReality posted some comments from the developers.
• Q4Run, which adds an emphasis on acrobatics such as trickjumping to Quake 4 by implementing run timers.

Also, Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Splash Damage‘s Paul Wedgwood, Steve Gaffney; and Richard Jolly; among the topics discussed was ET:QW’s future:

Wedgwood: We’re just finishing off another update for Quake Wars. We just did 1.4, which went down really well, particularly because it had loads of accessibility stuff in there. [...] Of course we also broke something in putting out the update, so we’re also putting out an update for the update. [...] A little more tweaking this stuff, and we’re otherwise done with ETQW.

Here’s something I haven’t noticed before: OpenFracas is an free software version of the popular board game Risk (thanks Free Gamer). While still in an early development period, the game currently features:

• An animated, customizable, resizable game board.
• Teams can be created when starting a new game.
• End-of-game dialogue displays statistics and a timeline.
• Basic map creator.
• Default maps are included: Europe, Risk
• Supports up to 6 players, Human or AI

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

Version 1.12.55 of D2X-XL, a port of the Descent 2 sourcecode that adds OpenGL support, has been released (thanks Linux Game Tome):

• Gatling speed up setting will now be exchanged between participants of a multiplayer game.
• Player names are better visible now in multiplayer games.
• The “player wants to join” message is better visible now for the game host.
• You couldn’t turn the textured automap off if the radar was disabled.
• Changed: Robots don’t use the custom Gauss and Vulcan sounds anymore.

Download: [ descent2.de ]

Mad Penguin has posted an essay wondering why more Linux desktop users don’t play games, and offers a few suggestions to improve their perception of the situation, although the latest product of one company they mention, GarageGames, doesn’t support Linux (yet?).

I’m not sure there’s really a problem with people who are already Linux users not playing games: we’re a niche market, and always have been, and I think whatever commercial-level titles the industry can spare are what we’ll be getting for the forseeable future.

We received an announcement for version 0.4 of SuperTuxKart this morning. The changelog includes a new bullet physics engine for collision handling, improved AI, rear view, a new kart (Wilber), new music, and a few improved tracks.

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

A reader pointed out the MMORPG Eternal Lands in our forums, which we haven’t mentioned in a while. The fantasy role-playing game is developed with SDL and OpenGL, and although it is in a beta testing period, there are still frequent game updates. The developers also note that ideas and suggestions are welcome on their forums.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ eternal-lands.com ]

AMD has released their monthly Linux ATI Catalyst display driver package for their graphics cards; the release notes tell the story:

• Introduces Xvideo extension for video scaling and color space conversion is now supported on Xpress 1200 series hardware.
• On workstation hardware 3D applications will no longer be corrupted if the screen width is not an integer multiple of 64 pixels, for example with a 1680×1050 wide screen display.
• Display flicker is no longer be noticed when the gnome screen-saver starts.
• Several image brightness and gamma-correction issues were resolved. Setting the gamma correction using xgamma, fglrx_xgamma, xorg.conf and in OpenGL games will all work as expected now.
• Diagonal tearing will no longer be noticed when playing a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension.
• Video playback will no longer look blocky when playing a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension.

Thanks to Tobias Lamers for the heads up.

Download: [ amd.com ]

Shrapnel Games has released a new patch for Dominions 3: The Awakening; version 3.15 includes these updates to the fantasy-themed strategy game:

• Scale spread bugfix
• MA Ulm and LA Abysia boosted
• Ermor domkill is at proper levels

The feature list is too lengthy to enumerate here, but if that’s not enough, there’s also lots of discussion about the game at the Something Awful forums.

Finally, throughout March Dominions 3 is $7.00 off its normal retail price of $54.95.

Demo Download: [ atomicgamer.com ] Download: [ atomicgamer.com ]

A new milestone release for The Battle for Wesnoth, a lauded open source fantasy-themed turn-based strategy game, has been announced by the dev team:

For players, the 1.4 version brings you no fewer than seven new mainline campaigns, a redesigned user interface, an amazing variety of high-quality new game music, and a refresh of the game artwork including improved portrait images for many unit types. For designers, the map editor and WML have been enhanced to significantly increase your creative options in writing scenarios.

It’s also noted that the developers are looking for additional translators, graphic artists, music composers, sound artists, authors, and programmers. If interested, head over to their forum or visit them in #wesnoth-dev at irc.freenode.net.

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

Version 2.5 of Bos Wars, an open source real-time strategy game which features AI opponents and multiplayer in a futuristic setting, brings recyclable buildings and particle explosions.

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

PlanetQuake pointed out Fitzquake SDL, a Simple DirectMedia Layer port of the Windows-only Quake client Fitzquake. The project is still in beta, so be sure to give the README a look. Here’s the aim of Fitzquake itself:

My primary focus is fixing a lot of the rendering bugs which made glquake inferior to the software renderer. My secondary focus is adding conveniences for mappers and general users. I am also slowly adding support for new modding or mapping features such as skyboxes, fog, and colored light.

Download: [ kristianduske.com ]

Version 1.1.1 of the chess client eboard, which can use AI engines like GNU Chess or play online via FICS, is available. Changes:

• Fixes text overlapping on the seek graph.
• Adds non-ASCII character filtering.
• Allows text timestamps.
• Provides better text searching.
• Fixes promotions in peer-to-peer games.

Also, I suck at chess. A lot.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ eng.br ]

Word War vi (now there’s a clever name) is a Defender-style retro shooter with a unique premise (thanks Free Gamer):

You pilot your “vi”per craft through core memory, rescuing lost .swp files, avoiding OS defenses, and wiping out those memory hogging emacs processes. When all the lost .swp files are rescued, head for the socket which will take you to the next node in the cluster.

Be aware that the current release, 0.03, has a few known bugs; a video is also up at Google video.

:wq!

edit: version 0.04 is now available with the addition of a volcano among other changes.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

The Doom 3 multiplayer modification 5.56mm Full Metal Jacket has had a new release; it features a third-person perspective, seven weapon classes, and twenty-five maps.

Download: [ planet-multiplayer.de ]

The Crystal Space-based MMORPG Planeshift has been revised: version 0.4.00 adds features such as character introductions, publicly editable books, precise item placement, a new monster, and two new cave networks. The full changelog can be found here; be sure to grab the new client to connect and play.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ planeshift.it ]

Freedoom, a project which is creating openly-licensed replacement content for the DOOM engine, has reached version 0.6:

• Doom 1 levels mapped into Doom 2 set for more exposure.
• Fixes for problematic lumps, sound effects, and texture definitions.

It’s also mentioned that they’re looking for a web developer to spruce up their site; interested parties should hit their forum.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

Version 3.1.2 of Glest, an award-winning open-source 3D RTS project, has been released. Changes:

• Fixed slow building placement in ATI cards with catalyst 7.10 or newer
• Fixed fog of war smoothing
• Improved position picking when giving orders
• Fixed some glitches in shadows
• Added red colored building cursor when trying to build in an invalid location
• Fix for empty chat messages
• Reduced Drake Rider morphing time from 120 to 80 and reduced splash radius attack of a few units
• Improved battlemachine death animation
• The game now checks that all players are using the same binaries

Linux users need to download the game data; you can then download the source code or use the official binaries, but the developers warn self-compiled executables have had a tendency to lose network synchronization in multiplayer.

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

Speaking of indie games, Rock, Paper, Shotgun just interviewed Mark Morris and Chris Delay of Introversion Software about their upcoming titles Multiwinia and Subversion:

Chris: One of the problems we’ve always had is with remaking what we’ve already done. Lots of people, including Mark, asked us to remake Uplink, and people wanted more Darwinia, which we’re kind of doing, but not doing. Multiwinia is quite different. We’re not too keen on this because you can’t make that many games. The loophole for us is that we can take our games and release them on every platform under the sun.

Besides the games mentioned above, Introversion also released DEFCON for Linux.