LINUXGAMES

Phoronix is reporting that AMD has announced additional Linux support:

AMD is in the process of pushing new high-end features into their Linux driver — such as Multi-GPU CrossFire support — and with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 they have even begun showing off Tux, the Linux mascot, on their product packaging and providing Linux drivers on their product CDs!

AMD has released their monthly Linux ATI Catalyst display driver package for their graphics cards; the requisite release notes include these changes:

• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: Playing the demo on a system running X no longer results in corruption being noticed.
• Quake 3 Arena (demo): Segmentation faults no longer occur when attempting to play the game.
• Quake3: Corruption is no longer noticed when changing the display resolution when the game is running.
• Running X server without a window manager no longer results in the X server flashing green for a moment, going black, and the computer becoming unresponsive.
• Clock Gating is now supported and enable under the Linux operating system.
• Audio out is now functioning after the installation of the ATI graphics drivers for Ubuntu 7.10.
• Attempting to resize a 2D application window no longer results in poor performance being noticed when composing is enabled.

Download: [ amd.com ]

Thanks to the project authors for letting us know that version 0.3.0 of the Legendary Orthogonal Virtual Environment, an open source 2D game engine which utilizes Lua, is out with the following changes:

• Added ParticleSystem.
• Added visual error reporting.
• Added love.system for game control needs.
• Added input grabbing.
• Added functions in love.graphics for display management.
• Added functions in love.graphics for getting current color, font, etc.
• Added love.graphics.point().
• Added love.filesystem.enumerate() for getting folder contents.
• Added functions for setting the window caption.
• Added version checking. An error occurs if the game is incompatible. (Remember love_version in the config file!)
• Fixed print() :)
• Removed all keyboard shortcuts. (Everything can be done in code now)
• Save folders are now created only if required.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

The Sauerbraten project has a new edition available which adds capture the flag game modes and numerous other changes (thanks Free Gamer). Also known as Cube 2, it’s a free multiplayer/singleplayer first person shooter, built as a major redesign of the Cube FPS.

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

After many, many years of tireless development, version 1.0 of the open source Windows API implementation Wine has been released, which allows Win-native games (and other, less important, applications) to be run under Linux. As always, you can use the ApplicationDB to read about or update game compatibility.

Congratulations to all of the contributors and developers who made this milestone possible!

Download: [ winehq.org ]

Splash Damage has released their official competition mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which allows ladder and tournament admins to customize the game rules as needed (documentation). It’s also noted that the source code will be made available for other mod projects to utilize.

Download: [ splashdamage.com ]

We received the following update from Platinum Arts’ calimer regarding their Sandbox project:

Platinum Arts Sandbox Beta 2.2 will be arriving soon to a webpage near you!  We’re currently planning on releasing June 26.  For anyone who is unfamiliar with Sandbox, here is a bit about it:

“Sandbox is a game design tool based on the Cube 2 engine that allows users to quickly and easily create and edit their own worlds in game, even cooperatively. It is free, open source, and easy to use for Kids and Adults.”

We’re extremely excited that Sandbox is being used in many schools now throughout the world ranging from Elementary through College levels!!!!!!  As a result one of our new features is the ability to support different languages!  However, we are desperately in need of translators.  If you can help or know anyone that would be willing please contact us!

There’s also a feature list for beta 2.2 available.

Word War vi, a Defender-style retro shooter inspired by the vi text editor, is at version 0.15 with customizable controller support (changelog).

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

Version 0.95 of Blob Wars: Blob and Conquer, a 3rd person action shooter, is now available to download. Changes in this release include:

• Mastermind can now be solved in all resolutions
• Enemies will no longer dive in to water and kill themselves
• Items that cannot be picked up, no longer “pop” on top of Bob
• Fixed some decals
• BioTank Boss hints were updated
• Bob and Teeka can no longer get trapped in Grasslands #2 (Mission 7)
• Manual aiming now works underwater
• Bob can no longer walk on top of maze at the start of Enemy Base 1-3 (Mission 11)
• Blobs no longer become stuck whilst trying to get food
• Blobs will now assist Bob by shooting at mission targets and destroyable structures

Download: [ parallelrealities.co.uk ]

OpenMW aims to create an open source (D and OGRE-based) implementation of the RPG Morrowind (the original data files are required). Current features:

• loads any interior cell (geometry, items, lights, and evironmental sounds) from the command line
• renders maps, with somewhat natural lighting
• you can move around in “ghost-mode” using WASD or arrow keys and mouse
• partially displays creature meshes, using leveled creature lists
• very basic sound and music support
• backend can load Morrowind, Tribunal, Bloodmoon ESMs and any combination of mods
• ignores dirty GMST entries in mods
• loads data directly from .esm and .bsa files, as well as from the file system

Download: [ snaptoad.com ]

Speaking of Quake series maps, Speedy Racer has released a Quake I singleplayer map, Explore or Die:

With subtle colored lights and skybox clad in my own cr8-set rusty metal textures for some interesting looks. Please use engine that supports colored light (.lit files) and skybox. ( fitzhack is recommended. or DP) Map features some non-linearity and requires you to explore for guns and ammo. Its pretty hard, maybe try normal or easy skill at first…

A small-scale competition-oriented map, Valhalla, has been released at the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars forums:

• Practical/functional and battle-focused design
• Aiming improvement for headshots, follow the wall lines
• Bot support to personal trainging against experts bots
• Trickjump training
• Playable roof for advantage/disadvantage firing training

Download: [ enemyterritory.com ]

Paradox Interactive has announced that Penumbra: Requiem, the conclusion to Frictional Games’ Penumbra adventure-horror trilogy, will be released on August 27th as an expansion pack for Penumbra: Black Plague. It is currently unknown if this just refers to the Windows version, but either way the Linux version will presumably follow in short order, as the other games did.

Black Plague can be purchased online for $19.99 US (demo); the same goes for the first game in the series, Penumbra: Overture.

LinuxLinks.com notified us about their latest game catalogue:

Are there many high quality commercial games available for Linux? That’s one of the frequently asked questions we receive in our mailbox every week.

It is true to say that the number of commercial games released for Linux each year remains small compared to other platforms. Nevertheless, we faced lots of difficult choices compiling a list of 42 of the best commercial Linux games. The selection we have finally chosen covers a wide range of different game genres, so hopefully there will be something here that will interest all.

This weeks release candidate of Wine 1.0, the free implementation of Windows on Unix, has been released. This is the fifth release canidate, as the previous, is a bug fix only release as the project is in a code freeze now.


Download: [ Wine 1.0-rc5 ]

Quake 4 Maximiser, a competition mod for Quake 4, is now at version 0.82 with a Tutorbot, more accurate player prediction for clients, and a new gametype, Domination.

Download: [ q4max.com ]

• Several people pointed out this report at Tom’s Hardware about an Intel-developed ray tracing demo:
  

  Intel demonstrated ET: Quake Wars running in basic HD (720p) resolution, which is, according to our knowledge, the first time the company was able to render the game using a standard video resolution, instead of 1024 x 1024 or 512 x 512 pixels. Seeing ETQW running in 14-29 frames per second in 1280×720 has brought up our hopes for Intel’s CPU architecture, since we do not believe that CPUs would deliver a similar performance when rasterizing graphics.

  [...]

  The icing on the cake was that the game was actually demonstrated running on a 64-bit Linux operating system. Intel stated that with ray-tracing, the company now supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Linux and Windows operating systems.

   

• The Splash Damage blog has taken a look at the ETQWPro competition mod:
  

  Despite some members of the community arguing that mods like ETQWPro change too much of the standard ETQW gameplay experienced on most servers, there seems to be little that will halt this mod’s progress, and the team behind it is willing and able to make changes to some aspects of the game that we at Splash Damage don’t always agree with them on.

   

• Finally, Splash Damage also noted that Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is now five years old!

TripleA, a clone of the popular board game “Axis and Allies”, has been updated to version 1.0.0.1. This release changes the following items:

• add tdice dice servers
• lock warnings don’t show error dialog
• fix bug [ 1962058 ] fighter move in non combat
• allow selection of text on chat panel
• remove non existent irony dice server

Download: [ TripleA 1.0.0.1 ]

Vulcando Games sent in a new update regarding their upcoming massive multiplayer game Celetania:

We presented you the ship chassis of the Grogg a week ago – now it is time to give you some information on what kind of weapons these ships will be able to utilize.
The following will lead to the information and video section for these new and fancy weapon systems: Grogg Weapons.

The Grogg possess particle and energy weapon systems. To protect your ships and assets versus hostile attacks or to prove a point against an enemy in the universe of Celetania, you will have to research these technologies. The weapon systems are mounted on different slots of the space ships. A cunning design will improve the cooperation between the weapon systems and optimize their output. The planning, assembly and adjustment of the weapons are easily done in the shipyard. Intelligently combined, this will turn an impressive fleet into a powerful armada.

Celetania is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) title with gameplay similar to Ascendency or Master of Orion, albeit with scores of other players.

The Vendetta Online news page has an update about the space combat MMO’s recently-added voice functionality:

As of tonight’s release (1.8.20), Vendetta Online has integrated, multiplatform Voice Chat in public testing! In other words, using a properly-configured microphone or headset, you can now talk to other people in Vendetta Online (for the moment, only people with whom you are grouped). Even if you have no microphone, you can still listen to other people who do have mics, allowing for enhanced in-game organization.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ Trial client ]