Version 0.73 of DOSBox, which emulates DOS for the purpose of running old applications (games!), has been loosed upon the world (thanks backstander!). Changes:
Support for more graphics modes and cards.
Improved Vista support.
New OPL emulation cores.
Sound fixes and improvements for Mac OS X.
Lots of compatibility fixes.
Lots of cdrom detection improvements.
Lots of memory (EMS/XMS) improvements.
Various fixes and enhancements for the recompiling core.
PipeWalker, a clone of NetWalk, is now at version 0.6.1. It’s a puzzle game where pieces of a computer network are to be turned in the right/left direction to make all computers connected to the same network.
The Blender-derived open-source game project, Yo Frankie!, has posted a video of it running in the Blender Game Engine with music, 4x anti-aliasing, a better framerate, and a multiplayer demo:
Educational games are games designed to teach people, typically children, about a certain subject or help them learn a skill as they play. Sometimes this type of software is known as games edutainment because they combine education and entertainment.
Linux has many attributes which make it an ideal platform to run educational games. This type of software typically runs perfectly well on older hardware. It makes little sense for an elementary school to purchase state-of-the-art computers, just so that the operating system runs at a reasonable speed when the educational software itself is much less demanding. Moreover, as the vast majority of Linux distributions are available to download at no cost, parents and schools have more reason to provide a full complement of software and student learning materials even in these recessionary times.
We have compiled a list of 9 high quality Linux educational games/suites that all have the virtue of being free to play. The selection is predominately aimed at a young target audience, but the software nevertheless offers a wide variety of learning experiences.
Koonsolo is starting production on their next game, but as you might know this can be quite costly especially for a small game developer. In order to gain some funds quickly, they are doing a promotion and sell their current game ‘Mystic Mine‘ at a huge price discount!
On Monday, June 1, they’ll send out a mail to all their newsletter subscribers which will contain a promotion code to take advantage of this deal. Only their newsletter subscribers will receive this code, so make sure you’re one of them! Subscribe at http://www.koonsolo.com/newsletter.php
The latest development release of a Winehas been announced, bring this translation layer capable of running Windows applications to version 1.1.22. Changes in this release include:
With the Friday night release, Linux-friendly space MMO Vendetta Online has launched Dynamic Warfare: a new long-term battle and large-scale warfare mechanic designed to permit factional conquest of geographical areas. In this first-generation implementation, players and NPCs of the Itani and Serco Nations vie for weekly control of 177 sectors within a critical solar system (Deneb). Several different battles may be running concurrently at any time, with a variety of different battle scales ranging from epic conflicts of capship fleets to small fighter-only engagements. The diversity of scale allows both varied gameplay styles and accessibility to players on older computing hardware.
Caster, the third person indie shooter from Elecorn, has gone gold (thanks Svartalf). Episode 1 is currently available; if you purchase it, you receive subsequent episodes as they’re released for free (there’s also a demo). There’s a review of the game at the Independently-Speaking blog.
openc2e is a free and open-source game engine designed to be compatible with the various engines used in the Creatures series of artificial life games (Creatures, Creatures 2, Creatures 3, Creatures: Docking Station). Creatures 3 and Docking Station were released for Linux by Linux Game Publishing as Creatures: Internet Edition. Anyhow, the first openc2e alpha has been released, which is focused on Creatures 1 support.
texture blending and new flame/smoke particles for map editing
in-game movie recording and also PNG screenshots
new engines features like ZIP archive support, better grass, pre-compressed DXT1/3/5 textures for faster loading, fixed-function shadowmaps & dynamic lights, low cost blob shadows, particle culling, faster shader loading, revised post-process effect system, and more
support for custom server ports, server passwords, public key crypto, and server-init.cfg for easier server configs
If you’re interested in player-created content, it’s archived at Quadropolis, including this amazing re-creation of the original USS Enterprise.
A reader let us know that the Linux-friendly space-MMO Vendetta Online added a new major feature: multi-player ships.
Pilots of Behemoth and Atlas class vessels (except the Behemoth XC) may now invite other players to join their vessels and help defend via turrets. Certain ship variants have up to three turrets, allowing four players to cooperatively defend a single ship. Pilots must all be docked at the same station to initially join, and be invited by the pilot of a given ship via new “/gunner” commands. More elaborate GUI interfaces, features and weapon options will become available as we move forward.
We are just over 9 hours away from the LGP flash sale where all standard edition game prices will be set to just 9 pounds. Sale starts at midnight UK time and lasts for 24 hours only. Resellers will receive further discounts when they login to their accounts.
tweeler.com and Charlie Dog Games have announced the fact that Atomic Worm version 0.19 is now free software, as all code was released under the GPL v3.0, and all music, sounds and graphics are released under the CC by-sa 3.0. Atomic Worm is a Snake-genre puzzle game.
