Ulbiri noticed that Retro Affect has announced (via Twitter) that they’ll be developing a Linux version of their highly anticipated (and IGF-recognized) puzzle game Snapshot:
@jknvv13 Yep! A Linux version is in the works…
It’s due for release this summer; in the meantime, here’s the spring trailer:
AMD released a new Linux Catalyst display driver package for their graphics cards; the release notes link currently 404s, but it might have been uploaded by the time you read this. In any case, enjoy!
I normally don’t mention Flash-based browser games (I always say this, but hey), but this one was named Gamasutra’s top indie game of 2010 (!): Give Up Robot 2 is a 2D platformer with a charming art style and swinging-hook gameplay. Sez Gamasutra:
Everything about Give Up Robot 2 is magnificent, from the clever level design to the playful, bouncy soundtrack. There are plenty of homages to the Mario games, including blocks that churn out coins and clouds with faces, and the level of challenge is spot-on, such that players will die numerous times, yet never feel that the game is being unfair. Simply put, Give Up Robot 2 is pure, unadulterated fun.
Your fellow reader Ulbri submitted a news item letting us know that Beep, being developed by Big Fat Alien, will be released for Linux in April.
There’s also a blog post detailing the effort to port the game to Linux:
Now after going through all this effort, you might be wondering if anyone is even going to care about a Linux build. To be honest, I have my doubts. But if other games are any indication, you can expect to gain between 5-20% sales by providing a Linux version.
How can this be given that most estimates peg Linux adoption at less than 3% of the total PC user-base? My guess is that those 3% of PC users are:
1. starving for content
2. much more likely to fit the gaming demographic
3. much more likely to want to support commercial software on Linux (Linux usesr tend to be a bit ideological)
Spiral Knights is a sci-fi/fantasy-themed dungeon crawler. It’s currently in a closed testing phase, but you can follow the status (and perhaps get an invite) at the official Twitter feed.
The MMORPG Ryzom, which had a Linux client released a few months ago, is now free to play, as announced on their forums:
We are pleased to announce that from now on, players that create a new account can play Ryzom without time or place limits. Instead, free trial accounts are now limited to a maximum level of 125 in all different skills, enabling everyone to sample all aspects of Ryzom and to discover what makes this MMO unique. When you reach level 125 in a skill you can still continue playing, but you will gain no more experience points. The second limitation is storage: you cannot own any mektoub packers, use the inventory of your apartment or take any items from a guild hall.
Despite the freedom of this new system, we would like to remind you that Ryzom can only live on through your paid subscriptions. Thank you for the confidence you have in us.
I haven’t played it yet, so here’s a screenshot I liked instead:
A moderator at the World of Tanks forums posted a thread a while back to gauge interest in a Linux port for the massive multiplayer tank sim:
Hi guys and gals. What do you think about an idea of porting WoT to Linux. Would you like it? Is it a viable project? Please leave your input in the comments. Would you play WoT on Linux? Would you be able to help out and volunteer your time and knowledge in case developers decide to port WoT to Linux?
It’s fairly rare these days to see a developer ask that question unprompted, so I’m encouraged to see the positive interest that’s already been posted in the thread by the time I noticed it.
Ryan “icculus” Gordon will be among those speaking at this year’s Flourish! open source conference:
Ryan “Icculus” Gordon – Gaming on Linux
This talk will explore the history of video games on open source platforms, from Zork to First Person Shooters. We will discuss the games, the companies, the players, and which games and business models created an Epic Win.
Free Gamer also pointed out this interview ABC Linuxu conducted with Ryan about a variety of topics:
17) What’s your favorite Linux game? How much time do you usually spend playing games (incl. Wii and the like)?
My favorite Linux game at the moment is Braid, without a doubt. I loved it before I was working on it. I actually offered to do the Mac/steam version of Braid for free, just so I’d have an opportunity to look inside Jonathan Blow’s brain a little.
Version 0.5.6 of PlaneShift is out for players of the MMORPG; changes include:
GUI:
A huge amount of fixes and improvements to the windowing system (paws) and mouselook management
Improvements to weather support and fixed the option to disable weather in pslaunch.
Fixed some issues in the char selection/creation screens which could lead to bad graphics or crashes
Several fixes/optimizations/improvements to shaders and lights management.
First version (BETA!) of the HotBar/quickspell bar (you can open it by typing /show quickspell and remove it with /show quickspell off ) which allows you to drag and drop spells or items in the quickbar, then click on the icons to cast the spell or use the item
fixed a display issue which could show skills to be completely practically trained even if it wasn’t so.
added a simple animation to pterosaur transportation load screens
Optimizations:
major rewrite of several parts of the background loader, which now should be more stable and faster.
several optimizations, leak fixes and crash fixes
Quests and Factions:
Major rework of the quests! In the past the quests were most likely one off and with little purpose. We decided to radically change the concept by creating chained series of quests with a purpose and where possible a story. So we looked at the quests we have in game and started to tie them together.
After char creation a friend’s letter is now guiding you to the major NPCs, which will explain the associations and factions present in Hydlaa. Players can start to follow those trails and learn more about the associations/factions. This is the foundation of a complex social system based on jobs and affiliations that we continue to develop to create a more immersive roleplay experience.
Many new quests were added, and many reworked, reaching a grand total of 320 quests!! In particular a whole new set of Magic quests is present, allowing access to bracers, robes and wands items in the different Ways of magic! (for graphics associated to those items, see the art section)
Art:
New Amdeneir tavern! Thanks Nikodemus and zweitholou for building it!
Added new female ynnwn wizard robe!
Made available all bracers through Way quests
Fixed many sounds for game areas, including gugrontid and the road to bronze doors
several improvements to sound management (including a startup crash when the sound system failed to init)
Improved sounds and graphical effects of many spells, including: crystal aura, invigoration, life infusion, relaxing sleep, flaming weapon, flame spire, and many more. Work is still under going to progressively improve/fix all of them.
Improved hydlaa grass, sky and trees
For GMs/Devs:
expanded the scripting system in several ways for example quests can now use scripts also to give specific items, factions and money depending on variables passed to them allowing faster balancement changes in them. Additionally in mathscripts it’s now possible to output messages.
Additional scripts used in crafting, which were before hardcoded in the sources, where now converted to math scripts. Making it easier for rules developers to change them.
complete rewrite of the adminmanager allowing a more generic targeting system and sane interface to gm and developers, also awarding anything to players uses a single functionality shared also in the manager of the events. expanded also killnpc to allow loading of new npc and runscript to allow more scripts to be run through it.
several expansions and expansions to npcclient to allow npc to do things not possible before like sitting, do emotes, teleport…
Others:
pets will now follow automatically
added support to define what type of chats should be logged, in which file and with what prepended brackets (check chat – logs)
added support for a spell checker within the chat input using hunspell. It’s disabled by default and it requires to be enabled by hand for now, and the dictionaries added in a dict folder inside your ps data folder. This feature is considered experimental and unstable (and could be not available on all platforms yet)
removed forceful removal in operating systems different than windows of the code which allowed the hardware mouse to be used.
The Unity engine/game development environment, which supports many other platforms today, will soon be getting a Linux web player according to this post on their official forums:
Hello Everyone,
Vectrex, it seems you’ve got us on this one
We are in fact working on Linux support to be released initially as a preview feature. We have no set release date yet.
You can see a list of titles that have already been developed using Unity here; in particular, Star Wars: The Quest for R2-D2 looks neat.
A bugfix version of Berusky, a free (GPL) logic game based on Sokoban, has been released. New stuff includes a crash fixes, an improved level editor, and translations.
A new video of Steel Storm: Burning Retribution (a.k.a. Steel Storm: Episode II) has been released. The video demonstrates new environments and gameplay mechanics.
The Linux Game Cast has another First Look feature videocast posted:
Wildfire Games proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 4 Daedalus, the fourth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. Now you can play against a (rudimentary) computer opponent, build Celtic warships, see gradually blending terrains, march your troops past beautiful bridges and more!
arand let me know that there’s a new Linux FPS in town:
A single-player and multi-player first-person shooter, it was built as a total conversion of Cube Engine 2. Red Eclipse, a fork of the now discontinued bloodfrontier, lends itself toward a balanced gameplay, with a general theme of agility in a variety of environments.
Static binary tarballs are available for 32/64bit Linux; unofficial Debian packages (tracking SVN) are available from Arand’s PPA (when using these packages, report issues to PPA maintainer first).
A reader requested we post about The Zod Engine, an open source remake of the 1996 real-time strategy game Z by the Bitmap Brothers. This is one of those projects that I thought I had mentioned already, searched, couldn’t find anything, and realized “oops, I’ve seen this and just hadn’t gotten around to posting about it.”
