LINUXGAMES

Thanks to Nemoder for mentioning Dwarf Fortress (one of the inspirations for Minecraft) has released a major update today including many Linux specific bug fixes.

Nemoder also linked a great newbie tutorial, as the game is incredibly (in a good way!) complex.

Strike the Earth!

Edit: Nemoder has also created a MojoSetup-based installer which includes graphics sets to enhance your DF experience, which can be download here.

Thanks to the readers that pointed out Molten Sky, a tactical modern air combat simulator from Big Little Team, is due to have a demo release for Linux next month.

Screenshots: [ View ]

Notch, lord of the mine crafts, has posted an update with some less interesting things and a video of WOLVES.

WOLVES.

PET WOLVES:

You can tame it and order it to follow you around, and it’ll work as a pet. They’re fairly rare, but they won’t despawn once you’ve tamed them.

The release of Warsow version 0.61, a free first-person shooter featuring trick-jumping boars, has been announced with various bugfixes.

Download: [ warsow.net ]

Machinima.com has produced a series of videos documenting the history of id Software; who probably need no introduction here, but I’ll post one if anyone asks for it…

No, seriously, I really shouldn’t need to do that.

Anyhow, three parts have been posted to date, with more to come.

S2 Games have posted a guide to the Gladiator from Heroes of Newerth on the Youtubes:

Jason Rohrer, has released version 15 of Inside a Star-filled Sky. Changes include:

• Default player powers in tutorial stages now include extended range
• Powers are now never decayed below level 1 on pass-up to higher self.
• Difficulty warning when entering a power-up is more clear
• Added a tutorial message about score and how to increase it.
• Fixed date stamping of graphics files in Source bundle (so that ‘convert’ is not require to build)

Purchase/Download: [ insideastarfilledsky.net ]

Atlas USA, publishers of Trine, have posted a new trailer for Trine 2:

Late last year, Linux Gaming News mentioned that the developer, FrozenByte, had confirmed both games will be coming to Linux.

Hey y’all what’s going on.

A new development release of Wine has been announced. This version has the following changes in it:

• New version of the Gecko engine, based on Firefox 4.
• Better support for Dwarf debugging information.
• Improved handling of animated cursors.
• GnuTLS no longer required on Mac OS X.
• Improvements to the GDI driver infrastructure.
• A number of MSI fixes for the .NET installers.
• Several GdiPlus improvements.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [ Wine 1.3.16 ]

The latest development of Wine has been announced. This version, being 1.3.15, has the following changes

• Support for changing network passwords.
• Reflection support in shader compiler.
• Tests no longer attempt to cope with Win9x behavior.
• A number of MSHTML and MSXML improvements.
• Various bug fixes

Download: [ Wine 1.3.15 ]

COR Entertainment has released Alien Arena 2011 version 7.51 Linux and other platforms.

Some of the new features for this release include:

• Extensive rewrite of bsp surface rendering for a massive performance increase
• Complete rewrite of vertex buffer object code
• Complete rewrite of post process effects
• Improvements to shadow mapping for dynamic shadows
• Variety of graphical updates and bugfixes
• Three new/revamped levels
• Added downloading of iqm meshes

Complete changelog.

This post was submitted by irritant.

Sam Lantinga, creator of the Simple DirectMedia Layer, has launched a new website for Galaxy Gameworks, which aims to enhance both independent and commercial game development. Other Linux game development luminaries are also quoted at the testimonial page.

I’m a bit late to the party, but Unigine has announced that their upcoming naval-themed real-time strategy game Oil Rush is now available for pre-ordering. Announcement after the jump:
Read the rest of this entry »

Both Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Ars Technica recently posted about Jeffrey Rosen and John Graham’s speech at the Independent Game Festival about the success of the Humble Indie Bundles in general, and on Linux in particular. First, RPS:

That [Linux users buy games] was the message from philanthropic pay-what-you-want Humble Indie Bundle post-mortemers Jeffrey Rosen and John Graham, who were speaking at the IGF earlier today. The pair revealed that Mac and Linux accounted for fifty percent of revenue from the bundles, with Linux users being the most generous overall.

And from Ars:

The other secret to getting noticed was the support across multiple platforms. “Contributions from Mac and Linux users doubled our revenue for the Humble Indie Bundle,” Rosen told Ars after his talk. “Mac and Linux gamers are historically underserved by game developers, so they really appreciate the extra effort, and help you back disproportionately.”

Rosen pointed out that Linux users were the most generous in terms of what they were willing to pay for the games. “It is sad that being Windows-exclusive is the norm and it’s actually newsworthy when a developer supports another platform,” he said.

Battle Jump is a 3D jumping puzzle game. Split-screen multiplayer is supported (I haven’t seen that in a while).

Download: [ battlejump.com ]

Thanks to the increasingly active Linux Gaming reddit for pointing out that Lexaloffle has released a test build for Linux of Jasper’s Journeys, a retro-inspired platformer.

To test the linux versions of my games, I made a build of Jasper’s Journeys with bundled SDL libraries. If it works then the others should too. So please try it out! It’s the full version *nudge* *nugde*

Download: [ lexaloffle.com ]