In a forthcoming update to Minecraft, not only will you be able to gain levels. You’ll lose your levelling progress if you die.
“I’m a big roguelike fan,” explains Notch. “It’s really fun. The idea is that you level up really, really fast. You can grind away and level up fast if you want to, or you can just play as normal and level up that way. The longer you play, the bigger the risk of dying becomes. It’s the part that really works. If it feels like it’s too harsh, we might make it half or something like that. But the fact that you lose everything – you lose all your inventory anyways.”
I already delete my entire world whenever I die in Minecraft, so that sounds alright to me – what do you think?
You will need to place it in the same folder as the game (hint : the folder the windows executable is in), and voilà!
You need the libraries SDL, SDL_Image, SDL_ttf, SDL_Mixer and SDL_Sound to run it.
Take one part Heroes of Might and Magic and another part Warsong, then add a dash of standard fantasy fare like orcs, elves and wizards. Now you’ve got Battle for Wesnoth, an immense, free turn-based strategy game and mathematician’s wet dream.
You maneuver heroes and armies around a variety of vast maps, moving and attacking in order to take out monsters and complete the game’s 15+ campaigns. Wesnoth can sometimes feel a little slow, but strategy RPG buffs will dig the 100+ hours of content and accompanying map editor, which allows you to develop your own campaigns and scenarios.
So there it is. Gone are the 2.6. days, and 3.0 is out.
This obviously also opens the merge window for the next kernel, which will be 3.1. The stable team will take the third digit, so 3.0.1 will be the first stable release based on 3.0.
As already mentioned several times, there are no special landmark features or incompatibilities related to the version number change,
it’s simply a way to drop an inconvenient numbering system in honor of twenty years of Linux. In fact, the 3.0 merge window was calmer than
most, and apart from some excitement from RCU I’d have called it really smooth. Which is not to say that there may not be bugs, but if
anything, there are hopefully fewer than usual, rather than the normal “.0″ problems.
Download from your chosen distribution’s repository or directly from kernel.org.
Better menu keyboard binding (Enter to select, Escape to Return or Quit)
Up keyboard arrow can be sue to jump (duplicated binding)
WIP (well, very WIP) keyboard and gamepad ingame configurators (from the Options menu)
Volume mutted when the game doen’t have the focus
Max volume can be tweaked in the Options menu
Max framerate option (only tweakable from the config/DisplayOptions.xml for now)
Saves slots can be used (switchable from the main menu with Gamepad Xbox (X) and keyboard [F])
Ennemies now stop moving when the camera is showing something to the player
Falling / sliding blocks are now repositionned when entering puzzle mode so that they are aligned with grid
The game can be played in french version if the OS is in french. (tweak the config/DisplayOptions.xml’ ” line and put the guess value to “0″ if you want to play in english)
The exceedingly Linux-friendly developer Wolfire Games (of Humble Indie Bundle and Lugaru fame) has continued development of their next title, Overgrowth, and in the comments for a recent dev diary, David Rosen mentioned the state of things for Linux:
All of the alphas work on Mac and Windows, and we are working on getting someone to do the initial Linux port, and then I can maintain that every week as well.
[...]we have started work on our final world (Lava World). Lava world will feature fiery projectiles that will shoot from the lava bed. A new power-up for our hero a rocket pack, which gives our hero a fun double boost to his jump. The final showdown with our as of yet unnamed end of game boss.
More above; it’s also mentioned that cooperative multiplayer is planned.
Gaslamp Games has released their roguelike game Dungeons of Dredmor for Windows and Mac OSX, and posted this update about the Linux version on their blog:
Linux guys: those of you who have emailed us have hopefully received a note from me. We are still very committed to getting you a Linux version of Dredmor, please be patient, we have not forgotten about you!
And in the comments:
Guys, have you considered distributing the Linux version through Gameolith (the new Linux games store)? I’d love to play Dredmor on my Linux box, please don’t delay it for too long!
There are quite a few options out there for Linux. Our current hope is that a more direct purchasing solution could support Linux users *and* people who would just like to buy the game using a different method than Steam. Nothing is certain just yet, but that’s the dream.
[...]
Can Linux users that bought your game through Steam dream to get a Linux client without having to buy the game again ?[...]
Planning on doing this. We just have to finish the darned Linux port.
NVIDIA made a new display driver for graphics cards utilizing their chipsets last week:
Added support for the following GPU:GeForce GT 540M
Fixed memory error and abort reported by glibc when running the application FieldView from Intelligent Light.
Fixed an OpenGL driver bug that caused an application crash when running Altair HyperMesh.
Fixed a performance problem when switching between stereo and monoscopic rendering in the application Smoke.
Fixed poor X driver handling of pixmap out of memory scenarios.
Fixed an interrupt handling deficiency that could lead to performance and stability problems when many NVIDIA GPUs shared few IRQs.
Fixed bugs in the VDPAU presentation queue that could cause GPU errors and hangs when destroying a presentation queue. This happens when exiting applications, and also when toggling to and from full-screen mode in Adobe Flash.
Version 2.0.39 (and 2.0.39.1) of Heroes of Newerth, the fiercely competitive multiplayer game inspired by Defense of the Ancients, was released. Changes include a new item (Sol’s Bulwark), a new hero (Revenant), and various gameplay/bug fixes. Also, as of right now accounts are $10 US.
Venn let us know that this weekend Kiaran Ritchie, one of the developers of BEEP, will be interviewed on the Linux Game Cast with ten questions solicited from the linux_gaming reddit:
Hey /r/linux_gaming! Fellow redditor, Kiaran Ritchie here. I’m the developer of BEEP which is coming soon to the Ubuntu Software Center. I’ll be sitting down with the LinuxGamesCast to answer your questions and the best question wins a free copy of BEEP for Linux!
Venn notes he will buy copies for the second and third highest-rated questions. LGC has also posted a first look at BEEP:
Last Tuesday is a brief, unusual game that is presented in the form of a visual novel. I don’t want to say too much about it as it’s best experienced without a lot of preparation, but definitely worth checking out.
World of Padman, an open source first person shooter which is also spinning up a new website, just saw it’s 1.5.4 beta release:
The new version solves some major game play issue like bots standing idle in CTL game mode and placing a BamBam into solid brushes. We added a new quick info (or tool-tip) feature for some of the menu items which appear on mouse over. The HUD now shows the the person voice chatting. To all the modders and mappers out there, please pay attention to the changelog. We made a few changes and additions to the game.
The full changelog can be found at the announcement post; it’s also mentioned that they’re now distributing through Desura, which isn’t available for Linux yet but is actively being ported.
There is a market for Linux commercial games which is still largely untapped. This offers a real opportunity for indie developers, who lack significant funding, to generate good sales. The more publicity that indie games receive should hopefully entice their developers to release further titles, as well as encouraging new entrants to the scene.
The indie developer team Swing Swing Submarine has released a playable tech demo of Blocks That Matter, a platforming/puzzle game featuring a driller robot and the various blocks that it can collect:
RPS: More seriously – do you know, as a developer, when you’ve got something so ferociously compulsive on your hands? Is that that something you can actually design, or is it a happy accident?
The goal wasn’t “compulsion” so much as it was “innovative fun”. Alex and I had been disappointed by the lack of imagination shown by MMOs; the slow linear evolution from text MUDs to EverQuest through WoW and all of its modern clones was really unsatisfying to us. It was clear to us that the huge budgets of mainstream MMOs had effectively prevented big innovations. We saw an opportunity to use a small team, 2D and Flash to shake things up by breaking as many MMO ‘rules’ as we could. The result is something with a lot of fresh gameplay, and I think that’s a big part of Realm of the Mad God’s appeal.
I haven’t played it very long yet, but I just lost my first character (only level 4, I made the mistake of teleporting into a battle where I was very out-classed) and immediately re-rolled, so uh, hey!
Wired pointed out two Linux games in their “10 Clever Indie Games Ready to Shine at PAX” preview, Atom Zombie Smasher and Snapshot. Both games were among those chosen by a panel for display at the convention as the PAX 10; congratulations to the developers!
