LINUXGAMES

Ok, I think I’ve found my game of the year. It may be premature to say that given there’s still an entire season left, but hey.

So, FTL. As you should already know, the acronym stands for Faster Than Light – in this context, FTL is a sci-fi “roguelike” (in that your crew will die, a lot) inspired by many of the major science fiction space series of the past few decades:

-Star Trek (overall technology, aliens, RE-ROUTE THE POWER!!!)
-Battlestar Galactica (running from an implacable enemy, constantly low on supplies)
-Firefly (overall scale of the ship/crew)

The premise: you and your crew are fleeing an advancing Rebel (!) armada, carrying vital information that must reach the remnants of your Federation’s fleet. Along the way you’ll be waylaid by rebels, hostile alien powers, pirates, and save (or not, you’re usually given a choice in the matter) friendly or neutral ships and colonists.

The experience ends up being a familiar yet thrilling one; it’s the sort of game with enough variety per run despite the single interface to generate the kinds of stories that only games that eschew cutscenes and rails can foster:

01:21 < Crusader> warped into an area of space where there was this insect race marauder ship attacking a space station
01:21 < Crusader> I intervened, but they beamed two troopers on board
01:21 < Crusader> they start rampaging through the ship so I open bulkheads to try and suffocate them while still trying to fight off their ship
01:22 < Crusader> finally destroy their ship but their soldiers are still destroying systems and crewmembers
01:22 < Crusader> finally end up with one person left who asphyxiates

It’s not just a great indie game, it’s a great game period, and I hope the developers continue to add content to it (or open it up to modding) for a while to come. I rarely personally recommend games, especially these days (due to lack of time to play anything, not because of some drop in quality), but I think you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you skip this one.

FTL is available for purchase from the game’s website (facilitated by the Humble Bundle folks it seems).

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted the second part of a two-part interview with Notch of Minecraft fame; in this installment, he discusses Valve’s recently announced plans to add Linux support to both Steam and Source-engine games:

I understand why Valve wants to do what it’s doing, too. But then they would be the de facto store again, and you’d still have the Windows 8 situation in practice anyway. Because everyone would be using Steam. Is that better than only using the Windows store? I don’t know. It’s more open, because you could use an alternative, but if nobody does… I hope that Valve chooses to work with others. Like, I wish they would have worked with Desura instead of making Greenlight.

[…]

I think that Steam is too large, though. I think it’s going to take over. If people would install Linux just to be able to play Steam games, then we would have a Steambox, essentially. That’s all it would be used for. I think Valve has their heart in the right place. It’s just that because there’s no competition, they’re automatically going to take over. Or there is competition, but Valve is so far ahead. I think that’s what’s going to happen.

Simon Roth (of Mode 7 Games) is working on a new title: Maia, a sci-fi-themed god game where the player is tasked with expanding a colony on an alien world fraught with danger:

I have been playing with the idea of making my own god game for a half a decade now. The genre has always been an obsession of mine since the Amiga period (well in my case Acorn). Bullfrog games defined my childhood. Its surprising its taken me this long to crack and commit myself to making one!

I hope to make this an interesting, ongoing, long term project that can evolve and expand. The ground work of design is already fixed, but will likely adapt based on community feedback.

The game is currently in alpha. I have written a sophisticated graphics engine that can deliver hundreds of thousands of lights and a layered compositing pipeline to create the visuals that I think the game deserves.

I have hired the best concept artists I could find and have had them visualise my thought processes and create some amazing artwork. Its really stunning to see what they have come up with, I can’t wait to show you.

I hope the PC gaming community will help me finance the title through alpha funding. I will start offering preorders soon to help subsidise some of my costs. More funding will allow me to bring in the best talent I can to make this game amazing.

The dev blog also has a recent first-person perspective test posted:

’nuff said:

A blog by the Valve Linux Team: Steam’d Penguins:

For some time, Gabe has been interested in the possibility of moving Steam and the Source game engine to Linux. At the time, the company was already using Linux by supporting Linux-based servers for Source-based games and also by maintaining several internal servers (running a 64-bit version of Ubuntu server) for various projects. In 2011, based on the success of those efforts and conversations in the hallway, we decided to take the next step and form a new team. At that time, the team only consisted of a few people whose main purpose was investigating the possibility of moving the Steam client and Left 4 Dead 2 over to Ubuntu.

Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we’re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn’t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.

After successfully porting L4D2 to Ubuntu, interest grew within Valve and, as a result, the team and projects we were working on also grew. Currently, our focus is on the following projects:

getting the Steam client onto Linux with full functionality
optimizing a version of L4D2 running at a high frame rate with OpenGL
porting additional Valve titles

Alien Arena: Reloaded Edition has been released. Revitalized…and, well, reloaded!

This is a major release of this game, with many new features, and a veritable truckload of new high quality content. Every aspect of the game has been improved upon and expanded, from the engine, to the game code, weaponry, and overall gameplay.

Some of the new features for this release include:

• Many new rendering features
• Twelve new/rebuilt levels
• Two new player characters, the Overlord and Warrior
• Brand new “super” weapon, the Minderaser
• Improved antilag code
• “Simple” items rendering option
• Improved and expanded movement
• Improved Bot AI, particulary with CTF
• New music, and music “shifts” in game situations
• Variety of bug fixes and code cleansing

Alien Arena is a freeware deathmatch game that has been around for some time, and steadily evolved into what we feel is a leader among a crowded fps field. With it’s smooth gameplay, balanced weapons, and rich, immersive arenas, the game is an artisticly cohesive tour de force in the genre. Alien Arena is free to download, free to play, and the code is open sourced, and that will never change.

Trailer:

This post was submitted by irritant.

There has been two Wine release since we have last posted here, one being a development and one being a stable release of the product. The first was version 1.4.1 of the stable branch with some minor updates to translations and some bug fixes. The second release was on the development branch which has some new features which are listed below.

• Automatic installation of the Mono add-on package.
• Control panel applet for joysticks.
• Device bitmap rendering now done through the DIB engine.
• Support for video rendering through DirectX (VMR-9).
• First steps towards a D3D shader compiler.
• Build fixes for DragonFly BSD.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [Wine 1.4.1 ] [ Wine 1.5.6 ]

…huh?

Oh.

Where was I?

Oh hey, a new HUMBLE BUNDLE! It feels like I say this every time, but this may be THE BEST ONE YET:

For two weeks, you can pay whatever you want to get these DRM-free games on Windows, Mac, and Linux: Psychonauts, LIMBO, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. If you choose to pay more than the average price, you will also receive Bastion! Each game comes with its soundtrack in both lossless (FLAC) and MP3 formats.

Each of the games can optionally be redeemed on Steam, and bundle buyers can also choose to support the Child’s Play Charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two non-profits doing excellent work in the name of gamers worldwide.

All of these games have received accolades for pushing the envelope in their respective genres and delivering incredible storytelling and gameplay. All of the games are debuting on Linux, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is new on Mac.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to jaggerz for sending in the following!

You’ve covered Kickstarter projects for Linux games before (Vigrior, and coryholl’s big list, for example)… recently there has been a HUGE renaissance of old-school game developers bringing their goods to our favorite open-source OS.

Currently, the creators of the old-school Sierra On-Line Space Quest series, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe (“The Two Guys from Andromeda”) have a campaign going for a spiritual successor to the beloved Space Quest series! It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and the Linux port is right there in their committment, from the beginning, no overfunding goal required.

These games are remembered for their self-deprecating humor, fourth-wall breaking metagame jokes, popular culture and science fiction references, and for turning gaming cliches inside out!

This campaign is also novel in a couple of cool ways; one, they are planning to turn HTML5 prototype demos at
each $100,000 mark; they’ve hit the first within two days, and release them at no cost on Google’s Chrome
App Market. The first HTML5 demo plays great with the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS packaged Chromium browser (I’m not currently using Chrome). They’ve also already polled for the second prototype to ask backers what they want to see next. I’ve never heard of any campaign so interactive in that way, supporting Linux out of the gate, and using standards-compliant web technology for truly cross-platform gaming demos!

Currently the project is called “Two Guys SpaceVenture“, as the final game title has not been announced yet.

A reader (thanks coryholl!) sent in the following compiled list:

At present the following game projects promising Linux versions are seeking funding at Kickstarters:
The Banner Saga
Bump N Brawl
The Earth: Battle for Survival- A Game of strategy
Gravitaz
Rebirth (?)
Shadowrun ReturnsNekro (?)
Wasteland 2

I know of the following funded projects which have promised Linux versions:
Double Fine Adventure
Proppa（プロッパ） (Linux version only available to backers?)
FTL: Faster Than Light

And the following game projects imply that a Linux version may be made in the future or added to the project should the project become sufficiently over funded:
BIONITE: Origins
Chuck’s Challenge 3D
Commander^3
The Dead Linger
fleetCOMM : Operation Vigrior
Jane Jensen’s Pinkerton Road: “A Year of Adventure”
Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!
Plague
Starlight Inception™
That’s Why You’re Not Ugly! – The Game
Yogventures!

Any missing? And what do you think about this new trend?

edit: arvd also posted this list in our comment section; thanks!

Frozenbyte has announced that Trine 2 has been released for Linux:

Linux was started in Finland and spread globally, so being from Finland we feel right that our games also make it to Linux users across the world.

Although it has already been a while since the launch on other platforms, the Linux version (beta) is now available to all who waited patiently.

You can buy it at the Trine 2 site.

It will be available on other sites soon, but for now we are still fixing small bugs with the community and want to keep the efforts close to home.

For more on this, check the forums for latest developments.

The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 1.4
is now available.

This release represents 20 months of development effort and over
16,000 individual changes. The main highlights are the new DIB
graphics engine, a redesigned audio stack, and full support for
bidirectional text and character shaping.

It also contains a lot of improvements across the board, as well as
support for many new applications, notably Microsoft Office 2010. See
the release notes below for a summary of the major changes.

This release is dedicated to the memory of Gé (Greg) van Geldorp, who
passed away in May 2011. Greg single-handedly designed, built, and
maintained the Wine Testbot, which has become a cornerstone of our
development process. The high quality of this release owes a lot to
his work. He is greatly missed by us all.

Download: Wine 1.4

The multiplayer-focused DOOM variant Skulltag has, after many years of resistance, become an open source project, as announced on the project forum recently:

Behold! What has been discussed and requested countless of times in the past, finally happens: Skulltag is open source now! And this not only covers the current version of the code, but includes the full history from our SVN repository. In particular, the full source of all public and all official beta builds made since I took over the Skulltag development five years ago is included.

Download

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted a review of Oil Rush, the naval-themed real-time strategy game recently released for Linux by Unigine that praises the game’s mechanics and originality:

In these suprisingly roleplaying-heavy times, something as laser-focused strategic as this is entirely welcome. It’s a proper, honest-to-god RTS – but, delightfully uncommonly, it doesn’t bow slavishly to the C&C or Total War thrones. Were my thumbs not too bust helping to type these very words, I would certainly hold at least one of them aloft.

Frictional is teasing a sequel to their amazing survival horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent at the domain name nextfrictionalgame.com, with a blurry image that links to a location in China.

Looking forward to more info (and well, the game).

Winner of Roguelike of the Year for both 2010 and 2011, Tales of Maj’Eyal is  an open-source, single-player, tactical role-playing roguelike and action game.

Why play this one?  LEMME TELL YOU (courtesy of the SA Forums):

For one a lack of consumable hoarding. The Tome philosophy is that hoarding potions and scrolls until the end of the game is neither fun nor particularly easy to balance. Things generally handled by consumables like healing and teleportation are handled through runes and infusions instead, which are basically swappable talents. Likewise Tome dungeons do not respawn. Once an area is cleared it’s generally cleared for good. The game’s leveling and xp system is balanced around these concepts so the player should never feel the need to grind to advance.

Tome also comes with a full tile set, has sound and music, as well as an integrated chat system so you can ask advice of other players without leaving the game (hence the thread title). It also supports ASCII and has an options menu so almost any feature you don’t enjoy you can turn off.

There’s more, the game’s pretty innovative and it would be hard for me to cover everything. But briefly, a friendly interface that supports both keyboard and mouse based play along with fully functional auto-explore, a fairly unique combat system, a polished UI (which will be customizable next beta), a very active developer (the game’s seen 37 beta releases in the last two years), and a growing player base.

Plus… it’s pretty.

Download.

Hack, Slash, Loot is a single-player turn-based dungeon crawler.

Defender’s Quest is a tower defense / RPG hybrid that focuses on
story, customization, and tactics.

Frozen Synapse’s upcoming DLC will include Unreal Tournament-style mutators.

Yamagi Quake II is an enhanced client for id Software’s Quake II, focusing on maintaining the original gameplay experience:

• Anisotropic filtering.
• Compatible with most mods (as long as their source is available).
• From scratch rewritten savegame system.
• Full 64 bit support.
• Ingame soundtrack playback via OGG/Vorbis.
• IPv6 support.
• Mature and stable codebase.
• No gameplay and graphic enhancements.
• SDL for input and rendering.
• Support for unlimited screen size / resolutions.
• Widescreen support.

Version 4.0 was just released to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the engine source code (!).

Alien Arena version 7.53 is now released (thanks irritant!):

• Extended use of VBO for big performance increases
• Signifigant improvements to bot AI
• “Dm Lights” server option
• Improvements to menu code
• Improved stats algorithms
• Entity definition files
• Optimized and improved vegetation rendering
• Variety of bug fixes and code cleansing
• Two new maps
• Optimizations to IQM and MD2 rendering
• New “Ultra” skill level
• Speed hack detection improvements

Version 7.53 features some very signifigant performance gains for people who like to run the game on higher settings, as well as some very nice improvements/bugfixes to the bot AI. We have also added two new maps, as well as the entity definition files which now allow for custom reconfiguration of a map’s entities, plus a number of other updates and bugfixes. For a complete changelog see http://icculus.org/alienarena/changelogs/7.53.txt

Alien Arena also has some new 3rd party content portals where you can grab the latest and greatest 3rd party levels as well as some of the “retired” classics:

http://code.google.com/p/aa3rdparty/http://3rdpartyalien.3r.funpic.de/index.html

A new developer release of Wine has been announced. This version being 1.3.35 has the following new items included in it.

• Triangular gradients and cosmetic wide pens support in the DIB engine.
• All Wine dialogs can now be translated through po files.
• Many more scripts added to UniScribe.
• JScript using bytecode throughout now.
• Several MSXML improvements.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [ Wine 1.3.35 ]

Ars Technica has taken a look at the latest Humble Indie Bundle, complete with quotes from the project’s volunteers:

One of the most exciting aspects of the bundles is that they mark the first time many of the games have been ported to platforms other than Windows, with each title offering full support for play on a Mac or on Linux. “The most ambitious aspect of a Humble Bundle is definitely the cross-platform porting,” Esguerra agreed. “Some developers are ready for it from day one, but usually a game is Windows-only and needs to get ported to Mac and Linux. Ryan Gordon and Edward Rudd have been instrumental in this, but a lot of developers will do ports internally as well.”

The Humble Bundles have done more for gaming on the Mac and Linux than maybe any other single thing in the past few years, as the team can go to developers who may be leery of cross-platform work and both provide talent to help with the porting and point to a proven business model so the developers understand that porting their game is a winning strategy.

Also, the current offering has been expanded to include the soundtracks from every title!