Slashdot Mirror

1. I play BZFlag. Don't know why, but it's become a tradition for me.

2. Use a handheld spotlight I have to signal a house on one of the hills around me, ever since about 4 years ago, I randomly shined my light up there, and they signaled back.

At www.bzflag.org we have a 3 way login for the website, forums and in game authentication that works flawlessly for us. Go to http://www.bzflag.org/ for the main page and to http://forums.bzflag.org/ for the forums. Our game clients are directly tied to the PhBB user database; no extra authentication needed.

At www.bzflag.org we have a 3 way login for the website, forums and in game authentication that works flawlessly for us. Go to http://www.bzflag.org/ for the main page and to http://forums.bzflag.org/ for the forums. Our game clients are directly tied to the PhBB user database; no extra authentication needed.

Just thought I'd flag it... http://bzflag.org/

I'll be here all week, try the veal, etc. etc.

xmoto is nice, but there's so much more :)
some i have played and did like enough :

http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://www.openttd.org/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://wz2100.net/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://chromium-bsu.sourceforge.net/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5
https://sourceforge.net/projects/koules/ (original page seems to be down)
http://neverball.org/

I like multiplayer networked games, especially games I can play with friends or my kids. Of course, not everyone is using Linux, so that's a hurdle too. So the 3 top ones I like to play also happen to be OSS and has multiplatform (Windows, Mac, Linux) releases.

Favorites starting from my most are:
Warzone 2100 - Think of a real-time war game such as Command and Conquer. It's not too technical, but technical enough. I like playing with a friend in a 4 on 4 game and tag-teaming the two computer players and then battling it out. Longer games, plus there is a single-player campaign mode.

BZFlag is a classic tank game with modern 3D and maps. There are a ton of online servers hosting fun maps, plus you can download the maps and host the games yourself. Virtually unlimited amount of users can connect and play. Capture the flag mode is a ton of fun (especially with 4 color teams). Great for fast matches during a lunch break.

Freeciv doesn't require a 3D engine, and is basically an Open Source version of Civilization. Also fun with many players.

A someone else posted, there are hundreds of Linux games and even better is a list of OSS games out there, but these are my favorites.

Anyone who liked BattleZone should check out BZFlag, http://bzflag.org/

Unless the game you're playing trusts the client to do its own hit detection (which would preclude any competitive Internet play), it's the server that disagreed over whether you hit the person, not their client. (although it's possible that some artifacts are produced due to lag compensation)

The only game that I'm aware of that doesn't do server side hit detection is bzFlag, where each client checks for hits against itself which would make cheating trivial, even if the source code wasn't already available. (More server side logic is planned for v3.0.)

Further reading:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/index.php?title=Lag_Compensation
http://my.bzflag.org/w/Lag

I'll probably be modded down for this, but there's also the very neat BZFlag. True, players are tanks instead of humans, but technically it's still a "Free, Arena-Style FPS" (okay FTS).

Check it out, http://bzflag.org/

http://bzflag.org/ There are plenty of servers rated "PG", "PG-13", and even "G" suitable for children of all ages. The servers for kids tend to be very heavily monitored with strict language and behavior rules.

Oops, wrong link! The write-up of BZFlag's participation is at http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/bzflag_gsoc2007_post_mortem.pdf (15.5MB PDF) Since I'm tossing out links, this one is a simple summary of the program: http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/GSoC2007_Overview.pdf (1.7MB PDF)

Oops, wrong link! The write-up of BZFlag's participation is at http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/bzflag_gsoc2007_post_mortem.pdf (15.5MB PDF) Since I'm tossing out links, this one is a simple summary of the program: http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/GSoC2007_Overview.pdf (1.7MB PDF)

Google is already a direct investor in games by funding open source gaming projects in the Google Summer of Code. Those participating this year included BZFlag, Battle for Wesnoth, Second Life (Linden Labs), Thousand Parsec, WorldForge, and ScummVM.

That roughly amounts to Google directly funding about 8 staff-years of development effort into open source gaming this year. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.

You can see some of the results from BZFlag's participation last year at http://my.bzflag.org/gsoc/BZGSoC2007.pdf

As the article mentions Google ended up funding a number of Gaming projects. There are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects for a total of over 40 slots.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (projects), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (projects), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (projects), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (projects), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (projects), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (projects), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (projects), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

My own project Thousand Parsec got 8 slots for a number of critical features. One of the coolest is a 3d client, which should make the games much more interesting to look at.

We will also finally have a few more interesting games to actually play, including a clone of Risk in Space and a very interesting game called DroneSec. Finally, we should have some opponents for you to play against as 2 AI clients being developed for our premier RFTS ruleset.

Linux Games..

http://savage2.s2games.com/main.php
http://www.eve-online.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://www.flightgear.org/
http://www.freeciv.org/
http://www.sauerbraten.org/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://wz2100.net/
http://www.cubeengine.com/
http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
http://www.wormux.org/
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
http://www.ufoai.net/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://tremulous.net/
http://www.eternal-lands.com/
http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Perhaps you could stop with the "No games for Linux" BS already as you obviously have your head up your ass.

I know I posted roughly this comment in the last GSoC Slashdot announcement but I've been told the information is really useful and some people might have missed it.

On the note about how GSoC effects our project you should take a look at our web stats since we where announced as a GSoC mentor organisation. The increase has been massive!

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool tu rn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the cla ssic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine whic h lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework fo r building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of mul ti-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the ori ginal open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a

I know I posted roughly this comment in the last GSoC Slashdot announcement but I've been told the information is really useful and some people might have missed it.

On the note about how GSoC effects our project you should take a look at our web stats since we where announced as a GSoC mentor organisation. The increase has been massive!

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool tu rn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the cla ssic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine whic h lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework fo r building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of mul ti-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the ori ginal open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a ruleset editor which will make ruleset development significantly easier in the future.

As well, the Open Source Office funded one student in a Summer of Code style outside the program. The student successfully completed the project and we hope the code will soon be rolled out.

Because of the success of our GSoC, our project has actively started to engage with educational instit

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a ruleset editor which will make ruleset development significantly easier in the future.

As well, the Open Source Office funded one student in a Summer of Code style outside the program. The student successfully completed the project and we hope the code will soon be rolled out.

Because of the success of our GSoC, our project has actively started to engage with educational instit

BZFlag participated in the Google Summer of Code for the first time in 2007. Our participation was documented in this detailed article (Warning: 15 MB PDF).

Another higher-level summary was put together for a presentation and is available here (Warning: 5 MB PDF)

See the presentation for the quick introduction. I highly recommend the article to any students and projects/mentors that are seriously thinking about participating for the first time.

On the whole, it's a great opportunity for projects but you do have to put in a lot of time and effort. You have to have your act together. If you do, the students and the projects will both have a great time.

BZFlag participated in the Google Summer of Code for the first time in 2007. Our participation was documented in this detailed article (Warning: 15 MB PDF).

Another higher-level summary was put together for a presentation and is available here (Warning: 5 MB PDF)

See the presentation for the quick introduction. I highly recommend the article to any students and projects/mentors that are seriously thinking about participating for the first time.

On the whole, it's a great opportunity for projects but you do have to put in a lot of time and effort. You have to have your act together. If you do, the students and the projects will both have a great time.

BZFlag participated in the Google Summer of Code for the first time in 2007. Our participation was documented in this detailed article (Warning: 15 MB PDF).

Another higher-level summary was put together for a presentation and is available here (Warning: 5 MB PDF)

See the presentation for the quick introduction. I highly recommend the article to any students and projects/mentors that are seriously thinking about participating for the first time.

On the whole, it's a great opportunity for projects but you do have to put in a lot of time and effort. You have to have your act together. If you do, the students and the projects will both have a great time.

Too much stuff from the past gets neglected. The Pros: There have been alot of innovative, beautiful games to come out of F/OSS: Vega Strike Pingus FreeDroid RPG TrackBalls Nexuiz Open Arena Tremulous Torcs Scorched Earth 3D AssaultCube Lincity NG

Yes, I'm rather biased...but...
BZFlag is still a great on-line game.

It's a real-time strategy first-person shoot-em-up action game... kinda like playing chess .. with tanks .. in a slow motion FPS style.

Those who claim that the above is an inherently bad idea that wouldn't work in any game at all, should check BZFlag.

... about a month or two ago - Some details here

There are also a bunch of other Open Source Game projects you can work on, here is a short list.

• ScummVM - For all you adventure freaks.
• bzflag - that age old tank game.
• Ogre3d - one of the best OSS 3d engines out there.
• Thousand Parsec - Go conqure the universe!

If you are interested in game programming you should give them a look.

There are also a bunch of other Open Source Game projects you can work on, here is a short list.

• ScummVM - For all you adventure freaks.
• bzflag - that age old tank game.
• Ogre3d - one of the best OSS 3d engines out there.
• Thousand Parsec - Go conqure the universe!

BzFlag

The oscillation overthruster was incorporated into BZFlag, a tank-based FPS. It lets your tank 'walk through walls' and lay in wait inside buildings where you can't be shot by normal bullets. For the record, I'm an admin on a few servers, and I play regularly. Oh yeah, the game runs on Linux, BSD, Irix (where I first encountered it), and Windows of course.

• bzflag http://www.bzflag.org/
• armagetronad http://www.armagetronad.net/
• warsow http://www.warsow.net/
• alien arena http://red.planetarena.org/
• xmoto http://xmoto.sourceforge.net/
• tumiki fighters http://tumiki.sourceforge.net/ this is a port of a win game tho
• frozen bubble http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
• sturmbahnfuhrer http://www.sturmbahnfahrer.com/
• globulation 2 http://globulation2.org/wiki/Main_Page/

Well, I have it on a thumbdrive, with Openoffice, FireFox (available through the installer system, if you're wondering), Thunderbird, AMSN, and a few other apps (did I mention, I play BzFlag on it? :D) -Christian

No, not entirely. It's the PC gaming business that they say is suffering, not PC gaming. There are plenty of games that are free from the onset that are fun. http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
http://asteroids3d.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lynn
http://toppler.sourceforge.net/
http://blockattack.sourceforge.net/
http://source.bungie.org/
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
http://www.classicgaming.com/worminator/
http://www.nexuiz.com/
http://www.armagetronad.net/
http://www.meatfighter.com/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://wesnoth.org/
http://cubeengine.com/

BZFlag is fun.

BZFlag is one of those free multiplayer games that keeps pulling me back in almost every day. The competitiveness of the game coupled with the community is hard to beat. And it's open source to boot!

Wake me when the 7600GT arrives, then it'll be time for me to jump to a PCIe platform. I'm happy enough with my NVidia 5900XTV-based system for now. No way am I spending over US$250 for a videocard. I'd prefer under US$200. Once you can play BZFlag at 1600x1200x32 at 85Hz or above, with all options on, and no slowdowns, what more do you really need?

bzflag perhaps?

There goes BZFlag.

It's not totally impossable.

BZFlag is an VERY good (3D) open source multiplayer game that uses openGL. It workd in OS X, Linux, windows, and a few other platforms...

Game programmers could learn somthing by taking a look at the code.

Try BZFlag. It's incredibly addictive, even though gameplay is straightforward. They have versions for practically every OS on every arch, and the requirements are fairly low. If you can run Warcraft, you can run BZflag.

You can set up your own company server for bzflag (Toss a cheap/obsolete workstation in the corner, mark it as the BZFlag server), or you can connect to some Net servers for battle with other people.

I don't run Windows, you insensitive clod! I run Gentoo!

And I don't play Freecell, I play BZFlag!

I'd be more than happy to make sure BZFlag runs on this if you'll send me a laptop. ;-)

P.S. I'm the http://bzflag.org/ maintainer.

make sure you have enough horsepower on those machines to play BZFlag. http://bzflag.org/ Awesome game to play in the lab with friends when you are procrastinating. Trust me, my senior project consisted of many-an-hour playing BZFlag in the CS Linux lab.

For those earlier posters whining about lack of a good FPS, they should make sure and check out bzflag, a networked 3D version of Battlezone with outstanding playability. Works out-of-the box for linux, Windows, and MacOSX. Easy server startup and config; easy to run locally. "easy to learn, hard to master."

The graphics are not as beautiful as Quake II or Doom 3, but I know people who have been playing it for years and still aren't tired of it.

More info: http://www.bzflag.org/screenshots

• You could get a Linux maintainer, or you could attempt to use the compile features at Slashdot, they have many different types of boxes and operating systems for you to choose from. If you want to support all Linux versions, definitely see about getting a helpful maintainer to keep the source working and be able to compile something that works for a majority of the distributions out there.
• SourceForge is the largest community, but BerliOS is nice as well as it has SVN, CVS, and most of the other nice features that SourceForge has. Admittedly, the community is much smaller so you'll receive less traffic if you go there (but that didn't stop me from signing up my project).
• Make an AUTHORS file in the root of the source code and give them credit for what they did. You could also have a credits option in your game and list contributors.
• Someone else mentioned the meanings of the different terms so I won't go into that. You can however, have as much leeway as you wish when it comes to numbering conventions. Just be consistant!
• Wikis can be useful for OS projects as BZFlag will show you.
• If you have legal questions, first look through the licenses at the Open Source Initiative to see what they have to offer. It's a good idea to use your common sense for most things, but if you have really pressing issues you might be able to ask the folks at the FSF (they have some very brilliant minds at work there), or you may have to find and befriend a lawyer. ;-)

BZFlag, admittedly not from 1996, more like 1986.

Solarian II is available for OS X now.

The 3D game was spectre. BZflag sorta captures the gameplay but not the level design.

Another classic of the time period, updated for OS X, is Oids.

http://bzflag.org/screenshots/bzkitty.jpg

I sure hope the gameplay is good, cause the graphics look like they date from the 80s Era. Sure, graphics ain't everything and its a major achievement for the open source gaming community... but couldn't they hire an Open-GL guy / artist? 6 polygons trees... and the tanks themselves look like LEGO blocks.