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Jade Empire - Mythic Chinese themed RPG w/ real time martial arts combat - but not hack and slash, more like the combat-as-puzzles presented in this game you should also try:

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Fantastic platforming, puzzling, and combat-as-puzzles. Great storyline featuring ACUTAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Woah.

Mind Rover build and program robots for fun! Anyone remember robotwar on the Apple ][? This is fun like that was fun.

And how about some games with people? Try Munchkin or Illuminati.

And I've been playing RPGs on tabletops for 25 years (and I got a girlfriend, married her, game with her, and our son games too, so forget the 'RPGs are for anti-social ubergeeks' sterotype). It's not my fave, but D&D is the industry standard - like Windows, everyone's got it, everyone knows it, and many of us hate it but use it anyhow. For more flexibility, I suggest GURPS, the new 4th edition is very smooth. And for the Linux of RPGs, just google on "free RPG". Here's one by a designer I admire: The Shadow of Yesterday but I haven't gotten to play that particular game yet. Enjoy!

A few years back CogniToy came out with a really unique robot design/combat game called MindRover:The Europa Project. You would start with a simple chase (tank, car, or hovercraft) and outfit it with weapons, sensors, and propulsion. However, the real meat of the game was in the programmer's window. Each piece of equipment had to be wired together with a network of logic gates in order to get the robot to anything meaningful. If your radar sensed an enemy robot, you could signal the weapons to fire or just ram him at full speed. If the radar sensed enemy fire you could signal the motor to move in reverse and fire your own weapons to try to intercept. The smarter the bot, more complex the logic network had to be. The development capital seemed to have dried up for them as well since MindRover was their one and only product of interest.

CogniToy has a game that simulates the programming of these robots. They have a small web based demo Here If you go to their main page you can get more details on the full game

There's still a demo available through Loki which can still be downloaded.

It's a very, very fun game, and quite different from twitch-based or other reaction-driven games.

MindRover was "by" CogniToy on the PC, originally.

Loki did the port to Linux. A great port, but the game wasn't their design.

Cognitoy makes an excellent (and engrossing) game called Mindrover, in which you have to design and program a vehicular robot to do certain things (follow waypoints, chase another robot, or destroy the opposing robot).

I don't know if a vehicle-on-vehicle rocket launcher qualifies as 'violence' or not (since these are very clearly toy robots going at it), but it's certainly an awesome game, even apart from it's educational value.

Loki has also ported it to Linux, and thier port is flawless.

Cognitoy actually did this for their Mindrover robot sim, see this link.

Cognitoy actually did this for their Mindrover robot sim, see this link.

Have you seen Mind Rover?

There's even a Linux version available from Loki.

It's a little different than Battle Bots; you construct a robot, and then "wire" it to compete in different arenas. Kind of a cross between Robotica and Lego Mindstorms.

For anyone who picked up Loki's port of Mindrover, they have something very cool on thier site.

This is a set of objects for Mindrover that simulate the functioning of Lego RCX components. They also have pre-built objects that represent two real-world lego cars, and all the appropriate 'wiring' to connect them.

The 'programs' that you create in Mindrover can then be downloaded to the Mindstorms, and you can then watch your Mindrover in the real world.

I think Loki might be getting around to porting it (they mentioned on thier newsgroups that they would be porting some more stuff for it - no link right now, though).

For anyone who picked up Loki's port of Mindrover, they have something very cool on thier site.

This is a set of objects for Mindrover that simulate the functioning of Lego RCX components. They also have pre-built objects that represent two real-world lego cars, and all the appropriate 'wiring' to connect them.

The 'programs' that you create in Mindrover can then be downloaded to the Mindstorms, and you can then watch your Mindrover in the real world.

I think Loki might be getting around to porting it (they mentioned on thier newsgroups that they would be porting some more stuff for it - no link right now, though).

These people seem to have something that may interest you, though.

Well, let's see.

I just bought Mindrover. Haven't seen a game like it since Robowar on the Mac or Robot Odyssey on the AppleII

Number 1 and 2 sellers on PC right now- The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. The Sims is certainly original, and RRT may be a clone of Theme Park but it's got its own unique flavor.

Yeah, there are a dozen RT strategy and first person shooters for every innovative thing out there, but they certainly exist.

Eric

Take what they already like and add the programming part to it.

Cognitoys makes a game called MindRover that is a 3D strategy/programming game. You get to program the intelligence of robotic vehicles.

-Scott

It's wonderful that some truly great games (apart from Quake and mindrover) are finally making their way to Linux. If this keeps up, gamers will finally be able to get rid of that MS partition.
What worries me though, is that the ports seem to be trailing behind rather significantly. Descent 3 has been out for ages, and most of the gaming public has moved on. If the majority has already bought and played the game for Widnows, why should they invest in an extra copy to play under Linux, especially since hardware support still tends to be wobbly ?

I've seen a lot of comments about Mindstorms, and that is truly excellent, however, a new tool that I have discovered (with which I plan to start teaching my six-year-old programming) is a game from Cognitoy called Mind Rover.

It has gotten excellent reviews in the game press, but hardly anyone has ever heard of it. Its premise is simple, accept a challenge and then build a rover to solve the challenge. Rover's are created from various kinds of chassis with various kinds of components--such as radars, bump sensors, etc. When you have picked all your pieces you wire them together using graphical programming environment (somewhat like Lab View). Then you test your rover to see if it is up to the challenge presented.

Stand Fast,

CP