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You're kidding, right?

The number of innovative open source games out there is astounding. I'll put the Debian 'Games/' package section up against any handheld out there (sure, the GB beats it for quantity, but quality?).

http://happypenguin.org/

1. better Cedega Support - http://www.transgaming.com/
2. native installers - http://liflg.org/
3. Greater development in the SDL world
4. Push for support of
      http://www.happypenguin.org/
      http://www.linux-gamers.net/
      http://www.icculus.org/

Why not try,

A mod point, a mod point, my root password for a mod point. I'm back playing smaller games that are addictive: www.happypenguin.org

I agree that just doing it is best.

I started looking at the SDL Wiki example page, and after looking over the code and browsing the game programming wiki I just started coding.

My first game, and first use of SDL is mousetrap - the graphics suck, but at least one person liked it.

SDL really was a pleasure to work with, and suprisingly easy to get started with.

Now I'm working on a more graphical platform game.

At the other end of the spectrum though, you will have large companies that have a pile of internal applications that run exclusively on Win32, making a move to Linux extremely difficult or largely pointless if they needed to use QEmu/VMWare on every PC just to run their internal applications. This is where Wine really shines, for applications that are needed, but have a low chance of being ported to Linux, and for which no native application exists. In the future they may decide to rewrite the applications to be native to Linux, but the chances of doing that as a part of the initial transion are low, as the time required to develop and test such applications is generally non-trivial.

I think in general, Wine is one of the catalysts for Linux adoption, which, ironically, will at the same time will cause it's own irrelevance at an accelerated rate. Without Wine, Linux adoption would be much slower than it is right now, even if only initially, people like to stick with what they're familiar with. Every person I know who has tried out Linux (including myself), has attempted to run the programs they used to use under Wine. I can also point out that they usually find native applications that replace the functionality of the programs they were running under Wine. I certainly did, and I no longer have a use for Wine, I've been running Linux exclusively for about 2 years now.

The one sticking point for a lot of users is still games however. Few Win32 games will ever be ported to Linux, and finding native games that can act as a replacement can be very difficult except for some of the most popular games, for example, the Civilization series => FreeCiv. Not to say that there aren't any games available for Linux, but if there was no Wine, the list would be significantly shortened, and many of the games that people want to play have no equivalant.

I don't think Wine will ever be completely irrelevant, but as it gets better, it will drive itself that way.

That's not really the problem. It has more to do with Linux as a game development environment totally lacking any good tools and debugging. Game developers don't want to have to make these tools themselves, that only hinders development times.

I have to disagree. The lack is not in code or tools to produce code. Linux does not really lack for game code -- it is at least as rich as the Windows world in available game libraries, and vastly richer in codebases to crib from. Some very extensive projects have been conducted, and very little has been built on them (Crystal Space is a great example).

The lack is in content -- audio, video, graphics, and even well-written English text. Almost every Linux game project I can think of has a severe lack of content.

On the Linux Game Tome today, if I search for top-rated games, the top-rated is Battle For Wesnoth. That game at one point used cribbed graphics from a commercial game, currently has a very limited 2d sprite set that would have been par-for-the-course in the Super Nintendo's heyday, and has character facial portraits that are atrocious (one more comment about the prince looking awfully fruity, and I think everyone will go insane). And this project is known for having rather good graphics for the Linux gaming world. I don't mean to bash the Wesnoth people (hell, I've hacked on the codebase), as they have a fun game. But the limiting factor is very definitely graphics.

Another game I've enjoyed is lincity. Good game, all open-source and not just a clone of a closed-source game -- but the graphics are reminicent of bad MSDOS game graphics.

After Wesnoth on the "top rated Linux games" list is Freeciv. Freeciv has graphics that are reasonable...for a decade-old game. It does not improve on the game it is cloning.

Next is BZflag, possibly the most popular 3d-accelerated multiplayer Linux game. It has incredibly simple graphics (note that 2.0 has improved things a bit). DOOM is really more graphically complex than BZflag. Again, fun, but it's simply not remotely able to compete with modern 3d games when it comes to texturing and modelling.

Next is Neverball. While this game has decent-looking textures, it also has no more than a handful of textures all told, perhaps a tenth or a hundredth of what a commercial, closed-source 3d game would probably have.

Next on the list is NetHack. NetHack is a terminal-based game (not that I think that this inhibits gameplay, as I just finished a four-hour stint playing Tales of Middle Earth), with extremely simplistic tile-based graphics. There have been a few attempts to improve things -- Falcon's Eye is a notable NetHack fork, with music and alpha-blended graphics -- but still nowhere near modern commercial-quality graphics. Now, as the NetHack aficionados among you know, NetHack can be a lot of fun, and while long-term replayability depends more on game logic than graphics, anyone who thinks that graphics and sound don't play a key role in making a game enjoyable is simply not being honest with themselves (and I would suggest that they try watching a horror movie with the sound off).

I am not demanding that open source developers do differently. I hack on games for the fun of it, and would not be interested in producing graphics, because I am not a good artist, or someone that finds creating game graphics fun. Good coders like donating their time -- perhaps because they are in a position that currently pays well and lacks enough employees that they do not need to compete as hard, and can afford to give away work as gifts for the sheer enjoyment. Artists work in a rather more competitive world (there are simply more people that want to be artists than there can be funded artists), and do not seem to be able to enjoy the same gift-based culture.

Another consideration is degree of work commitment. Code is largely opaque to the user, and differences between programmers large

Why not do something like this? It might be 2d-only at first but it would satisfy the requirements of almost any game.

Or even better, the Linux Game Tome, which is the original site to list games, and also the primary site where Linux game authors post their updates.

Now we'll need a free registration to read other people's junk on about.com. :o/

indeed, all games with hours of game-play, i'm surprised no-one has yet to post a link to the linux game-tome. here it is: http://www.happypenguin.org/

I think you meant linuxgames.com. linuxgames.org is just advertising. By the way, I prefer The Linux Game Tome, but that's just me.

So where are the Open Source Games Projects?

All over the place. For starters try here: Happy Penguin Google for Linux games next.

Enjoy,

Games Knoppix

The Linux Game Tome

Guess what, CivNet and Civilization II also used Windows common controls. I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but some people actually prefer windowed games (2.0.0 even has a fullscreen mode option). GTK+ is themable, so it isn't like you can't easily change the look if you don't like it using one of the zillions of free available themes. Try that on Civilization III... The interface has strong and weak points. The cities list is one of the strong points. I've never found one in a Civilization like game that allows to do complex actions that easily, instead of having to click the mouse a zillion times.

If you want to "escape from the computer world", go play in the outside world instead of being stuck in front of a computer screen.

Quoting the 5 "Informative" post, in full:
I sure hope so, because the current release makes me want to blow my brains out. I thought the original Civ and Civ 2 had a craptacular interface, but then I played freeciv.

Blow my brains out. Worse than Civilization I (a game on which the mouse sometimes stopped froze permanently and required constant pointer-chasing to click in teensy squares).

Seems pretty terrible doesn't it? It must be pretty terrible. Freeciv has earned 5 HappyPenguin stars, is the #2 best OSS game according to their rank, etc.

Not surprising. Blowhards like you who like to dish out criticism often can't take it themselves.

Want some cheese with that whine?

Bah... unless they get a level of unit detail like in Wesnoth, I don't think it could peak my interest. :)

Hmm... it looks like there's now an X-com style game for Linux ( ), and it's gotten some really impressive ratings. I never even knew - I was wishing someone would make a game like that just the other day ;)

Not being at all familiar with Settlers of Catan, I did a quick search at The Linux Game Tome and found Gnotan.

Perhaps you can suggest the LLGP folks add it...?

Not being at all familiar with Settlers of Catan, I did a quick search at The Linux Game Tome and found Gnotan.

Perhaps you can suggest the LLGP folks add it...?

The limiting factor is organization of talent. You'd think it'd be the artwork, but right now that's not the case so much as getting the artists to work with the core programmers. Happy Penguin's game of the month project (now called the Help Wanted project, for instance, has led to some significant turnarounds for Linux games (especially with regards to graphics). Right now they're working on Lincity, and amazingly enough, people aren't worried about getting good 3d graphics for it, as much as they are about coding them in.

The limiting factor is organization of talent. You'd think it'd be the artwork, but right now that's not the case so much as getting the artists to work with the core programmers. Happy Penguin's game of the month project (now called the Help Wanted project, for instance, has led to some significant turnarounds for Linux games (especially with regards to graphics). Right now they're working on Lincity, and amazingly enough, people aren't worried about getting good 3d graphics for it, as much as they are about coding them in.

This is *the* source for great Linux games (both free and non-free, mostly free though). Most games on the first page of this list is really good actually. :)

On the Linux side of things, I run Gentoo and just use the regular old Gnome desktop with Nautilus even. My system is fast enough to keep up with it, and Athlon-XP 2400, GeForce FX-5900, 1G of RAM, a fast 120G HD, 20" Monitor, SBLive! sound card, and some USB joysticks and game pads. I use the JFS filesystem in Gentoo because it has the lowest CPU usage and its speed is comparable with the other guys.

One of the greatest things for the Linux gamer is DOSBox. Using that program, I can play Wing Commander: Privateer, and X-COM UFO Defense in Linux. You can adjust the speed of DOSBox so the game feels about right. You know its getting pretty good if it can run Privateer (which is now abandonware and a free download from The Underdogs). In fact, you can probably run most of the great old DOS abandonware games in DOSBox with zero problems now. This one program increases your Linux gaming library to thousands of freely available commercial quality games.

Next are the nice commercial games which have a linux port. Neverwinter Nights and Doom3 stand at the forefront of the pack and run great on my system. Also there are great ports of Quake1/2/3, RtCW, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen 1/2, and Doom.

After that, you enter the realm of Open Source games, with great titles like the Ur-Quan Masters, Vega Strike, Battle for Wesnoth, and any of the thousands of other games listed at The Linux Game Tome. Having Gentoo is an advantage here because the compiler toolchain is particularly strong, so its easy to compile and try out the latest cutting edge CVS versions of these in-development games.

Then you have the Wine and Cedega games. I use this for Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout1/2, and Diablo II. These (and other) well programmed games are totally playable in Wine, so there's no reason to have to special boot to windows just to play them, might as well just use Wine to play them. The windows versions of most of the old Loki games that are now broken typically work under Wine.

I won't even go into the other emulators, but suffice it to say that there are emulators for most consoles, such as ZSNES, and arcade games, like MAME. There are thousands of games which will work great using these things. I sometimes boot up ZSNES and play some ShadowRun.

Which leads me finally to the unfortunate state of the Loki titles. A lot of these are linked against older libs and may or not work on a new system without some serious fiddling around and building of compatibility libs. Some still work, some don't, but chances are that they will all eventually die of bit-rot. Poor Loki Games, you are missed.

I've been doing serious Linux gaming since 1998. There are tons of great games available, thousands that can be emulated, and the best part is if you want to take a hand at making your own games, you have every tool and library under the sun right there at your fingertips.

But for the whole open source movement? Please. The only thing the top downloads shows is that people would rather pirate good windows games than bother downloading free mediocre games.

While it may be true that open source games lag proprietary ones, Battle for Wesnoth and Freeciv have taken on lives of their own. They beet out BZFlag on the happy penguin top ranked games.

But for the whole open source movement? Please. The only thing the top downloads shows is that people would rather pirate good windows games than bother downloading free mediocre games.

While it may be true that open source games lag proprietary ones, Battle for Wesnoth and Freeciv have taken on lives of their own. They beet out BZFlag on the happy penguin top ranked games.

Better looking game installer ;) and free (as in beer) for open source

Bitrock

You know, this is really getting tiresome...
But I'll take the bait anyway.

Here's a list of 319 games.
And here's another 1400 or so games.

Much less than what's on windows, sure but still way more than enough to get my gaming fix. And this doesn't even count what you may be able to get to work through emulation.

Then you really haven't looked very hard, I would think. If you like BZFlag, I would have thought you might like e.g. Unreal Tournament or Doom 3 (both available on linux).

Lots of games of varying quality on http://www.happypenguin.org/

When you were on windows, probably the only games you had out-of-box were stuff like minesweeper. You had to go looking for other games. Same on Linux.

Guess which one is being bounced upon my knee as we speak because he won't sleep (probably has something with that projectile vomit bug he has!) Hint: the kitten^H^H^H^H^H^Hcat would just meow and vomit (a previous kitty did that in the back of a monitor. I needed a new monitor anyways (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!)), and the video card would probably rather render cacodemons rather than be physically bounced.

(Side note: while bouncing said baby, one hand is usually used holding him, which makes typing difficult and preclues most games, as they generally require two hands to play well. Chromium BSU is sort of useful in these circumstances -- can be played with one hand, is quick, and your system may already have it installed. Your video card wants OpenGL to render, and Chromium BSU does a fair job of delivering, at least until it crashes (alas, it's not that stable)).

While you wait to see how major publishers will jerk you around next, games for linux keep getting better and better!

Gimme a call when happypenguin isn't full of clones and remakes. Or at least one example of blatant copyright infringement. Not saying there aren't any good Linux games, but if what you link to is any indication, there's a long way to go compared to the major publishers.

While you wait to see how major publishers will jerk you around next, games for linux keep getting better and better!

Cut and Paste don't work
It does, those ctrl-c ctrl-v thing has been introduced by KDE/Gnome, because those people always have to reinvent the wheel, whether the existing solution is useful or not. Use you middle mouse button, everythings fine.
Games
Although their is a much wider variety of games available for Windows, many games that are important to me are running fine on Linux (UT2k4, ET, etc.), even more can be played using Wine, especially those using a Quake3 Engine (Jedi Knight series, Call of Duty e.g.). There are also plenty of free (beer as well as speech) games available, check out Linuxgames or HappyPenguin.
Font display is awful
It's not, I can'u say anything more to this.
Aplication installation is awful, poorly integrated with desktop(s)
Now you are kidding, apt-get is the finest thing ever invented for installing application. Once you ever tried apt-get, you'll never want anything other.
86 different text editors... why?
Why not?
Some very important web sites only work with IE
www.windowsupdate.com is not that important...
General lack of polish, little (and some big) things inexplicably not working
??
Cut and Paste don't work
It's not, I can'T say anything more to this.
As you can see, I was able to even copy & paste the above line.
Font display is awful
Looks quite fine to me...

Also bear in mind that Linux was weak areas (eg, games, off-the-shelf software).

I'd actually say that Linux is weak in supporting off-the-shelf games; however, there are numerous fun, high-quality games available Free and/or for free. KDE provides many addictive games and edutainment applications that I can't live without (speaking as a GNOME lover, when using Linux). GNOME also has many high-quality games (my favorites are Mahjongg and Robots). Then there many other favorites like Tux Racer, Frozen Bubble (like Snood), and GL Tron (you have to play this one) among others. Another really cool diversion is Celestia, which allows you to zoom around the galaxy and visit planets, moons, comets, astroids, spacecraft (like Hubble, the ISS, or even Friendship 1). And despite my premise, there are also quite a few commercial games for Linux. There are many fun games that run on Linux - some aren't even available for Windows or non-unix platforms! Check your favorite Linux Distribution for more examples.

Also bear in mind that Linux was weak areas (eg, games, off-the-shelf software).

I'd actually say that Linux is weak in supporting off-the-shelf games; however, there are numerous fun, high-quality games available Free and/or for free. KDE provides many addictive games and edutainment applications that I can't live without (speaking as a GNOME lover, when using Linux). GNOME also has many high-quality games (my favorites are Mahjongg and Robots). Then there many other favorites like Tux Racer, Frozen Bubble (like Snood), and GL Tron (you have to play this one) among others. Another really cool diversion is Celestia, which allows you to zoom around the galaxy and visit planets, moons, comets, astroids, spacecraft (like Hubble, the ISS, or even Friendship 1). And despite my premise, there are also quite a few commercial games for Linux. There are many fun games that run on Linux - some aren't even available for Windows or non-unix platforms! Check your favorite Linux Distribution for more examples.

Also bear in mind that Linux was weak areas (eg, games, off-the-shelf software).

I'd actually say that Linux is weak in supporting off-the-shelf games; however, there are numerous fun, high-quality games available Free and/or for free. KDE provides many addictive games and edutainment applications that I can't live without (speaking as a GNOME lover, when using Linux). GNOME also has many high-quality games (my favorites are Mahjongg and Robots). Then there many other favorites like Tux Racer, Frozen Bubble (like Snood), and GL Tron (you have to play this one) among others. Another really cool diversion is Celestia, which allows you to zoom around the galaxy and visit planets, moons, comets, astroids, spacecraft (like Hubble, the ISS, or even Friendship 1). And despite my premise, there are also quite a few commercial games for Linux. There are many fun games that run on Linux - some aren't even available for Windows or non-unix platforms! Check your favorite Linux Distribution for more examples.

Game of the Month Link got messed up, correct one is: http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=21

Game of the Month Link got messed up, correct one is: http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=21

However I think one of the key points to move Open Source gaming further ahead lies in the tools, the engine and the data freely available, once we have reached a point where there is 'enough' of it available, we might see free games poping up. It won't be the hollywood blockbaster games, but it will be little short-stories and stuff which can be done by two or three persons. Some years ago you needed to basically start with a blank sheet of paper and no tools when you wanted to start a game, today we have at least a bunch of tools (Gimp, Blender, Wings3d, ...) available for creating content, in the sound area there is still much missing, but we are moving slowly forwards. We also have a bunch of libraries and engines, which while not being up to Doom3 standards, still might be enough for a homebrewn game, that said, with every game that uses them, they will of course also mature a bit more. On the content side however we are still at a very low level, however in large part that might be due to the lack of proper license and to the lack of tools in the past, thing might hopefully change a bit in the future.

Why I think it might work in the long run? Imagine in another five years we might have a repository full of 3d models, textures and sound. Now somebody comes along and wants to create a game, all he has todo is to select a collection of models and textures that will fit his story, point&click them together in some 3d editor and just add his dialogs lines to them. Some ready-to-use 3d engine will do the rest. Sure it won't look commercial quality, especially not like commercial-quality will look in five games. But a game created by such building blocks wouldn't look like it would look today, full of one-color box placeholders, but instead it would be full of well done 3d models. Sure there is still balancing and fixing needed, but those building blocks could reduce the entry level for game creation by quite a bit. It might not work for all games, but it might be still provide a good amount of entertainment. It won't replace commercial game development for sure, but it will be a good addition.

At it stands now however we have still a huge lack of manpower, not just artists, but also programmers who are able to work on a game, since even on the code side of a game, there is some kind of art involved that an average application programmer might not be able to provide. This lack of people is most likly caused by the lack of games on Linux, since those interested in game development are naturally also interested in games.

So if you are an artist or programmer who wants to move Linux gaming forward, stop complaining and do something, join projects which interested you be it games or the content-creation tools, which are at least equally important. If you don't know a project that would be worth joining, join us at the Game of the Month on Happy Penguin where we pick a game every once in a while and try to polish it, thus joining forces and focusing it on a single project for a short period of time. Don't expect to end up with a Doom3, but your contribution can make a difference and might provide the gamers with another good game.

It seems you haven't heard about The Linux Game Tome.

Nobody's broke Enigma. That thing's impossible!

Happy Penguin's Game of the Month is an effort to fix this sort of problem.
Every month (or two, or three..) they choose a game to work on, and generally the end result is a greatly improved game. Currently they're working on TuxKart, if you view the screenshots of some of the improved models, they're amazing.
Anyone who has an incomplete game that they're no longer working on would do well to at least suggest it to the GOTM people, since they have artists and other people willing to do the type of work that coders hate.

Here. I haven't tried it personally, but the development effort looks pretty active.

Some software re-released under the GPL(probably adding some asset to the original company).

• Quake II engine
• MySQL
• Blender
• QT
• a bunch of games

This is *fucking* amazing.

JA2 is a phenomenal game. It's absolutely *fantastic*.

JA2 is also one of the few games that has had a Linux port.

If you'll look here, you'll notice a snapshot into the kind of problems that Linux people have had trying to keep the ported binary running on modern systems. Linux binary compatibility cross-distro and over time is not exceptional, and this source release means that Linux folks can continue to patch and play JA2 without problems well into the future.

I'd like to give Strategy First a big thumbs up for this -- if I hadn't already purchased JA2, I'd do so again.

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the source release does not include the Tribsoft source for the Linux port, which means that this stuff may need to be ported again to run on Linux (but when it does, it means that Linux gamers can play the Wildfire release as well). I hope this doesn't mean that Tribsoft makes even less money from their port -- as Linux gamers already didn't give them very many sales.

I figure any old game should work using similar techniques.

I figure any old game should work using similar techniques.

http://happypenguin.org/

We have some good Free games, but we aren't doing very much with them.

We have the great quake 1 engine, all we need is graphics and level data, but no one has contributed to Open Quartz in years. One doesn't even need to know how to program to contribute!

The critics loved Ikaruga, but Tenmado our Free clone is completely neglected.

This happened not too long ago with The Linux Game Tome. About.com had taken all of the Linux Game Tome's content and printed it as its own.

Have fun :-)