Slashdot Mirror

Hey now, that's not fair.. we have a number of Quake mods also.. and...

Actually, there's excellent games of many types. At least as long as excellent gameplay is the goal, not necessarily AAA level graphics from current gen games.

Battle for Wesnoth, Flightgear, Tremulous, and Chromium B.S.U. are games I may never tire of.

For more suggestions, http://www.happypenguin.org/list?&sort=avg_rating

Even free software advocates turn blind eyes to their own illegal remakes. Oddly, for people so much about freedom, they don't mind another company's rights violated, but it's the GNU GPL so it's all "okay" and "fair game" for them.

I await the day where Hudson goes after all of these blatantly shameless Bomberman clones that even copy their exact Bomberman character's trademark design.

http://www.happypenguin.org/

Eat those words...

You might not find the next Grim Fandango but i promise you there are a heckOfalot fun and decent timewasters that runs on this platform.

And let's not forget the Linux Game Tome!

Linux Games
Happy Penguin
LinuX Gamers

Check out http://www.happypenguin.org/. I've got the RSS enabled on the right side of /. If you ever up your video card, http://www.planeshift.it/ is an excellent open source mmorpg.

Absolutely. But it's not a freedom (unless you conflate the meaning of "freedom" with "right").

I never said it(murder) was either a right or a freedom, I was merely explaining why the activity is legislated against. You were the one that said "thinking about it, murder is freedom for the murderer".

I'll need proof that there are no commercial artists who would stop creating once they stop being compensated.

I probably can't give you proof of that, since you modified artists with commercial. When I used the word artist in the statement you quoted, I backed it up by the next statement referring to people planting flowers in their yard. Perhaps you don't consider that artwork, but as they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I can however give you proof of artists creating because they are driven to do so, regardless of monetary compensation, but I shouldn't have to, as a quick perusal of many websites across the internet should make that very clear. If not, take a look up and down the street while you are out one day and see all the cars with aftermarket products that enhance their looks. I'll admit that some look tacky, as do the plastic pink flamingos, but you can see that people create art all the time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most people create art in some form or another, even if it's just a simple arrangement of furniture. Before we had TV, many people spent their time doing crafts such as quilting, knitting, woodwork, making bird houses out of gourds, etc. In fact, there are so many examples of people creating art for the pleasure of doing so, instead of making a living doing this, that I have a hard time understanding how we will run out of new artworks to share, as our civilization is built around this simple fact. As I said earlier, we are only in danger of running low on high budget artwork, but we will only run just so low on that. The money that is saved by not having to support such art as that will bring it back to a more sustainable level where more people are happy.

Current art creation rates have been dependent, for years, on culture penetration.

We have just the created the most valuable tool that allows for the deepest culture penetration known to mankind. The internet and ability to share files are having a larger impact on our culture than the spice trade and trade in native artifacts across the world ever did.

Again, I'll need some evidence.

Have a child. Raise him or her. Will you hang his/her drawings on the refrigerator? Will you take a picture of it to share with your friends?

To top all of this off, take a look at this:

http://wesnoth.org/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (cause civilization should be free ;))
http://www.simutrans.com/
http://www.globulation2.org/

Art, and the human desire to create will die when the last man dies. We are never in danger of losing this, as this is why we live. I pulled most of those links from a quick browsing at http://happypenguin.org/ , but you can look around more places for more things. I for one would be willing to pay an ISP to maintain access to these works. If others are willing to pay for access to the works then we'll not be in danger of losing them. We are only in danger of losing what we don't want, presuming that we don't lose our civilization to some catastrophe. We have nothing to fear by the removal of these monopolies that inhibit our creativity. This is what these people who control those works and regulate the creation of new works have done their best to make you believe.

They say that one of the benefits, if not an outright goal, of some Linux distributions is to be a great platform to develop software on.

At one time Linux looked downright competitive as a platform (if certainly not market,) so what happended since 2002?

I do think one thing that would help is for OSS games to have much better tools. Make it easy for people to add assets, build levels and so on. Maybe more people would be willing to do so.

Well, games are not just software. The software is simply there to make the game go.

Perhaps the reason that there are so few (or in some opinions no) good games on Linux is that for developing games, Linux sucks?

Perhaps it is time to admit that OpenGL is a not the only kid on the block and start providing another popular API that other developers want to use?

Perhaps it is time to stop throwing away all that boatload of artwork with each release and start saving anything under a usable license to an appropriate gathering spot?

Perhaps it is time to put down that cumulative-xml2pd-custom-package-colored-pretty-printer patch and answer some basic questions in such a way that new people don't hate us?

What happened to those Open Source game engines that were going to let you MOD your way for WoW 2.0? Perhaps they are still there, waiting for content.

Perhaps what Linux Gaming needs is a little less CompSci and a little more Bachelors of Arts?

You just need to know where to look.

http://happypenguin.org/

Enemy Territory will be a great game to put on these free computers. Runs on Linux, Windows. Don't think this free game made it to Mac OS X, though.

Seth

We could have seen a GTA clone on the Linux front by now, but we don't

Or do we?

ASUS isn't in the content business, so I'm not sure where the software is going to come from.

Apart from the free and non-free games that work on GNU/Linux, Asus could start with ports from the GP32, GP2X, and (soon) Pandora communities, or perhaps an emulator that can run homebrew games.

My older son (now 4) learned how to use a mouse and the basics of computers from a Toddler Game when he was just two years old. I highly recommend this game for children between 2-4. Although its not 100% finished, enough of the game is there to keep toddlers occupied.

Disclaimer, I haven't actually tried the software in the links above.

The reason there is a vibrant indie gaming scene is the relative ease of development, accessibility and ubiquity of the Windows platform. Sure if Linux can take over and become the default OS, the indie scene might move over there, but suggesting that in the meantime people should limit their gaming consumption exclusively to proprietary gaming systems is really stupid and counterproductive.

Linux has independent games. The indie scene has already expanded into penguinland. Which is good, since - in my experience - getting older games to work on Linux is far easier than getting them to work on Windows; even some of Microsoft's own games (such as Crimson Skies) seem to have trouble on newer Windows machines. Whether this is because of OS incompatibilities or shitty coding in said games I couldn't say.

It got nowhere, depending on who you ask.

Where are the commercial game ports for Linux? No one wants to make them, obviously, save for the FPS crowd (and there's only an Unreal Tournament for Linux because Epic passes the buck to Icculus to get the job done, not because they have the in-house talent to do it themselves). There are a few commercial games for Linux, yes, but only a few, and there's very little variety between them. In the open source world we have a few good games (the majority of them being FPS's, what a surprise), Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games (turn based ones, that is). Then we have the unfortunate, ugly ripoffs like "Secret Maryo Chronicles," and other games that look like they were developed for a C64. Plenty of selection, not a lot of quality.

We have Parallels for Mac OS X, which seems to be quite capable at running Windows programs at a decent speed, with good compatibility. What do we have on Linux? Wine? Crossover Office? I think anyone who's actually tried to use either of these will probably tell you that if you really want to run Windows programs on your Linux machine, you're going to have to install Windows too...and the fact of the matter is that most of the commercial software out there is for Windows, whether you like it or not (being an Ubuntu user, I would have to say that I do not :>). Apple has the best of both worlds on their platform -- why can't, say, Canonical, or (dare I mention them) Novell? They had a few hundred million thrown at them by Microsoft, supposedly to increase interoperability with Windows and Linux...where are the results?

Distributions are still a fragmented mess, it's incredibly difficult to produce a binary for Linux that will work across all distributions (especially with Gentoo and their whole CFLAGS fiasco...thank goodness that fad died off). As much as you'd like to complain about Windows and Apple, binary compatibility is not a problem. There's plenty of smart, dedicated people out there that could find a solution to this, particularly the people working on the kernel. Why isn't it a high priority to increase compatibility -between- Linux distributions, or to form some sort of a community-based standard...one that actually works (as opposed to the LSB)?

Professional audio? Don't even bother. ESounD, ARTS, JACKD, now PulseAudio seems to be the big name in useless sound daemons...but that doesn't mean everyone will standardize on it. As if we needed yet another sound daemon anyway. If the Linux kernel is supposedly so "flexible" that it can be used in any range of devices from computers to cell phones, then why is it that 18 years or more later after the first release, there -still- isn't an easy way to do very low-latency, high quality audio recording on Linux? Linux distributions could _EASILY_ supplant a lot of the Windows based environments for professional audio if the kernel was up to the task. And for those out there who think that Audacity and Ardour are adequate replacements for ProTools...wake up.

I haven't run Windows on my PC in over six years, so clearly Linux has been capable of meeting my desktop needs...but the fact of the matter is that there's _PLENTY_ of problems that just aren't being addressed, that could solidify Linux as a real desktop computer competitor.

If there is one thing I've seen on The Linux Games Tome, its that it only takes a few people to build a MMORPG. If anything, they should just use the quarter of a million to mobilize some open source programmers around a game that is open source.

Fun-Motion lists quite a few of building games and other such timewasters, most of which are free. There's also the Linux Game Tome (most of the games also have Windows and Mac ports).

Hah! Where did you see that? In the logs of slashdot?

I'm sure it's exactly where you saw the data that you're basing your "Ha!" reaction on - out of someone's ass.

The fact of the matter is that it's impossible to determine the exact overall installed base (which is different from market share) of the various operating systems - and even if you could the number would be meaningless for any of the stuff that you'd want to use it for (because the population distributions of subpopulations are different - the percentage of Linux using computer gamers isn't directly linked to the percentage of Linux using web developers).

The sort of statistic that would actually be useful is this: What percentage of people who play UT2004 online run Mac and Linux? Clearly it's high enough that Epic is releasing a native port of UT2007 for Linux. Same thing for Quake4 / Wolfenstien: Enemy Territory. I'd be really interested to see what those actual numbers are, because they would be meaningful.

That sort of question gives you really interesting answers like this one: http://www.happypenguin.org/forums/viewtopic.php?=&p=18972.

I guess my overall point is this: You need to get the right numbers to know anything, and even the wrong numbers aren't especially available.

Ah, good thing they're only making free games in China. Imagine the uproar if there were free games available elsewhere!

Go to http://happypenguin.org and look around.

There's loads of Open Source games out there, probably only the biggest releases ever reach Slashdot. Anyone interested in the smaller games can, however, read LinuxGames, The Linux Game Tome etc. - actually those are only Linux game sites, but many of the games there have ports for other platforms too. Also, from what I've seen Skulltag isn't completely Open Source, in the sense that it requires files from the original Doom in order to be playable (at least that's recommended), whereas Alien Arena is completely Open Source (or is it?) independent and more or less original game.

You can, sort of. Some games can run under wine, or Cedega (a commercial version of wine). I use Cedega to run some older games that I've always liked (Civ IV, Star Trek Armada 2, Earth 2150). There are some native commercial games for Linux (like Quake and the Unreal Tournament series) and there are some very good free games for Linux. The situation is not quite as dire as the critics would have you believe, but not as great as some Linux proponents would like you to think.

These pages show some of what's available:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Games

http://www.happypenguin.org/

Of Linux games there are few, and of FREE there are even fewer.

  Are you joking? I'm friggin unemployed, and I can barely find the time to play a third of the games that show up on the Linux Game Tome... World of Padman, Nexuiz, Flightgear, Lincity-NG, TORCS, Ultimate Stunts, S.C.O.U.R.G.E., Endgame: Singularity, Secret Maryo Chronicles, Battle for Wesnoth, TA: Spring and the TA: Star Wars mod, Privateer Remake and Gemini Gold..
  Forget Wine. There aren't enough hours in the day for just the linux native games, throw in ZSNES and GENS and Stella and FCEUltra and MAME and E-UAE and Mupen64, and you've got enough gaming for three lifetimes.

You need to spend some time looking around http://happypenguin.org/ and http://freegamer.blogspot.com/

Wesnoth hasn't worn out its welcome for me in years.
Mostly due to continually improving graphics and a ton of campaigns. Some rather well written.
And of course plenty of online action.
You might like http://globulation2.org/ too.
And of course http://happypenguin.org/ for countless others.
I just know that while I've been a Star Control fan since the SC1 days, Wesnoth and Spring
are my two big ones these days for TBS and RTS.

Is as bland as top 40 chart music. I play games on linux, gleaned from http://www.happypenguin.org/. Sure, they're more raw than a commercial game, like a track from an unsigned band's blog is raw. But they're _more fun_ and have more integrity in the little finger of their blender-drawn blobby characters than 1000 gory commercial FPSes.

There are lots of games for linux. Go here: http://www.linuxgames.com/ or here: http://www.tuxgames.com/ or here: http://www.happypenguin.org/ to find out more. I play Enemy Territory for about an hour a night, and also play a lot of Neverwinter Nights with the occasional UT 2003 match...

You can also see what's available via Cedega.

http://happypenguin.org/ has a lot of open source games, mostly indie and mostly linux, although some have windows ports.

I think geeks are killing gaming.

You think geeks are killing gaming? Well, excuse me, but fuck you. Geeks made gaming and are still making it. There wouldn't be computer games without geeks. And all those involved, 100 hour, 12 button mashfests you complain about? We wouldn't make them if they didn't sell. No, your gripe should be directed towards the two groups who ruin just about any type of media: apathetics and zealots.

The apathetics come in many forms: drunken frat boys who would be just as happy tipping cows as playing games, teenagers with too much time on their hands, etc. They actually have a lot in common with you, because they don't want to have to remember anything like 12 button combos to play a game. On the other hand, they don't want to have to remember complicated things such as plot or character. This results in dumbed down games with no substance and very pretty shiny graphics. The only reason they are a market force is because there are so many of them.

The zealots are what you are really complaining about. They aren't geeks (except in the loosest sense of the word), they aren't creators, they are consumers. They buy many games a month and probably spend as much time playing them as a full time job. They can finish games in incredibly short time spans and master even the most convoluted controls. Even though they are few, they drive the gaming industry because they spend so much on it.

What you may want to look at is the Nintendo Wii. From all accounts, it's geared toward the casual gamer, which is what you sound like. As for variety in games, stop shopping at Best Buy, dammit! Try looking online at independent developers, maybe even try some open source games.

Tremulous is excellent and really rather addictive, i used to be a big fan of onslaught in UT2k4 but i tend to find Tremulous more interesting.

Not sure that i'd agree with the comparison of Alien Arena 2006 to CUBE, Alien arena is quite nice to look at and a fast paced deathmatcher based on Quake(2 or 3, i forget), for some reason there aren't any good screenshots of it on the homepage so http://www.ratiatum.com/img/logiciel/502/502.jpg will give you a better idea. CUBE is mildly entertaining but Sauerbraten with coopedit is more fun.

Nexuiz does a good job with a heavily modified version of the original Quake engine as its codebase, again surprisingly attractive for such an old fashioned engine http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/

Warsow is fast paced Deathmatch with a twist, and quite nicely done in a cellshaded style http://www.warsow.net/

Most of those are free software, if not they're at least linux compatible. http://www.happypenguin.org/ despite looking a little dated, is still a good place to find new games.

...then please please PLEASE first take a look at the hundreds of other OSS games out there and consider building on (read: contributing to) one of those.

It's sad looking at the large number of games that have shown promise but for one reason or another have been abandoned or development has slowed or forked. We really don't need another nethack clone, MMORPG or 3D engine. We have all of those in abundance. What we need now is to build on these, both with shader code and good content. It's often easy to tell the OSS games from the commercial ones from a single screenshot because the commercial studios have good artists and the OSS devs don't (I am being overly broad here and there are exceptions such as Frozen Bubble, but these are rare).

One not-quite example: I am a fan of the excellent OSS flight simulator FlightGear. The latest version 0.9.10 has some nice ground textures and real-world data that makes for a truly beautiful view when flying at 30,000 feet. But the planes themselves look like crap. The model detail and decals are average but what really lets it down is the way the plane interacts with light. The engine is badly need of work to take advantage of OpenGL shaders. And the sky looks completely wrong. As you ascend beyond 50,000 feet you should see the sky darken to a very deep blue with some stars becoming visible but the engine doesn't allow for this (you're basically inside a big solid-blue sphere). Not vital properties for learning to fly a 747 I know, but still important polish for a realistic flying experience.

If you have a truly original idea then by all means start from scratch if nothing existing fits the bill, but don't just fire up a text editor and start another MMORPG from scratch. The OSS gaming community don't need it.

here yah go

http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Open%20Racer
http://www.happypenguin.org/show?PPRacer

here yah go

http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Open%20Racer
http://www.happypenguin.org/show?PPRacer

Have you considered making Linux ports? If it is a true Mac OSX port and Windows port, the effort of adding in Linux should not be that great.

I would recommend checking out LinuxGames, Linux Game Tome, and TuxGames.

If you do write a Linux game, I recommend packaging it in the Loki Install Wizard.

Blizzard has a long and rich history of creating games that rely on making players perform drudge work rapidly.

Starcraft, for example, introduced the limited build queues and limited selection group size specifically to increase the amount of drudge work in the game. The tasks added were simple and mindless, but because they forced the player to click the mouse and hit keys more quickly, Blizzard felt that the player was more excited. (Contrast this with, say, Total Annihilation -- which is currently being enhanced and cloned for Linux -- which allowed a player to automate essentially all of the drudge work and simply focus on high level strategy.)

Regrettably, the main goal of computers (eliminating drudge work) runs counter to this approach to game design. A number of people who want to use the computer for, well, its primary reason for existence, are going to chafe. These players may want to focus on the higher-level strategy and not simply engage in a clickfest. Blizzard feels that this conflicts with their game design, and will attempt to stop people from taking this approach.

Contrast this to, Stuart Cheshire's Bolo implementation. Numerous quite sophisticated bot programs were produced, ranging all the way from adding small automated features or recording a map of seen area all the way up to fully automated AIs that could be played against. Frankly, I thought that this was both cool and fun.

It all depends on the mentality of the game designer. Some people feel that drudge work is fun, some don't. Some players want a high level strategy game with action to watch, others want to be required to perform every click themselves.

I'm sure there's still a couple of independent games around

Costs $15, but well worth it. Also, there are more native Linux games than you might think. Check out http://www.icculus.org/ , http://www.linuxgames.com/ http://www.happypenguin.org/ , http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ , http://www.tuxgames.com/ , http://games.linux.sk/ , http://games.linux.sk/ , http://www.linux-games.com/ , http://www.linux-gamers.net/ ... Of course for me gaming is just gravy, Linux is my ideal OS for actually getting work done. But I find that games run much more consistently in Linux than in Windows, which makes my gaming flings that much more enjoyable when I do have time for the occasional LAN.

There are much more games for Windows, so if gaming is your number one reason for owning a PC Linux will probably dissapoint you. If you're like me and gaming is secondary, I think you'll get along just fine. ;-)

-AT

I made the switch about a year and a half ago. The transition really isn't that hard . . . especially when you start to appreciate concepts like "Hmm, I'd like to try out some software that does X", and five minutes later it's up and running, uncrippled (five hours for Gentoo :P).

Really the only true pain today for the home user is if you're hooked on some specific Windows-only games. I simply switched to Linux games (though I don't play many games nowadays anyway other than the one true game).

Battle for Wesnoth has lots of subtance. They released 1.0 a few days ago, but the /. editors don't think that the first stable (as in unchanging) release of the highest rated Linux game deserves a story...

I don't think it is this nice the have the 100th clone of C&C in a long review. What about opensource games like Battle for Wesnoth. They just released version 1.0. Maybe a review of that one would be nice? I think it is really a good one and it is rated with an average of 5 stars at the linux game tome. That game really is worth a trie...

I prefer Linux Game Tome

Linux is no drop-in replacement for Windows. You cannot get the style of gaming that you get on Windows on Linux. Period.

On the other hand, if you're a Linux user looking for entertainment, there really is no shortage. On your base Gnome system, you've "sol", which is a scalable vector graphics Solitaire with about eight bazillion Solitaire games more than Microsoft's SOL.EXE. If you can live without graphics, many years of improvements and coding have made ToME one hell of a roguelike (with, admittedly, one hell of a learning curve). Diablo was derived from these things, but lost all the sophistication of the game.

If you love strategy, check out Battle for Wesnoth, which is a polished strategy game in the hex-wargame genre, or FreeCiv.

If you've never played interactive fiction, it's another text-based genre that's a lot of fun, and deserves a shot. Get yourself a copy of TADS and a copy of Babel, or if you want an adult game, try Ideal Highschool.

If you want a vertical shooter, check out Chromium B.S.U..

The multiplayer FPS that most people seem to be playing on Linux is a tank game called BZFlag.

If you're looking for more, try hitting up HappyPenguin and sorting by rating, which will pretty consistently give you decent stuff.

You can make some pretty consistent general statements about open-source games. They are usually uglier/less flashy than their closed-source equivalents, because there are few artists working on open-source projects (maybe art just happens to be such a competitive field that nobody can spare the time and fund a hobby with their day job -- dunno). They tend to have a much greater degree of replayability than commercial releases, since the developer wants to play it too -- you could easily play most open-source games for ten years and still continue to enjoy them. Many (though certainly not all) open-source games have a strategic element to them, or something that requires the application of the brain a bit, and less pure twitch. Very few open source games have cutscenes or cinematics (though they do exist). Some open source games have been around for many years, and have a very high degree of complexity and sophistication -- closed source games don't have a development cycle of this length, and the ability to keep adapting to trends in playing. With a few exceptions (I really like Battle for Wesnoth's music, for instance), sound and audio is limited and low-quality compared to commercial games. Globulation 2, for instance, is an RTS with essentially *no* audio.

Linux is no drop-in replacement for Windows. You cannot get the style of gaming that you get on Windows on Linux. Period.

On the other hand, if you're a Linux user looking for entertainment, there really is no shortage. On your base Gnome system, you've "sol", which is a scalable vector graphics Solitaire with about eight bazillion Solitaire games more than Microsoft's SOL.EXE. If you can live without graphics, many years of improvements and coding have made ToME one hell of a roguelike (with, admittedly, one hell of a learning curve). Diablo was derived from these things, but lost all the sophistication of the game.

If you love strategy, check out Battle for Wesnoth, which is a polished strategy game in the hex-wargame genre, or FreeCiv.

If you've never played interactive fiction, it's another text-based genre that's a lot of fun, and deserves a shot. Get yourself a copy of TADS and a copy of Babel, or if you want an adult game, try Ideal Highschool.

If you want a vertical shooter, check out Chromium B.S.U..

The multiplayer FPS that most people seem to be playing on Linux is a tank game called BZFlag.

If you're looking for more, try hitting up HappyPenguin and sorting by rating, which will pretty consistently give you decent stuff.

You can make some pretty consistent general statements about open-source games. They are usually uglier/less flashy than their closed-source equivalents, because there are few artists working on open-source projects (maybe art just happens to be such a competitive field that nobody can spare the time and fund a hobby with their day job -- dunno). They tend to have a much greater degree of replayability than commercial releases, since the developer wants to play it too -- you could easily play most open-source games for ten years and still continue to enjoy them. Many (though certainly not all) open-source games have a strategic element to them, or something that requires the application of the brain a bit, and less pure twitch. Very few open source games have cutscenes or cinematics (though they do exist). Some open source games have been around for many years, and have a very high degree of complexity and sophistication -- closed source games don't have a development cycle of this length, and the ability to keep adapting to trends in playing. With a few exceptions (I really like Battle for Wesnoth's music, for instance), sound and audio is limited and low-quality compared to commercial games. Globulation 2, for instance, is an RTS with essentially *no* audio.

Linux is no drop-in replacement for Windows. You cannot get the style of gaming that you get on Windows on Linux. Period.

On the other hand, if you're a Linux user looking for entertainment, there really is no shortage. On your base Gnome system, you've "sol", which is a scalable vector graphics Solitaire with about eight bazillion Solitaire games more than Microsoft's SOL.EXE. If you can live without graphics, many years of improvements and coding have made ToME one hell of a roguelike (with, admittedly, one hell of a learning curve). Diablo was derived from these things, but lost all the sophistication of the game.

If you love strategy, check out Battle for Wesnoth, which is a polished strategy game in the hex-wargame genre, or FreeCiv.

If you've never played interactive fiction, it's another text-based genre that's a lot of fun, and deserves a shot. Get yourself a copy of TADS and a copy of Babel, or if you want an adult game, try Ideal Highschool.

If you want a vertical shooter, check out Chromium B.S.U..

The multiplayer FPS that most people seem to be playing on Linux is a tank game called BZFlag.

If you're looking for more, try hitting up HappyPenguin and sorting by rating, which will pretty consistently give you decent stuff.

You can make some pretty consistent general statements about open-source games. They are usually uglier/less flashy than their closed-source equivalents, because there are few artists working on open-source projects (maybe art just happens to be such a competitive field that nobody can spare the time and fund a hobby with their day job -- dunno). They tend to have a much greater degree of replayability than commercial releases, since the developer wants to play it too -- you could easily play most open-source games for ten years and still continue to enjoy them. Many (though certainly not all) open-source games have a strategic element to them, or something that requires the application of the brain a bit, and less pure twitch. Very few open source games have cutscenes or cinematics (though they do exist). Some open source games have been around for many years, and have a very high degree of complexity and sophistication -- closed source games don't have a development cycle of this length, and the ability to keep adapting to trends in playing. With a few exceptions (I really like Battle for Wesnoth's music, for instance), sound and audio is limited and low-quality compared to commercial games. Globulation 2, for instance, is an RTS with essentially *no* audio.

Linux is no drop-in replacement for Windows. You cannot get the style of gaming that you get on Windows on Linux. Period.

On the other hand, if you're a Linux user looking for entertainment, there really is no shortage. On your base Gnome system, you've "sol", which is a scalable vector graphics Solitaire with about eight bazillion Solitaire games more than Microsoft's SOL.EXE. If you can live without graphics, many years of improvements and coding have made ToME one hell of a roguelike (with, admittedly, one hell of a learning curve). Diablo was derived from these things, but lost all the sophistication of the game.

If you love strategy, check out Battle for Wesnoth, which is a polished strategy game in the hex-wargame genre, or FreeCiv.

If you've never played interactive fiction, it's another text-based genre that's a lot of fun, and deserves a shot. Get yourself a copy of TADS and a copy of Babel, or if you want an adult game, try Ideal Highschool.

If you want a vertical shooter, check out Chromium B.S.U..

The multiplayer FPS that most people seem to be playing on Linux is a tank game called BZFlag.

If you're looking for more, try hitting up HappyPenguin and sorting by rating, which will pretty consistently give you decent stuff.

You can make some pretty consistent general statements about open-source games. They are usually uglier/less flashy than their closed-source equivalents, because there are few artists working on open-source projects (maybe art just happens to be such a competitive field that nobody can spare the time and fund a hobby with their day job -- dunno). They tend to have a much greater degree of replayability than commercial releases, since the developer wants to play it too -- you could easily play most open-source games for ten years and still continue to enjoy them. Many (though certainly not all) open-source games have a strategic element to them, or something that requires the application of the brain a bit, and less pure twitch. Very few open source games have cutscenes or cinematics (though they do exist). Some open source games have been around for many years, and have a very high degree of complexity and sophistication -- closed source games don't have a development cycle of this length, and the ability to keep adapting to trends in playing. With a few exceptions (I really like Battle for Wesnoth's music, for instance), sound and audio is limited and low-quality compared to commercial games. Globulation 2, for instance, is an RTS with essentially *no* audio.

Linux is no drop-in replacement for Windows. You cannot get the style of gaming that you get on Windows on Linux. Period.

On the other hand, if you're a Linux user looking for entertainment, there really is no shortage. On your base Gnome system, you've "sol", which is a scalable vector graphics Solitaire with about eight bazillion Solitaire games more than Microsoft's SOL.EXE. If you can live without graphics, many years of improvements and coding have made ToME one hell of a roguelike (with, admittedly, one hell of a learning curve). Diablo was derived from these things, but lost all the sophistication of the game.

If you love strategy, check out Battle for Wesnoth, which is a polished strategy game in the hex-wargame genre, or FreeCiv.

If you've never played interactive fiction, it's another text-based genre that's a lot of fun, and deserves a shot. Get yourself a copy of TADS and a copy of Babel, or if you want an adult game, try Ideal Highschool.

If you want a vertical shooter, check out Chromium B.S.U..

The multiplayer FPS that most people seem to be playing on Linux is a tank game called BZFlag.

If you're looking for more, try hitting up HappyPenguin and sorting by rating, which will pretty consistently give you decent stuff.

You can make some pretty consistent general statements about open-source games. They are usually uglier/less flashy than their closed-source equivalents, because there are few artists working on open-source projects (maybe art just happens to be such a competitive field that nobody can spare the time and fund a hobby with their day job -- dunno). They tend to have a much greater degree of replayability than commercial releases, since the developer wants to play it too -- you could easily play most open-source games for ten years and still continue to enjoy them. Many (though certainly not all) open-source games have a strategic element to them, or something that requires the application of the brain a bit, and less pure twitch. Very few open source games have cutscenes or cinematics (though they do exist). Some open source games have been around for many years, and have a very high degree of complexity and sophistication -- closed source games don't have a development cycle of this length, and the ability to keep adapting to trends in playing. With a few exceptions (I really like Battle for Wesnoth's music, for instance), sound and audio is limited and low-quality compared to commercial games. Globulation 2, for instance, is an RTS with essentially *no* audio.

So this is a pic of a NEW linux game? Exactly how many of them are there?

Well, a fair number. If you mean closed source, commercial-style games, about this many (slow because LGP is getting hammered -- that was pretty stupid, putting both machines on the same line, so that you can't sell anything while people are hammering the server).

http://happypenguin.org/

I have a feeling they'd beg to differ. There's other sites that may interest you, too, but that's the one where I get most of my Linux games.

More realisticaly compared to the PSP/DS, its not even trying to compete with them on the gaming front. It would be foolish to try. It doesn't even have a 3D graphics chip in it.

Your statement misses the point, because it says where are the games well http://www.happypenguin.org/ has quite a few, ok nothing that will put a dent in GTA:SA sales but most available for free.

How about those that want to write a game themselves, for a games machine, they now can, because *finally* there is one, really there hasn't been device like it before(unless you count its predecesser) without some sort of hack, certainly not with this much ease.

Also its not a games device its a commodity media device with video/music abilities, which are more than capable of competing with any of the alternatives(Phones/PDA). Having games on there as well just puts all the media content through in one place, and better designed for this.

ALthough I'm sure you are aware of all the Games/Ports/Engines/Emulators that are already available for Linux. That look very nice on a little handheld.