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The man's a porting machine, from the old Loki days up to a lot of the current Linux compatible titles. http://www.icculus.org/~icculus/

Try this or this.

This game was definitely released as freeware . In fact, not only is it freeware, the source code was also released. It can be distributed as you wish as long and it's not for commercial purposes. It has been ported to Mac and Linux as well

There might have been a time where they had a window to make it officially available, but I'm sure that there are plenty of ways to get it. Just be aware that it looks like the games and cutscenes have to be downloaded separately. Because is it a story-driven game, the cutscenes can make a difference. I recommend getting them. This is one time where you can download via BitTorrent and not worry about some Big Brother "Let's-Sue-Everyone" company coming after you. :)

Good luck getting that wireless card to work out of the box.

Good luck getting video to look as crystal clear as in Windows.

Want that RAID controller to work gotta recompile the kernel.

Need x software.... oh crap there is no .rpm or .deb you'll have to compile from source.

Have fun playing Xbill when it comes to games.

That was also done a while ago.

All I can say is thanks, this link made it much easier to show my friends why they should not bother installing linux if they want to continue to game. None of those games are remotely interesting and all have better versions on the PC.

Have you investigated the open source versions of Doom and Quake? While maybe a bit dated (the Quake III engine is from 1999), they are GPL and have a lot of community support.

The original Doom engine has been used in a shit load of games since (including games available for a wide variety of platforms, such as portable music players).

The Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_engine has a lot more information about the Quake III engine, and a lot of handy links at the bottom (such as http://www.icculus.org/quake3/ "A project to remove bugs, clean up source code and to add more advanced graphical and audio features via SDL and OpenAL, and to act as a clean base package to build other projects on.")

Go get it!

I'll see you and raise you. My posts are encrypted with 23 levels of ROT-T, after which you have to deal with the NME. If you can somehow get past the NME and to my final level, I'll use your own routines to decyrpt your text.

And I run on Linux too!

I think you are forgetting these hackers.

http://icculus.org/pyddr/
http://www.stepmania.com/

Hacker cred abound.

Sorry I couldn't find anything smaller...
clicky ...or bigger, ftm.

~

( I can't remember if UT'99 has one also...?)

Epic was cool enough to do the linux port as soon as they released the windows version. They later had Loki maintain the port. I liked it better than the windows version because you could even play online without having to keep the CD inserted.Here's one place to get it. That link also has a download for an installer of the bonus packs.

The original Unreal Tournament is still a blast to play, and it'll run great even on something as old as a TNT2 video card.

Also, the original Unreal can be played if you have Unreal Tournament installed.

Nexuiz - High quality open-source deathmatch game running on the Darkplaces engine, which is arguably superior to quite a bit of the stuff currently on the market.

One irritating thing is that the files are encrypted on the Gold CD, and the CD-check doesn't work in Wine, so you need a Windows install to get the game data (but VMware images will work). I think it's a simple scheme but I'm not a crypto guy. Anyone want to take a crack at it? I have the decrypted files so it's basically a known-plaintext attack. Indeed, some of the files have regular patterns so it becomes almost a chosen-plaintext attack.

Yes, the Linux client was included, I have the Collectors Edition DVD that can prove it. It wasn't "officially" supported but the port was done by Ryan "icculus" Gordon. http://www.icculus.org/ He is also working on Unreal Engine 3 with Epic Games as well. It had 1 nasty bug right at the beginning, that actually ended up showing its head in the Windows client a few patches down the line. To say the least I have always been happy about Epic Games and id Softwares Linux support.

Quake 1 deathmatch... and it's never looked better.

GameHippo seems like a neat idea, but their coverage seems too spotty to rely on. How can any free game site that doesnt have Battle for Wesnoth on its list, and has a years-outdated description of Neverball, be taken seriously?

NUT diet software
http://www.lafn.org/~av832/

ShrinkingMan
http://debain.org/software/shrinkingman/

Diet Monger Ass Kicker
http://freshmeat.net/projects/dmak/

Pydance
http://icculus.org/pyddr/
(dance dance revolution for Linux with dance pad support)

No you have no excuse to be a fat Linux looser. Soon you will be a regular Linux looser like everybody else, except of course you'd have very fast feet. :-)

I always do this as basic steps for ease of use:
+ Set 'single click actions'.
+ Enable desktop icons.
+ Put the common applications and folders on the desktop.

They know click this to go on the net, and click these to see pictures and so forth. I make sure all the names of the icons are easy to understand also with generic names along with proper names. Double clicking is something I didn't have to teach. Also this helps if I move them to a mac mini later. ;)

GNOME installs now come preconfigured mostly like this by default. I don't really have to do more than click some gconf options for an all new install for people to use a new 'customized' machine. Ubuntu can also be setup to guide them with application installs or security updates if they're more knowledgable. You can even setup autoupdates in the background, or auto download updates and install later.

I'm still pissed GNOME doesn't have a ink applet that works, so I wrote a newer one using mono. I need to clean it up and give it to someone to do something with it upstream. It's pretty crappy, but it more than gets the job done. http://www.icculus.org/~mongoose/files/mink-0.1.1. zip I shouldn't have to write stuff like this, but at least gtk# is quick. =)

In the "Gold" edition the programmers got to indulge their vanity and re-record the in-game FMVs themselves. An excellent example of why you should hire actors to do acting. The same lines, same framing, same lighting... but the "Gold edition" FMVs sucked compared to the originals.

(Fox/Rebellion released the source code and icculus ported it to Linux. (The cvs link there doesn't work, you need to use Subversion to get it.) It didn't link for me on Ubuntu, so I patched it. Unfortunately, the videos are in a proprietary codec (Bink/Smacker) and now I'm working on restoring them to the game. Looks like recent libavcodecs support that format... :-> )

In the "Gold" edition the programmers got to indulge their vanity and re-record the in-game FMVs themselves. An excellent example of why you should hire actors to do acting. The same lines, same framing, same lighting... but the "Gold edition" FMVs sucked compared to the originals.

(Fox/Rebellion released the source code and icculus ported it to Linux. (The cvs link there doesn't work, you need to use Subversion to get it.) It didn't link for me on Ubuntu, so I patched it. Unfortunately, the videos are in a proprietary codec (Bink/Smacker) and now I'm working on restoring them to the game. Looks like recent libavcodecs support that format... :-> )

I'm at the junction where you claim Google Earth doesn't support Linux. Perhaps you meant that Folding@Home has no Linux client, despite there benefitting the most from such an install-base having the most security without the fatigue of corruptable data processing. Ryan "Icculus" Gordon had News posted on his ICCULUS domain, here, that he is the developer for Google Earth. On the other hand, for Folding@Home, please don't rule-out a Linux client just yet; distributed computing is the main-course meal of charity among UNIX system and network adminsitrators pledging non-used process to events, for the sake of progress and advertisement for "creditor" fragrancy among the conclusion of said-charrities progress. To think, the Breast Cancer "jogathons" wouldn't be successfull if said "participants" didn't make appearance to assume among their joys at hand the blessing they can bestow in number to complete a calculated milage or task to the event.

Great advertising space, Folding@Home is become. Same as SETI@Home.

Au contraire, my friend.

Works on:

• Linux 2.4/2.6/etc through the "evdev" kernel interface.
• MacOS X (and Darwin?) through IOKit's HID Manager API.
• Windows XP and later through the WM_INPUT/RawInput API.

Your comparison to World of Warcraft is ridiculous. Wine most certainly emulates windows' api and running environment. World of Warcraft runs natively on the macintosh, without using any sort of windows emulation, or wine, or any such thing. Call it a pretendulator if you want, it doesn't change the fact that it isn't native. Just like my icculus.org/quake3 project runs on windows, mac, linux, solaris, and more, natively, without windows emulation.

As a Windows developer, you can always code your game/application to work with wine. http://www.winehq.com/ It seems to work OK for Google http://earth.google.com/earth4.html.

You are right that it works for Google. However, you are wrong about Google Earth.

I bought Neverwinter Nights Saturday, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

With the Diamond Edition ($30 at Best Buy), you get both expansion packs, and you can follow some online directions to install to Linux without passing through Windows.

I also bought Return to Castle Wolfenstein a while back. That was good, too.

Oh, and there's DOOM, DOOM ][, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, several versions of Unreal...

If you'll go the Open Source route, there's DarkPlaces, Cube, Duke Nukem 3d (engine, anyway. You'll still need the gamedata.

Uhm...no games? How about, no hyperadvertised games?

I bought Neverwinter Nights Saturday, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

With the Diamond Edition ($30 at Best Buy), you get both expansion packs, and you can follow some online directions to install to Linux without passing through Windows.

I also bought Return to Castle Wolfenstein a while back. That was good, too.

Oh, and there's DOOM, DOOM ][, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, several versions of Unreal...

If you'll go the Open Source route, there's DarkPlaces, Cube, Duke Nukem 3d (engine, anyway. You'll still need the gamedata.

Uhm...no games? How about, no hyperadvertised games?

Linux has had people playing with this sort of thing ever since the hdaps driver was written for thinkpads just over a year ago. The first things done with it were e.g. being hooked up to neverball.

And the rest : http://www.icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

Hell of a freeware game in Win/Mac and Linux flavors !!

http://icculus.org/neverball/

The best way to get games to run on Ubuntu is to either buy a TV card and plug a console into it, lower your expectations a bit, or do a bit of digging.

You're probably going to hear a lot of people wax on about Cedega here, but I'm not one of them. I've tried Cedega several times (and transgaming still spams me with their "news" every so often) but every time I have it's been money down the drain. The games I'd want to play are either so old or sold so few copies that it is impossible for them to ever garner enough votes to get any critical bugs fixed, and even if there aren't critical bugs, the annoyances are generally legion.

The best solution I've found to gaming is to just use my consoles for 90% of it. I admit, I'm a bit of a gamer, so I have all the current gen consoles, a Dreamcast, and an assorted pile of other stuff including a SNES with no power adapter (if someone has one they're willing to get rid of let me know!) There's a lot more quality just letting the computer alone and turning to the conveniently placed TV. One of these days I'll invest in a decent TV card and just move the whole operation to the computer and clean up a bit, but for right now, I don't need Windows, or Ubuntu, or MacOS for 90% of the gaming I do.

Other than that, if you go looking, there are a fair number of ports for Windows games done by the developers (or people working closely with the developers). Neverwinter Nights is the most popular one, I would imagine, followed by id Software's entire game library (as long as you have the resource files from the original discs). I believe Quake 4 has had its Linux version released by now. icculus.org is a source for some other ports, and also a way to explore a bit more in that area. Also Tux Games is a good place to find games packaged for Linux. I've never bought there, so I don't know if you get a normal installer or a seperate disc with the binaries, etc, but there are some interesting old games in there now that I'm actually interested in getting again. You're going to pay more, but it all goes to support more games being released for Linux.

Lowering your gaming expectations can also be helpful too. I've gotten an awful lot out of Angband, NetHack, etc, over the years, and all those run quite well under Ubuntu, as well as just about anything other OS with a display.

Actually, they contracted out to someone that ports games to Linux. Read http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=3188 for more information. You should really be thankful for people like Ryan. =)

Better yet, play it with this.

My twin brother made the independent game Lugaru. I am developing Lugaru 2 with him.

a) "Should you design for Macs? Probably. How about Linux? Probably not."

How about designing for computers and then trivially porting it to Mac, Windows, and Linux. Lugaru gets about 65% Mac, 30% Windows, and 5% Linux. If Wolfire followed this guys advice then instead of talking to Ryan Gordon and getting a Linux port in a matter of days, we'd be out 5% of our sales and Linux users would be screwed out of another game. This also goes to show you that for an independent developer, Windows is not necessarily the best platform. The tiny, tight-knit community of Mac users is much easier to break into than pissing into the wind that is the Windows game market.

b) "the all-important topic of Search Engine Optimization"

Search engine optimization is not for game developers. Unless you're running one of those giant portals with like 200 mini java games, you shouldn't even think about SEO. A strong, well designed website is critical (yeah, Wolfire isn't the best example of that right now - we're trying to find a web designer) but realistically, you will get 98% of your hits from game sites linking to you, magazines mentioning you, forum word of mouth, etc. No one seriously goes into google and types "3d ninja ragdoll rabbit game downloadable game linux shareware" which is what you would have to type to pull up a review of Lugaru. People find their games through download sites, not search engines.

c) blogging, "motivational pyramid", power of sequels, cross-selling items, etc.

This makes me ill. Part of the charm of indy games is that they are not made to squeeze every last penny out of a game. The good ones are made more for fun by the developer as a hobby. More often than not, if you treat it as a soulless business you will fail, but if you stick to your indy roots, you will succeed. Your blog should not be a place where you try to plug all of your games and entice people to purchase everything, they should be a community where you keep your fans in the loop. My brother and I both are approaching 1000 posts on our forums and business is never even mentioned.

http://icculus.org/quake3/ is close enough to the "definitive" Quake 3 for me.

I guess I'll just keep playing Text Mode First Person Shooters while I wait

Having to boot into Linux just to play some Duke3D has gotten really old. I gotta say though that its worth it. There's a lot of seriously neat and fun gameplay packed into that game.

The amount of Linux play I get out of the Duke3D Platinum Pack that I picked up for $10 is phenomenal. For a "DOOMish" type game, it is just superb.The http://www.icculus.org/duke3d Linux engine is really good.

Hail to the King baby!

If your game depends on a load of exotic libraries, then you should jolly well provide them in their correct versions below the game itself on the downloads page.

Heh, I thought the same thing as soon as I heard, and so here's the obligatory Gimp'd image:

http://offload1.icculus.org/~dolson/img/wii.jpg

Parent is right up to a point:

DON'T USE THE ORIGINAL ID QUAKE SOURCES.

I repeat: don't use them. There's been a LOT of open source development going into all three of quake engines. Quake 1 and 2 are just a google away; quake 3 deserves special attention as it is relatively young: icculus quake 3 (and that's only one of many, many forks, but arguably the most known.)

Here's the best analysis I've seen of it so far, written by Ryan Gordon, who's done a zillion Mac and Linux ports of games.

I personally don't think Boot Camp changes the economic equation at all yet. When it comes out of beta and if users are willing to buy a $150 "software dongle for games" (WinXP), then maybe Mac ports will start declining in revenue. On the other hand, if Apple can double or triple their market share by taking away the fear of switching, maybe we'll see more.

Its weird how game compatibility goes. We can run almost everything made on things like Commodores and such (various emulators for everything), and with the latest release of dosbox, we can run almost all the DOS and a lot of the Win3.1 (not that there were that many) games. Its the stuff between that and Win2k that's iffy.

It almost seems like there's this hole that's a lack of support, and its shrinking from the tail end while eating up a bigger and bigger time period. Not sure if its expanding faster than its shrinking, but its rather interesting. I think with Vista's release, a lot of older but still-playable games (late 98 era) will become unplayable, and at the same time Wine will keep getting better and will be able to play the oldest games unplayable now (95-era and such).

On a different note, software like dosbox and the like seems to go partway toward nullifying the argument for open-sourcing games. I mean, games that were open sourced (Gladiator, Rise of the Triad, the Dooms and Quakes, etc) do live on today on modern systems, but the games that weren't are still very much alive and playable. In facts, Dosbox's enhancements like modem and IPX emulation make those games better and better! Of course, no matter how good Dosbox gets, it still won't be able to make, for example, the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe be anywhere near as good as OpenTTD, but its still cool how they improve well after their support life-cycle is over.

I kinda lost my point in all that, or maybe disproved it or never had one to begin with, but its still interesting. Maybe a bit off-topic, too....

Neverball wikipedia entry
Neverball homepage

Free fun nonviolent gender-free multiplatform marble game, not too steep requirements, has a golf mode that is pretty fun.

Yeah, well, I know I personally did a really dark room for Doom 3 once, so I was certain about that game being supported. I kind of assumed Q4 would be supported because previous games sure were; I assume Q4 support is just in works then =)

GtkRadiant is also used by Crystal Space and Neverball, and probably some others too; I sure hope this means more OSS software adopts it in future =)

That's really cool about the Labyrinth game -- it would be cool if Neverball were modified to use a similar input device. It works off of a similar principle, the graphics are fantastic, and it would be sortof an open-source Revolution controller. :)

For comics:

http://comix.sourceforge.net/ (which I personally recommend)
http://icculus.org/6reader/ (haven't tried yet, but if it's hosted by icculus it's worth a shot)

What the hell are you talking about? There are plenty of commercial games out for Linux: Doom 1-3, Quake 1-4, Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2003-4, Serious Sam... Well here's a more extensive list

If you enjoy Dismount, check out BlackShades -- http://www.icculus.org/blackshades/ One of it's unique features is the rag-doll skeletal animation. I found the game play to be cute, graphics to be lacking, but the animations very cool.

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

Err.. one URL:

http://www.icculus.org/quake3

I just grabbed it and 'make' just worked. Works perfectly.

I believe that with Quake 3, every time you quired the master servers, it would authenticate with your key and your OS. ID stored a hash of all keys with the most recently used OS. Of course, you could find out for sure by simply looking at the source... http://www.icculus.org/quake3/

...has been working great for me, for several commercial games like Unreal Tournament 2004. Over the past five years, I've shipped several products using it, both on commercial CDs and downloadable installers.

It _is_ a little quirky in some regards, but once you get it working, it pretty much works everywhere.

If you use it, please use our codefork at http://icculus.org/loki_setup/, since the Loki Games version died with Loki, and we've put several man months of further development into it since (largely improving things as we ship new software with previously unexpected requirements, a MacOS X port, more archive formats and other enhancements). We're pretty fast to respond when someone has a bug, too.

Otherwise, I'd say give people a tarball and let them sort it out. :) Yes, trying to make distro-specific packages is SO BAD as to make this a better option...even between the various RPM-based distros.

Someone DID mention that it's nice to enable those distros to repackage it in their preferred format, if there's a want, and I think that's an interesting idea as long as you don't rely on people to show up and do it. Gentoo, for instance, provides their own packages for most of the games I've shipped, which will even extract the data off the retail CDs if need be, etc...this empowers Gentoo users to have a consistent experience, but they can still use my loki_setup based installer if they want, as can those without a "real" distro package. This seems to be the least-messy solution at the moment, and it allows the distro maintainers to compete on features while you maintain a single, decent and universal solution yourself.

At least, this works well for me. Your mileage may vary.

--ryan.