Slashdot Mirror

LinuxGames has a current tally of released and announced stuff. Their tally is 22 =)

I count 6 released (Q1, Q2, Hopkins:FBI, Civ:CTP, Myth2, RT2:GE) in boxes on my bookshelf (and, well, installed and played =) ), plus 2 unsupported (Kingpin, Ultima Online), plus 2 public betas (Q3, U:TE), plus 3 older unsupported/unofficial ports from source releases (Doom, Heretic, Descent 1). So that's 13 presently available, of which 2 are betas.

I'm not sure where to stick Abuse in that list, but I suppose that makes 14.

I personally wouldn't call Heretic II a strategy game, and I doubt anyone would call Soldier of Fortune a strategy game - apparently it is a Quake II-engine first person shoot-em-up with more and/or better gore than any other game ever. Or something like that. And of course there's Eric's Ultimate Solitare which is (according to reviews) pretty good, the kind of thing to get your Mum using Linux.

Meanwhile I want, make that need, a copy of RRTII - the number of hours I lost to Transport Tycoon when I should have been writing up my degree project is quite disgusting - but fun :-)

One of the things I've noticed in my (few) years of life is that if the rule ain't there, no one can break it. If software is free, and the licence says you can sell it for free (like the GPL and a few others), then giving it to your friends isn't a crime at all. And in my experience a lot of free software can be better than its costly equivalents (think Linux vs. Win zzzzzz) and it's free to go with that. Being the recipient of all this cool stuff for $0.00 (connect time charges may apply, or not), I just say, "cool!".

Go get some games. C'mon, we haven't got all day! Well maybe we do, but still...

Kenneth Arnold

Uh, there are several Free (as in GPLed) game projects going on right now.

WorldForge - Massively Multiplayer RPGs ala Ultima Online. They've published a proof of concept demo and are working towards a playable Game.

TimeCity - not one of my personal favorites of an idea, but they seem to have something going. Just recently published some network code.

Tux: A Quest for Herring - 3D game ala Mario 64 or Gex. Has a couple of playable levels.

Crystal Space - Ok, not a game, but a LGPLed 3d game engine.

And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are several Free (as in GPL) projects out there that are just waiting for you to come running. :)

There already is an open source 3d engine avaliable, called Crystal Space. From their web page, "Crystal Space is a free (LGPL) and portable 3D engine written in C++. It supports true 6DOF, colored lights, mipmapping, portals, mirrors, alpha transparency, reflecting surfaces, 3D sprites, scripting, 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit display support, Direct3D hardware acceleration on Windows,Glide and OpenGL hardware acceleration on Windows, Linux, OS/2, Macintosh, BeOS" Check out http://crystal.linuxgames.com for more details

Which game is that? Civ CTP? Free Civ? Quake? Quake 3? Craft? Railroad Tycoon II? Check out linuxgames.

Besides, my favorite is still xgalaga.
--Wes

According to Linuxgames the source code has already been released.

SMJPEG documentation

SMJPEG source code

BlueSky

DirectX is a large set of API subsets, including DirectSound, DirectDraw, DirectInput, etc. There's already strong support for a lot of these API's in Wine, and there has been for some time. Starcraft, for instance, uses DirectDraw and DirectSound, both of which are emulated in Wine well enough to run it.

Direct3D is the 3D-specific subset of DirectX, and is almost completely unsupported in Wine at this time, although as you mention, there's a Direct3D->Mesa mapping effort underway.

So, lots of DirectX stuff works fine under Wine; Direct3D stuff doesn't really yet.

Check http://www.linuxgames.com/wine/ for more poop on Wine gaming success stories.
--

This is another major title that could be available on LINUX, but thousands of petition signatures have to be collected. That means you will have to print the form and mail it to Westwood Studios. Did I come to the right place for LINUX fiends, or are you ladies too scared to lick an icky little stamp?

Tux expects that every man will do his duty. That is all.

If you would like to see a great and popular game Command & Conquer2/Tiberian Sun come to Linux you can make your interest known to Westwood Studios by filling out this form. The petition has been running awhile and without trying to bias the results, I'll add that many more people need to express their interest for a port to happen. Thnx

Man Im so excited about all the games! Hell we are gunna get Heretic2 also! So anyone interested in the lokigames come check my site out! The loki Portal Site is dedicated t bringing you the latest news on Loki! We have the MythII demo and a message-board! Anyway I can't wait for UT...its gunna rocks with my V3! Natas

I run a website dedicated to bringing you news about Loki! We have Message-boards, Faqs, Links and all the news you can use about Loki and the games they port! Check us out! Loki Portal Page

A good place would be the Linux Game's site. If they won't host it, I will. This is the kind of "real" info that makes games and such very useful. Like the how to do a real autopsy page (vs. X-files' version).

Help the CrystalSpace project out, that way this project gets something, and any other 3D games that want to use the CS engine.

Mazed, the CS map editor, needs help, to make it comparable to quake or better yet unreal level editors. I am guessing the unreal editor would be closer to what they wan't, since CS and unreal seem to use mostly portals for their engine, then again, I have never done any level editing for unreal, so I wouldn't know.

And, a good engine for the future games needs better model support. Right now, CrystalSpace just uses model sprites(like Quake*), not dynamic models(like Half-Life or fighting games). And for these models, you need something to make them. So help make a decent open source 3D model animator, like Extreme Wave. I say Extreme Wave becuase it apears to be the only OSS modeler that focuses on animation. Better than starting your own.

What settings are you using to get this? On my K6-266 running in 640x480 I get ~60fps on a VII 12MB. Visit LinuxGames and check out the old and new forums for speed tips. There are environmental variables that you can set to increase your framerate dramatically.

Yes, it works as of Wine-990226. There is even an HOWTO, but it doesn't really require any special magic.