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I don't know if it would run on such low end machines, but you might consider Nethack.

Then I probably shouldn't tell you that Nethack 3.4.3 is out :)

You can hang that Amulet of Yendor in the empty spot you left for your diploma.

This would be very handy to me, since I use XP for Video

Transcode,
Cinelerra, ...

Photo Editing,

Gimp, ...

Gaming

Nethack :)

Try again... What do you need windows for?

NetHack...

NetHack...

NETHACK!

What's next? NetHack for my toaster?

Does your toaster run WinCE?

In case you haven't noticed my sig, I have a public Nethack server as well. If you want to try out Nethack but don't want to go through the hassle of installing it (it's not much of a hassle if you install binaries, but unless you've installed it from source before, it's not that easy), then try using my server. Simply login to (SSH or telnet) fyre.sytes.net with username "yasd" and password "yasd". Create a name (basically an account), and start playing! If you need help with Nethack, check out the Nethack webpage

Wrecking the national college grades since 1996 and before...

Nethack has been doing that since the beginning. You never want to play on Friday the 13th....

Nethack used such features for a years. Lycantrophy happens often at nights, undeads are stronger around midnights, Friday the 13th, really brings bad luck, and all dogs-alike creatures reacts to phase of the moon.

Ive been using XP for a while now and these are the essentials that I've found I can't live without
1 : Firebird (IE sucks leprous donkey balls, opera cant render properly, mozilla is slow, firebird is the best)
2 : Gvim is the best editor out there for code and text alike (remember to disable backup files)
3 : PuTTy retreat to a comfortable bash shell ;)
4 : XP Powertoys virtual desktop manager,cmd prompt here context menu and of course...
5 : TweakUI turn off those silly windows defaults
6 : a good FTP client,WS-ftp is a good one
7 : Winace,the only compression tool youll ever need!
8 : startup monitor monitors for extraneous crap adding itself to startup
9 : strokeit ,mouse gestures for windows,Yay!
10 : Nethack the only game you need (safe for work too)

that might not necessarily be in the right order and this doesnt count amusement software like media players and whatnot but those are my most used tools at work

• CygWin. The Linux-like environment for Windows.
  Mozilla. Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
  Firebird. for FAST browsing.
  WS FTP Light. A FREE, FTP client that works great.
  Filezilla. which is TRULY free and does sftp as well.
  PuTTY. a free SSH client for Windows.
  TTSSH. is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
  iXplorer. freeware secure FTP client
  VNC hello!? remote controll software.
  Tight VNClike the original, only FAST.
  GNU-EMacs for Windows. just trust me ;).
  Dev-C++a free C++ compiler for those who can't afford VS.
  NetHack. as someone here said, you MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
  Free-AV.free Anti-Virus software for Windows, (mandatory these days). or
  AVG Free edition. another free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
  Zonealarm. my favorite Personal Firewall,, really!. or
  Kerio. another firewall that some seem to like. or
  Sygate. yet another firewall. whatever floats your boat.
  Boingo. to see where the closest hotspot is, hehe.
  OpenOffice 1.1 the Microsoft Office KILLER :) {really!}
  Winamp 2.x for audio/video usage in Windows, stay away from the new one :).
  Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator.
  SpyBot Search & Destroy The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool we've found, "IE is unusable without".
  Ad-Aware another spy-ware app "alas poor Windoze."
  Trillian a favorite IM, since we're all chatters @ heart. or
  GAIM since trillian hogs resources, "bad piggy!".
  Gimp image creation/editing. Who needs Photoshop anyway?
  EnZip freeware Zip Utility, Stop nagging you WinZip!!
  Iview is a great little image viewer. or
  Irfanviewone of the best image viewer out there for Windows.
  Audacity is a great little sound editor.
  Virtual Dub. a great video editor.
  cDex gotta rip those cd's for the RIAA!
  MAME for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. and finally
  XPantiSPY since XP is E-V-I-L.

And FINALLY, don't trust me! Trust the experts;

Go to the Pricelessware site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group.
The

Here is my top ten list (in no particular order) for Windows. I'll let everyone argue about the Linux tools.
CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
Mozilla naturally.... Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
WS FTP Light a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
Free-AV free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
Boingo to see where the closest hotspot is. (free) you don't need the service.

Not only did Sierra On-line games kill you for making a wrong move - they killed you for doing something entirely logical! End result? You creep through the game with a trembling hand, expecting death at every step, stabbing the "Save" key every 30 seconds or so.

Man have I got the perfect game for you!

But for non-graphical RPGs, just stick to the rogue-likes, and you'll be happy.

But is the game too difficult for most? That's pretty debatable. I personally found the difficulty curve pretty harsh -- particularly on the harder difficulty settings -- but F-Zero has always been about the overall challenge.

I don't understand this reviewer at all. When the difficulty is set higher, the game actually gets harder! What a concept! This amazing technology should be implemented in as many games as possible.

I think gamers are just getting used to games that are nothing more than busy work and no challenge. Obviously, a few hours of NetHack could solve a lot of problems.

These people have never played Frozen Bubble or Nethack.

I currently have a level 8 male gnomish wizard on Level 5 and 6 (I go back and forth, the last (and currently only) merchant is on 5). I'm kinda stuck on 6 because there are no secret doors to be found (searched the walls of every room four times over already) and now way further down.

BTW, Nethack 3.4.2 is out!

These people have never played Frozen Bubble or Nethack.

I currently have a level 8 male gnomish wizard on Level 5 and 6 (I go back and forth, the last (and currently only) merchant is on 5). I'm kinda stuck on 6 because there are no secret doors to be found (searched the walls of every room four times over already) and now way further down.

BTW, Nethack 3.4.2 is out!

These people must be bored if they play games in a console. I mean, how long can you stare at an xterm window with ASCII characters?

You have obviously never played Nethack, my friend...

According to nethack.org, Nethack has been ported to MacOS 10 as well as 7.x - 9.x.

On a more serious note, the one game I've had serious expectations for that turned out to be a waste of money was the original Outpost; it had a wonderful premise and lots of interesting concepts, but was awfully buggy and had a user-hostile UI. Sadly, the sequel was fairly good but was saddled by the "Outpost" name and tanked. Still, I was able to get my space-colony sim fix five years later with Alpha Centauri, which I still play to this day. That's a game worth getting out of the bargain bin.

There is one great exception, of course. Nethack has to be the king of the indie games....

A "game" gets Linux support! Whoa! I must buy that "game" just to convince the "games" publishers that Linux is an OS worth supporting! Woohoo!....... then again I could just download Angband or NetHack and f**k the publisher :o)

If fighting kittens and avoiding eating bad corpses (as opposed to delicious fresh corpses... Mmmm... Dwarves...) sounds like fun to you, and you have any responsibilities at all (job, school, children, pets) then do not go to nethack.org. Seriously. While not as time-consuming as, say, Diablo, it can demand your attention in a way that nothing else can ("Oh, but I'm just about to reach the Castle, and I need to rust-proof my Snickersnee!")

...and here they are, the two *must post* references whenever you see "ASCII"..... nethack and if ATI can do this I don't see what's so strange with an ASCII X11 is....;o))))

I don't get it. Why would anyone need anything other than Nethack?

-Sean

I wouldn't care if the "game industry" would cease to exist tomorow, there are enough NES, SNES, Gameboy, Neo-Geo etc. roms out to play. There are also people who make games for fun (Nethack, IF, etc.) and some even do something creative.

Same goes fore the "music industry" and other "industries" that produce "intelectual properity".

I would be shocked if anyone tried to claim that the software ESR has written is even comparable in importance to the software RMS has written.

Then prepare to be shocked :). This puzzles me a bit - why is it that you (and quite a few others) seem to think that fetchmail is the only piece of software ESR has written? I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to have a look at his software list, and his projects list. Note the "past projects" - especially "I was heavily involved in the GNU Emacs 19 development (in fact, I was the primary Emacs-lisp library person for about two years during 1991-1993)." The software page also has this quote: "According to RMS's credit list, I appear to have more Emacs Lisp code in the standard Emacs distribution than anyone else but him."

He was also a primary developer on ncurses, and nethack... he's contributed to python... he's contributed quite a bit to the GNU/FSF project in general. Note: "I was one of the original GNU contributors back in 1982-83, and I've been at it ever since." And fetchmail and CML2 are by no means insignificant.

Fetchmail vs. the entire GNU collection [snip]; it's clear which is more important.

Did you seriously think that RMS wrote all of the GNU software himself???? The two most important projects that I believe RMS originated were GCC and of course Emacs (and probably GLibc and the GDB). But a hell of a lot of people have contributed to those (including ESR) - and I don't think RMS has done anything significant on most of them for a while.

I know it's nice and easy to give one high-profile developer all the credit for projects they originated... but that's just not the case here. RMS is an uber-hacker and has worked on a hell of a lot of great stuff - but so has ESR. I think the main distinction between the two is that while RMS originated more major software projects than ESR, Raymond's probably contributed to more.

Pete.

The first game to really affect my life was Ultima Online. Working my way up from lowly mage to owner of a player city took its toll on life. My computer was right next to my bed and at night I'd leave my character macroing. There were several occasions when I'd wake up in a cold sweat, dreaming in 3D-Isometric Tiles, thinking someone had used a 'sploit to break into my house, kill me, and take my stuff. I was so freaked out I'd have to go over to the computer to see if everything was still there and alright.

The second game to affect my life was Nethack. Simply put, this is just the best game ever made, and it's free and open source so check it out! Many people don't get how I can still be playing this game after so many years, and how I still haven't ascended or even come close (I made it to the castly once only to choke on a dragon corpse). Well, let me say this: You aren't truly hardcore until you have dreamed in ASCII.

Most of my entertainment does come in the "real" world though, and does cost money.

You know, I've this idea where bloks of for squares are falling... What, you mean for the blind not the deaf? Can't you decide? Well in that case I have Nethack and Ineractive Fiction for you.

> Heck, Nethack didn't have *any* room descriptions, since it's traditionally all ASCII art.

Nethack is still alive and well (you insensitvie clod). Second, it does. "You enter an opulent throne room!" "It looks rather wet down here."

Jack

Maybe they will predict that NetHack will die as well.

These games are just being published by smaller developers. The ones that can't afford the extraordinate fees to buy a chip so that there programs work on the consoles. These games are usually more affordable as well.

Check out some of these sites:

Game House

Pop Cap Games

Llamasoft

Shockwave Games

That is what ttyquake is for.

While I prefer the original FPS for those longer compile nights...

Planned Obselescence... what an interesting concept.

Thanx, but no thanx. I'll stick to games that don't force me to keep buying new stuff. Like nethack, or StarCraft.

Honestly, I think that Nethack has done a pretty good job of putting a fantasy game into a computer.

It is infinitely more detailed and complex than the flashy CD ROM games I have played.

It took me nearly 8 months to win the first time.

That's why I'm still playing NetHack...well that and because it's still the best game out there.

Seriously though, can these super cards be used for anything other than the generation of display output? As they are doing so much 3D processing so much faster than any CPU can, I'd like to see the ability to use these GPU's as coprocessors for rendering images back to software/files rather than just to display output. Something like using it as a hardware accelerator for POV-Ray or Renderman. Does anybody have any insight into potential non-traditional uses of these super cards?

or play a game with a CLI alone?

You've got the best game in a CLI!

I have been playing nethack since 1992. It is without a doubt the most addictive fun you can have with a computer. If you have not played nethack, you must get nethack and at least give it a try. Forget what you knew about AI, become a slave to the ULTIMATE AI run by the RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR. www.nethack.org

They never test the number of text lines per second in text mode. Or Nethack FPS. My card does 7.5 FPS in Nethack, if I click the keys really fast.

The best PC games are free.

and pretty proud of it.
It should be taught in schools.

for some screenshots of mine check screenshots or my guide on using linux as a workstation.

if you have a webpage with alot of visitors, feel free to use banners to make users switch to open source, apt-get.mine.nu my banners, and my friends banners (volkany)

Yep.

I believe if you unset your DISPLAY variable it will start in ASCII mode. Or login through a virtual terminal instead of X. The Nethack home page is www.nethack.org.

This post is in anticipation of all the Tux Racer flames etc....so for the nay sayers who mock OS games, I invite you to try NetHack.

If you've never played this game before you will notice that the graphics are a bit...dated...but just try it for a few hours. You might very be surprised.

I really dig this, man. It's a good cause and it helps your family realise that they have choices, lots of them. Noticing that alot of people are recommending office productivity suites (which is cool, but you can only recommend Open Office/AbiWord/Gimp so many times =P) or server/high-end programs (very commendable, but...very time-consuming if anything like what I had to do to teach my parents), I wanted to include a list of games I figured might brighten their day.

First off, glTron. GPLed and very very addicting. Great to show off the fact that 3D Gaming and Linux are not mutually exclusive. (I would mention TuxRacer here, but it has been said before)

Secondly I want to go old-school with Nethack. I mean, it's Nethack. If someone in your family thinks they are cool because they can survive a Zerg-rush, let them play this and see how tough they are. ;)

Thirdly I would mention anything old by Id. They have a ton of free mods and maps for Quake or Quake II and with the new Tenebrae mod it's not your Mom's old Quake. Plus if you compile it for their PC on their PC, it might get them interested in Programming.

Which brings me to my last addition, Dev-C++. For the Casual Programmer (i.e. takes a few courses, kinda C-curious) This is the perfect IDE. Based on GCC it has a good-looking front-end, great support, and takes up ALOT less space than Visual Studio. I know at least one teacher that recommends the students run this, and rightly so. It really puts the brain-strain on the appropriate part of programming, the actual program.

Do you think it will spell an end to D&D ?

Oh, you mean will D&D software survive. That has nothing to do WotC. They only control things that are called D&D. Example:

A long time ago a undergrad name Michael Toy used the D&D fighting system and monster stats to create a Curses game called Rogue, the predecessor to NetHack. (Ignore Glenn Wichmann -- he's a legend in his own mind.) TSR didn't care for this, of course, and sicced their lawyers on him. The only result was that all the names got changed to non-D&D things. Which was actually an improvement -- there's no place in the D&D universe for my own favorite player character, the Tourist

Bottom line -- you don't need the media monopolies to play games, any more than you need them to make music. Pity about Farscape though.

Nethack.

Not quite GPL, but still, it is open source. And it still has managed to steal quite a few man-months of work from me.

There is nothing wrong with updating the graphics for an old game. Its fun for the developers and fun for gamers to revisit a title that may only be collecting dust. New != bad. Games are graphical entertainment. If you don't care about graphics, play Nethack.

There is nothing wrong with adding quality that requires a more powerful computer. If you have any thoughts like "this Pentium 2 was good enough for games when I was in college, it should be good enough today" then you might as well forget about claiming to be a "gamer". Gaming drives much of the evolution of PC hardware.

As long as an update to an old title is done with quality, I have no problems with it. Updates that suck (for example, George Lucas' bastardization of the original Star Wars) should be critized because they suck, but there is nothing inherently wrong with giving the technology a spitshine.