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The reason for releasing source code as open source isn't so that you can download it for free, compile it, and have a working copy of Doom 3, it's so that people can look at the code, learn from it, port the game to new architectures or mod the source to add new features/take advantage of new technology. Several original games have been developed using previously released id source code: (Someone should really invent some kind of "Search" "Engine" for this internet thing...)
Nexuiz
Urban Terror
Tremulous

Sadly, I suspect that you won't appreciate the value of any of that, having phrased your questions the way you did.

I don't play games as often as i used to thesedays, those that i do play are indie titles such as Aquaria and World of Goo, but one FPS that has really managed to hold my attention for several years now is Tremulous. The combination of team play with real humans, RTS style base building and a set of varied and interesting alien classes and human technology certainly help.

I just realized there is no way to moderate you as "-1 wrong", so I'll comment.

In addition to be wrong about Alien Swarm (if you can't RTFA, at least read the summary), you're wrong about Tremulous too. It's based the GPL Quake 3 source code.

There's now the Game Play Preview release, which is basically a beta version of the game-play changes that will be in the next version.
It's a lot more fun, there have been lots of changes around reducing camping and stalemates, so it's well worth taking a look.

http://tremulous.net/files/ <-- download link.

Googles gotten:

Galcon
Gratuitous Space Battles
Mount & Blade
Plants vs. Zombies
Puzzle Quest

Tremulous
OpenArena

http://tremulous.net/files/

Tremulous is a very unique FPS. Two sides: Humans and wall-climbing aliens. Check it out.

http://www.wesnoth.org/

Wesnoth is a hexagonal turn-based-strategy. I find it quite fun, though at times the random number generator can be annoying. (Don't ask...)

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

If you've got any relatively new Windows games, check out PlayOnLinux. It manages multiple versions of Wine, and the installation of games. I've got it on an Ubuntu box, and it works great for stuff like Diablo II - old classics. ;) Apparently it also works quite well for a bunch of newer games - the list of supported ones is about 200 long.

And if you're looking for flash based games, there's two sites that are absolutely the best:
http://www.miniclip.com/
http://www.armorgames.com/

Honourable mention - Penumbra. (The survival horror series, with native linux versions. Around $10 each, but right now they seem to be bundling all three.)

It sucks for me, though, I hate FPS games. For my Linux gaming I've always used emulators. Install ePSXe, Mednafen and dgen, then eat your heart out on old games console titles.

Why wait for another Aliens movie? Grab your copy of Tremulous and get going! Pronto!

My nightmares involve not being able to pounce away from a chainsuit fast enough.

You could always play a derivative game such as the (free) Open Arena or Tremulous

I don't see how a game like this can compete with something like Quake Live. Quake Live (still in beta) is free and has comparable graphics and gameplay. Yet it already has a much larger community, more polish, and runs more smoothly.

I understand that it is difficult for an open source game to have the same playerbase and polish as a professionally developed, ad-supported game. But at the very least Nexuiz should run more smoothly and should differentiate itself from other games that have already been released.

I'd say that a better open-source game might be Tremulous. Runs much more smoothly on my computer, and I often want to play it because its gameplay is different from other games I already have. Perhaps that's why there have always been more Tremulous players than Nexuiz players in my area.

Better than Wolf in many ways is Tremulous.

http://www.tremulous.net/

I've run the PCs at a a gaming convention for several years and have had Wolf there every year for the past 4. This year I tried Tremulous. Most everyone, especially the 13-16 year-olds really enjoyed it. Many said, "Way better than Wolf!" We even had girls playing!

It ran on more aged hardware much better than Wolf did. Higher FPS. Snappier. Ran on meh MacBooks with Intel graphics quite acceptably. Has enough newness with the aliens so it's not a same-old same-old FPS. Some RTS elements. I like it.

http://www.tremulous.net/

Second this motion. It's excellent, just like the original. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

http://www.tremulous.net/ is a good laugh too.

You really should install the Ubuntu though... or at least wipe that XP off, you're not doing them any favor there.

Just a few that I know of:
The Battle for Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/
FreeCiv http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Tremulous http://tremulous.net/

Linux Games..

http://savage2.s2games.com/main.php
http://www.eve-online.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://www.flightgear.org/
http://www.freeciv.org/
http://www.sauerbraten.org/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://wz2100.net/
http://www.cubeengine.com/
http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
http://www.wormux.org/
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
http://www.ufoai.net/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://tremulous.net/
http://www.eternal-lands.com/
http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Perhaps you could stop with the "No games for Linux" BS already as you obviously have your head up your ass.

I'd like to put in my vote for Tremulous. It could use a new release but it never gets old. Aliens vs Humans, both have bases, upgrades. How can you go wrong?

It also makes you suck at Tremulous, not good man, bluetooth FTL.

This is a good list. Allow me to weigh in with a few more of my own.

• Nexuiz is a fun networked 3D deathmatch FPS.
• Sauerbraten is a great, mindless FPS for both networked and single player mode.
• You should definitely give tremulous a try. Its innovative, asymmetrical approach to team based network play is outstanding.
• You can read a review that I wrote of these games and many other FOSS projects.
• A lot of these games are on a live Linux DVD that I reviewed recently.

I find OpenArena pretty lacking but I can suggest a great open source game.

Tremulous

It's a very interesting first person shooter that incorporates a RTS. Definitely worth checking out. If you're running ubuntu you can grab it from the repositories.

I'll eventually have to use Vista for gaming purposes,

Same as me. In the same day I received the new Vista based laptop, I checked out it's new features. After poking around Vista's Media Center (Maybe the only good thing I saw), I installed gentoo on it and migrated my ~home dir and system configs from my old laptop..
After two days (yes.. gentoo takes time) I had my new laptop working exactly as my old laptop used to work.

Besides all obvious things which makes Linux better than windows the thing which keeps impressing me is the used memory by system:
- On windows right after booting I have about 910Mb/2Gb of RAM used by system (not including cache).
- On Gentoo with XFCE WM I have right after booting about 260Mb/2Gb of RAM being used by system (not including cache) with email client, messenger, firefox (note firefox and not browser :p) and consoles opened.

I kept Vista for a month for playing games. But since I'm back to University I don't have time to game, also there is a excellent game called tremulous http://tremulous.net/ that runs natively on Linux.

What happened to Vista? Vista isn't anymore bootable on this machine, I needed space for my /home partition.

Just wanted to share the life cycle of Vista on a Linux user computer. :D

PS:For those looking for a perfect laptop for running Linux:
Let me recommend the HP Pavilion dv6535ep Laptop.

For Tremulous (incidentally, based on Quake^H^H^H^H^Hid tech 3), the OS breakdown is as follows:

Windows: 78%
x86 Linux: 16%
ppc OS X: 4%
x86 OS X: 1%
x86_64 Linux: less than 1%
Freebsd: much less than 1%

This is based on approximately 370000 clients. Admittedly the figures are a bit skewed in favour of Windows and Linux as the OS X build is only available from apple.com. The same is true of x86_64 and Freebsd -- those are built manually by whoever is running them (I assume). There are other issues as well as it could be argued that the Linux version is potentially easier to get than the other versions since it has made its way into various packaging systems.

Even if you take this data with a pinch of salt, I think it does reinforce that there is a demand for gaming on Linux. What it doesn't indicate (and I'm not convinced exists) is a demand to pay for gaming on Linux.

Tremulous is where it's at!

With regards to the part of the article that talks about corporate customization of games for corporate or military training, I'm surprised that I didn't see anyone else here talk about this but how about turning to the OSS world for custom game mods? cube shows great potential for modification. Nexuiz looks really nice and plays sweet. Tremulous is a great example of a FPS with non-traditional FPS rules.

I would be terribly, terribly remiss not to mention http://live.linux-gamers.net/ which I have blogged

> 1st person shooters are totally out of the question

Oh, like this one:
http://tremulous.net/

Sim City 3000 (happy penguin pay)
Tremulous: http://tremulous.net/ (Repositories free)
Legends: http://legendsthegame.net/ (download free)
Uplink: http://www.uplink.co.uk/
Darwinia: http://www.darwinia.co.uk/
Defcon: http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/

Don't assume they're all rubbish till you've actually played them. Preferably on Linux. (Except Sim City. Thats rubbish.)

Easily the best free (oss) game in existence is Tremulous! http://www.tremulous.net/ Check the demo if you don't believe me http://mods.moddb.com/3449/tremulous/ Windows and Linux clients, as well as an independent Mac client, 100+ servers, all free. And the wallwalking ROX!

you misspelled http://tremulous.net/

I must agree, the ID games have always been great fun for multiplayer, be it accross a serial cable between two machines barely qualified to play Doom or modern online gaming.

One of my current favourites uses ID's opensource quake3 engine, Tremulous is a surprisingly well designed multiplayer team FPS with a twist. It's Free, in the freedom sense, and the dozens of servers are _never_ short of players, whatever time you connect.

Tremulous

http://tremulous.net/

Agreed, if I had em, I'd mod you up. Watch the show and judge it on its own merits. (Disclaimer: I have yet to see it, it could suck and be a shameless rip-off)

I play many a game, When reccomending to my kids, Too many times I hear things like "Tremulous is a Natural Selection Rip-Off" from someone who hasn't even played the game. Almost all open source games are derivatives. Hell even if it is derivative that does not automatically decrease its quality. For example, Ipods are derivative of the Walkman. AMDs and Intelx86, etc...

FYI, http://tremulous.net/, Not a bad way to spend a half hour.

I don't know anything about Halogen, but there is another fan-coded RTS/FPS called Tremulous. It's pretty fun, and very well balanced. It's based on the GPL Quake 3 code. Nobody is going to be sending a cease-and-desist letter any time soon... or ever.

Yeah, it's so cool it's been done twice before, at least.

Just how is this any different than Natural Selection or Tremulous?

Oh, right. 10 hour matches.

You are - of course - totally wrong. ;-)

Developers who leverage the GNU GPL or the GNU LGPL to combine powerful ideas with a friendly user interface - at a console or in a GUI - abound in the free software ecology. Savannah, Sourceforge and Freshmeat and similar sites are the obvious places to start looking for these possibilities. I'll mention just three that I've found exciting:

• For developers - Wikicompiler - develop software using a wiki. This is exciting because both developers and documenters only need a browser any where in the world to collaborate.
• For the office - Zimbra - groupware using AJAX web interface. This is exciting to end users in the office because it is nicely integrated and you only need your browser, meaning you can have a "one icon desktop" where the software is up to date as you open it anywhere on the LAN (or WAN over SSL).
• For gamers - Tremulous - combining FPS and strategy using a Quake-like engine. This is an exciting network game, because - being on either a human or alien team - your team need to protect your area, build defense, and kill the other team. Personally, I like the alien team, which lets you crawl the walls, and jump down and bite the enemy's necks.

Tremulous has been getting most of my attention over the last week.

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

As long as we are bringing this up - check out Tremulous. It is kind of like and RTS and FPS at the same time. It is tough to imagine (it was for me) until you experience it. Truly innovative gameplay really.

Alien Arena is similar to CUBE - good multiplayer, virtually no single player.

All three have source available and are available on Windows and Linux.

I don't see any talk about Tremulous (Screenshots and Download link), so I'll say it here. It's a first-person-shooter, but is more than just shooting things; a few commercial titles have been based on it, like Starcraft or Command And Conquer (I like turning the IP around on What looks like What).

I'ld rather the children try a game they would be satsified with playing after a couple hours, than a game that does more to enslave and numb the mind of someone (Second Life, Everquest/EverCrack, Will Right and his Sim bullshit, EA and potbelly-football clubs that follow, etc).

Try out Tremulous; play as Alien or Human, subdivided between two castes to call-forth structures to erect or a more Weaponized caste to go about with various improvements based on a credit system on enemy Kills.

I'm surprised Tremulous is GPL; based on Quake3 engine, first was a Quake3 mod, but now it can be downloaded as a stand-alone game including the Quake3 engine for its custom use. Download size is hefty at about 90MB for the Mod or about 105MB for the Mod and Quake3 bundle.

If you all want to try a free(beer) and opensource(speech) entertainment title, that I've experienced and found exciting, then try Tremulous; it's like first-person starcraft, without the waiting. It doesn't build on any excess theme, doesn't need exorbiant computer hardware (tuned Pentium 200 and a openGL-capable rated near DirectX 6 qualifies), and is quite a hit. It should've been sold for 10 dollars per hit at the store or online, but it's freely available to download in about 100 MegaBytes.

For the criticism on EA and Maxis.

Any corporation (think EA) that threatens to sue another to have reserved senior claim for a public event or theory (think Sports press), needs to be boycotted.

Any corporation (think Maxis) that creates software that is designed by theory to repetitively stress the user into submittance to the theory of the game, and does not productively resolve that theory within acceptable limits of resource (time; think Everquest, The Sims, SimCity, Monopoly, etc), and even tries to dictate economic theory beyond the game to skew the experience of the owner, needs to be boycotted.

I remember trying that Sim City crap back in High Schrool, and it was just a pile of crap that tries to present a form of community development in attempt to mis-report the prior developments of townships and parishes and villages; happiness, taxes, police, etc? Sim City was a cheap hack (look even at Sim City 1000). Everquest has helped to find and kill the weaker minds, read the news. Monopoly burned any improvements people could have made in their lives, way back in the "Great Depression" of the United States of America. There are better things to do than watch a Sim watch TV, or wash dishes, or censored hygiene and pretended pleasure. Are people really that predetermined to live a Second Life in the game on what they wanted their life to be like? Outside of the box, the people have freedom; if you know the common law, then you can move about the country without a Driver's License, without Income Tax, without the Admiralty always making seizures, without pretended drawing rights and Contract compelling performance on irrelevant and non-injurious private matters. The problem with the people in America is they are being supressed.

What do people see in EA, other than another yearly Madden Football game that doesn't improve ethically and presentably on what was offered on the previous yearly release? What do people see in Will Right, other than Will Right's pee? Kings (Americans) need to comprehend, and their servants (state Citizens) need to know these thoughts, and their servants' servants (State citizens) need to know these thoughts, and the emancipated perpetual slaves in the United States (not manumit: citizens of the United States) need to stand-under/under-stand these things.

EA and Maxis are patent nightmares; just wait untill those corporations bring their claims to the politic and skew the diversity of citizenship clauses...already done.

If the Quake3 installer is anything like the one for Tremulous (which it should be, since Tremulous is based on the Quake3 game engine), then all you have to do is download the binary (a .run file), mark it as executable (either with chmod or through the GUI), and run it (command-line or double-click). The only extra step vs. Windows is setting the execute bit, and I think the underlying reason for that step (to avoid spyware/viruses) is sufficiently useful to justify leaving it in.

If you want to install it into the system directories you need admin priviledges, of course; Windows has the same requirement. However, I had no trouble installing the program into my home directory (it even autodetected the non-admin state and chose a reasonable directory to install into). I have no idea why they recommended setting LD_ASSUME_KERNEL; I know what it does, but Tremulous installed fine without it, and Quake3 should also, since the underlying binary is essentially equivalent.

Most total conversions (SUBTLE PLUG: such as http://tremulous.net/) do not rely on the base pk3s a great deal. It's predominantly textures that are the problem, but they're also the easiest to replace.

Here are screenshots and downloadable media of Tremulous, currently a Quake3 full conversion that would benefit perhaps of being released as its own game.

I agree :)

http://tremulous.net