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A speedtest from myself to somewhere else in Europe has gone from 450/599Kbps down/up to 454/636Kbps, plus my favourite UT servers are pinging the same as usual, so it obviously isn't very serious.

I can only think of one game where this is so, and IMO it bites compared to it's competition. :)

Games like Urbanterror, a mod for q3, are much better.

I bought Quake 3 when it hit the shelves not because I thought it was good (indeed, as a game itself it is incredibly weak), but because I knew that Carmack and crew were bound to learn from the previous Quake experiences (Action Quake was one of the best games ever, but was a mod) and they'd make it versatile, and that they did. Now I'm a big fan of Urban Terror and it has made my Q3 purchase absolutely worthwhile.

The saddest thing though is that mod workers are usually compensated by accolades alone: Urban Terror, as an example, represents an unbelievable amount of work and talent, yet while id is pulling in $50 from every player, The Urban Terror crew is pulling in nothing.

Quake 3, with the Urban Terror total conversion. Very realistic, very fun and addictive. I love the way the maps look like everyday places, and the characters look very human. And the real guns.

Roller Coaster Tycoon. This sim-style game where you build a theme park and design your own coasters is probably the most addictive game I've ever played. Hours go by without me even realizing it. Lots of fun.

Counterstrike runs on the Half-Life engine, which is a (heavily) modified Quake 1 engine.

UT does rock - it is the best online tactical game I have played.

I used to play a ton of Q3 then after I tried UT I totally switched to it completely. UT definitely sets me more on edge than Q3. It's an extremely well done mod and its fans are desperately waiting for 2.4 which is coming Real Soon Now to provide a variety of improvements and enhancements. Don't wait for 2.4 to try it, it's ready to play NOW.

Try the Urban Terror mod for quake 3 at urbanterror.net. It's an extremely fun counter-strike like mod. Not only is it better because of the Quake 3 graphics engine it is also very realistic and has such additions over counter-strike as stamina, body part damage and bleeding along with lots of nicely skinned weapons, grenades and equipment. Everything from grenade launchers to night vision goggles and laser sights. I consider this to be a far better "real life" mod then counter-strike.The downside, of course, is the higher graphics requirements, but the upside is that the mod only requires an installation of Quake 3 once and can then be played without the original cd. With only the beta 3 right around the corner it is already offering more then CS.

Check out Urban Terror! it's an awesome q3 mod that is so complete it's a totally new game wich pushes the Q3 engine to brilliance.

This is the most addictive FPS you will ever play!! http://www.urbanterror.net

Urban Terror is a mod for Quake3. Less twitchin, more bitchin!

All these "usage stats" are directly related to the demographic of the users. For example, there is/was a game server for TLB, an urban terror clan at darthik.com, however, I think its down now. At any rate, they had usage rates posted and more than 60% of the web surfers at darthik were linux users, another 20% or so were MAC users and the windbloze people were down around 14% with a 5 or 6% other rating.
So that goes to show you that gamers and people of that mindset/agegroup/general demographic are also linux users. When you also realize that most -- if not all -- gamers are "youngsters" that tells you that in the next couple years when these gamers are going to work in industry that they will use and push the use of linux.
End of story.

Counter Strike???

You sucka ! Be a man

Sure, although CS sucks,.. it does run fine under linux. Just like many other games.

Although I do have to agree with you. Q3UT is a hell of alot better than CS.

What Do You Do When CS Isn't Fun Any More?

Stop playing CS and try Q3UT instead. Its got nicer weapons, a better looking engine, much better level design and runs great under Linux (well God - this is Slashdot after all).

See you in Rommel :D

Nailer

When you are tired of CS, it's time to play Urban Terror Instead

Yep thats what I'm going to do and for pretty much the same reasons. Playing Urban Terror last night I realised how at a loss I was by not being able to pin point sounds. Not only that but I imagine I'll piss the wife off a lot less.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a pair that will keep the sounds in, but won't totally dissociate myself from my surrondings? The lighter the better, too.

I was able to play Urban Terror mod in Quake 3 Arena v1.30 without problems. I didn't find out if the servers were using v1.30 when I played tonight.

I've been dissapointed by Loki once recently. I was thinking of moving from windows to linux on my home gaming system, figured i'd be able to play tribes 2 in linux, since i had heard it was done. I didn't realize the windows cd isn't patchable (like q3a is). To make things worse, Loki only sells complete CDs, not patches. And after spending 70$ on the win version, i figured i may as well say in win than move to linux and pay it again. If he had, for example, been selling a 15 dollar patch, i may have migrated.

You obviously don't hang out on the Loki newsgroups do you? This must be the most asked, most discussed question on those newsgroups.

Simply put, it doesn't make any financial sense for Loki to do this. Selling games on the Linux platform will, at least for the immediate future, be selling to a much smaller market than the Windows platform. Therefore the economies of scale which allow the cost-cutting seen with Windows games are just not an option for Loki - if every Loki game could be run on Linux by buying the Windows version (often more cheaply) and patching it to run on linux, Loki would not have released as many games as it has and it would be filing for Chapter 7. Bust. Finito. Gone.

Even allowing people to pay purely for the patch rather than new physical media would cut any margins they currently enjoy to nothing. Out of the $15 you propose, you can forget about $10 dollars as tax and payment to the original vendor (id software, Dynamix, etc.) and only leave tiny crumbs for Loki. $35 would probably make about the right margin - you can buy most Loki games for that and get a Linux-specific manual as well.

Have I been disappointed with Loki? No - everything I have bought has run straight out of the box. Most problems are fixed promptly and the installation and patching is an easy, trouble free process. And quite frankly, Urban Terror rocks my world :-)

Cheers,

Toby Haynes