The Best Linux Games of 2001?

Apostata asks: "As more and more people migrate (or consider migrating) to Linux, I'd like to know what Slashdot readers would vote for as their top picks for Linux-friendly games (either native or commercially ported) for 2001."

Comments

friendly linux games?

[mackermacker]

Didnt know their were any linux friendly games. Castle Wolfenstein is decent on linux, dell 8000I w/ 512 RAM and GeForce II Go, but until ATI or NVidia come out with their newest chip, which will almost double the power, as well as provide almost full support for direct X 8, linux games are still way behind the windows version. I like to play games at full screen, and if they use openGL, its just way too slow at fullscreen

Moria/Angband

[W.B. Yeats]

I've played Moria/Angband since iMoria on the University of Washington VAX in 1987. Moria and its variants are truly the greatest computer games ever invented.

Creatures Linux

[StarTux]

Has finally arrived, and will begin shipping to destinations just after xmas.

Get to play with digital DNA and see evolution at work all on your Linux box.

check ds.creatures.net and also of course www.tuxgames.com

There is no best one as each Linux game brings soemthing new to Linux, perhaps if enough of these games sell we might see more of each catagory or the same.

Matt

Docking Station!

[vadim_t]

It's a really nice game. And it even runs faster on Linux than in Windows!

It's a very interesting Artificial Life game. Something like The Sims, but more oriented towards biology. It's written in its own interpreted language that you can see and modify (look in the Bootstrap folder). It's free (but not GPL'd) and you can get it here.

Creatures and Creatures 2 can work under Wine, but they're pretty unstable. It's also possible to play Creatures 3 with this one because they share the engine.

If you grew up playing Atari 2600 games...

[heffel]

There two great clones of classic
games for that console:

Mad Bomber, a Kaboom! clone

and

Circus Linux, a Circus Atari clone.

Both are very good.

Heffel

The Sims/Mandrake Gaming!!!

[joestar]

It's incredibly nice... (The Sims for Linux)

FreeCiv!!!

[llywrch]

Open Source or not, I have to admit to wasting more time on this game than any single one since Warcraft.

And what I find nice about FreeCiv is that I can play it in one Virtual Window, go to another VW to do stuff, then return to where I left off in FreeCiv. It nicely works with the multi-tasking environment of Linux, unlike the Loki ports I have tried.

Geoff

Re:I've read all the posts...

[jfunk]

If you like Nethack, check out Falcon's Eye. It's an SDL-based fork of Nethack with an isometric view. The graphics are quite nice and it even has a soundtrack.

I've wasted a *lot* of time with it.

Re:RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTIEN

[Cryptnotic]

I must agree. The multiplayer RtCW is quite fast and stable on linux, whereas on WinXP on the same machine (athlon 1.4ghz, ddr, geforce 3), it is glitchy and sometimes slows down for no reason.

Cryptnotic

BZFlag

[BiggyP]

BZFlag is an incredibly fun Opensource MultiPlatform OpenGL tank shooter type thing, brilliant fun, and it even works on a 56K modem. well, almost.

Top Linux Games - Freeciv, Kohan

[Naum]

Here is my list:

1. Freeciv - the open source flavor of the epic strategy game. I purchased Civ3 when it came out, but TBHWY, it doesn't provide a compelling reason to reboot into Win-doze, and I still opt to play freeciv. Freeciv is much more customizable and plays quicker, allows multitasking, and was set up specifically for mulitplayer (even if I haven't ventured online to play much MP). I hope the freeciv team is entertaining notions of a Civ3 ruleset, or some variation ...
2. Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - innovative, evolutionary RTS (real time strategy) game - instead of the "Age of Buildings", clickety-click nature of other RTS games in the genre, Kohan is the wargamer's RTS, with company-based battle, zone of supply, and zone of population constructs, and as opposed to the micromanagement of resource collection, resources are earned/spent on a per minute basis, and constructed companies have a maintenance cost. Plus you have magic wielding units that gain XP and cast some cool spells. Multiplayer with Windows gamers is possible (though with large maps you won't be able to view films after)
3. Pysol - the vastly superior Linux alternative to solitaire
4. Sid Meier Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack - great game, but I have a big beef with the multiplayer support - you can only MP against other Linux users, unlike Kohan. So it gets downgraded to the bottom of the list for that reason.

Re:no stable games for linux....

[dvNull]

better OpenGL support?

Either you didnt read the DRI docs or use a modern distro which supports OpenGL pretty well on more than a few cards or was just bad luck . i know had some headaches when I first started to setup dri (XF86 cvs)

OpenGL supported cards are:
Matrox G400,G450,G550
nVidia TNT and above
3dfx Voodoo3 and above (OpenGL w. Glide)
Radeon, Rage128

Except for the nVidia all the other cards are supported by XFree86 natively. nVidia has its own binary drivers (best supported by games).

A default install of Mandrake sets up DRI for you where you can play Quake3 w/o problem if you have a DRI supported card. I played Q3, Q2, Q1, Tribes2 (after the Matrox Multitexturing patch), Unreal Tournament on my G400 MAXX. NO problems

Phantom EFX Reel Deal

[Dave Walker]

I was out shopping for the future inlaws Christmas gift this weekend, in the casino games section at Best Buy. We were looking at several different slots games, and my eyes kind of got wide when I saw the banner on the corner of the box; Windows and Linux.

I took home two copies; one for them and one for me (I like to play video poker, lol). It's not blow your doors awesome like Wolfenstein, but at 19.95 they've put out a VERY realistic slot machine game. Rated pretty highly by Casino Player Magazine, too.