Slashdot Mirror
RTCW Single Player Demo & Linux Binaries
Ant was fastest on the mouse to report that Id Software has a single-player demo and a set of linux binaries available for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Blue's News has some more information and a mirror.
Most likely because RtCW is based on the Quake III engine.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Y a quake Icon?
First of all, it is an id game. Secondly it uses the Quake engine.
Honestly, why spend the money if you already have Halflife? It runs on linux (well), and with the Day Of Defeat Mod, you have a better game then RTCW (although the DOD mod is multiplayer only right now).
Honestly, I didn't think RTCW is all that, and don't know why people are going nuts about it. Its living on name alone, IMNSHO.
Most Halflife, Quake, and UT mods have already explored most of the FPS phenomenon if you just check them out...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
My kid hates M$oft and so has gladly run RTCW in Linux(Debian).
My kid can beat your kid at video games!
probably becuase rtcw is built on the quake 3 arena engine. they just worked on the textures a whole lot more. pretty pretty textures.
rtcw is fun and addictive. it is strangely refreshing to have an "old school" feel with the treasure and secrets.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
Man, I tried this thing on Linux when I first got it. I've never seen my Linux system turn into a smoking mass of Windows wannabe freezage before, but that sure as hell managed to do it. We'll see if the new ones work any better after the link clears up some...
Um, an AI where the enemies don't wander around aimlessly? The ability to jump? The ability to walk under and over corridors? The ability to play on teams? I'm sure this is flame bait, but I'm bored.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I think it is cool that id supports Linux. And I know that everyone on /. loves Linux and the promise of Linux gaming. Not to mention that if Linux did develop into a major gaming platform, many more people would use it in the mainstream.
/. and other geeks downloading it just to see how it works, but this is as a novelty, IMO. You download it, get it working, say "this is cool I am gaming on Linux" and get back to work never to touch it again.
However... is this sort of release really going to be downloaded and used a lot (outside of Slashdot)?
ALL hardcore gamers use Windows for gaming. It is simply a fact. All the games are published for Windows, and even if they make it to other OSes, they make it to Windows first.
I can see people from
Even if they did release for Linux, how many more units would they ship? Is the demand really there? I don't like Windows any more than the next guy but games are developed for Windows, played on Windows, and the AOL using rubes that buy the games all use Windows...
Mark
Despite poor sales of their Quake3 linux port, the release of a demo for linux shows the future of commercial gaming on linux platforms is still possible... I recall reading how support for the linux client was a difficult task, I wonder if it will be curtailed for a linux RTCW release?
For those like me who have had problems with RTCW 1.0 you can get the Patch Here
http://www.kubuntu.org/
For those of us about to ROCK...
Where's the Mac version?
Is it appropriate to have more of this. Castle Worlfenstien picks on Nazi's, fine, I hate nazi's, but when you shoot people, it's decidedly anti-german in practice.
Would anyone mind if instead of germans screaming "ya" and dying like Quake monsters it was cowboys and digital Coronel Custers screaming "yeeha". I mean, if you know history, there are genocidal forces in most cultures history, maybe they could pick on them a bit for ballance?
I'm an expert because I played the Original Castle Wolfenstien (still a great game in emulator land)
-pyrrho
While not yet posted on their website as of 15:07 Eastern Time, www.tuxgames.com will sell RTCW with a linux-based installer.
:)
This is for those folks who want to show their allegience to Linux gaming by purchasing from a company dedicated to bringing it mainstream and properly tallying Linux sales.
I have no affiliation, just a friendly notice.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
I have been playing the full multiplayer version on RH 7.2 for some time and it runs like a breeze. .10 kernel that ships with RH. Only "problem" I have is that I'd like to run a lower resolution(1024x768) in the game than on my desktop(1280x1024), but when you choose full-screen and a lower resolution than the desktop, the games sits in the lower left corner of the screen and the rest is garbage. But that goes for all the games I have tried, like Tux Racer.
Once you get the proper display drivers installed for OpenGL. I realized that I was lucky that NVIDIA provide Linux drivers that enables me to take proper advantage of the card. Note that the default install of RH won't utilize the Geforce chip properly so that you can play games on it.
I have a "old" Geforce 1 and have been looking at the ATI 8500DV. But I have just switched from Windooze to Linux this week so I was checking ATI's site for Linux drivers and it quickly shows that it is not a choice if you want to play games. Their site says that they do not support Linux and then direct you to some sourceforge pages. Pheew good thing I checked that out. Now I am going for a Geforce 3 istead.
Anyway RCTW works great with the
A final hurdle is that you cannot make a Linux install from the CD, which gave me a lot of problems. You have to copy the data files from a INSTALLED version on a windooze setup which was impossibe for me since I had deleted the Windooze. I had a second drive in my PC with a FAT32 partition with my old data. So I had to install windooze again just to get the files.
Please, PLEASE, make a Linux program that can extract the data from the Windooze installer. I don't need no fancy GUI, just a command line tool that will let you extract the files from the CD that you need.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The MP has been out a while and the SP ran fin under wine, transgamings, winex, and plain vainlla CVS , all except sound lag on SP under wine.
:)
What IMPORTANT is they DID it, they said the would and did is also imortant this is the kind of cross plattform movability you get with OpenGL.
RTCW is a ton of fun, I hadnt bought a game in over 10 years, Im not really the Gaming Type, BUT Me, and my two sons are Hooked on this, since we have Linux workstations at home, It RUNS FAR more stable on Linux than it does on My wifes W2k box, much nicer all the way around.
Just in case any of you wonder my handle is
"Major Dick"
See you at the Happy Penguin Server tonight
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
I live in a Windows-free world, so I guess I'm a Linux gamer.
The downside is that there's not much in the way of games. The upside is that those that are there are pretty good.
My "game machine" is a P1-233 with a PCI GF-MX200 in it. Plays Q3 just fine. And I've been making my way through the Loki ouvre and having a ball with it.
I'm almost finished SOF, and then there's Descent 3 waiting in the wings.
Am I typical of the bleeding-edge, overclocked, 3000 FPS gamer that Windows seems to attract? Hell no. But I AM using Linux as my gaming OS, and I AM having fun with it, and I'm using a machine that's over 5 years old.
Which is pretty cool, as far as I'm concerned.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
It's true that I do a lot of gaming on Windows but I often buy a linux version of games when available (even if I have the windows version). At work, for example, I have not installed Windows (and yes I do play games at work ;) and even at home I like to be able to quickly go for a few online games when I need a break from my linux coding.
Being able to run the game on linux also allows me to avoid buying more windows licences. Since I don't need to have windows installed on all the machines in a LAN game.
So RtCW is not only one of the best games of 2001, it's also one that supports alternative operating systems (OsX and linux)!!
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Anyone going to be nice enough to post a mirror of wolf-linux-1.1b.x86.run? idSoftware's FTP is full already.
Thanks.
Different classes in multiplayer. Grenades. Interactive turrets you can use. Ladders. Water effects. Walls and buildings that can explode, break, etc. The flame thrower (already being talked about as revolutionary).
:) CW is quite simply one of the best single-player (according to reviews, community) FPS games in awhile. Couple this with the fact that the Lords of FPS (ID software) helped them with development and gave it their blessing, and you have a game that may not be mindshattering, but is supposedly top-rate entertainment for FPS fans.
Of course its still point and shoot! It's an FPS, sheesh! What exactly are you looking for? The smug feeling of knowing CW won't change our most basic perceptions of the world we live in?
"Old man yells at systemd"
the fact that it was modded interesting means that it's more interesting that any crap michael posts. browsing to goatse.cx is a better use of my time than reading michael's articles.
of running a windows game on linux through half-working emulations when there is an excellent game that has native binaries. Besides the half-life engine doesn't look as good as the quake 3 engine.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
"Germany has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world."
You must be making this statement within a very narrow context.
You must be setting very specific parameters for timespan and how you define violent crime. And even if your parameters are not objectionable I question that there are any actual facts to support this assertion.
And just broaden your time frame a bit and the whole thing is laughable.
Too bad you can't blame the holocaust on video games
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
There's a better article at Blue's about an upcoming Farscape game; it looks moderately OK, and will probably be out before the new eps.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I'll be downloading these binaries as soon as I get home from work. Hopefully, they'll run under FreeBSD. Otherwise, I'll have to go into my garage to dig up one of my working Linux boxes. :) Oh well.
A list of mirrors (which may need some time to propagate) is at:
http://www.fileaholic.com/
Does the new installer for linux require an existing windoze install, or is there a way I can play this thing without having to boot to windoze and install it there first?
Sure man, Doom / Doom 2 are awesome games. If you like those, pick up serious sam EBWorld did a survey of all the big gaming sites and magazines, and Serious Sam walked away with best game of 2001. It's 20$. It's Doom (complete with funky sense of humour, 300 enemy battles on absolutely HUGE maps, 20 story tall final baddie) with 2001 level graphics. It's amazing; if you deem FPS's of today a little too involving, Serious Sam is non-stop heart-pouding action. No story, no dialog, no stupid NPCs, just shooting and shooting and ambushes and shooting and armies and shooting. If you think you like Doom over other FPS because of the awesome enemy spawning and item placement and non stop action, Serious Sam is your leap into the 2000s ... and at 20$, you have no excuse not to give it a shot! Shit, I'd have spent 50$ on it .. it truely was one of the most enjoyable games I've played and completed in YEARS.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Except for the fact that the Germans don't speak German! Just pseudo-Sgt. Schultz Germisch dialogue. You have no idea how "annoying zees sort uff sing isss".
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
RCTW wasn't actually developed by ID Software. ID merely "produced" it. RCTW's multiplayer part was developed by Nerve Software and the singleplayer was developed by some other developer who was recently bought by Activision. Can't remember the name though.
Thank you Thank you Thank you!
Last one in jail is a fascist.
you have been misinformed for quite a while. The only version released so far was the Mac OSX test. The port for the full game was given to Westlake Interactive tho, so that they could add support for OS9, having worked on previous Q3 engine games on the mac. The OSX/OS9 version is apparently in late beta, and scheduled to arrive late jan/early feb
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Actually, if you can find it at Best Buy, it's only $10. And the "sequel" comes out in two weeks.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
... or anyone that is reasonably adept at first person shooters.
While the (full) game is gorgeous, as you will see if you download the demo, it seemed a bit "short" to me.
I completed the game on hard setting in 4 hours and 50 minutes play time. Sorry, but that's just not the kind of value I was expecting.
Replay value is IMHO low, since the sluggish handling (as opposed to, say, Counter-Strike) makes it hard to use your carefully honed FPS skills.
As an example, any long-time Counter-Striker will automatically aim for the head of the enemy. While headshots exist in RtCW, they are not easy to land and generally seem very random, although every shot will go exactly where you aim. Even Counter-Strike's very random firing pattern feels more precise.
The final boss I managed to kill on my second try. On hard setting. That was disappointing.
Overall, I'd rate the game B+ for eye candy, coolness and first-time wow factor. After 5 hours though, it drops off fast.
By releasing the single player game so long after the multiplayer-only binaries, I suspect that Id has ensured the existance of lots of players like me, who bought the game for a fun multiplayer experience without the hassle of frequent reboots, but who weren't somehow "morally" above rebooting to Windows for a couple days to play through the single player game a month ago. Also, the RTCW single player game, although it's the best such that I've seen from Id, just doesn't cut it compared to Deus Ex or even Halflife. I could easily imagine busy people buying this for the (most fun shooter I've ever seen) multiplayer experience and ignoring the single player game altogether.
It takes a whole lot (Deus Ex is the only example I can give you right now) to get me to buy a game without a Linux port at this point. Linux is enough of an improvement over Windows for most of the productive things I do on a computer that my desktop spends most of it's time there; why would I want to have to spend minutes rebooting every time I want to take a break and goof off?
"Germany has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world."
That's because German cops scare the piss out of everybody.
That's not even challenging. Don't you know that exp, sin and cos are just 3 faces of the same coin when you understand complex numbers?
e^(au) sin(bu)
= e^(au) * (e^(ibu) - e^(-ibu))/(2*i)
= (e^(au+ibu) - e^(au-ibu))/(2*i)
integrate w.r.t. u
= (e^(au+ibu)/(a+ib) - e^(au-ibu)/(a-ib))/(2*i) + C
= ((a-ib)*e^(au+ibu) - (a+ib)*e^(au-ibu))/(a^2+b^2)/(2*i) + C
= e^(au)/(a^2+b^2) * ((a-ib)*e^(ibu) - (a+ib)*e^(-ibu))/(2*i) + C
= e^(au)/(a^2+b^2) * [a*(e^(ibu)-e^(-ibu))/(2*i) - b*(e^(ibu) + e^(-ibu))/2] + C
= e^(au)/(a^2+b^2) * [(a*sin(bu) - b*cos(bu))] + C
Don't expect to become anything more than an engineer. And leave Malda alone.
Doom had a "funky sense of humor"? Give me a break. It is/was a great game, but ... humor?
Serious Sam is the worst sort of crap to come out in ages. It's not even that fun the first time around--the gameplay consists of shooting several large swarms of monsters in one large courtyard, walk into the next large courtyard, and repeat.
Placement? What placement? The monsters teleport in. Items float about in the centers of these monstrous courtyards.
The final baddie is a big joke too: Where's the thrill of dodging 3 rockets in quick succession, the maddening race against an insanely fast and inexorable spray of chaingun bullets? The most "dangerous" attack the Serious Sam boss features is a spray of easy-to-dodge fruity color light bolts! And oh look, you can't kill it with all the guns you've been busy collecting, you have to play jump-into-the-hoop to blow it up!
There's a better comparison between Serious Sam to Duke Nukem 3D, in that multiplayer support is fairly decent on both games, and co-operative play is actually quite fun in Serious Sam... for the first couple of times. The large level sizes just make deathmatch a painful and not very enjoyable exercise.
"Best Game of 2001" my ass.
Germany has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world.
This kind of logic is ridiculous. Germany's rate of violent crime is directly a result of them selling RTCW in adult only stores...... This is about as ridiculous as people citing gun control laws as responsible in the UK.
We couldn't possibly have worse crime in the US because we put too much stock in rehabilitation...., or because people don't take the time and care to learn to use weapons for self-defense....., or etc....?
No, wait - you've convinced me. If we take RTCW off the shelves we will be so much better off as a society..... But why stop there, let's just ban the XBox, too (not such a bad idea, now that i think about it). And Personal Computers (so you can't play RTCW or MS Flight Sim). And box cutters - you know they're dangerous after 9/11 proved it. And....
While I can appreciate Tuxgames' wanting to package a complete game, I (like many other people) primarily want to play the MP version. And I assumed that when I ordered it early last Decemeber that it would ship as soon as they had packaged it. But that wasn't the case. I wrote tuxgames and asked them what they were waiting on, and they told me to join the mailing list so I could find out when it was going to ship. Not especially helpful.
If you make it hard to show support then only diehards will. If you make it easy, then id gets to see plenty of Linux gamers. For example, everyone at work has been bugging me to set up a server on our game machine. I've been telling them to wait until I get my copy. Now many of them are beyond the game, having played it for the last two months straight. So I'll get my copy, put it on our game machine and it won't get played very much because everyone's moved on. At least I'll have shown my Linux support. If they would have shipped with MP only and then emailed me a download link to the SP binaries when they becamse available, I'd have been very happy I bought from Tuxgames. I would have been playing on Linux with my Win32 friends damn near after the game went GM. As it is, I'm just grumpy that I paid for a game over two months ago and am just now going to get it.
I almost bought a Win32 copy a couple weeks ago, and maybe I should have. It just seems to me that waiting two and a half months is asking a lot simply to show "support" for a single-player portion of a primarily multiplayer game (how many of you still play Quake2 or Q3A in single player mode?). Besides, id ought to be able to gauge Linux support from their ftp logs, right?
I guess sometimes I feel left out enough as a Linux gamer without having to tell people why I'm waiting to set up a RtCW server...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Maybe you didn't set it up right? I run a GF2 mx 400 and all the games I have run flawlessly, not to mention all the loki demos I don't own.
I'm 26, and I'll admit it. Between my unhealthy addiction to my PS2, and my 200+ days on Everquest before I finally woke the **** up, I am an obscessive compulsive gamer. I check Penny Arcade every day even if there is not a new strip out. I walk around in the gaming store for hours just reading the back of boxes, even if I have already read everything about the game on the best damn review site on the net
However outside games I use Gnucash, Gphoto, Kword, VI, The Gimp, and all the other great stuff I can find that is GPL. I also use a couple of proprietary programs under linux, but I won't advertise for them here.
I absolutely pine for the day that I can use my fastest machine with my best video card/mouse/processor/ram for linux instead of MS Windows and feed my gaming twitch at the same time!
Not one of my friends would NOT like to escape to Linux to play games. Just ask them the next time they are in DAOC or some other direct X game that doesn't play nice with the windows key, and end up getting booted out by a miskey. Gamers hate 2 things above all others. Lag and that GD windows key.
Kharma Martyrs ?
Finally......
"Neither life nor happiness can be acheived by the pursuit of irration whims." --Ayn Rand
Its pretty intereting to note that in the last few months a few sources have been getting osme pretty good results when benchmarking Linux against Windows for gaming - specifically Quake 3 on GeForces. Hover a proper installer would be great. The CD uses Wise installer archives. There is a free Unix Wise archive extractor (sorry, lost the URL :( )but it needs to be updated for the latest archive format.
* This months Atomic (a well known Australian overlocking / hardware geek mag)
* The Register
It was inevitable, but I'm glad its happening. Onward penguin soldiers.
Now if Slashdot would post the news that Tuxracer 1.0 is avaliable for ordering I'd be a happy man.
I've played the RTCW demo on Windows and have been seriously underwhelmed. They've slid downhill ever since the first Quake as far as I'm concerned. I think they really need another Romero to help channel their technical abilities into a more exciting and presentable package. No Id game has creeped me out the way the original Quake did, until Half Life. I really liked the quasi-medieval-sci-fi angle to the whole thing which was entirely original, and eventually panned in favor of a 'safer' alternative.
Oh well. It ain't my company!
**>>BELCH
Granted, I only tried the OS X multiplayer version like a month or more ago, but what's so revolutionary about the flamethrower? Marathon had one a looong time ago, and in low-g levels one could use it as a pseudo-jetpack.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I dunno, maybe it's an american thing, but all this conveyor-belt stile Nazi fragging just isn't in my game (pun intended).
And talking about the o-so-hailed multiplayer expierience, Tribes 2 still kicks the ass of every other game up and down the street.
And Loki has a very good boxed T2 in their programm for quite a while now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Although your post strikes a lot of resemblance with a Troll, you do raise a good question.
Were the "enemies" portrayed as Germans ?
Before even playing the game, it is something that I wondered about. Back in the wolfenstein3D age, it wasn't much of a problem, but now, in our so politically correct times surely people would react to it.
And I think that greymatter/id did a great job at show that the bad guys were SS. All the bad guys wear the typical black uniform and the red armband with a swastika (albeit it's not really a swastika but a cleverly made logo that supposedly symbolizes nazi).
Also killing any civilians will abort your mission, and you will have to start the level again.
Murphy(c)
Nothing really, it is a conglomeration of some good things from many sources, but there is NOTHING NEW in the game. Not that that makes it a bad game, I really liked the variety of sniper rifles in the single player. I've not played the multi player yet so I could not comment.
And for the bank AC, mouse look, online play, and half way decent AI, though there is still MUCH room for improvement in RtCW. The holes in the AI show up at extreme range. They will just stand there and watch their buddy take a sniper round to the skull, without reacting in any way. Beyond that the game was a bit steep on the $$'s side but 10 hours of fun.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Actually, that is funny, your sig. The meaning of gruntle is "To grunt; to grunt repeatedly". So I guess a happy employee should be grunting while at work! :-)
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
I wonder if they fixed the SMP issues -- reportedly, the Windoze side of things will take advantage of two processors, but on linux RtCW can only use a single processor. I haven't been able to get the linux side of things going to actually test this on my SMP system though.
Haven't played enought to say anything about gameplay yet, but it certainly looks sweet as hell with all the eye candy jacked up and at high resolution (runs like a champ too - better hope BillyG doesn't see it, he might have a heart attack)
Just might have to go out and buy a copy - will that make me one of the 50 or so people who've bought Linux games? ;)
Oh yeah - anyone know how I can get it to display fps? Just idle curiousity...
sic transit gloria mundi
http://lhl.linuxgames.com/howto.shtml
What innovations have been made in music since Beethoven's 9th (the first symphony*i think* to use a chorale group)???
Wolf3d created/popularized a genre, just as the Beatles did with rock'n'roll, and Run DMC did with rap, and Marilyn Manson did w/ shock-rock.
if you dont like FPS's, dont bitch, and dont play them.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Hi, i'm an ANONYMOUS coward and I really LIKE mixing in ALL CAPS when its NOT really NECESSARY.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Great. So just as I finish single player rtcw in windows, out comes the Linux binaries. I could have avoided all that dual booting.!!!!
I don't care to buy hardware from a company that might oprhan me or DRM me, when their priorities change(only a fool would argue that Microsoft dosn't carry a big club in their xbox deal). GPL is required for software infrastructure in my book.
Do you know what the highest Linux card that works with video capture and 3d is? Is it the 32meg Radeon AIW? Is there a 7500 aiw type tv card?
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
wolf-linux-1.1b.x86.run - 9.2M
wolfspdemo-linux-1.1b.x86.run - 112M
wolfspdemo-linux-nomedia-1.1b.x86.run - 4.1M
can anyone comment on whether RtCW can use >1 processor? Maybe I should just check the Windows side, but I'd rather not reboot. :) I can say with certainty that it doesn't use >1 processor on linux, at least according to "top".
Very good that ID still spends time to port their magnificent games to Linux. ...
I hope they continue to do so, because there deffinately is a public for Linux fps.
And as long as they do so, I'll continue to buy their games and love playing them.
I just hope that if they release a Linux release of one of their future games, they
don't wait months to release it after the win32 version.
I definately think this unfairly skewed the distribution. I for one bought a win32 version but only played it in Linux.
Same goes for RTCW, only a pitty of the packaging system,
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Hate to burst your bubble, but CS is a mod for Half-Life, which is a beefed-up Quake 1 engine.