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25 Best Linux Games
bobz writes "The Linux Game Tome has announced the winners of the Happypenguin Awards. Games, toys and libraries in 25 different categories were nominated and voted upon by the Linux gaming community. Take a look at the best Linux gaming has to offer." Alas, no SimCity 4, and no Sims Online.
Forgive my ignorance, I don't use Linux for gaming. I game on consoles and my other PC with an OS that is less favorable to the /. masses. Anyway, are there actual stores where you can BUY games for Linux, or are they only primarily available from online sources?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I've always been amazed at the marvelous art of the Spectrum game designers. Cramped into a 8-bit environment with really sucking video, they managed to create very addictive games, with really non-trivial gaming ideas. (When you don't have too much resources to waste, every bit of your game better be brilliant). Now the newer generation computer games have all those fancy video effects, tons of multimedia played in your face, but the signal to noise ration is much lower IMHO than was on Spectrum. Kinda like the modern FX-laden films with no really good plot behind them compared to the old classics. Perhaps I'm getting old, but Spectrum emulation is one of the best gaming environments I've seen on Linux...
VKh
I find Vexed to be more fun than any other game lately. Nethack is nice too. I really haven't enjoyed commercial games in a while.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Doom was the original and even Castle Wolfenstein 3D before that should get the real credit but it didn't quite have the environment that Doom had (the secret levels paying homage to Wolf3D and Keen were great).
Playing Doom with my Gravis Ultrasound MAX sound card so I could hear guitars in the music was just awesome. Simply hearing the music for level 1 was amazing. And the stereo separation was so good that I could kill enemies with the (single barrel only) shotgun with my eyes closed. Played great on Linux in an X11 window too.
I wish another game would come along with the impact that Doom had. It was just SOOOO amazing and nothing has come close since. Every 3D shooter since is just the same old with better graphics and sound, aside from interesting forms of multiplayer action like Team Fortress and Infiltration. Pretty sad, actually, but at least 3D shooters haven't had to go down the cheesy movie route like adventure games.
Multiplayer really came along with Quake. In Doom it worked better as a cooperative feature. Deathmatch was really born in Quake, along with Capture the Flag, Team Fortress, etc.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
And your point is?
Of course some are over a year old, it takes time and costs money to port to Linux. Now if you stopped and thought about it and actually bought a couple of games for Linux from http://www.tuxgames.com you'd see more and more games appear a lot quicker from the bigger companies.
OTOH, have you played Uplink? Just because it didn't end up on Happy Penguins winning list does not mean a thing, its one of the big surprises of 2002; a game by a small development team that is very addictive and was released on Linux at the same time as the Windows version. Its here http://www.introversion.co.uk.
I didn't vote for Quake 3, its really quite sad people put that as the best game, as with all things Linux related my opinion differs. Perhaps next year they can limit the vote to commercial games released during the year. As for the free games, most are still in active development.
The upshot of your argument and others who make it is that we'll never help break break the monopoly on the desktop with that attitude, and yes to begin with we need to help create the correct amount of market share (yes its hard to manage), but do you, when you see a game you'd like to play, e-mail the publishers and developers with a kind e-mail?
Are you one of those people who runs a Linux gaming server? If so, write to the development and ask for a client and actually use that client.
StarTux
Right, but did you wait a year or two to buy Civ 2 before you started playing it? Did you wait another year or two for Civ 3 before you bought it? The fact is, new games only come out for Windows. If you like to play new cutting edge games without waiting for years for someone to (hopefully) port it then settle with Linux for games. Personally I'm like most people, my windows box (and PS2) is for games and my Linux box is my file server, shell box for programming, and all around general purpose workhorse. The Windows box is just a desktop for browsing IE only sites and a game machine. The right tool for the right job.
It does if the hammer is going to cost you $200.
I like your analogy though
Why use a $200 hammer that can't turn a screw when you can use a free screwdriver that can pound in a nail.
I'm sure someone can reword that nicely into a sig...
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
T2 is a newer game than Quake 3, has unbounded maps and much deeper gameplay.. yet does not even warrant a mention? Come on!
There is not a sports game category? I would like that category to be filled. Unfortunately, people see linux users as geeks unlikely to be interested in sports I guess...
Check it out Here
I'm afraid of the flames I'm gonna get for this... but the problem with people adopting linux isn't linux, it's people.
:)
See, you say linux has a good OS, many good GUIs (I really love GNOME), and office tools for people to work on. I wouldn't disagree with you there... but that's not the problem. People just don't wanna use linux. And by "People" I mean "the masses."
Here's an example. Dreamweaver is the most incredibly wonderful GUI-based web design program there is. It has everything anyone needs, and it outputs tight, compatible code. But do "people" use it? No.... I work in a place where we have enough licenses to go around, and what does everyone want? Frontpage. F'ing Frontpage. Not Claris Homepage, not Netscape Composer. F'ing Frontpage. And they ask me stupid things like "I want to use Frontpage, can you install it on the server for me?" ARGH!
See, Frontpage isn't requested because it's... well.. good... or useable... or functional for that matter. Everyone wants it because it's MS Word for web pages. It may be a disgusting train wreck of a program the likes of which should warrant its creators' executions on a public street in broad daylight as a warning to other MS programmers, but the "people" are too lazy and dumb to contest their friend who says "Frontpage is the best" because he heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from a sales-bot at CompUSA. Why do sales clerks reccommend Frontpage? Because it's wizard-based, and any monkey can do that... less chance of returned product.
So the moral? "People" will continue to use Windows and slink away from linux as long as we keep thinking that they're too stupid to learn anything else. It's about time to shirk the attitude of "I use linux, but that's because I'm a genius. You lower life forms can use Windows." It'll go a long way.
Oh, and never use your Windows discs as frisbees. Instead, keep them around to make copies for all of your friends.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Incredibly addictive stuff. I've been playing it for a year now and only just beat it on the hardest level. You won't regret checking out the demo at pompom.org.uk (you will, actually, if you value your time).
Gameplay is pure arcade goodness, with 3D graphics to match.
They've also recently released a robotron clone, Mutant Storm.
The first pattern I got was that if you have a line of three ones the one that is diagonal to the box is the correct one with the mine so long as you keep revealing ones around that box you can clear each of their border squares.
1 1 1 []
1 X 1 []
1 1 1 []
[] [] [][]
You could click all seven of the empty boxes [] as long as the bold 1 only borders the square that then must contain the mine and the other borders are all 1s.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Ok, no offence here... but if everyone had your opinions we'd still be using DOS and NES's. The current state of a situation is not a definition of the future state of a situation.
Or rather, because games are not widely available today doesn't mean they'll never be.
I really wish I had a nickle for every time someone said that real gamers only use Windows. It's one of the silliest ideas I've ever heard of. Obviously not every game company is going to drop everything and start porting games to a platform with only 1%,2%,5% (or whatever it is now) share of the desktop market. It's incremental. Everything is incremental in the market. As the market share increases for Linux desktops, so will software availablity. As that availability increases so will share.
I have no idea why people think that because it's a great idea to have Linux desktop machines, and Linux games on those machines, that magically the entire market should be converted over night. Nothing happens this way. Ever.
The move from Dos to Win3.x to Win95 was incremental too. When Win95 first came out you could have made the exact same argument about it vs. Dos. True many games would run under Win95 that were intended for Dos, but still in general the speed was better with a clean boot. So I heard the same things: real gamers use Dos, Windows is meant for business applications, not games... why would anyone want to use it for games?
Well, here we are, aren't we?
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
Wonder where freecraft fits in... http://www.freecraft.org/
...
Then again, this might be an only RTS
Take a look at it -- best non-free game, Quake 3 arena? That came out, what, 3 years ago?
The state of gaming on Linux is terrible, and, unfortunately, I don't see it getting better any time soon.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Let me bring something to light. Cutting-edge games are rarely made from big commercial software houses. It may have been true in the past but it's fading.
The problem: lack of innovation. How many first person shooters and mmorpg's do we need? The reason is that the cost of development has risen so sharply, that to recoup the cost of working on games, game houses have to make a sure fire hit. It's not an option to make a flop like Daikatana that 1. brings nothing new to the genre, 2. comes out late, and 3. sucks ass beyond compare. You have to make sure your game will sell.
In this scenario, companies will NOT venture into some new area or create a new paradigm of gaming. You'll get another FPS. You'll get another Quake, another Soldier of Fortune, another Civilization. Why? Because these are sure things. Not to go off on a tangent, but this type of thing has been ruling the music world in America and other countries for the last decade or so. You'll get nothing but more Britney Spears and other disposable stars because the cost of entry is so high, the industry bets on the easy winner. What sold yesterday? Package it up with a new paint job and sell it tomorrow.
No, friend, unfortunately the big game houses won't bring you the hidden nuggets of gaming goodness, unless another Quake or running-through-dungeons-swinging-swords is what you're after. Not to say these are bad things, but games like Uplink (fun and revolutionary) would have never rolled out the doors or made it through a proposal at Valve or Sierra or Activision or (fill in the blank). There are lots of games out there you've never imagined before, and you're missing out because your only source of amusement comes from the shelf at Best Buy.
I started using Linux eight years ago, with Slackware. I was pleasantly surprised that the Games set for Slack contained Doom. Pleasantly enough that I shot an email to the address on their page thanking them for taking the time to support Linux. One of the developers wrote me back saying "what are you talking about? We write it under Linux and port it to DOS..." I thought that was very very cool.
--Storm
I'll vote for that. I'm sure most of the readers haven't heard of Liquid War. It's a 2D realtime strategy game that is so incredibly simple in concept (probably took a long week to code up and get working) but very, very fun.
Unfortunately, the game's strategy is closer to Go than Chess, so the computer is a pretty lame player.
But fear not! Liquid War has network play! So you can try your hand against other human players, if you can find anyone who's heard of it and is therefore willing to play against you.
Anyone in the Sacramento greater metro area, goto my homepage, find my email, and email me. We'll do a Liquidwar LAN party.
fifth sigma, inc.
In order for a company to port their games, there has to be an audience.
In order for there to be an audience, people have to game under Linux.
By not gaming under Linux now, you are casting your vote to never have games under Linux.
Developers aren't just going to up and port their titles because they like Tux or something (well, besides Id).. They will port when they feel that enough people will buy their game for Linux if they go through the trouble to port it.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Granted, you may not care if you're part of the problem, and that of course is too bad for Linux gamers.
And you're wrong about it getting better.. It IS getting better. Games like Doom 3 and Ut2k3 are running under Linux - those engines are used for future games. (Quake 3 engine was used for many games, as will the Doom 3 engine.) Once developers see a reasonable profit to be made by porting their already portable game to Linux (due to the cross platform nature of Doom 3 or Ut2k3), it will be an easy decision for them to make.
Serious Linux gaming won't happen quickly (and people like you and other Linux advocates who hate Microsoft but love gaming under Windows even more will see to this), but it is happening.
Why do I keep typing pythong?