RTCW: Enemy Territory Full Version Released

bani writes "Following just a month after the test release, Enemy Territory has finally made a full version release! You can download the Linux and Windows versions for free, it does not require the retail Return to Castle Wolfenstein product in order to play. Hats off to Id+Activision+SplashDamage for giving the community such an excellent 3d FPS, for FREE!" Update by J : Id has set up a BitTorrent for the downloads. And if anyone needs a Mac beta-tester, I'm available :)

Comments

Hmm...

[Soukyan]

Quality, free 3D FPS games. What is the world coming... I smell armageddon.

Re:Hmm...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"I smell armageddon."

Whoever smelt it delt it

See any problems with this story?

[cOdEgUru]

YES!

Its official!. Michael is colorblind!!!

Green, Purple, RED!! GAAA!!!

Re:See any problems with this story?

[pete-classic]

Between the email link you alluded to in the subject and the red title bar I take it that Michael is (finally) on some sort of editor probation. ;-)

-Peter

Re:See any problems with this story?

[revividus]

A simple slip of the fingers, and you get #CC3333 instead of #006666.

It could happen to anyone.

Re:See any problems with this story?

[DJPenguin]

Isn't red title bars with a "see any problems" link what subscribers see on new stories? Must be a cock up of somesort if normal readers are seeing that...

solution

[Frothy Walrus]

I smell armageddon.

put your shoes back on.

Re:Anyone got a torrent for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/BT.html

w00t!

[HP-UX'er]

I'm just glad I downloaded it last night when Maarten announced it. I really like it!

Fileplanet ! NOOOOOOOOOO! Mirrors?

[curtisk]

[RANT]
I despise having to have an account for places like this, and when you do get through its usually slow as hell.
[/RANT]

Any Mirrors???!?!?

Re:Fileplanet ! NOOOOOOOOOO! Mirrors?

[curtisk]

Found another site.....

http://www.ausgamers.com/files/download/html/6569

Go get it!

Re:Fileplanet ! NOOOOOOOOOO! Mirrors?

[opk]

Can only see the Windows download there. Also seems to be at http://games.telstra.com/gamearena/resources/files /?action=details&id=6570

Re:Fileplanet ! NOOOOOOOOOO! Mirrors?

[the gnat]

My favorite is the 3D Gamers mirror, which requires that you have a special Windows-only download manager to get the files. When you click on the Linux installer, you get an error message saying "you do not appear to be running IE on Windows". Nice work, guys.

Re:Fileplanet ! NOOOOOOOOOO! Mirrors?

[Brummund]

On Debian, just do:

$ apt-get install bittorrent

then

$ btdownloadcurses --url http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/torrents/et-linux-2 .55.x86.run.torrent

(or btdownloadheadless if you don't have curses
installed)

enjoy! :-)

Urge

[kaamos]

.... to....... take..... red.......pill..... growing

No way

[mental_telepathy]

Am I sending an email to "Daddypants"
"Really officer, it's not about kiddy porn"

Please post a BitTorrent

[vcbumg2]

If we had a bittorrent we could help each other out...

Re:Anyone got a torrent for it?

[TTimo]

Yep. Torrent tracker running at Id since this morning. Slowly loading up.

Yes, but...

[Devil Ducky]

I'm very excited by this news. Not only is it free but it is available for Windows AND Linux, already.

Now, why is the story red? It really looks wierd on the front page, and probably on games.slashdot.org too since that color scheme is purple.

Re:Yes, but...

[Chilliwilli]

Red stories usually indicate that it's a story that has only been release to subscribers, hence the majority of us shouldn't be seeing this yet. Bug in slashdot me thinks.

Re:Yes, but...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Bug in slashdot me thinks.

What? It's open source and runs on Linux! It's not possible for it to have bugs!

/humor

Re:Yes, but...

[Planesdragon]

but don't give them the ability to have their voices heard any louder than a regular joe.

Why not? /. already gives those with UIDs a louder voice than the anonymous coward; why shouldn't those who help pay for the site get a louder voice?

In RL, courtesy gives the host a slightly louder voice in a topic of conversation (especially one with thousdands of participants.) No reason the same can't be true on /.

Re:Yes, but...

[maxpublic]

it gives subscribers the opportunity to have louder voices because they can comment before other people, and those first comments are usually modded to 4s and 5s.

Sounds like this is the point, actually. And if you're one of the folks who cares about karma, then you'd have another reason to subscribe.

I doubt it'll have much of an effect though. It appears that from the recent spate of postings provided by newer users for our reading pleasure, the Weekly World News crowd has arrived in force - and they care not a whit for karma.

Max

Re:Anyone got a torrent for it?

[mxs]

It seems there's absolutely no need for that ... (I guess I came to the game way too late); zerowing and gametab both have torrents for this already; I hope the slashdot editors will add it to the story RSN, too ;)

BitTorrent link

[fondue]

http://news.gametab.com/files/wolfet.exe.torrent

I haven't tried it yet, so download at your own risk.

BitTorrent Links

[CrezzyMan]

are here: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/BT.html

Re:BitTorrent Links

[TTimo]

The seeding is getting a lot better. Initial seed was configured to max at 70kb/s, and early /. posting of the torrent sent the number of downloaders to 150/200 in no time.

Now we have a good base of complete downloads seeding back with good bandwidth.

Re:BitTorrent Links

[jandrese]

Sorry, that must have been me. I was getting 950KB/s down and only 200KB/s up. It's done now though, and I've left the window open (but it's only doing 100KB/s up).

Re:another

[sweeney37]

let's try that again:

another link

Mike

however

[qortra]

Its fantastic that they are releasing it for free, and I'm very grateful that development took place for GNU/Linux and win32 concurrently. However, I'd still like to see a quality open source FPS sometime. It is important to note that this is still "free as in beer", not "as in speech".

Re:however

[Eccles]

However, I'd still like to see a quality open source FPS sometime.

Hopefully, keeping it closed may slow down the cheats a bit.

Re:however

[bigjocker]

Its fantastic that they are releasing it for free, and I'm very grateful that development took place for GNU/Linux and win32 concurrently. However, I'd still like to see a quality open source FPS sometime. It is important to note that this is still "free as in beer", not "as in speech".

Well, you are very welcome to write one and donate it to the comunity.

Re:however

[aardvarkjoe]

The only way to prevent cheats is to encrypt all data packets between the client and server...

And that still doesn't solve the problem, because you still have to trust the client program. If the cheaters have access to the program, they can have it generate any encrypted packets they want anyway.

Better would be to not let the client know anything that it shouldn't know: transmit all keystrokes/mouse movements to the server, and then have the server send the screen to display back. Of course, that's quite impossible with current bandwidth and processor/graphics card limitations.

Of course, that still won't spell the end of cheating. By the time we can do that, it will probably be easy to have a program that watches the screen and generates mouse movements accordingly, or something of that nature. It's an arms race, and the cheaters will always win.

This is, of course, the reason why I usually don't play games online any more. (Well, one of the reasons. Foul-mouthed twelve-year-olds is another.) It's too bad that the single player game of ET didn't pan out.

Re:however

[IamTheRealMike]

Though a free software FPS would be great, I don't think it'd be especially vital to have one (in the same sense that having a free OS is important), nor do I think the open source volunteer/services model works well for them.

The main thing with games is that they tend to be one offs. You take an engine, add artwork, music, gameplay, AIs, multiplayer servers etc - and then that's it. The upgrades are small. The improvements that can be made without disrupting the other playeres are minimal.

I wish I wasn't feeling so lazy, maybe I could articulate it better. But I don't think the incremental patch model would apply well to games. I'm not going to have any hangups about paying for them, nor playing them, regardless of how open the source is.

Re:however

[Matt Ownby]

Id has released many quality open source FPS games for Free. Perhaps you meant modern quality open source FPS games, but surely you must realize how unlikely this is considering the large development costs of these titles.

Quake 2 remains one of my most played games ever, and I am absolutely thrilled that id released the full source to that game. To me, quake2 is about as quality as it gets. Sure it's a little outdated now, but the basic physics and gameplay still appeals to me.

Re:however

[blibbleblobble]

Well, you are very welcome to write one [Free Software FPS game]and donate it to the comunity.

You may find some of these projects useful:

OpenSceneGraph -- the standard rendering platform for game graphics. Runs faster than commercial systems.
The virtual terrain project -- terrain modelling resources
HFTools -- landscape generation tools (admittedly level-design in blender is more likely for FPS)
Audio library -- most important bit of a game is the music!

Re:however

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"Better would be to not let the client know anything that it shouldn't know: transmit all keystrokes/mouse movements to the server, and then have the server send the screen to display back"

This is essentially how current games work. But instead of sending 30 bitmaps per second back in a video stream, they send 30 descriptions of the state of the game back per second, and allow the video card to render it.

The problem isn't with trusted clients. They already weed out any modded clients using the pure server mode, which requires the client to send checksums of itself to the server on connect. The problem is mainly that a proxy is ALTERING the keystroke patterns that is sent to the server. The proxy bots will keep track of where players are using the information the server sends the client (Note: depending on the game engine, the server might transmit every player's info to the client, or just players that are near his visible field of view, Massive Multi Player [MMP] games are usually pretty good about not telling you about people you shouldn't know about for obvious bandwidth reasons, but games like Q3, etc tell you about everyone to keep client side prediction code working good, and this is one reason why Q3 based games don't scale well past ~32 players/server). When you press the fire button, the packet that contains that command gets altered to include a movement command that will aim the cursor before the fire command.

A proxy bot could still intercept screen captures and aim the cursor for you, even if your server side render method were possible within the next 10 years (which it isn't). In fact, there are other bots that are standalone programs that do screen captures, finds the head of the enemy, and aims your mouse cursor to it when you want to fire. All this without using a proxy, or altered gamecode (note: this method is not solved via encrypted packets, but it is much more difficult to implement than proxy bots, and very uncommon from my experience).

We need a combination of encrypted data packets, a good way to trust clients (like checksums, AOL does it with their IM client even), and a good community of players that you know and trust to not cheat.

I play FPS's a lot. I run into bots rarely. Usually because I know most of the players I play with.

Ok, I've started the download

[stinky wizzleteats]

If I ever get it, I'll slap it up on my mutella node for everyone else. I think I'll ln -s it to "daddypants_sent_me_here.zip"

My guess as to why it is free

[DrXym]

RTCW is a superb game multiplayer, but it stinks singleplayer. I wonder if the ET developers had the rug pulled from under them when attempting to develop the sequel because of the single player aspect being too weak. Throw in an aging game engine and perhaps they saw no viability in selling it and decided to toss the already designed maps and MP bits out as a freebie.

Still I thought the ET test game was excellent and I'm looking forward to this. IMHO, Wolfenstein just kicks the shit out of the likes of UT2003 with their flashier visuals simply because it is not one tedious fragfest with everyone bouncing around like kangaroos.

Re:My guess as to why it is free

[clarkc3]

now if only they could release a patch to allow the germans to speak german like wolf3d I'd call it my favorite game of all time. I miss shooting guys that scream 'Mein leben', 'Spion!', and 'Eine leine Amerikaner!'

The I Speak English all the time germans in the game were the one quirk that always annoyed me

Re:My guess as to why it is free

[DrXym]

I said it stinks because I thought it did obviously. Compared to the likes of Medal of Honour, the gameplay seems unimaginative consisting of alternating levels of monsters and Nazis, all coming at you in dribs and drabs, triggered as you move from one room to another, and cheesy cut scenes. Nor are you even given the feeling that you're in a squad with computer team members which would assist in firefights. I didn't think it was even very atmospheric and it was disappointing to see many of the levels were just primitive and poorly rendered versions of the multi-player maps.

The cardinal sin as far as I was concerned was the motion sickness inducing design to the game. I really hate games where you spend a lot of time spinning around, wandering back and forth through bland levels of twisty staircases, or corridors to hit switches to open doors and things of that nature. At the end of a level I'm just about ready to throw up. Postal 2 suffers the same problem but even worse and I just can't stand games like that.

I don't have that problem with multi-player where you have objectives and spend most of the time fighting towards it, or other FPS games such as Grand Theft Auto so I can only attribute the problem to unimaginative and tedious level design.

Re:My guess as to why it is free

[jandrese]

Nor are you even given the feeling that you're in a squad with computer team members which would assist in firefights.

Huh?!? Are you sure you are thinking of RTCW? You don't feel like you're in a squad in RTCW because you aren't. Jack is sent in everywhere by himself. Apparently he is the only field operative left alive or something.

As for the spiral staircase problem, what are you talking about? There are maybe 3 or 4 spiral staircases in the entire game. You also rarely have to do any backtracking (unless you missed something), or at least I didn't.

By the third paragraph I'm pretty sure you're trolling, as no version of GTA I've ever seen is a FPS.

Red Title Bar

[Zach`]

A red title bar signifies a "subscriber-only" story. Notice that the timestamp is for 8:15am -- a time in the future. That is when the story will (or should) debut for non-subscribing Slashdot members.

There seems to be a glitch in the Mat^H^H^HSlashdot system, or perhaps they are attempting to lure more subscribers by showing off the features of the system.

Re:Red Title Bar

[grub]

..perhaps they are attempting to lure more subscribers by showing off the features of the system.

I was thinking this exact same thing. We must use the same brand of tinfoil for our hats.

Re:Anyone got a torrent for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.gametab.com/files/wolfet.exe.torrent

Win/Linux Games...Mac?

[cedmond]

I noticed, along with this game, that Unreal Tournament 2003 also was released for Win and Linux simultaneously with the Mac version (of UT 2003 anyway) coming out much later. I know that Mac games are always later to market but does anyone have a theory (or even an actual reason) that Linux versions come out along with the Win version? Is development for the Mac platform really that much different now with OS X? Just curious.

Re:Win/Linux Games...Mac?

[ZorinLynx]

Anyone who is a gamer on a Mac has long since unplugged the one button mouse and connected a mouse with three or more buttons and a scroll wheel.

This is a rather silly reason not to port a game to MacOS X...

Re:Win/Linux Games...Mac?

[GauteL]

The reason here is that lots of ID Software developers use Linux themselves.

Development for Linux and MacOS X is still very much different. They may both be POSIX-compatible at the core, but there are still plenty of APIs on top of them that differ..

ID Software could possibly release versions for MacOS that uses the Apple X-server.

Re:Win/Linux Games...Mac?

[moebius_4d]

I'd started to say something sarcastic here, but let me say it straight. Blizzard is the company that threatened legal action against b.net, which was free software that let people play together on their lans without talking to battle.net. A battle.net emulator, essentially.

I realize that it could be used to play warez copies of WCIII, and that battle.net could not. But it was pretty clear that there were substantial uses other than facilitating the enjoyment of "pirates."

I wrote them and told them that, my shelf of blizzard games notwithstanding, that I would never buy another blizzard product. I'm standing by that statement, until they either change management or issue an apology. I hope other /.ers will remember who their friends are.

Thanks !

[ATAMAH]

>Hats off to Id+Activision+SplashDamage for giving >the community such an excellent 3d FPS, for FREE!"
Special thanks to fileplanet.com for hosting the linux version.
And as a token of our appreciation we will slashdot the hell out of fileplanet.com. Thanks once again guys.

Re:Anyone got a torrent for it?

[EpsCylonB]

ask and you will recieve...

http://news.gametab.com/files/wolfet.exe.torrent

Avoid File Planet lameness, BT link

[Anonymous Coward]

et-linux-2.55.x86.run.torrent

Macintosh?

[mbbac]

I haven't been keeping up with news about this game. Is there a Macintosh version coming out? Return to Castle Wolfenstein is available for Mac OS X, so I would think it would be easy to get this out for it as well.

**Jaw Drops**

[MoeMoe]

Either these companies are very smart or very stupid, I personally would have bought this game in store for a max of $50 which I'm sure other people would have as well and therefore increase revenue for the companies, but the fact that they are giving it away will really get the word out on them as well and give them the image of a "gamers gaming company" so when they will charge players for thier next big hit, people will remember the name and buy in (I know I would). Either way, Kudos to them for having the guts to give it away and make many MANY gamers very happy :)

Thanks guys!!!

Mac Torrenting...

[BMonger]

Since I can't really use either version of the game on my Mac (which is fine, it'll let me get work done :) ) is it beneficial for others for me to download via the torrent link or not? Even though I can't use the file, once I've downloaded it fully I'd only be helping the upload bandwidth I presume...

Re:Anyone got a torrent for it?

[illumina us]

RIAA/MPAA: MY GOD? YOU'RE USING BITTORRENT! PIRACY PIRACY PIRACY!!!! Friendly Neighborhood Geek: But, the game is free. How am I pirating it? RIAA/MPAA: Game? What game, it's a moving image with sound files, that means it belongs to us! We're talking to our lawyers right now! Friendly Neighborhood Geek: Ok... time to put up another firewall and set my pgp encryption to 4096 bits.

Need it

[muffen]

/me is looking for Enemy Territory.
I have Doom I&II for trade. I will give leech access to this ftp site as well.

Sorry, just had an IRC-warez flashback :)

Seriously, it looks like a good game, and I'm impressed by the fact that it's free.
This is set to be a big hit, as you can play online with it, which today is the only thing that counts.

direct WGET link for Linux version

[Chuck Bucket]

I'm seeing 106.96K/s from AU - not bad...

• wget http://files.ausgamers.com:81/wolf/enemyterritory/ et-linux-2.55.x86.run

P

Re:direct WGET link for Linux version

[billatq]

I'm seeing 106.96K/s from AU - not bad... wget http://files.ausgamers.com:81/wolf/enemyterritory/ et-linux-2.55.x86.run

Yeah, but I'm getting 234 kB/s off of bittorrent :). My, I love how it's the only thing that actually gets faster as more people hit it. Reminds me of the scene in the Matrix Reloaded where Neo is fighting the fifty agent smiths, only without Neo or the agents or the cool computer generated background.

Re:Weird

[grub]

Anyone know why Slashdot is all weird this morning?

Just this morning?

Gentoo Soon

[anourkey]

It probably won't be long before Gentoo (aka Gentoo Games) releases a LiveCD version for those of us who want insane frame rates! *Drools*

Re:What's the big deal about bittorrent?

[Troed]

I'm on a 2.5/0.75Mbit ADSL. Current BT-speeds: 250kb/s down, 70kb/s up.

Good enough for me.

Re:no such thing as a free lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pardon the cynicism, but has anyone checked this for spyware?"

Not bloody likely is it?

Id software have long shown a commitment to both gamers and linux, and this gesture is nothing but designed to garner goodwill - why would they risk it for something thats worth jack shit anyway?

Including Spyware which would inevitably get discovered is completely at odds with what they're trying to achieve.

feh.

Re:I was a tester for this game

[Doug Neal]

I've found OpenGL games to run just as well under Linux as they do in Windows, if not marginally faster. And that's with Wine as well as Linux native. (All the Quake 3 based games I have tried work perfectly under Wine, fully hardware accelerated. So does Counterstrike)

Sounds like you don't have hardware accelleration set up properly (or at all). Your best bet is with an Nvidia or maybe ATI card (I think the Nvidia drivers are slightly more polished than the ATI drivers at this point but I'm not entirely sure as I don't use an ATI).

Context info

[stinky wizzleteats]

When the last two stories were posted, they included a mailto link to "daddypants@slashdot.org" labelled "problems with this article". Now that they've pulled it, my post looks stupid. FYI.

Another server to slashdot

[AndersM]

I wonder if the Norwegian University of Science and Technology can handle this link posted on slashdot...

Let's find out. =)

Re:Another server to slashdot

[AndersM]

Here ya go.

Good lord, 500cc's of glucose up the arm...

[Bowie J. Poag]

As a long-time RTCW addict, I can tell you this much -- The original RTCW in multiplayer mode is enough to keep you hooked for months. I mean, come on... Any game that allows you to shoot someone in the face point blank with a high powered rifle, drag their body off into a dark corner, set them on fire, and jump up and down on their chest while stabbing them in the face... What more could you ask for?

Linux Version

[DarkSarin]

You can get the linux version here.
You may have to wait to download the file, as they only allow 30 concurrent downloads, but I am getting 211Kb/sec down, so that's okay.
16 minutes into the download I am 80% done.

Re:no such thing as a free lunch

[Minna Kirai]

It is not. RTCW:ET is a full game on its own, completely separate from the original RTCW. It's not advertising or anything like that.

(I suspect it's a feel-good release of a product that was judged good enough to get played, but not sufficient to be profitable against free FPS like America's Army)

Mac OS X version?

[froggle2003]

Alright, there's a Linux version, so is there a Mac OS X version?

I have some experience doing OpenGL both with Linux and with Mac OS X, and if they could get it working on Linux then they should definitely have an easy time getting it to work on OS X. Under Linux it's tricky to switch to fullscreen under X11 in a robust fashion: in a fashion that doesn't leave your WindowMaker dock or GNOME panel still showing. The last time I tried to do it with SDL the sample didn't work. Also, under Linux you of course can't programmatically change the display adapter's mode unless the end-user explicitly puts the mode in their /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or whatever.

Let's not even get started with the state of programming decent sound on Linux....

Under OS X there are easy, supported ways to get fullscreen OpenGL modes, switch the display mode, and program great sound. You can find samples at Apple's developer site.

Re:Fileplanet: the virtual equivalent of "Allentow

[default luser]

Every slashdotter had a pretty good shot,
To get spot inside the Public Server lot,
If something happened on the way to that place,
They threw a 'Personal File Server' subscription in our face!

Tips for Red Hat 9/nvidia users

[IamTheRealMike]

OK.

NPTL breakage (thanks glibc!) means you have to run X using LD_ASSUME_KERNEL if you are using the nVidia drivers. If you don't, you'll have wierd problems, like errors about the static TLS memory size being too small. Here's how to make it work.

1) Install the game.
2) DO NOT hit start, there is a bug in the installer, which will run the game as root if you run it from the installer. D'oh.
3) Once installed, hit ctrl-alt-f1 to get to a console. You can get back to the desktop at any point by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F7.
4) Log in as root, at the text terminal
5) Now enter the following commands exactly as shown:

export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
X -ac :1

6) You will be looking at any empty screen. Press ctrl-alt-f7 to go back to your desktop. Now enter these commands:

export DISPLAY=:1
xterm & metacity &

Now press ctrl-alt-f8 to go back to your dedicated gaming display :) Running, run "et" in the xterm that has appeared. The game should now start reasonably quickly, and let you set up a profile.

You can use ctrl-alt-f7/f8 to switch between game and desktop at any point.

Good luck, and have fun!

Re:Tips for Red Hat 9/nvidia users

[IamTheRealMike]

Yawn. I was expecting a comment like that from somebody. "Never" is a very long time. We'll see.