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Multiplayer Linux Games
gooshy1 writes "Ok it's getting near the end of the year and people are beginning to wind down for the holidays. What I want to know is are there any decent multiplayer games that an office of about 4-7 can play, preferably action. The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question. A favorite is BZFlag due to its playability and nice tunable graphics. All thoughts welcome, and Merry Chistmas/Happy Holidays :-)"
No offence, but I think your concept of "all that great" isn't the same as most of the world. For example, Quake 3 was designed to run comfortably on a 300mhz machine with one of those newfangled "3d accelerator" cards (in my case, a voodoo3 2000). A P4 1.7Ghz with a 2 year old NVidia graphics card would still be considered by many people to be of "gimme gimme gimme!" quality.
quake runs on pentium ONE machines, what are you on?
...P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards...
Hmm... you sure you can't play Quake on those machines? I'm pretty sure you can get that running with no problem, but then again, I could be wrong.... we are talking about the original Quake, right? I would look into it.. a great game for LAN play!
I've played Quake 3 on and AMD Duron 800 MHz and it works fine. Some of the newer games though...eh wouldn't work to well.
I know they aren't action. (at least not any i've heard of) But online game sites are pretty fun, and you don't need a good computer either to play on Yahoo, Playsite, or the likes.
Nothing like it
I can play Doom on my pocket pc, so you should be able to play it on a desktop. Same with Quake, it is the same thing I am sure.
-Vib, videogame freelancer for news0r.com, videogame.net, and vnorby.tk
P4 1.7s and 2 year old graphics cards are just GREAT for Quake and the like. I play Quake3 weekly on such a system. The Nvidia card is slightly newer, but not much, and I'm playing at 1600x1200. Even with a GeForce2 for instance, I would expect excellent gameplay, if at a slightly lower resolution.
NeverWinter Nights works very well on the same system. There's lots of options.
I can remember working the Christmas shift and playing Warcraft many years ago on much lesser systems (albeit on Windows back then)
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
"The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question." Those box's will EASILY play any form of quake/doom/half-life/ut...
Um, why is Quake out of the question again? These machines are plenty fast enough to play the original quake all though Quake3. If 3D rendering is a problem (binary module issue or licensing or something), try the original Quake1 NetQuake in software rendering mode.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Freeciv. Sorry, its not action though.
Starsiege: Tribes.
It is old, came out around 1998 or so. Single best multiplayer game. Infinite skill ceiling, fast gameplay, dirt cheap, and runs well on anything. I still play it regularly. (can you tell?)
Where have we come as a nation, as culture when a P4 1.7Ghz is classified as a "not all that great" machine.
I set this up for a few of us at the office, and now we have up to 20 players on a friday afternoon, including some VPN'ing in from home to play.
We've managed to also include managers and some people 40+ who haven't played FPS games before, and after a week they become a lot more proficient.
Currently running it on a linux server (700 MHz box next to me), and we play it from our 2.0Ghz desktop PC's.
Best thing about it.. it is FREE.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
How about counterstrike? It doesn't require a high end machine infact P4 1.7 is a over kill for counterstrike.
PS Doom
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Xblast is quite good. Easy to setup and get the hang of. Very very low requirements to run.
http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/
> The machines that we use are not all that
> great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia
> graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out
> of the question.
( Score: -1 (redundant) )
When you go looking for games to play try to find a list of what're called "Minimum Requirements". You'll find your machines are more than adequate for a lot of the games out there (even that fancy Quake game!)
Definitely Cube! It's like a basics version of half-life for free.
http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
Esoteric reference.
i run a dual 450 and i play all the half-life mods and they run better then ever. i "use to" play all the time on a voodoo3! so don't give me that you can't play any of the good games. they might load slow but once they load they should run fine.
Nethack!
Nettrek!
NetXRobot!
MultiWumpus!
C'mon, if it were designed in the 70s it had to be good. It's the Linux philosophy. Don't pine after those fancy modern things that were developed with WinTel boxes in mind. Stick to the good old Unix roots.
this story sucked, but your link ruled. thx mang. =)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I played Quake1 for years on my P1-200mhz. I don't see how this is out of the question for your p4-1.7ghz and Nvidia video cards.
Unless you are talking about Quake3 etc. Even then, I play Q3 all the time on a Tbird 800mhz w/GF2. Your machines are far better than this comp.
I guess you just have something against Quake. In that case, my suggestion would be Half Life or UT.
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
Sheesh, I remember playing Quake 1 on my now pitiful 133mhz pentium 1, and you're crying about a p4 1.7Ghz?? I myself am still running on a 1Ghz Athlon, and am satisfied with it (so far, it's beginning to be a bit slow now relatively).
Unreal Tournament plays under Linux. But I've only played multiplayer under Windows so I can't speak for the net code.
It will run on just about anything that has 3D acceleration. It's oodles of fun. And it can be had for $10 in the bargain bin at CompUSA.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
so Quake and the likes are out of the question
Um... you may not be aware that when Quake 1 came out, it ran great on a Pentium 1 / 120Mhz machine with software video rendering.
Quake 2 ran just fine on a Pentium 2 / 233Mhz machine with a 2Mb 3dfx Voodoo 1 graphics card.
Quake 3 runs just fine on my old Pentium 3 / 800Mhz machine with an nVidia GEForce 2 (which was the definition of good - in summer 2000).
Any hardware greater than the machine specs listed above is going to have absolutely no problem at all. You may not get 400fps in Quake 3 benchmarks - but nobody needs that level of performance to be able to play and enjoy the game.
On your 1.7Ghz machines, Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament will run just fine as will Unreal Tournament 2003 (assuming you at least have a Geforce 2).
http://gtetrinet.sourceforge.net/
Loads of fun, multiplayer, great for an office enviornment, and very light on hardware...
-PhaseBurn Welcome to Linux country. On quiet nights, you can hear windows reboot.
Wolfenstein Enemy territory would be an ideal game.. It should run with no difficulties on your machines and it is also free..
A quick google search turned up this URL, for example, to download from..
grab from here
Give Freedoom a go - the PrBoom port runs on Linux and supports multiplayer. Not all the freedoom levels support deathmatch yet but theres a huge archive of deathmatch wads you can play under it instead.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
With such low end systems, you'd better stick with MUDs.
If my _great_ P2 450MHz machine with 128MB RAM and an Nividia TNT2 with 16 MB of VRAM can play Counterstrike via Wine, I'm really not sure what to recommend for your "not that great" machines...
enough said.
comment directly in my journal
and play Americas Army!
http://www.americasarmy.com/
runs on the UT2k3 Engine but my 1.4 TBird and NVGF3 seem to do ok.
http://legendsthegame.com - action game, multiplayer, scalable graphics etc. download from any of these mirrors http://shiftermod.com/legends/legends-0.3.6.1.tar. gz
http://borganism.com/legends/downloads/legends-0.3 .6.1.tar.gz
http://themasters.co.za/legends-0.3.6.tar.gz
Unreal Tournament Classic (not UT2003) runs great in Linux. You can purchase it for around $10 in the bargain bin at my local CompUSA, so everyone could afford to legally have a copy on their machine. It runs just fine on my daughter's Celeron 700 with a four-year old Voodoo card, so I suspect it would run great on your newer faster better office PCs.
There are lots of mods for it if you get bored with the factory DM, CTF, and assault modes.
Also, as many have mentioned, quake3 runs fin on a box like yours. It's a great game and is getting pretty cheap now too. My family and friends still find UT classic and Q3 just as fun, if not more, than the newer games.
It'll run, but barely on those P4 1.7 GHz boxes. Luckily, those NVIDIA can do 16 color screens pretty good, so you'll be fine there.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
With Linux being free and America's Army being free.... all you need is the PC hardware and a broadband connection. "Frag out" indeed.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I have a 3 year old computer 1GHz Athlon and GeForce2. I have yet to run into a game I cannot play.
Smeghead every day of the week.
those machine should be able to handle Quake 1-3 and Unreal Tournament fine in linux. UT2K3 and tenebrae quake would take a better vid card. If you are willing to install WinE Half-Life and Counter-Strike will also play perfectly fine. check out more at linuxgaming.net
I suggest Unreal Tournament its a pretty good fps and it supports companies porting their software to linux, all you need is an installer that can be downloaded from here [lokigames.com]
Freeciv is multiplayer and works on about any machine that can run X comfortably. If you want more action, may I suggest the classic XPilot?
Marklar: marklar
I use an athlon 1.5ish-ghz with an old geforce, and Quake 3, UT2003 and the like run quite nicely at high resolutions (1024x768), and that's with the crappy linux nvidia drivers. If it's slow, drop the resolution down, you'll be fine. Actually, even RtC Wolfenstein runs okay at low res., although I hate it :)
Other fun choices: Armagetron (tron clone), or TEG (a RISK clone) for the strategy-minded. I hate BZFlag though, I always get wasted on their servers. There are also the latter day DOOM rewrites; I use PRBOOM, compatable with all the old ones.
If you like turn based fantasy strategy multiplayer free games Battle for Wesnoth is your game.
Battle for control of villages, using variety of units which have advantages and disadvantages in different types of terrains and against different types of attacks. Units gain experience and advance levels, and are carried over from one scenario to the next campaign.
You must have meant .17 Ghz because otherwise your system will play just about any game on the market.
So if this is the case fire up a good old game of Hearts. I've played it over the network on a P133. With all the eye-candy turned on and full resolution.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
This is a reasonably playable game if you're a bit of a trekkie. It's not entirely original and has some bugs, but it's fun.
I believe Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory runs natively on Linux. Enemy Territory Webstie. Then again I may be wrong =/
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
Masssively multiplayer, you could play it on your P90 with 512K graphics card if you wanted to.
Beta 4 just started a new round today. Get in while you still have a chance to win!
AstroWars
in a really cool office. If you want something that works on a "puny" P4 with a "measly" 1.7 ghz...will "Hearts" work ok?
What?
Linux binaries that run the Windows Medal of Honor client have been created and MoH runs decently on modest hardware (I've played on FreeBSD, 1.8ghz, Geforce 4 440MX), I recommend it for some good old-fashioned killing fun.
We play Qauke 3 here at this net cafe on AMD Duron 700s w/ some sort of 32mb Nvidia cards... I can't remember exactly which model but they are at least 2 years old as well. Anyway... I can get online w/ our DSL connection and frag total strangers.
Unreal Tournament works fine @ 1024x786, and so does Counterstrike. I even installed and played Battlefield 1942 (800x600)... but that was pushing it heh.
America's Army would be a great game to play in your Office LAN party! Especially since its available on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
486's made a good Quake server, console only...
I've played "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" (both original and the new "Enemy Territories") on a P3-700 with an NVidia GeForce 2.
Under W98, Linux and FreeBSD using FreeBSD's linux ABI emulation. All worked well a decent graphic settings. (1024x768 with good textures.)
I don't see how a P4-1.7 can do any worse.
I've played Q3 on a PII 350 MHz with an NVidia TNT1 (yes, I said one). I don't think your system should have any problem. If not you need to find out how to turn on the OpenGL acceleration :)
games are mostly a preference thing. you specify action but i know people who will hate wolf:et to the end yet play day of defeat and have fun, but they are similar games (ww2 team based fps). small differences in games can lead to somebody not having much fun.
also consider skill levels of the players involved, i often have problems deciding what to play with my room/floormates because there's always somebody that totally kicks ass at any particular game (me usually, but it sucks more for me than them). what usually helps in this case is to introduce a relatively unknown to all yet still can be enjoyed type of game.
games that can be enjoyed by most people aren't games that are played over a computer network. i'm talking about games like touch football, ultimate frisbee or, since it's christmas time, snowball fights. have you thought about going outside at all? computer games are fun but it's hard to force a group to form out of any particular one.
i had to learn to accept this when quake lost significant popularity. for a while i couldn't believe anybody would not want to play such an awesome game as quake.
(Return to Castle Wolfenstein) Enemy Territory has a native linux version - i run it very comfortably on a p3-933 with a geforce2 GTS.
savage.s2games.com
Linux & Windows version. $40, but it online or play the demo for free. Very very cool game, and lots of Linux guys playing at any given time.
Arafat*s Book-Keeping Department Yields
Bill Linking Him to Suicides
2 April: This piece of correspondence was discovered by Israeli troops who went through the files in Yasser Arafat*s personal accounting department in Ramallah. It is an itemized bill signed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades * Palestine, and dated September 16, 2001, exactly five days after the September 11 suicide attacks in the United States.
The document is a routine request for Arafat to approve the daily outlay for the arming of suicides with explosives and ammo, their memorial ceremonies and funeral posters.
It is part of the body of evidence Israeli troops gleaned at Arafat*s headquarters in Ramallah and demonstrates that Arafat supervised every last detail of the Palestinian suicide offensive.
Translation into English:
1. Cost of posters for Martyrs of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: Azam Mazhar, Osama Juabra, Shadi Afouri, Yasser Badawi, Ahad Fares (inserted by hand: NIS2,000).
2. Cost of printed notices, invitations and mourners* tents (inserted by hand: NIS1,250.
3. Cost of attaching personal photos of these martyrs to wooden panels, plus those of Tabeth Tabeth and Mahmoud al Jamil (inserted by hand: NIS1,000).
4. Cost of memorial ceremonies for martyrs. Memorial ceremonies held for Martyr Azam, Martyr Osama (inserted by hand: NIS6,000)
5. Cost of electrical goods and miscellaneous chemical substances (for manufacturing explosives and bombs * the largest item. (One prepared explosive device * NIS700 at least) We need 5-9 devices per week for the squads in the different regions (inserted by hand: NIS x 4 = NIS20,000 per month)
6. Cost of bullets (cost of Kalashnikov ammo is NIS *8 per bullet; M-16 bullets cost NIS2-2.5 each) We need bullets supplied on a daily basis.
7. Note: Available are 3,000 Kalashnikov bullets @ NIS2 each. We need a sum of money at once to buy them (inserted by hand: NIS22,500 for Kalashnikov bullets * NIS60,000 for M-16 bullets)
In conclusion, glory and pride to those who support our brave resistance against the occupation. Revolution until victory.
Link please
You mean, besides DDoS'ing SCO?
Try few free (of cost) games:
strategy
FreeCiv - new version was just released, FreeCiv is not as good as Civ3 in single player, but it's very playable in mp
TEG - if you want simple strategy (it's risk clone)
lgeneral - panzer general clone
action
RTCW ET - IMHO best team action game
Cube - simple multiplayer FPS, with nice graphics
Armagetron - 3D tron implementation
sport
CannonSmash - table tennis simulation
foobillard- billard simulation
misc
Scorched 3D - scorch (or for younger slashdot users: worms) clone
I've played Quake3 on a p166 with a voodoo2. It ran like balls, but, I mean, if _that_ can run it, then I would hope that your p4 would do alright.
OMG that is shocking news..More information available here
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/15/arafat.s hot.in.compound/index.html There the link to the CNN story.
Any games that have hexadecimal input/output?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
No offense, but for gaming wouldn't it make sense to plunker down $100-180 for a decent console?
Wow, your article show clear bias towards the middle east. Thats a very bad article covering Arafat's death. I think its clear he was a terrorist and deserved to die. I think You make me sick supporting Islam while you hypocritically live in the west. not fun to have people like you around, why dont you just move to an Islamic country and enjoy them up close and person?
I'm looking for Multiplayer Deathmatch Solitaire!
-- There is four mistake in this sentences.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you were a fan of scorched earth then scorched3d shouldn't disapoint. link
kyjello is too damn smooth to make a signature.
The ratio of "Quake 3 runs on your hardware you shit/*"&("/ bastard" to real answers must be a bit... unbalanced. This story should be added to the FAQ under the question "How do I not post an Ask Slashdot?" !
americas army man!
oops sorry, wrong link; try this one
I have seen Quake played on and old, and I DO
mean OLD...286!! You sure you havent been to
your local woods and ingested psychoactive
'shrooms?
Try the new version of BZFlag. It is a rather fun game. If you see me in game just say hi and don't move so I can kill you. My BZFlag nick is BSD-IS-DYING.
Not only does it run natively on linux, it performs GREAT! I get ~90 fps
And, it has a map creation utility that also runs natively under linux www.gtkradiant.com
Let's play Global Thermal Nuclear War.
paintball
xpilot is an oldie but a goodie. Excellent action, and certainly not too hard on those creaky 1.7 GHz machines of yours.
there are two versions:
The original xpilot
improved xpilot
You left out the part where he was arms locked around Sharron. Last recordings of them in the meeting they were in, was 'hold me' moments before a hail of gunfire peppered the meeting room.
Ok, I'm going to rant so mod me down appropriately.
The system you just spec'd isn't too far off from one of mine (P4 1.8A, 512MB RAM, GeForce2MX400) from which I play Enemy Territory from perfectly fine (from Fedora, and RH8, 9, Mandrake 9.1, Slackware 9.0, a homespun distro, the list goes on). Your system is more than capable of playing a good deal of games including but not limited to:
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament 2003
Americas Army
Duke Nukem Forever (just kidding folks) :)
So, you have plenty of options out there and these games will play on lesser machines as well. Hell, some of those games can be spun up on Live CDs (Gentoo Live Game CDs come to mind) so you don't even need to install them to play. Just do a little hunting and you will find plenty of current games out there that work. Granted, most are FPS but if you're into that thing, you've got plenty to play around with....
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
But if you have to interact with people, go with a pen and paper role playing game. People love that shit.
postmodernsideshow.com
If you like Risk, there's always TEG. No 3D graphics or even sound, but somehow I got addicted to it.
Just get version 0.10.x (for Gnome 1) because 0.11 (for Gnome 2.x) crashes under Gnome 2.2 and 2.4 (only works in 2.0).
A lot above has been said of Q3A running on low spec machines (hey, I ran it fine on a Celeron/400 (before I O/C'd it) with an original NVidia Riva TNT card). As for more modern games, I have seen and played UT2003 without difficulty on a P3/800 with a TNT2...
A GF2MX (or whatever) and P4/1.7 is a whole load faster than that. Basically, just becuase they are office machines and have 'cut down' (MX or similar) graphics cards, don't expect them not to be able to handle all but the most modern games at the highest resolutions.
I had running quake3 running fine both linux an windoze on my old 400Mhz cpu, with voodoo5 and 256MB ram.
Now I can emulate counterstrike with no complaints on my new athlonxp..
Bolo... The ultimate strategy/action game that was originally developed for the Mac but has now been re-written for windows/Linux.
http://www.winbolo.com/
Get it and enjoy.
Zoid.com
One game says it all! www.enemy-territory.com. something perfect for the warhungry penguins.
This is not a troll post, the guy really is a moron. Read what he wrote. Think about it, hard.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
...that if you want to play multiplayer games that much, partition your disk and install Windows.
It's what most non-hypocritical Linux enthusiasts do... They realize Windows is still strongest in terms of available games. They use Linux where it's *better*, instead of settling for less in the name of misguided zeal.
well i remember playing quake on my p1 100 Mhz with NO 3d acceleration at 30 fps, so i'm sure that a p4 1.75 GHz can easily do 50 fps without a 3d card.
so my recomendation is easy off that christmas punch and consider games like quake and it's sequals, which still run on my celeron 400a with a tnt2 card can run quake 3 and rtcw at over 30 fps with a couple things turned off but not much really
i might also suggest that not being able to play it acceptably as you not being good at playing the games themselves very well. just cause someone continually schools you in the art of fps doesn't mean it's unplayable at a certain speed, it means you need to get better and adapt.
Depends if you're into the more realistic shooter type dealy, but even if not, Unreal Tournament (the old one) won't disappoint.
http://infiltration.sentrystudios.net/
There is a great game being developed with Garagegames' "Torque" engine. It has rock-solid 32-player multiplayer, high fps, emboss terrain bump-mapping, and, most importantly -- great, unique movement dynamics.
:) Great guys on that dev team, though -- download the game, it comes with a modified version of a stable auto-updater program. Download it once, and if nobody is playing, you'll always have it -- when the next release comes out, you can autoupdate! Also, the team is very good about arranging regular scrimmages for everyone that is interested.
Well, not unique entirely. Some might even argue that the game is nothing more than an independent resurrection of a type of gameplay that was accidentally (bug) introduced in the first game of a franchise, was LOVED TO PEICES by the fanbase and introduced thousands of players to the game, and then was nixed in the second installment because an arrogant jackass (*cough*he made Planetside*cough*) who got owned every time he played the game in multiplayer decided that player skill was overrated and unfair to the majority of players.
http://hosted.tribalwar.com/legends
My work here is done.
Summary:
Legends. A team-based multiplayer FPS with a very deep and well-developed movement-and-combat model.
What I want to know is are there any decent multiplayer games that an office of about 4-7 can play, preferably action. The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards
and you are gonna get paid for those hours ? I want to work for a company like that !!
Lay down paper towels on the floor before playing to collect any spilled lubrication. You may also want to place a paper towel under the bottoms butt. Wipe off the play area and the bottom completely before leaving the play area. It is the tops responsibility to make sure the lube is wiped off the bottoms butt and that the floor and sling or table is wiped off and clean for the next person.
Gnocatan, the Gnome 2 settlers of catan clone, is a lot of fun.
As surprisingly most games that are out now I could run on my machine, minimum sys requirements for games have now just past the 800mhz numbers, with the exception of 3D heavy FPS and RTS games, so you could run quake 3 superfine on your machine, since its a linux box. Would recommend HL but can't.
Why not try the latest and greatest FPS, America's Army. It will run OK on your 1.7G machines, and it has Linux, Mac and Windows versions - an added benefit is you'll get higher FPS on the Linux version too! It's free, what more could you want? Get it here: America's Army
The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question.
Oh great. Now even the slashdot editors are trolling.
Just for the record, my P450 with a TNT2 runs Q3 at around 80 FPS at 800x600.
Remain calm! All is well!
Do not share lube. This can lead to the transmission of HIV and other diseases. The cans can become contaminated while playing so it's good to write you name on the jar of crisco or lube
Don't walk around the party in street clothes or be a gawker. At most play parties the guys are usually in jocks or chaps so that their butts are exposed.
Michael 'Arminass' Sims
and Siminogger Q. Ueer are exposed in this
shocking expose (pun intended)
I loved this game way back in 1993. Is there a opensource/freeware clone like this game?
PLEASE SAY YES!!
Think of Alien, and you have it... alien team vs human scum.
Wesnoth It's a turn-based strategy game that is simplistic but very, very addictive.
The scenarios are hard (in 0.5.1, I heard they're easier in 0.6), and the game is being developed quite quickly.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
any decent multiplayer games that an office of about 4-7 can play, preferably action.
How about mouse fight?
Several older games have linux ports if you can manage to find original coppies.
Some really good action games:
Descent1 http://d1x.warpcore.org
Descent2 http://www.icculus.org/d2x
Freespace2 http://www.icculus.org/freespace2/
Serius Sam: http://icculus.org/betas/ssam/
Ravage has made a bunch of Linux installers for Windows PC games including:
Alteria
Devastation
Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition
Freespace: The Great War
Freespace: Silent Threat
Freespace 2
Kingpin: Life of Crime
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
Rise of The Triad: Dark War
Soul Ride
Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror
Unreal: Return To Na Pali
Unreal Gold
Unreal Tournament 2003 Digital Extremes Bonus Pack
Unreal Tournament 2003 Epic Bonus Pack One
All you need is original Windows CD for the games, and possibly some graphics cards tweaking. I've used these installers to get Unreal Tournament and Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror working on my Debian (woody) box.
Check out the ravage's web site here: http://www.icculus.org/~ravage/
Oh, this game used to be so much fun and addictive.. especially on the chaos servers. But there's hardly any players left now and it's doens't have fancy graphics. Most of the regular players tend to be mean and bitchy towards newbies and just about everyone else.
check out the goods at GarageGames. They have several great games available for linux (download the demos to see how well they work - well for me!) like Think Tanks and Orbz. Check out Marble Blast as well, although it's not multiplayer. Priced reasonably at $20 too!
Oh, and how about TuxRacer commercial? The demo's quite fun.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
glTron! has multiplayer on a network. and it's TRON. that's action!
You are not your blog
Shit. I hate to reply to myself but i forgot to mention that i've got a Tbird 1200. Not that great a computer.
I ran quake3 on a P133 with a Voodoo2 under linux.
So those sytems are perfectly fast to play pretty much most current games..
shedding some of those extra pounds and starting a table tennis tournament...
if you have a table, of course
100% Insightful
erm come on guys, quake 3 has pretty rubbish graphics, i mean come on it would probably almost even run a on a intel! lol, shitty p4's, god they suck, anyway quake3 is easy AS to run,
my old router (celeron 333) with a geforce 2mx 400 runs it easy as, and thats really old hardware, quake 3's graphics are so ugly though, wonder who would want to play it?, besides, if you have linux, just get winex3 (*pay* for it off kazaa lite) hehe and you can run pretty much anything, i have UT2003 running on it, half-life, dues X II and I, they are great games that all run easily on linux, i get more fps in linux than i do in windows! sya!
p.s - try out the new kde beta, its awesome!!
moocowman@paradise.net.nz
sam.
I play racing simulations, and 30fps is the MINIMUM we need, else it gets real choppy, and choppiness isn't what you want when you're trying to make a pass on a tough opponent that's literally inches away, especially when spining out is not an option. Couple this with possible latency on the other driver's part, and it starts adding up. When a wreck does occur, that's when the fps usually go down since the CPU is now going into overdrive doing heavy calculations. Trying to get through someone else's wreck, or trying to save your car in a spinout, 10fps isn't gonna cut it at that point.
So one needs a buffer of extra fps. 60fps is usually good, as it gives a nice cushion for when the fps draining wrecks occur.
Neverwinter Nights. A great game, and plays great under linux with the linux client. Though the implementation of the DND ruleset leaves much to be desired, I think it's a very good and very customizable (The player created modules for it...Mmmmmm...goood... Try Twilight, a paladin module for some fun, you will never think of the paladin class the same again). NWN is still one of my favorites to play multiplayer.
Savage is a great multiplayer linux game. I have run it on RedHat, Mandrake and Debian and it runs great. There is a demo as well. s2games.com
I would recommend checking out Legends. The gameplay, weapons and physics are very similar to Tribes (in my opinion). It uses the same engine as Tribes 2 (Torque), but with many more bug fixes and updates.
Like I said in the subject, it is still Beta, but it does have a Linux Release and its free.
Dark Horizons: Lore is another Torque game that is also in open beta, but you need to sign up for it. I haven't played it yet, but I hear it is fantastic.
Support your local Indie Game developers!
--Nycto
Am I the ONLY person on earth who still plays BZFlag on a regular basis? I certainly hope not, as I don't like the idea that all the other players on a server are just figments of my imagination. I doubt they'd much care for it, either.
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
Legends is trying to remake tribes 1
Saw the screenshots, read the info. I think I liked this game more when it was called Tribes (or Tribes2.) - David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Jeez, I've been playing quake 3 on linux ever since I had my old amd 300 and trusty voodoo3, LOL - and now, my P4-1600 with an nvidia geforce 2 is just way way fast enough - damn dude, what are you on, saying your P4-1700 is too slow? I'd love to trade with you!
For Fucks Sake...Just install Windows 98 and play your fucking games on a 400 mhz pentium II. A 1999 TNT2 will run Quake 3 just fine.
Or, you could have a 1.7 GHz machine that runs like SHIT on simple, old games, just because you won't run Windows and have to run everything through WINE. Get a fucking life.
Flame on!
Did a search on the titles and it seems nobody has yet pointed to Liquid War (at least not properly naming it in the title of their post). Winner of Most Unique/Original Game in the HappyPuppy 2002 awards. Simple, yet fun. Controls couldn't be any simpler and multiplayer action is reasonably well paced, not "frantic" (usually), yet not slow, either (again, usually).
Worth a try.
A few friends and I found an old linux copy of Myth 2 the other day sitting around the house and it supplied us with days of great fun.
They have a very good linux implementation. It crashed once or twice but is very playable anyway. Also, I mostly played the demo, so the full client might not crash at all.
I have a 1.6 Ahtlon, 256MB RAM w/ GeForce 2 and I get a great framerate. Even with an older card you should get decent performance.
It's not an amazing game, some things are frustrating: the collision detection during fights needs work, but it's a totally new genre of game, it's fun to play AND it's got a linux client. Good job S2!
Try it out, it's worth it...
// TODO
Don't need much power, Internet connection, unlimited number of players. Impartial referee. Can play it all through the day
I hear a lot of this. I rarely venture away from CounterStrike (a Half-Life mod). The specs people throw at me are Pentium 133 and a Voodoo 2 as a minimum, yet the systems they use are something like Pentium 4 3.2MHz with an ATI 9700Pro. Hmmm....
While I agree that the specs he has given are "good" and would allow many of the older games to run "well", including Quake3 and below, they are wanting for many of the newer MULTI-PLAYER games.
One of my friends recently purchase the LATEST Nvidia card, something like a 5950 with a P4 2.8 with a 800MHz bus (I have an ATI 9800XT) and it ran fine in single player games, but once we started CounterStrike 1.6 (not 1.5 which runs fine) with 32 players everything went to sh!t, especially with the cl_weather turned on in de_Aztec, on both our systems.
Since ALL the systems are similar in this guys office, I guess the gaming will be even so even CounterStrike should be fine (if you have enough copies of the game) providing you use a seperate computer as a server.
I'm safe if we share a condom, right? Normally I use it after he's done. But what happens when my partner and I share a condom that's lubricated? Is that bad?
Fucking rich? Cool, I like being here.
A P4 can look like real shit if it's got a 100MHz FSB and sdram to match it. In that case, an Athlon 1600 with DDR can run circles around it. When top of the line is 800MHz FSB the 100s are over anyway.
That being said, Quake 2 is playable on a 650MHz slot 1 with crummy old pc133 sdram. Playable, but "not that great"
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Check out the Linux Game Tome. Look for games with a rating of 4 (out of 5), or 5 with a lot of votes. (those with a few votes of 5 normally are idiots who don't know how to rank a game... Xbill is cool, but the design isn't worth a 5)
I'm typing this on a P4 1.7 with a geforce 2, and I can tell you that there's hardly anything that won't run nicely on it. The only problems I've run into are with the latest Prince of Persia (requires geforce 3 or better).
Trust me, just about everything will run on those machines.
Wait!
You mean that Legends is incredibly similar to Tribes 1, but with better graphics? That it is bringing an innovative, unheralded and mostly ignored late-emerging game mechanic (that represents the most seamless and original integration of player movement with combat to date) into a format that people can enjoy visually?
Wow.
That is news to me.
Nobody's mentioned Enemy Territory yet? This thing is fantastic. It's a special release of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (totally free, and legal) that allows network team play of Allies vs. Axis. Pretty realistic, and definitely runs on slower hardware (I have a 1.2 GHz Duron, and ancient Radeon card). Versions have been released for both Windows and Linux. Here is the distribution site with BitTorrents but the download is available from lots of other places too.
hasn't DooM II been availible for linux ppl 4 a while now? who cares about other games? LONG LIVE DOOM!
First of all Quake2 and Quake3 will run great on those machines. Aswell Counter Strike will also run just dandy. Another nice one to checkout (this one is free) is Enemy Territory a nice game built on a modified Q3 engine if my mind serves me correctly. Also this game is a wicked fun game as long as you have at least 3 people per teams, some maps may be to big for a small game, but there are some small maps that would work great with anything over 3 players per team :)
Happy holidays!
No, this is
Although I think Quake crashes or something at 1000 FPS.
But I have heard of people running at 333 FPS and doing crazy strafejumps...
"The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question."
and who smokes crack?
Ask first, think later. I'd imagine somebody in the office has Quake. What was the harm in installing it to see if it would run?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I really like xbattle and xpilot. Both of them are really old and therefore will run on very minimal equipment. They both provide a lot of hours of fun however. Over the summer we had a couple of interns working for us and they both had fun with xbattle. *smile*
1) Starcraft - released in '97 (2097?), is a great multiplayer game that you can pickup for 10 bucks! Heck, I was playing just the other night. 2) Unreal Tournament (the original) is another sweet first person shooter that you can pick up fairly cheap. I love that game! 3) Unreal Tournament 2003 is like 19 bucks. Your PC is more than enough. You might have to back off some of the high end graphics depending on the graphics card. Those are my cheap favs! Good Luck!
TacoGirl79: Can anybody bring me some SHAZBOT?!
Phantom4: No.
Ralph[RPS]: Yes.
Ralph[RPS]: Yes.
Ralph[RPS]: Yes.
MarkIV: You idiot!
Phantom4: Yes.
TacoGirl79: You SHAZBOT!
MarkIV: ARGH
I still play it regularly... can YOU tell?
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
I no longer wonder why they are shipping jobs to India.
This entire thread is the best (or worst, YMMV) Linux dis ever.
The fact that somebody must ask Slashdot if there are any games that their office can play on decent hardware is, um how shall we say it, ouchie.
Ya, ya, troll post. Don't bother flaming, I run Linux too.
Uh, Pardon?
I remember playing Quake 3 over my work's LAN using a Slot A Athlon 600Mhz CPU with a PCI Voodoo 3 2000 16MB card.
Ran incredibly well, too. Half Life would be Quake2 Engine Based and probably could do even better with less resources.
When I read that I thought of the old Nes title Star Voyager which was one of the worst games ever invented for the 8-bit nintendo.
Oh man it was awful. Sends shivers through my spine.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I've been playing Savage for the last few weeks.. they have a free 130mb linux client demo download. It's a great game, 3d FPS for up to 32 players per team.. and one person on each team is a commander, who is in overhead view RTS mode. It's a bit warcraft like in the RTS mode.. gather resources, build tech buildings, build spawn buildings. main goal is kill the other teams stronghold.
in the full version, there are 2 races, humans and beasts. There are also more maps.
check it out.. http://www.s2games.com
mangband! It's kind of like a realtime, multiplayer nethack. Not quite as advanced as nethack in terms of creatures and items, but a huge amount of fun nonetheless. And I promise your graphics cards will handle it.
For something a little more flashy there's Crossfire, which takes the graphics all the way from Nethack levels to Gauntlet levels. I've had some problems at LAN parties with the Windows client, but if you're all Linux you should be OK.
These games prove that fancy graphics aren't necessary to make a game fun. Plus, call me a wuss if you want, but I like that they can be played cooperatively.
Man those Freespace games suck ass.
Very retarded gameplay. Boring, stupid, you name it, it has it.
However, the screenshots that you provided don't look markedly different from Tribes 1. Indeed, they look considerably more primitive than Tribes 2, which I still believe is great eye candy. Maybe I just saw some subpar screenshots, but I looked at about ten of them.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Here are the burnable ISO images:
Enemy Territory (torrent) (ftp)
America's Army ISO (ftp)
Phosphors need to be refreshed before they expire. If they start dimming before they are refreshed, then you will notice slight blinking compared to looking at a piece of paper. Your monitor tries to do this at as fast hertz as possible. If 85 hz means that for your monitor, pixels are refreshed before they even start dimming, then you won't ever be sick from it.
However, when frames are refreshed (in a game), they do not "dim". What I mean is, old frames don't expire. If you are staring at the same thing that doesn't change, it won't matter if it updates 200 frames a second or 1 frame a second--YOU WON'T KNOW. In a game, people will know the difference between 90 fps (fluidity) and 30 fps (not fluid around fast jerking around of mouse.) The person will FEEL the difference in speed. There will be a laggier feel as opposed to the 90 fps. 30 fps doesn't just mean less fps, it also means there's more time needed for the computer to draw that frame before showing it. People will see much faster updates at 90 fps, regardless of hz your mointor supports. 2/3rds of the frames the gamer gets are older than the ones the 90 fps guy gets, only 1/3 (every third) frames might match up with the new 90 fps the faster comp guy gets. You are missing the point about fps. It's not for eye candy. Higher fps makes you a better player, gives faster response time, and allows less bottlenecking. Lower fps shows a deficiency on the computer to run the game properly, and in a low fps case, you know that if it's that low, then networking and other systems might be affected. While at 90 fps, you know that everything is going smoothly for you to get that high.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
You need true power for Quake!
I used an 486dx4-160/64MB-RAM/S3-864 without 3D-acceleration running quakeworld at 320x200. The game was very playable at 15-25fps.
Quake2 ran at ~10fps on the same system,
Quake3 ran at 20-40fps on my later system, a System with two PentiumMMX-233/128MB-RAM/Voodoo1.
So I think everything beyond Pentium3-450/256MB-RAM/TNT-2 should kick major butt running Quake-Enginees like Enemy Territory, Return to Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor and so on...
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Armagetron is a networkable, 3D light cycle game, as seen in Tron the movie. Check it out at http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/. Latest version even supports Internet multiplayer!
http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/ a great tron light cycles game....actionious? it's pretty fast paced and can get serious at times.
In case anyone doesn't know, it wasn't anything about the gameplay that doomed Tribes 2. It was the copyright protection. Not only did it require a CD key to play online, which is fair and understandable, but you had to have the disc to play and the disc was uncopyable. So no letting your friends try it out at LAN parties. The lawyer who talked the publisher into that should be hanged...
what a great present
Armagetron is also a very good networked game. I don't know about commercial games since I can't afford them, nor pirate in order to support Linux gaming ;P.
I used to play this about 5 years ago (so computational concerns are moot). In our lab, it led to much yelling and screaming (and cursing). The problem was that I got too good at it so there wasn't any challenge anymore.
The old xblast page was gone, so I hope this is the official one now. http://www.xblast-center.com/
and screw some chicks, nerd
I wasn't awake when Tribes1 came around("sleeper hit"), but Tribes2 was awesome and even more fun when I joined a clan + we made it to #1 on a twl ladder. Plus it had a lot of integrated features, like irc, news posts, emails, etc. -- that all made it easy to find clans(FPS devs are you listening??)
Tribes2 died in 8 months though - too many bugs, required good hardware to compete fairly(i.e. distance/far plane), and those fucks at Sierra fired the tribe developers and forcing them to release the game 6-8 months early.
There is NO multiplayer game that had the same depth and strategy of Tribes2 - not even Battlefield with its multitude of vehicles.
Play Netrek!
http://www.netrek.org/
It still doesn't suck!(tm)
Commas are going to be key when writing things like this. For instance: You see it, how it is, not how it was. or You, see it how it is not, how it was. These sentences mean very different things. I don't consider myself to be any kind of punctuation Nazi, far from it. I'm not usually moved to comment on things like grammer or spelling. As you can tell from the way this post is written my grasp on the English language is slippery at best. But this sentence is gibberish without commas. You see it how it is, not how it was.
Linux has MMORPG?
Wait, Linux has games?
try myth II, there was a version ported to linux by loki. Due to various updates and then community disputes there are no servers which support the linux version anymore though.
I'm going to have to agree with (apparently) everyone else here. Unless performance on linux is *way* (and I mean *way* way) worse than on windows (I've never tried gaming on linux, sorry. Just developement/fooling around) a 1.7gHz P4 with a 2-year-old graphics card ought to be pretty darn good for gaming. I've got a 1.4gHz Athlon and a GeForce 3 Ti200 (the cheapo version) and it handles basically everything I've tried to run on it quite well, if you don't count the techdemos that require new-fangled features that I don't have (Pixel Shaders 2.0? We've only had 1.0 for about 6 months before we've got a whole new version? That's as big a deal as a point release for Nethack? It shouldn't happen that quick). But I digress. The point is that if your machines are in the ballpark you're indicating and they won't run Quake 3, chances are with a little re-configuring and a little driver updating, they should be able to run it, and just about any other game for linux, just fine. All it will take is a little bit of thought, and you'll be fine. And seeing as you've asked slashdot, you're clearly up to the task.
In my days at the university we spent many late afternoons playing xpilot. I haven't played it on Linux for many years, but last I tried it was doable. I guess it can only have become better over the years.
Uncopyable? Nothing's uncopyable. Then how do you explain the LAN copy of my original sitting in my drawer?
BZFlag has a new "break the world" version. It has a few new flags and voting to kick cheaters and dirty mouths. I love the Flag stealing "laser!" Cool stuff...worth a download.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
I know, there is Linux-emulation and it works fine, but I really prefer native games.
Anyone has information, if there is support from game developers? I don't want back to Linux.
I admit doom3 would suck but all 98-2000 era games would work great. Oh, try descent! Very old but great maps on the internet as well as cool online features for deathmatch.
Descent and Duke Nukem were years ahead of their times and is great for offices. Duke Nukem shareware, map01 is great for like 3-4 people.
http://saveie6.com/
Marathon (now known as Aleph One) was a fantastic multi-player FPS from the time of Doom. This was a Mac-only game that we played in a lab with typically 4-6 people at the same time, and it was a blast. Mostly just straightforward fragging fun (before "frag" was a word). It ran very well on the first Powermacs (66MHz machines), so it should just squeak by with the P4/1.7GHz.
In paintball, the adjective is "thermal" - as in lense, or in this weather, underwear. My bad.
The sad part is I actually googled the quote to make sure I got it right. I suppose I should have checked the war half in addition tothe chess half.
paintball
Return To Castle Wolfenstein has a bit more gameplay though, and is the one I'd recommend.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
You mentioned Bzflag, I think you would like XPilot also, perfect for team games about 5 a side. It might have been mentioned under this post already but heres some more info..
The official homepage gives you some tips on how to play the game (it DOES takes a little while to learn). It's rated the #11 best game on www.happypenguin.org, works under most Unixes, linux distros and even windows.
It is basically Multi user thrust and while that might sound a bit boring and the graphics look a bit boring, it is actually really great fun, once you have perfected control with the mouse it becomes a game of lightening reactions. Don't let the basic graphics confuse you, but you knew that already right. There are hundreds of game parameters and client parameters you can change, and loads of maps, of different modes, some of them are pure power games where you collect as many power ups as you can, there is also a race mode where its pure speed, and then there is a team play mode where you try to steal each others treasure.
You might want to check out a branch that some of us are working on too which gives the ability to define maps in XML and use polygons and as high an FPS as your machine will allow, and also has an SDL/opengl client in it (much nicer graphics same gameplay). You can find that in the CVS linked from here
It's great just to start a local server in the office on a machine and let the fun ensue. Try out a map called bloods music, where you attempt to steal each others "ball" (same idea as a flag in quake). Warning though it takes time to get into but once into is VERY! addictive.
Regards
Ahhh. No, running games in linux means you don't have to reboot after setting default keys, reboot after the map appears, reboot after shooting an enemy target, reboot when the high scores list freezes.... Feature freeze in Linux means no new features for the current software release. Feature freeze in windows means the mouse pointer no longer moves and the image on your screen is 'frozen' till you either give your computer the three finger salute, or yank the plug out of the wall. Linux: Even games run better(tm).
Aleph One
Open Source fps with plot for Linux, Mac and PC
http://source.bungie.org/
Honestly! It is! The media get us all so self-concious by showing us 'better' stuff all the time - wether its /.ers talking about their dual P4 3GHz machines that they are retiring, or beyonces ass, or Tigers short game. We all know that the rest of the world is just waiting to take the piss when we say 'look at my [PC / Tits / Chipping] isn't it good'.
So chicks with perfectly nice boobs get them 'done' to look like everyone else who got them done, we all buy new machines before the old one is past it because we can't stand having a smaller number, and we pay a fortune to some 'pro' to show us how to chip better.
It's a sorry state of affairs.
To try and turn this tide - I should state that I am writing this on a 1GHz Inspiron with a dead battery, knackered mousepad, and no ink left on the a,s,n,m,shift(left), ctrl(left), Page Up (but surprisingly plenty in on Page Down - do you think they put tougher ink on page down? The only game I play on this machine is TOCA 2 - which runs just fine.
My boobs aren't as nice as beyonces - but then Im a guy so I shouldn't even HAVE boobs. Oh - and golf is for bald people - so I have a while before I'll be too worried about my chipping. I'm almost certain the shirt Im wearing is too young / cool for me though.
openparsec.sf.net :)
vegastrike.sf.net
The Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent, free (as in freedom) game with both campaign and multiplayer mode. The requirements are very low, and they have just released the 0.6.1 version today. Download it! ;)
While I agree almost fully, there are some issues.
If a game is single player, and it seems the same on PC and a console, I always prefer the console version (if it's not known to be worse).
If a game is multiplayer though, it's a whole different world. Almost everyone's a pc, and LAN games are a great thing to have some fun.
One note here: consoles run in a very low resolution compared to pc, so although it seems the console might be more powerful than a pc it hardly is.
Utopia: http://games.swirve.com/utopia (Angel runs in WINE and there's http://utopia.sf.net)
NationStates: http://www.nationstates.net
PlaneShift: http://www.planeshift.it
VegaStrike: http://vegastrike.sf.net
Advanced Strategic Command (ASC): (a Battle Isle clone) http://www.asc-hq.org
FreeCraft, FreeCNC. These are multiplayer iirc. C&C and WarCraft clones.
Dune2 runs fairly well in DOSbox. DOSbox and WINE are of use sometimes, among others. There's a ton of emulators for Linux.
NETHACK.
It has rock-solid 32-player multiplayer, high fps, emboss terrain bump-mapping, and, most importantly -- great, unique movement dynamics
:) His systems Can't seem to play Quake :) I think he is looking for Action games Such as Speed Soliarie (Need Speed to Satisfy his "Action" criteria)
:) )
Obviously you didn't read
I Guess Netrek would a a good one for him... Should run smoothly on a 1.7 system (Don't need no fancy fandangled Video card either
Sorry for the trollish Post... But God! Why can't we Moderate People that post this idiotic junk. It should have been edited and Killed his Quake Comment... Seeing a idiotic staement like that on a tech forum like this is Insulting.
The underlying Question is a fairly good one.. But fair portion of discussion board is trashed because of a idiotic statement that should have been deleted.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Try out xblast (www.xblast-center.com), a bomberman clone with multiplayer support which should run on almost any machine. Simple but very addictive!
It runs quite nicley with full resolution/textures/shading on my home machine (P4 2.4, NVidia GForce-1 year old), so I think it would run ok on a P4 1.7 with a 2 year old nvidia, even if it meant screwing down some of the detailing (which you can do from the settings menu in a variety of ways)
an independent resurrection of a type of gameplay that was accidentally (bug) introduced in the first game of a franchise, was LOVED TO PEICES by the fanbase and introduced thousands of players to the game, and then was nixed in the second installment because an arrogant jackass
Actually, I'm one of about 5 Tribes players who liked the game a lot before they learned about skiing.
I also liked skiing. I was a pretty good flag runner for a while.
Point is: Many of the maps had not been designed with skiing in mind, and it showed. It would've rocked completely if it had been a server or map option ("skiing on/off"). I'd definitely have played both kinds, but if you just want to play on skiing servers, that'd be fine with me.
As to legends: From what I've seen it rocks. Also don't forget to mention that while it's based on the T2 engine, there have been quite a few improvements made to Torque.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You fuuuuuckin cockaroach. How about I come stick my celeron 366 up you MOTHER FUCKIN COCKAROACH ASS!?!??! I fuckin own you on my celeron, you hear me you little fuckin cockaroach.
I play ET on my P3 450, 320 SDRAM and a GF2 64MB like yours. I played it last night. I had a great laugh. I'm not the best in the world at it. I normally finish halfway down the list of frag totals (if that means anything at all in ET).
I would put the graphics quality at better than my old PSX. How good do they need to be for a game like this? I find the team play far more exciting than the graphics.
The story submitter has a P4. Where is the problem again?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
As others have said, you should have no problem with the Quake series.
However, also consider: (and you'll have to Google, don't have links to hand)
* Old favorites - open source too:
XPilot - highly addictive 'Thrust' style battle game with a half-decent physics model.
XTank - Multi user tank battle game.
These games have been out a while and will play on very modest hardware. We used to have all weekend LAN parties at university with xtank and xpilot on the Sun Sparcstations...in 1992, before the Microsoft world knew what Ethernet was!
* Newer games
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - will run fine on a 1.7GHz system.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I have the same question but for childs.
Anyone known any multiplayer games for childs under 10 ?
( linux or windows, that don't matter)
For example a game where they can walk in a wonderfull land etc etc...
I started playing freeciv last week and i've allready put in ~45 hours into it.
i can't speak for everyone who uses linux here, but perhaps if we stay doing things that have at least some conceivable merit rather than looking at porn and playing through simulations and games...that better things (ie, a better overall os to play games and look at porn on!) will come of it.
don't get me wrong. i think games (and porn) are great...but you can lose a lot of spare energy, and right now the last thing we need, as a community of users, and as people in general, is more [bread and] circus. we need in its' place, stronger communications forums, and more activity. go out, right now, to your local irc channel and say hi/io. spend 5 minutes or so talking at minnimum. breathe some life into your corrospondants.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Funny, addictive, and cool.
armagetron.sourceforge.net
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned PlaneShift yet, the only MMORPG available for Linux under the GPL license. It is still under development, but is coming along quite well. They recently reached their 100,000 member mark. The homepage is http://www.planeshift.it if you are interested in learning more about the game. The game is based upon the CrystalSpace 3D Engine, which seems to be popular in recent efforts to produce linux-compatible multiplayer games. That project is hosted on sourceforge.
The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question."
Thanks for setting off my idiot detector, there, boy-genius..
It's probably been said here ad nauseum, but, a machine of this calibur is more than sufficient for even the most recently-released FPS games. My advice? Before you post, try not to come off as one of those jackass noobs who says "OMFG 1.7GHZZZ SOO SL00W". Sheesh.
Bowie J. Poag
one of the best platform games ever made
XEvil
basically a kill-everything platformer, but with some comedy value.
works on both win/nix and dosn't require a fantastically good machine.
networking etc etc etc.
(strangle your cat)
Why trouble yourself running around in circles trying to find games that work under linux when you can run any of them under windows?
I mean, if it's just for the holiday, bite the bullet. Windows, at the very least, is good for games.
Some of our local favorites (from the FPS action catergory):
Medal of Honor: allied assault
Battlefield 1942
Unreal Tournament
Vietcong
Halo
As far as I know, only UT would run under Linux (natively). I say, use the right tool for the right job. Linux is not a good gaming solution.
---
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Try a turn based strategy/fantasy game Wesnoth. It comes with multiplayer server and gives you the oppertunity to grap a cup of coffee sometimes.
Have a look at Cube - a Doom-like (2.5D) FPS, very light on the network, and with a really mad "multiplayer edit mode".
Even today, there are not too many multi-player games that are equally playable to xbattle.
-- Imperial units must die --
No wonder your job is being offshored.
later tribes 2 patches made it so the disc wasn't required
NWN is the most interesting (native) Linux game I have currently. Most of the Linux ports of commercial games are first-person-shooters, like Unreal Tournament 2003, Quakes, the upcoming Doom 3 etc. Those that are not FPS, are often some of the other popular game types which I don't like that much, like real-time "strategy" games. Of course, it makes sense as with the small market of Linux games you have to aim for even some sales.
Anyway, I've had lots of fun with my friends playing the crpg Neverwinter Nights, and its expansion packs.. it's hilarious and satisfying to play with adequately different characters, and the fun-factor improves by using e.g. TeamSpeak (a voice communication software, Linux and Windows clients available) to chat with the friends while playing. But, I'm not sure if your graphic card is enough.. a more accurate model of that NVIDIA card would be good to know. Anything >=Geforce2 should be passable for NWN.
Do yourself a favour and spend 37US$ on Neverwinternights Gold. It runs smoothly on the named hardware, since you really seem to underestimate your boxes.
;-),
It is a killer in multiplayermode and together with the "shadows of undrentide" extension already in the box you are well set for weeks of dungeonaction.
Trust me, this game is worth every buck, and really sucks you inside the story. If youre done after newyearseve you can still reuse your key on the internet servers and keep playing. That game is definetly worth its money...
Give it a try or put it on your Xmas-wishlist
Lispy
Try Quakeworld. There's still an active community (Pan-European clan leagues!), it runs on really old hardware, and the sheer speed of the game coupled with the high skill level makes it really rewarding to play.
:)
There's some undefineable quality (and I do mean Quality!) about the way Id built Quakeworld which they (or indeed anyone else) still haven't managed to recapture with any of the other games which followed.
The Fuhquake client - http://www.fuhquake.net/ - is pretty good, as is mqwcl - http://mqwcl.n3.net/ . Both of these are used in current leagues to prevent cheats.
Quake3? It's okay, but QW still rules. IMO.
It's a Real Time Strategy game, came out around 1999. We played this for hours. You can have teams anywhere from 2 to 8 players and play against each other, in 2 or more teams or against the computer. We played on pentium 200's at work. I'm sure you can find copies someplace.
Plays great here with a 1.4 Atlhon and an Geforce 2 GTS, whiich I imagine is similar to the poster's setup.
Beware though, it can be a humongous timesink.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
The guy who submitted this was a moron.
I submit that if he was able to find BzFlag, he already knows how to find good Linux games. I also submit that if he thinks a P4 1.7 GHz and a GF3 isn't enough to run any Quake game he is a moron.
So he's asking a question he already knows the answer to based on a false premise.
Sorry, but that's just stupid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Nothing on cnn, nothing on google. This must be a zionist troll. I suppose these trolls will be forced to stand behind Mr Sharon when the revolution comes (To make good use of all the bullets fired at him).
The first great (FREE) game is called Legends. It is very similar to Tribes and is based off the Torque engine. Fun gameplay, cool maps and an integrated map editor. Get it for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X at http://hosted.tribalwar.com/legends/
The second game is Vendetta. It is a space combat MMORPG, and since it's a pre-beta game it's free. Don't let that scare you away, though. The gameplay is spectacular, as are the graphics. The community's even fairly decent. Get that one at http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com.
Sadly, neither of these games include source code. Draw your own conclusions.
My Systems
Not exactly a First-Person-Shooter, but still don't forget the Battle for Wesnoth.
http://www.wesnoth.org/
Looks a bit like Heroes of Might and Magic, but is better.
Free and Open, Linux, Win, multiplayer, singleplayer campaign, etc
nobody plays xevil anymore? used to be very fun, but i think the development is completly stopped. :( still has no sound, but the gameplay is great and has a multiplayer mode.
the last major version dates back to 2000
Great fun, lots of levels available, and should have no problems whatsoever with your puny hardware :-).
I've been playing this game since my final year of college. If your office is full of Tetris fans, then load this on your workstations and have fun.
Quadra homepage
I would better recommend to look for a game which you can plain together against someone else. If you fight against each other this will increase competition inside your group, which is bad. It is better if you beat someone else all together. This will help to build better relations inside your team.
So, I would recommend to play tetrinet (http://tetrinet.org/). Not against each other but against other team.
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, and while it isn't a 100% action game, Neverwinter Nights is still a great multiplayer experience and the Linux client for it is excellent. It should run reasonably well on the aforementioned systems, although probably would need to be in lowest resolution and have graphics settings tuned down a little.
Loki used to sell Postal. It worked great for me on a Pentium 300 with 128 RAM. I think there's a German site that still offers the CD.
"What I want to know is are there any decent multiplayer games that an office of about 4-7 can play"
In ANY office in the WORLD save for GEEKDOM, office games are all about sex, seduction, romance, and telling stories (true and false) about those things.
For gods sake, put down your joystick and chat up the nearest skirt!!!!!!!
That should cure them of any open sores and lunix urges for life.
Look, if you've got 4-7 people and a few hours to spare, you could write your own game that would be in every way superior to BZflag.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I don't know if it would run on such low end machines, but you might consider Nethack.
So instead of sex you can play counter-strike?
Man, you're a true geek.
Enemy Territory, tons of fun, saves $$
Roger has been consumed by the borg, he is a windoze luzer, pay no attention to the man behind the nick...
with all this discussion going on, can we throw some windows , os x and linux into the equation.
Can the readers please post any views on any multiplayer real time strategy games that may be available.
Let's see... game for linux... 4-7 people... moderate systems... easy!
:-)
CVS and make world
very exciting!
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Skiing absolutely sucked. It was only power-gaming twits that liked it, because it meant the people who read voraciously had an insurmountable advantage over casual players who just bought the box from the store. Having an unfair advantage over other players sucks in my book, but I understand why people go apeshit over it...heck why else is online cheating so rampant, people would rather win than have fun playing.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Well, I just thought I should tell you about a game you can play with your "low end" machinery instead of bragging about what a cool or non-cool machine I've got
Go to www.fuhquake.net, download, load, and play. You could also try out equake.quakeworld.nu, download, install (on a windoze machine) and then copy to your beloved "low end" linux-box.
Fuhquake is quake1 with qw-capabilities and it looks better than q3 (among other things, it supports 24bits textures).
There ya' go, boy! Start fraggin'!
I'll frag your ass on my PII-350, which was relatively new when QIII was released.
machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question.
Let's see now: Quake III was released in 1998. That means the bulk of the development was done in 1997 and 1998. What was the fastest PC you could buy at that time? In early 1998 it was a 333MHz Pentium II with a 66MHz bus. I know, because I intentionally bought the fastest PC available at that time.
In terms of video cards, 1998 was the year the 3dfx Voodoo 2 was released. There were *zero* cards available that did transforms in hardware. The CPU still did all that.
And now a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 with a circa 2001 video card--several generations past the Voodoo 2--is considered too slow for Quake? I'm not going to be the guy who says 640K is enough for anyone, but methinks that some people's perspectives on speed are greatly skewed.
legends rox
i don't like the 0.3.6 though, i have really high latency, because i am in the UK and all the servers are in the US
with 0.3.0 this didn't matter
...these aren't my real teeth.
Unreal Tournament 2003 Umm, I think there's a linux client for this...
Quake[1/2/3] Yeah, the games old, but still amazingly playable, plus because of their age, there's lots of mods available and it'll fly on modern hardware
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
MUDs are possibly some of the best multiplayer games on the net, esp playable under Linux. Heck, most mud servers are running Linux!
-- M
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
i found it here
http://www.icculus.org/~ravage/freespace2/
> Shit. I hate to reply to myself but i forgot to
> mention that i've got a Tbird 1200. Not that
> great a computer.
Yeah, but at least it has four digits in the "MHz" number. My work machine is a 550MHz Pentium III running Windows 2000 (and X11 over Cygwin, naturally), and my home machine is an 800MHz Duron running (usually) Mandrake Linux 9.2. Granted, my utter lack of spyware (on both OSes), the use of a separate video card (my friend has a 1.7GHz Celeron with an "Intel Extreme" integrated crapola graphics chip), and a generally conservative habit of system efficiency tweaking makes this machine more capable than my friends' "faster" boxes, but it does kill me, especially since I run programs that kill the cpu (mplayer, parchive2, unrar, bittorrent, giFT, gcc, etc..).
Anyway, feel free to send me your 1200MHz chip when you're done with it. I wouldn't mind.
--
-JC
I can write code. ^_^
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main
Newer Tribes games build them in.
It is exactly the same as people bunny-hopping in Quake. If people don't know it exists then you could say, "hey, thats cheating to get an advantage over other people." The fact is skiing may have seemed unbalancing at first, but it has in fact created a game with a near infinite skill ceiling that still manages to amaze me five years later. Tactics rise and fall in Tribes, the dominant one right now is abusing the chaingun and shooting it like you would shoot guns in Counterstrike to inflate the accuracy, along with tweaking the highly controversial client interpolate settings.
It is the drive to succeed that makes games last many years, as opposed to 3 months and then being shelved. We all hope to find games that engage us for more than those three months, that make us spend hours configuring and (over time) days practicing to be better. If a game says "okay, thats as good as you can get" indirectly via physics, or weapons enabling lower skilled players to take down better ones to "even" the base, you will have pros leaving to find a game that appreciates them instead of dumbing it down.
Make Linux attractive to Counterstrike campers, and there goes the neighborhood.
Outgun is a 32-player CTF game, ported to linux, and will run on a K6 II 450MHz! http://www.amok.com.br/outgun Or get the linux package from sourceforge: http://sf.net/projects/outgun
Try XEvil. It's easy to play, low on bandwidth, and pretty fun.
Quake 3 runs wonderfully on a 800 mhz machine with
a $50 nvidia geforce MX card.
P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question...
;-). Why don't you tell everyone that you're tired of Quake and the likes. Simple, clean and most probably the bare truth. Otherwise, you can always try Tribes for linux, if making games work is your kinda thing. Also, make sure you had a good look at what WineX can offer you.
This is funny, very funny. You know i used to play the quake demo in college at lan parties with a P166 & Diamond Viper card ( minimal settings of course ). You are a very funny person
!yvan eht nioj
An open source port of this classic PC game.
Want aliens? Got it. Want adventure? Got it. Want a plot line? Got it. Want big weapons? Got it. Want multiplayer melee? Got it. Want source code? Got it.
Head on over to http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ and download.
Best of all, it also runs on FreeBSD!
Cyrano de Maniac
While I'd be the first to agree that Tribes is one of the greatest games every made, I question how much fun 99% of the maps would be with 4-7 players.
And as someone else mentioned here, it is not easy to run under Linux.
Nobody has mentioned Conquest. That game has been around over 20 years. And it still is a fun game. It's the predecessor to NetTrek. However, I think it is better. You can plan better strategies for battles and all. Granted it's not a fancy interface, as a matter of fact it's a curses interface, but once you get past that you can have alot of fun with the game. It's pretty cool to have a bunch of people playing on teams trying to take over the universe, it gets pretty heated at times too. If you people want to check it out go to radscan.com or the new source is at freshmeat.net
You're mistaken. Here's why:
First of all, you're confusing monitor refresh rate with the number of times a game redraws the screen. Regardless, I'll address your post.
Phosphors need to be refreshed before they expire.
True.
If they start dimming before they are refreshed, then you will notice slight blinking compared to looking at a piece of paper. Your monitor tries to do this at as fast hertz as possible.
True.
If 85 hz means that for your monitor, pixels are refreshed before they even start dimming, then you won't ever be sick from it.
True, but the latter assertion is subjective.
However, when frames are refreshed (in a game), they do not "dim".
False. Frame refreshes in a game function similarly to that of non-game screen refreshes, save for the region of memory that the graphics adapter scans out to the DAC/TMDS. The point is, the frequency at which I redraw the contents of my 3D (or non-3D) rendering context is completely disconnected from the speed by which my DAC or TMDS scans this region of memory in order to send pixel data to the display device.
What I mean is, old frames don't expire.
True, but this is irrespective of being "in game" or "out of game". There is a region of video (or host) memory that stores the data used to describe the desktop, application windows or perhaps a game that is running. They don't "expire" per se, rather they are written over a window update. The closest paradigm I can think that resembles "expiration" is when a window context is marked by an application as requiring an update, but still that has little to do with the contents of the framebuffer, and nothing whatsoever to do with monitor refresh rates.
If you are staring at the same thing that doesn't change, it won't matter if it updates 200 frames a second or 1 frame a second--YOU WON'T KNOW.
True.
In a game, people will know the difference between 90 fps (fluidity) and 30 fps (not fluid around fast jerking around of mouse.)
False. I'll hold off on posting a novel, but suffice to say that this depends on the individual's persistence of vision. Some people can visualize "gaps in motion" or flickering at 30 frames per second of a given animation, but on average, 24 frames per second is sufficient for creating the illusion of motion, thus movie playback standardized on that method.
The person will FEEL the difference in speed. There will be a laggier feel as opposed to the 90 fps.
False. This is all subjective. Additionally, I believe you are confusing input response delay with graphics response delay.
30 fps doesn't just mean less fps, it also means there's more time needed for the computer to draw that frame before showing it.
False. Some arbitrarily "low" framerate (again low is subjective, bear with me) is not a reliable indicator that a particular set of frames has required more time to draw. Frame limitation is a perfect example of this.
To argue your point for you, I'll provide an example supporting your assertion. Suppose I have a graphics engine that renders bouncing balls, and I am in a room with a single bouncing ball. The lighting is per-texel, texture-based (normal map) N dot L with 4 textures per pixel. With one ball being rendered my scene can be drawn 90 times per second. I then move to another room in my world where there are 50 of these bouncing balls and the time to draw each frame extends out past 34 ms, resulting in less than 30 rendering context updates per second, purely due to a limitation in the graphics engine to draw these updates. In that case, there would be more time required to draw the frame.
The point is that the framerate, as in the number of frames that are drawn per second, is completely disconnected from the speed at which that content can be scanned out and drawn to the display devi
Yeah I'm old. But before there was all of these fancy windowing systems, there was the original UNIX multiplayer shoot-em up game hunt and the original UNIX multiplayer explore-build-techup-destroy game empire.
Hours of entertainment, barely a blip on your network, and hardly a cough on nearly any UNIX box built in the last ten years.
Maybe a nice blitz empire game....
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
I'm sure someone already mentioned it, but here's my $.02. Wolfenstein Enemy Territory rocks. It's free. It's the best multiplayer game to come out this year, hands down. It runs great on linux. I was able to play it with no problems on my PIII 667 with a GeForce2.
-Kevin
That's great, except for the fact that the original poster specifically stated that these systems were at work. Let me ask you something... how do you think yer boss would respond to you installing Linux on a workstation just so that you could play XEvil?
Or, you could have a 1.7 GHz machine that runs like SHIT on simple, old games, just because you won't run Windows and have to run everything through WINE.
Uhm, the original poster actually was asking for recomendations of multiplayer games that run in Linux -- not multiplayer games that could be run in Linux via Wine. There is actually a difference.
Get a fucking life.
er, uhm... yeah. For future reference, nobody posting on ./ should ever use that phrase: Something about pots and kettles.
Now, for the rest of us... reviewing the above post clearly points out the traggic need to address the way in which our system handles the education of our trolls.
It is clearly obvious that this poor troll does not even know how to read. And how, may I ask, can a troll properly do it's job if it is unable to decipher those cryptic little letter things used to make up posts?
This is a tragedy, but you can help. How? Glad you asked... For the mere price of a cup of coffee...
#SickNotWeak
At the risk of shameless promotion, check out Star Control: Timewarp, downloads are here. It runs on Windows and Linux, and can support up to 8 people at a time in hot-seat multiplayer (on the same computer with keyboard and joysticks). You can also play with two computers on the internet or LAN. There's a lot of cool ships and game modes, similar to the fun and excitement of melee fights from Star Control 1, 2 and 3.
This game is a lot of fun, it's open source, it's Linux friendly, and it's Star Control, baby! Check it out!
No one has ever fired for blaming Microsoft.
"We all hope" to have a game where you have to practice for days? WTF dude? Get out of your ivory tower and mingle with the common folk.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
...people still play videogames on their PCs? Didn't you all get that memo about the whole market switching back to consoles like the PS2 and the Xbox? I guess you didn't get the TPS report either... :)
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Obviously you didn't read :) His systems Can't seem to play Quake :)
--
Uhh, excuse me - the original poster isn't the only audience for the forum. Maybe the original poster didn't want anything Quake like (although, I tend to agree with some of the other posters in this topic that the original poster seriously under-estimates what his machines can and can't do).
Anyhow, I found this poster's mention of this Legends Tribes-clone to be informative and usefull. On the other hand, I find that your comments tend to fit the statement, "Seeing a idiotic staement[sic] like that on a tech forum like this is Insulting." He added to the discussion. You did not. Goodbye.
A good example is my RTCW experience with the same machine(s) unedr win2k and Linux 2.4.17 (debian stable). The Linux box was completely smooth with RTCW, I mean, absolutly no slow down in any gaming situation. Networking pings were the only thing I'd ever notice. Switching to the windows side, I get crashes about every 3 or 4 times I play. Sometimes the sound freaks. And the game slowdowns in scraps are much more noticeble.
Machine specs:
Machine I:
AMD tbird 1100, 512 MB/768 MB ram (two tests.)
Abit K7A raid.
Machine II:
AMD tbird 1100, 512 MB/ 768 MB ram
Gigabyte K133 genero.
Abit board performed a bit better in linux, but had more crashes in windows (though was faster when it worked. Less integrated stuff.)
WIndows performance was much noticably worse on both systems. 512-768 improved *feel* in linux but didn't change anything for windows.
I also did a lot of tweaking of hunks and such in config files.
Both systems used same ram and sblive soundcard. CPU was also same. Video card was an ATI Radeon 7500. (No complaints there.)
My reccomendation, throw an RTCW setver on one of the machines and play tram till you're all blue in the face.
Reccomend playing on Wod and Foshibiosh servers too. Kitty Karnage is good for a warmup.
"I'm a Medic!"
-=fshalor
If any of your officemates are over 30, they may enjoy going down memory lane with some head-to-head arcade action.
There is a cheap, multiplayer gamepad that allows up to 4 simultaneous players. I've used it with XMAME to play Gauntlet, etc. with friends. I've even got some extra hubs if you're interested. Installing the driver involves a quick download and cutting and pasting a few commands.
Click this link for details. It's got links to information on linux arcade games near the bottom.
XBlast!
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
http://jumpbump.mine.nu/
We play Descent II on a LAN using outdated machines (Pentium 233, Pentium Pro 200) and outdated graphics cards (S3). It is now open source and available for Linux, Mac, and Windows - thanks Matt Toschlog (Outrage Entertainment) and Mike Kulas (Volition Inc.)!
My new favorite multiplayer networked game is BZFlag - but it needs some horsepower (fast CPU and 3D GPU) and won't run right on my outdated machines.
All you had to do was play the tutorial levels, they explained skiing. If you don't play the tutorials or read the manual, expect to suck.
Just wondering if you've had any luck getting Tribes 2 to install on any version of Linux with >=glibc2.1? I'm having a helluva time doing so, just wondering if you've had any luck.
that you've ever tried to write a game. Believe me that when the frame rate is only 30, that's not going to be the only thing slowed down. Games are written for probably around 60 fps with possible settings that would allow 30 to be playable. However, the networking code and everything else is designed to work while the the computer can support processing 60 fps to draw. At 30, the computer is functioning below the intended optimum and performance does start lagging.
In theory, maybe a person won't notice the difference between 90 and 30 fps redrawing the same thing on a monitor that flawlessly displays refreshes at a billion hertz WHERE ONLY SIMPLE CALCULATIONS ARE DONE, like a circle moving around really fast, and the only difference is the cap at 30. That's what you're suggesting... OF COURSE a person might not be able to tell!
What I am saying is that a low fps in almost every major game that I can think of will occur on an under performing computer which has some bottleneck that prevents it from going to 90 fps, and whether or not it is the graphics card or a slow cpu or slow memory or cached memory or not, PERFORMANCE IS WORSE. Every single person will find 90 fps more enjoyable. 30 fps isn't a setting as you suggest, it's a SYMPTOM of a bottleneck.
Do you really mean to tell me that you think I'm talking about a game that is capped at 30 fps? You are digging for straws. 30 fps, especially in my example and real life, is not a cap in fps games. I am talking about real life performance, you are talking about a computer capable of rendering at 200 fps that displays two screens, one capped at 30 and one capped at 90. What kind of a student unrealistic argument is that? Of course in both cases everything is updated at the same speed and the only factor is the 2/3s less frames on one monitor. But in real life, 30 fps happens for a reason, beacuse of a real bottleneck. 90 fps without a bottleneck would be preferred to any system at 30 fps because of a bottleneck (not a cap, obviously.)
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Try Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. Linux supported.
A relatively old OpenGL game, fully open sourced (GPL), which works on fairly low-end HW, both under Linux and Windows. You can find it via the hoverball home page Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors.
Find these, and tons of other Linux games (just browse around for multiplayer!), over at The Linux Game Tome.
That site's been around since before I was even using Linux (1998), so I'm shocked to find people who've never seen it!!!
When I started playing Quake I had a 400 MHz Celeron and a Pure 3D (Voodoo 2-based) 3D card. I didn't get 60 fps all the time, but it was certainly playable. A 1.7 GHz P4 and any flavor of GeForce should have no problem at all with Quake. Perhaps you're thinking of Quake 2 or 3? I don't know if the newer versions are more demanding of the hardware.
-Rich
Damn straight, BenBoy! Back in...'98?...I installed Quake on a couple work PCs so a couple co-workers and I could game during lunch, and boy, did I get the 3rd degree from IT! I was probably lucky I kept my job!
-Rich
1) You'll donate those "not so great" systems to me, right? I mean, I'm running Not-So-Great Previous-Generation back here, after all.
2) What about CoreWars? It'd be great, especially if some of you are coders.
Well hot damn. Where'd I put that CD?
Given that you have those "sluggish" P4's, may I suggest you setup a single-player game of Pac-Man? It only takes up 24K on your hard disk, will use about 0.001% of your CPU and will load faster than Websphere Studio Application Developer v5.0 would on a 266Mz machine running OS/2.
You and your office mates will scream with excitement when you hear the noises of your Pac-Man guy dying, eating ghosts and especially during those elaborate interludes that occur after every three screens or so.
Also, I'd recommend you invest in a complete computer surround sound system, perhaps Bose 8.1, to take advantage of the digital mixing and dispersement abilities that are beloved Pac-Man arcade game did back in the early 80's at the Shopping Mall.