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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 :-)"

15 of 654 comments (clear)

  1. Umm... by fo0bar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Umm... by smchris · · Score: 4, Insightful


      Well, I read about the following 20 posts and nobody else was rude enough to ask whether the cards were set up with the proper _accelerated_ drivers. So it's up to me. Maybe with stock drivers Quake 3 wouldn't be so good even on those machines.

    2. Re:Umm... by labratuk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Exactly. Running on a PII 400Mhz (dual) with TNT2 here. Have been able to play all the quake series just fine. (Not that I really do anymore. Haven better things to do than throw away time playing a silly game.)

      While I'm here I might suggest something. Doom Legacy. This is great fun. You'll need to dig out your old Doom / Doom2 wads, but it is really a blast playing through the levels on a lan in cooperative mode. Give it a try.

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      Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
    3. Re:Umm... by spikev · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From what I understand Nvidia cards in Linux need accellerated drivers moreso than other cards.

    4. Re:Umm... by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Has anyone yet released a Doom/Heretic/ROTT/Whatever old-school game with tcp-ip support for joining games mid-way through

      There's a rumor going around that Slashdot posters never read the articles they're replying to.

      Apparently they don't even read the post being replied to either, because the software linked does exactly that.

    5. Re:Umm... by override11 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mostly the higher frame rates aren't for visual quality, but in a big frag-fest with 20 players and everyone shooting glowie bullets and rockets, that 140 FPS will drop like a rock. The object is to get a system powerful enough to handle these stressing times during game play without screen lag. If you start out at 60 FPS and get into a big brawl, you can easily drop to about 20 fps, and then find yourself facing a wall when you meant to turn the corner. :) Happy gaming!

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      No I didnt spell check this post...
  2. wtf by _Shorty-dammit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    quake runs on pentium ONE machines, what are you on?

    1. Re:wtf by blixel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why is this funny? Quake ran just fine on Windows.

      Dude, this is slashdot.

  3. Huh? You're underestimating those machines... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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).

  4. Re:Enemy Territory by Marsala · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and after a week they become a lot more proficient.

    Yeah.

    It doesn't take all that long to figure out how to type in "OMFG..WTF?!? HAX!" or to understand that when all hope is lost poor shots turn to the flamethrower for solace. :)

    Seriously, though... Enemy Territory (which is totally, 100% free-as-in-beer free and plays under Winders and Linux nicely) or Return to Castle Wolfenstein are awesome games... especially if you want to emphasize that whole teamwork thing. We used to play RtCW after hours, and it did a lot for the whole "I got your back" mentality in the office.

    ET will be more graphics hungry than RtCW, but I currently play ET on a Ti4000 without too much hassle, and was running RtCW on a honest-to-gawd 3dfx Voodoo 3000. Something like Quake3 should be no sweat for the systems you mentioned (I've played all 3 on a 850Mhz duron).

  5. Re:Wanna Trade? by xeno_gearz · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Exactly. Even a 2.6 GHZ machine is not good anymore. My previous post on this reposted for your convenience... :)

    Precisely! I recently purchased a computer for a family member who will only use it for some basic uses such as word processing, email, etc. Anyways, when I was out shopping at one store, the sales guy stated "This machine will be on sale the day after Thanksgiving, although it's only 2.6 GHZ..." ONLY?!?! What in the hell? Anyways, I ended up getting the person a Thanksgiving special at a different store (but it also was only 2.6 GHZ ;)

    Took the damn thing back to their house and a whole bunch of the extended family was there, it being the holidays and all. They check out the computer and they are all, "Nice computer, only 2.6 GHZ though..." What in the hell! These people are only going to use it for email and stuff. I couldn't believe the reaction I was getting from these people!

    At least the person who received the computer appreciated it though. Sorry for the rant but I was amazed at this prevalent outlook on processor speed. Has anyone else run into this?

    We might as well all get Athlon 64s to check email and run word processing because that is what the industry [Not just AMD, mind you] tells consumers that they need. ;)

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    troll blacklist. Please mo
  6. Re:Needs WINE, but its dirt cheap by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It can't be commercially viable any more.

    Doesn't matter. They still won't give it away. Releasing it for free might mean that someone will grab it any release an improved version (still for free), and that it might get a few users, and those people might have less time to buy the company's upcoming for-profit releases.

    That's the real reason the entertainment industry wants eternal copyrights- not because old works are still earning them money, but because they'd be competition with their new releases.

  7. Re:Might I suggest... by burns210 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    or you could take it a step further: buy a game console. REAL People realize thate GAME CONSOLES are stronger in the area of .... games. Windows has a larger library than linux, but the xbox, ps2, or gamecube(all work fine, i prefer my gamecube) are going to play those games better. Use a windows box where it is *better*, and linux box where it is *better* and a game console where it is *better*. it makes perfect sense.

  8. Re:Wanna Trade? by forlornhope · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Im with you buddy, I have been on my 800Mhz Celeron for the past 4 years(though I must admit it is "slightly" overclocked to 1.1Ghz). Meanwhile my dad bitches daily to me about how slow and how much of a piece of shit his P4 1.8Ghz system is. I keep telling him its windows be he refuses to let me put that "Piece of Shit" Linux on his system. Im ashamed to call him my father sometimes. And on a similar subject I did just splurge for a brand new Apple iBook G4. I brought it to engineering(WVU student) three days after I got it and no one could imagine why I got the 12 inch Apple iBook running at an appauling 800Mhz while they showed off their 17 inch beasts with top of the line intel crap. That was until they saw the amazing battery life and how I could throw it into my backpack and it fit in perfectly because it is the exact size of my notebooks and textbooks. Size might matter in somethings, but in the computer world most people get size for the sake of size and end up screwing themselves. Ok now Im done ranting and heading off to bed.

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    "We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86
  9. Come on, let's just come out and say it... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    The enemies of Democracy are