Slashdot Mirror
Freeloading PC Multiplayer Party Games
Thanks to 1UP for its 'Freeloader' article profiling little-known but free multiplayer party games for the PC. The author explains of the featured games: "All of them are quick to download, easy on the system requirements, free of charge, and support six or more players. Perfect for the next time you throw together a quick gaming session", before pointing to Little Fighter 2 ("Super-deformed kids hitting each other in the face with baseball bats"), Soldat ("about as close as you can come to a side scrolling Quake deathmatch"), and Liquid War ("Definitely the most fun you'll have playing with puddles since you were six.")
Liquid war is one of the most fun open source games I've played. I'm surprised BZFlag wasnt mentioned!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
What about AlephOne/M1A1?? Can't beat it's FPS'n platform'n action! /me goes back to his Marathon-athon
I downloaded liquid war and set up a server. If any other slashdotters want to play it's at 68.201.157.203
It should be in the menu there.
Seems the only other server that was up was password protected. And no one was playing.
Well they missed a few games out including Allegiance which is still going at http://www.freealleg.net/
I think Abuse fits that bill better, and it's public domain, with a Win32 port here
That is the full game with all media. It comes with a level editor, and only supports 4 player deathmatch. Still, one of my favorite LAN games.
P.S. I understand the author of this port has a slashdot account. Be sure to let him know what you think.
Be warned - Bontago will bring your system to its knees on bigger maps, more players.
In larger games you end up with a standoff where each player is constantly disrupting the others lines of communication, and the only way to attempt a win is to build a rubble road to the flags. This means that you end up with huge numbers of objects on the map, and thats when the game falls apart. It takes so long to recalculate your area of influence, which is constantly changing, that all your drops time out and you are no longer able to play.
If the game changed just a bit so it didn't completely reset your area of influence while it figures out the effect of a change, it wouldn't be so bad.
Speaking of 2D deathmatch, I found Jump'n'Bump very fun and skillish.
I even supports four people playing on the same computer! I tried with three. It's cute and full of gibs and blood.
It's also on Orkut.
Not a party game, but an absolutely awesome, and free, mmorp. Runescape. I've been addicted since I started a few months ago. If you decide to check it out, i also highly recommend RuneHQ as it's an incredible resource for playing the game.
Come on, no one remembers the original Scorched Earth? Now there is an open source, 3d version: http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/.
Little Fighter II and Soldat are great games too, but in our local Lan Parties, Armagetron was definitely the most succesful. We found out that Little Fighter II is best when played with less than 4 players, hopefully about the same skill level, as there is a huge learning curve. Soldat used to be more succesful in earlier versions, when it was even faster and crazier :)
circa 1995
I still play Subspace, which you can download among other places at www.subspacechaos.com
There's still plenty of people who play in the various zones, but I'm sure the current population wouldnt mind getting a noob or two thousand.
Also, bzflag, is easy on the requirements and easy to play.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Soldat is quite the game for when you are stuck on a low end computer. It never ran quite right on my laptop, which is another story, but even on dial up you can play a 8 player deathmatch. It works okay over the network, for me at least.
SAILING MISHAP