The State of Linux Gaming

Srikant_Chaudhry writes "CTZ has an interesting article that talks about hardware and software problems, along with others, that is limiting Linux gaming as a whole. Here's a quote from their concluding paragraph: "As of this moment, gaming on Linux is still a little like the Wild West. It's somewhat chaotic, random and empty, but it can be very exciting too. As time progresses and the market matures, we will see a plethora of games on Linux. Right now, many distributions are concentrating on other materials, like making their distributions easy to use, and making sure they work well with all the different hardware. Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux. That's when the Linux gaming market will really take off."

Comments

America's Army rocks

[Trailer Trash]

I've been playing AA:SF on Linux for a couple of weeks and it is rock solid. I was amazed to find that there was a Linux version, and there is one single guy in the credits who is credited with both the Linux and Mac OSX ports. The only problem is that I couldn't signup on their web site with Firefox, had to use IE.

Anyway, good FPS, absolutely free, and downloadable via a torrent (check out the 3dgamers link for download).

Re:I'm willing to change

[kg_o.O]

There you go

Re:I'm willing to change

[plover]

Seconded! America's Army is The One True Game.

The gameplay is brilliant: no "instant respawn". You die, well, you get to sit there and watch your buddies try to complete the mission. Since your opponents are also equally motivated to stay alive, they're usually much more challenging. The weapons and ammo aren't unlimited, you don't find Big Kegs O' Health laying on the ground, and you don't get powerups. There's no such thing as turning friendly fire on or off -- don't shoot your buddies or you'll get booted from the server and wind up in Leavenworth (worth exploring in cheat mode once or twice, by the way.) The graphics (especially since the 2.x release) are among the best in the industry -- great attention to detail. Most of the maps are fairly well balanced. And while you don't play an ongoing "character", your performance is still tracked, and counts for a little bit in selecting your position on each squad.

Relatively few bugs, and PunkBuster to keep the cheating reduced to a playable level. All that and it's free -- you don't even have to sit through a "Join the Army" lecture to get it.

I've played all the other FP shooters, and I keep coming back to AA for every one of those reasons above. I've not played it on Linux, so I can't swear to the performance on that platform, but if it can run on a crappy Windows box, it should run fine for you.

Re:I'm willing to change

[Contact]

...I've never been able to get Dance Dance Revolution on a PC and that's the game she really wanted

Check out Stepmania. It's an open source DDR clone, runs under windows, and can import third party songs and patterns (there are *cough* allegedly *cough* lots of these available on various file sharing networks).

Without wishing to sound like flamebait, Stepmania is head and shoulders above most homegrown software - it's much better than most commercial stuff. I'm not a huge DDR fan, but I was incredibly impressed by how well this was put together. Best of all - it's available for Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows.

Just add a USB to Playstation adapter, and you can plug a playstation dance mat into your PC and get going...

Re:How the fuck

[LilMikey]

Wow... you're impressively uninformed. Have you even bothered to use Linux?

Audio Software for Linux, well, let's see, Audacity, that's it. Windows, Audacity, Goldwave, SoundForge, etc.

Check PlanetCCRMA once in a while. Personally, I personally use Ardour + Hydrogen + Jack often. You mentioned Audacity and there's a bazillion 'nothing special' recorders along the line of goldwave.

Video Editing Software for Linux, well, let's see, none that I can think of. Windows, Adobe Primere, Video Explosion Deluxe, Dazzle DVD Complete.

Kino, mencodeer, AVIDemux, DVD-Create...

Image Editing Software for Linux, The Gimp, and that's it. Windows, PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, NeoPaint as well as the Gimp.

Photogenics, X-Paint, Artstream, if course Gimp. If you really can't live without the comfort of Photoshop, 7 runs perfectly under wine.

Email Software, Thunderbird, none other that I can think of. Windows it's Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook/Outlook Express.

Evolution, Thunderbird, KMail, Balsa, GMail, Aethera, Mahogany...

I understand you're trolling and I'm just feeding you but if noone replies to crap like this average people might actually believe the shlop this guy says. If it weren't for games, there would be a lot more converts.