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Great Games To Put On a Free PC?
Lumpy writes "I am giving several new PC's to a local charity that will be giving them to needy kids this Xmas. They are not powerful, basically baseline Dells that have Intel graphics and Celeron, but more than enough to do homework and other studies on. They are going out with XP on them, an Ubuntu CD, and a bunch of OSS software like OO.o and the others. I would like to include some games for the kids. Strategy, fun, etc. Great freeware games that are fun to play. What would be the best games that a 13-16 year old will like to play that are free and legal to give away, and will run on this lower-end hardware?"
Armagetron - its a great game based on the Disney movie Tron, very fun and addicting. Even better is that it is available with fully networkable clients for Mac, Linux and Windows so anyone can play with anybody given they have the game for their platform and a network switch.
The game is a clean, competitive one that can be monitored via server. Comes in the Ubuntu package repositories by default.
Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid
Project: Starfighter
Virus Killer
All are 2D software rendering with screen modes of 640x480 or 800x600. They've proved fairly popular in the past...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Reversi/othello
Checkers
Chess
Go
instead of mind numbing violence and graphic eye candy, maybe it is a better idea to switch gears and provide something that actually cultivate the mind?
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
Scorched 3D ran on old 3Dfx cards.
Current intel graphics would more than handle it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
one of the funner games i remember playing as a child was AT-Robots. i'm not sure if it was free back then (i might have gotten it at a swap meet or something), but it's certainly free now.
basically, it's a robot battle simulation. you use a text editor to write the AI for your bot(s) in ATRA (Advanced T-Robot Assembly), a simplified assembly-like language used in the game, and then you load your custom-made bots up in the game and run battle simulations against other types of robots.
even if you don't assembly or don't have any programming experience, it's relatively easy to open up one of the pre-written robots that come with the game and figure out what different instructions do by altering different program parameters and then seeing how this changes the robot's behavior.
it's a great way to get kids interested in programming (and perhaps robotics/AI) while having lots of fun. one of the game's best qualities is that it encourages experimentation and creativity. once you get into the game you're always trying to tweak your robots and experiment with new techniques to improve their battle performance. it's largely a process of trial-and-error when you first start, but it also encourages deductive reasoning and other analytical skills.
On the educational side, TuxType, TuxPaint and TuxMath are all great programs that teach spelling, typing/speed, basic geometry/colors, and basic math problem solving.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Oh, man! I loved GORILLA.BAS (I mean the game, the code I didn't understand when I was five :P).
I liked Nibbles too, but there was this level I just couldn't beat. It has two diagonal lines, I remember. Damn walls!
Similarly, Logo can be a great way to educate programming skills, as well as artistic and problem solving skills. Logo can make spirograph-type art, and puzzles such as mazes can be navigated. I'm not sure if Logo has been developed as far as having AI, but it seems possible.
Logo may be more appropriate for younger audiences. Something with a similar artistic/programming approach for teens would be interesting. Maybe sodaplay or processing, although these maybe a bit too difficult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
On that note - we have a 4 year old at home (soon to be 5) who is hooked on GCompris. Most of the mini-games there are too difficult, but she loves the ones she can figure out.
She switches on the PC and logs on herself (with her own password) to get to it.
While I thought about giving her Sugar as the DE, she seems very comfortable with GNOME.