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Unusual Physics Engine Game Ported To Linux
christian.einfeldt writes "Halloween has come early for Linux-loving gamers in the form of the scary Penumbra game trilogy, which has just recently been ported natively to GNU-Linux by the manufacturer, Frictional Games. The Penumbra games, named Overture, Black Plague and Requiem, are first-person survival horror and physics puzzle games which challenge the player to survive in a mine in Greenland which has been taken over by a monstrous infection/demon/cthulhu-esque thing. The graphics, sounds, and plot are all admirable in a scary sort of way. The protagonist is an ordinary human with no particular powers at all, who fumbles around in the dark mine fighting zombified dogs or fleeing from infected humans. But the game is remarkable for its physics engine — rather than just bump and acquire, the player must use the mouse to physically turn knobs and open doors; and the player can grab and throw pretty much anything in the environment. The physics engine drives objects to fly and fall exactly as one would expect. The porting of a game with such a deft physics engine natively to Linux might be one of the most noteworthy events for GNU-Linux gamers since the World of Goo Linux port."
I just ordered it and am downloading the install file now (893 MB). All three games are $5 (and the site says for this weekend only) when purchased as one. Normally they are $10 each. And the site accepts Paypal if you're afraid of handing out credit card information to yet another site.
Dirt cheap compared to most games even on Steam so I'll definitely see how well it runs on my Ubuntu box.
My work here is dung.
Actually, they've had the Linux version of these games available for quite some time... The only thing new is the $5 special pricing for the complete collection of all three... But, if you haven't already got them before now, then definitely go get them for $5!
Poking around the checkouts I see that you buy the game individually for each operating system as opposed to buy once, run anywhere. If my main mac dies (again) I'll have to shell out again to play it on a Windows or Linux machine. Not a huge fan of this sort of arrangement, I liked Braid where I've paid for it once and have access to Windows and OSX copies.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Well, the article says the games have been RE-ported. Which makes sense: I tried playing the first one - or a demo - on my Ubuntu machine about six months ago, and it was the most unstable piece of software I've ever seen, and crashed so frequently I gave up on playing it pretty quickly.
Uh, even my 8600M GT can handle most graphic effects in a stunning fashion if not amazing. I don't know what you're talking about but both Nvidia and ATI cards are handled pretty darn well on Linux nowadays.
People even use it for gaming! .
Maybe you should try running Linux. It's clear you aren't currently.
Copyrights recently expired, might have something to do with it. Chaosium has trademarked Call of Cthulhu (not sure how, would love to see someone challenge it). But the stories are copyright free (although I think someone might be fighting this).
I just bought the linux version and started playing it and have not had any problems with performance so far. I am running kubuntu 9.04 x86_64 with an Intel core2quad 2.83G with 8G DDR1066 and dual Radeon HD 4550 in crossfirex mode using the latest ati catalyst 9.6 fglrx driver. The movement is very smooth without any hiccups with all the video options at their highest settings. I can't give you a comparison to the windows version since I have no intention on getting it, but I can tell you that it works great on my linux system.