Slashdot Mirror
Linux Games For Non-Gamers?
Nethead writes "Due to some down-time, I'm looking for some Linux games to pass the time. I've been playing BattleMaster, a PHP web game but it's only two turns a day, and I'd like something a bit faster. I've not really played PC games since the Doom era so I'm really out of touch here. I don't have a real gamer box, just a simple video card. What do Slashdotters think I should try? A simple FPS or some type of networked game would do. What's out there for Linux?"
I find xmoto is an excellent time waster ..
http://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/
Also I occasionally delve into the "flash games" arena .. there's actually some decent stuff now days! (And there's always the classics like "defend the castle" and "Champion Archer")
some flash games are quite decent, like gemcraft http://armorgames.com/play/3527/gemcraft-chapter-0
Well, there is a wiki too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Linux_games I've played the Penumbra games, they are ... adventure games really but fairly atmospheric.
You could try MUDding :) See my sig
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Cube, OpenArena, Nexuiz are all fair FPS games. Not amazing, but fun diversions. Aside from that BZFlag, Battle for Wesnoth, and FreeCiv.
A word of advice: Never play Frozen Bubble. I've lost days thanks to that bastard.
Check out http://www.happypenguin.org/. I've got the RSS enabled on the right side of /. If you ever up your video card, http://www.planeshift.it/ is an excellent open source mmorpg.
Quakelive works on linux now, have a go!
Travian is a free browser-based strategy/resource game that works fine on any OS. From what I gather, it's not as fast as most of the other MMORPGs, but it does require a bit of attention.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Freeciv is a good game you can play and leave, then come back to later. It doesn't require a lot of hardware, and while complicated at first, it becomes remarkably simple to play once you've played for a while.
Watch you don't get too addicted though! The urge to play 'just one more turn', or to go to bed 'after I've captured that city' is incredible.
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
OpenTTD (which is based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe) is a great game and you can quickly loose track of the time building intricate train networks. You do need the original game files but this is pretty easy to do with the help of Google.
http://openttd.org/
Vendetta works under Linux. More of a space shooter with role playing elements than the traditional FPS which you seem to be looking for, but the guys at Guild Software have spent a good amount of time making sure it works well under a wide variety of hardware configurations.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
World of Goo - check it out!
Seriously, if it exists, you can find it here.
Here is a short list of some Linux games I know of:
3D Multiplayer Deathmatch:
Alien Arena
Warsow
Openarena
World of Padman
Nexuiz
Sauerbraten
3D Multiplayer team DM:
Tremulous (aliens vs. humans)
Enemy Territory (allies vs. axis), freeware
ET - True Combat Elite (terrorists vs. specops), freeware
Urban Terror (terrorists vs. specops)
2D Multiplayer Deathmatch:
Teeworlds (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!)
Artillery:
Scorched3D
Hedgewars (Worms clone)
Wormus (Worms clone with OS mascots)
Real Time Strategy:
Warzone2100
Bos Wars
The Spring Project and various mods
Turn-based Strategy:
Battle for Wesnoth (caution, addictive)
Freeciv
Racing (I'm not really into racing):
Supertuxkart
Trackmania
Jump-n-run:
Supertux
Secret Maryo Chronicles
Others:
Neverball/Neverputt
Foobillard
Frozen-Bubble (multiplayer bubble-puzzle clone)
OpenTTD
These games require fairly simple hardware -- I have played most of them on my built-in intel X3100 (i965).
Sounds like you've missed a fair few generations of games then.
Try giving Enemy Territory a go.
Quite addictive in its time and a nice cooperative element to online play.
It was released back in 2003, and runs quite well on Linux. You did mention only having a "simple" video card but odds are better than even your system has sufficient support - even basic integrated video chipsets tend to have some degree of OpenGL support these day.
System requirements are: 600 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB OpenGL graphics card, 56.6k Modem/LAN
Its not quite Open Source but it is (and always has been) free as in beer.
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
If you're into strategy and don't mind losing all of your free time and some of your work time, there's FreeCiv. Think Civilization recast as a full-on client/server multi-player setup. I've not played it recently (no time to game at all lately, too much code to write!) but the graphics requirements should be fairly modest.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
In order of my personal preferences, I'd suggest NetHack, Angband, NetHack, SLASH'EM, NetHack, ADOM, NetHack, and, oh yeah, NetHack.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The deepest Roguelike ever. If you aren't sure why you might want to play it, start here.
Get the Linux 40d16 version from this page
If you prefer graphical tiles to (nearly) pure ASCII (I certainly do) get the Mike Mayday tileset from this page and use the instructions to get it working.
Then watch the 40 tutorial videos to ease the neigh vertical learning curve. You will of course supplement the videos with lots of careful reading of the wiki.
This game is a time vampire, but lots of fun if you have a little patience and an attention span.
Linux Games
Happy Penguin
LinuX Gamers
I can't believe nobody mentioned Warsow. When I first played it, I couldn't believe it was open source. The graphics and animations are impressive. And the gameplay is far better than any other FPS game I've ever played. Also unlike other Linux Games, Warsow is polished and doesn't have that open source feel to it.
The Ur Quan Masters (was: Star Control 2) at http://sc2.sf.net/ is a masterpiece of a game, runs natively on Linux, and is free.
You can also run a lot of great games under DOSBox. You can get the X-COM series ( UFO Defense, Terror from the Deep, and Apocalypse ) from various online sources for something like $5 US, just make sure they're not DRM-wrapped. I also highly recommend Master of Orion II. All these run great under DOSBox on Linux and require no 3D video capabilties at all. They're all long-running single player strategies, which may not be your kind of thing.
Strategies continued...
* Use the Linux box to connect to the Internet and create a private network with NAT with default inbound deny, connect the Windows box to the NAT network so that worms don't infect it. Run all Windows updates on the relatively secured private network. (works every time, so far)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Linux games that I found/find genuinly fun:
Battle for Wesnoth
TORCS
Vega Strike
OpenArena
This sig has been distributed under the Creative Commons license.
You just lost the game.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It's on Microsoft's FTP servers now:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/games/public/AAS/Hover.EXE
(Usual disclaimers about running random binaries go here...)
World of Goo is a great causal game http://2dboy.com/games.php
Although its not open source, so ill likely get modded down. They do have a demo (in deb,rpm & tar)
Seems strange nobody yet mentioned the linuX-gamers' website.
;) make me still enjoy loggin-in for a few rounds.
It has an extensive list of games of all genres, indexed per category.
In addition to the many good titles already submitted by other posters, I would like to mention Savage: the Battle of Newerth. It is a quite old game (2003, if memory serves me well), got open-sourced when original publisher rolled out the sequel, but latest mod is kept closed-sourced.
It's a mixed FPS/RTS game, OpenGL, multiplatform (Windows, Linux and Mac [there were issues with previous mods, seems resolved with latest]), online-only cooperative game wich faces humans and beasts with the goal of destroyng enemy's main building. One player per team takes role of "commander", and plays the game RTS (Startcraft-style), and the other people play on the field, in FPS mode.
There are buildings, enchantments, AI controlled workers and many many more.
I mentioned mods: developement of the game continued by third parties (community-driven, at most) to keep it up-to-date. Latest "stable" is the SFE (Savage Full Enchantment), while there's the almost-released XR (at rc1 stage, or rc2... iirc).
All can be found at the community site Newerth, officially backed-up and supported by S2Games, the original publisher. Downloads from the home page are directly for the XR. In the menu donwload section there are others aswell.
*Disclaimer*: I'm not affiliated to the site/organization in any way except for the fact that I'm a registered user, in quality of gamer.
An old Athlon@800MHz with a Nvidia FX5200 was sufficent to make it playable. Actual hardware should not suffer from any inconvenience. But keep in mind XR introduced use of hardware shaders (among with other visual improvements) which may raise the bar.
After all those years I still like this game: its unique mix, in comunion with many really good players (and many many many more newbs
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
Both great games from Introversion. There is also Darwinia (which I didn't like so much), but the other two, highly recommended.
The game, technically, is simple enough for almost any video card to handle (better ones don't add /that/ much extra). In the same way as checkers, it's quite easy to operate (mouse plus 4 keys or so) but takes a while to master.
The simplistic graphics and simplistic controls focuses the game on something else: gameplay. That's why it's what I spend 90% of my gaming time on it.
"Good news, everyone!"
Still one of the best games available - I replayed it a couple of months ago.
No sig today...
Try the DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death) series, which are puzzle games with story lines and lots of humour. They are also very playable for beginners, you don't have to be a die-hard puzzle lover to play this.
You can play one or a few rooms per day if you want, the game will automatically save your progress so you can stop any time you want. They released the source code of the first game in the series, not unlike what id Software does.
http://caravelgames.com/Articles/Games.html
Though commercial games: Uplink and Defcon. Especially Uplink. Not too expensive and both very good games you can spend alot of time with. Uplink runs with almost any graphics card, Defcon might need a slightly better one. Both for beating the world before it beats you.
I work for a very successfull and rapidly growing browsergame publisher (currently the largest). We do have the one or other title that was acquired and isn't all that spectacular for geeks and nerds, but we have some very neat originals, some of which have made us big and have had gotten a facelift or two recently (aside of the regular improvements and bugfixes). Since they run on browsers they are naturally x-plattform and require no installation. All are free to play.
Here's my personal favorites list from our portfolio:
OGame, a classic 4X sci-fi/space game with a brand new pimped-out Ajax interface and fresh GFX. ... And a cool trailer. (Hint: Try a non-US server if the one you got has old boring table layouts - the community is large and most of us read and write a fluent english :-) )
Ikariam, a Settlers/Civilisation type Browsergame. Scored some prestigious awards recently, including 'Browsergame of the Year 2008'.
Wild Guns, a BG with a Wild West setting. Just has gotten a total redo of the graphics by our art crew. Very neat.
KingsAge, a nice old-school BG, Defender of the Crow / Middle Ages Camelot style.
OK, slashdoters, go flood our servers and have our admins do some extra shifts. Hehehe... *leans back and takes some popcorn*
Have fun!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You'll love Nexuiz.
When I want to pull away from MMORPG time sinks, this is where I go. Total in your face FPS action. Multiplayer as too, tho' the bots can be taxing enough.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Which you can play, actually: DefCon.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it