Next-Gen Linux Game Roundup

[GameGod]

Hey guys,

I've posted a roundup (http://linuxrevolution.blogspot.com/2006/03/next-gen-linux-game-roundup.html) of some up and coming open-source games over on my blog (many of which you might have never heard of)...

Looks like we might not be doomed to run WINE for the rest of eternity... ;)

Tell me what you think!
:)

[ReviewSpin]

Purdy good man...:-D SOme of those games look neato.

[Sutekh]

=D>

Nice stuff, I always like to see whats out there in terms of native games for Linux. When I have some time I hope to have a go at them.

[akiro.yamamoto]

Thanks for the link, I am looking for a new driving / simulation game for my system.
So Ecksdee looks interesting, I'm not to curious about the various multiplayer
Doom , Quake , Cube mods..... Not really a deathmatch fan, I prefer a single
player progression type game... ;)

[GameGod]

Yeah, Ecksdee is probably a pretty good one to watch driving wise... There's always VDrift and TORCS, but the developers of those games are so focused on making them "the perfect driving simulation" that they both are completely lacking polish. Bleh...

[akiro.yamamoto]

Yeah, Ecksdee is probably a pretty good one to watch driving wise... There's always VDrift and TORCS, but the developers of those games are so focused on making them "the perfect driving simulation" that they both are completely lacking polish. Bleh...

I have to agree...
VDrift is ahhhh well, ....... not my cup of tea :rolleyes:
Torcs is alot better but still needs a little work....
Right now I'm thinking of getting NFS installed in Cedega to get my driving fix:mrgreen:

[KingBahamut]

Hmmmm....I like your list.

What about Nexuiz? Warsow?

TA Spring, there gives some old time feelings there. Im actually hopeful that Taylor will give us an installer in Supreme Commander --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander

[GameGod]

I thought about including Nexiuz, and I probably should have, but the last time I played the game I was kinda disappointed by it. I'll give it another shot again sometime though, as it's probably gotten better since then.

Warsow (http://www.warsow.net) on the other hand, I definitely should have included. I don't feel like I could accurately judge how the game's going to turn out, but it's got a cool graphical style and a unique concept, so we'll have to see what happens. (I'm a Defrag (for Q3A) fan btw, so I do like trick jumping stuff...) :)

Thanks! :)

[KingBahamut]

Nexuiz 1.5 , the build is much better than its previous releases. Im certain I wont be the only one to admit that earlier builds were kind of not clean.

[charlieg]

You missed some...

FreeOrion (http://www.freeorion.org)
Glest (http://www.glest.org)
UFO: AI (http://www.ufoai.net)
Mars: Land Of No Mercy (http://mars.sourceforge.net/)
OpenCity (http://www.opencity.info)
VDrift (http://www.vdrift.net)

These will all be corking games once completed and all are progressing steadily.

Also games like VegaStrike (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net) will see upgrades that bring them back into the fold as major open source games. I also think you'll see movement from Scourge (http://scourge.sourceforge.net) this year too.

[GameGod]

Oh yeah, good calls...

Glest totally kicks ***, that's definitely another one I shouldn't have missed. I thought Mars: Land of No Mercy was too early in development to write-up, but I agree that it's definitely going to rock too...

FreeOrion looks like it might get good too. I'd never seen OpenCity before, but that's got potential too. Lastly, I definitely completely missed UFO:AI... I didn't think they actually had a playable release for some reason... (downloading now...)

Thanks!

[charlieg]

Don't thank me yet. I missed out a few more, only now it's too early in the morning for me to recall them from last nights snooze-fueled thoughts.

[simplyw00x]

Have any of you had any luck getting these games working? Ecksdee needs CS-0.9, which takes hours to compile and I'm getting scores of annoying errors trying to 'scons configure' TA:Spring. I managed to get that one based on Quake3 (tremulous) working, but it only has a multiplayer (no bots). I realise that Q3 itself was always internet-focused, but at least it was playable by onesself.

As I posted on the entry, this really opened my eyes to some exciting possibilites on the bleeding edge of linux gaming, previously stagnating a bit with PPRacer this and UT that and ET the other. Well done!

[GameGod]

simplyw00x:
I managed to install and play all of the games except Automanic (hence the short description of it in the article, lol)...

For TA Spring, take a look at the Setup Guide (http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/SetupGuide) which explains how to compile and install it.

For Ecksdee, I downloaded the binaries from here (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ecksdee/ecksdee-bin-0.0.7.tar.bz2?download). You're going to also need the Cg libraries though, which I downloaded from here (http://www.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html#downloads) (again, already compiled... I downloaded the "Cg_Linux (.tar.gz)" package, and extracted the two .so files to my /usr/lib directory and ran an "sudo ldconfig" for good measure.)
Unfortunately, Ecksdee ran extremely slowly (< 1 fps), so I wasn't able to get a good feel for the game, but I'm still optimistic.
Also, I tried the Windows binaries posted on their site and they worked identically when I ran them through WINE (same frame-rate)... So if you have a new-ish version of WINE installed, it might just be easier to try the Windows binaries, lol)

Once again, thanks for the feedback everyone! I really appreciate it! :)

(Oh yeah, and Tremulous will definitely be worth playing once the stand-alone comes out...)

[akiro.yamamoto]

Thanks for the link GameGod, I wanted to try Ecksdee but it was being a pain in the a** ;)
What type of VD card are you using? I'll post back with my results for this game
when I get it installed ;)

[GameGod]

I'm using a GeForce 6600GT... but it's definitely a bug in Ecksdee or something that's causing the massive slowness for me...

[Gnowm]

One game some may not have heard of is called PlaneShift (http://www.planeshift.it/download.html) . It is a MMORPG, it is in beta stage still, but it works excellently in all platforms (well Linux, MacOS and Win). Since the developers have taken the time to actually port it to 3 platforms, we should support them. It is free to DL and play. It is all open source. Well check it out. One thing they do ask is for it to be DLed via the supplied torrent link. Install went without hitch on my Breezy Badger.

Cheers

[simplyw00x]

Ok, I've followed some of the suggestions and can report as follows:
Ecksdee - smooth menus, but unplayable 1fps in-game
TA: Spring - still won't compile - I get an error detecting main() in glew32 and glew
UFOAI - Used loki installer and works well, though the game is a bit confusing
Sauerbraten - great and looks very polished, but there's no occlusion and hence lots of slowdown in big maps. Also, RPGWTF?

[GameGod]

Also, RPGWTF?

bahahaha, that's exactly what I thought too... lol :)

[charlieg]

One game some may not have heard of is called PlaneShift (http://www.planeshift.it/download.html)
That one has been going a long time. It progresses about as fast as Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace.org) does (the engine it is based on).

[akiro.yamamoto]

PlanetShift looks interesting , think I'll try it out :)

[Breepee]

http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/

An RTS even, and one that's among the most promising I've found.

[RavenOfOdin]

I think I'll get PlaneShift too.

I'm currently switching between Battle for Wesnoth and America's Army, but when that's done. . .

[charlieg]

http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/

An RTS even, and one that's among the most promising I've found.
Freeware but not Free though and don't expect anything before 2007. :(

[Gnowm]

You missed some...

Mars: Land Of No Mercy (http://mars.sourceforge.net/)

These will all be corking games once completed and all are progressing steadily.


From the Mars page....

Mars, Land of No Mercy... the end of the dream

I'm really sorry guys, but the project Mars has to be closed...
Today I have received an email from Microsoft where they say that our mech models are too much similar to the ones of their game "Mechwarrior 4 : Mercenaries", so I have to choose if close Mars or be ready to deal with a suit.

I'm really sorry guys, but I have not the power nor the money of a big corporarion, so Mars project stops here.

Thanks to everybody that has believed in us and thanks to all the developers, I love you guys!

M3xican

P.S.
I have opened a thread in the forum about this news, so to use it as a guestbook for the last messages to Mars, bye.

That was looking pretty good too.
Damn it!

[GameGod]

GUYS!

That "Mars, Land of No Mercy" vs. Microsoft thing was an April fools joke!!! :)
(See the last comment in this thread (http://mars.dev-labs.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=77)...)

ie. It's not shutting down. :)
Besides, all they'd have to do was change their artwork... that's no biggie. ;)

[justleen]

GUYS!

That "Mars, Land of No Mercy" vs. Microsoft thing was an April fools joke!!! :)
(See the last comment in this thread (http://mars.dev-labs.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=77)...)

ie. It's not shutting down. :)
Besides, all they'd have to do was change their artwork... that's no biggie. ;)
Now thats a silly april fools joke.. why let everyone know you're quiting - even as a joke?

[vknecht]

Hello,

being one of the authors of Ecksdee, I'd be interested to know if Ecksdee 0.0.8 release (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=157040&package_id=175437&release_id=408862) solves your 1-fps-problems.
ARB shaders support was missing but I guess I overlooked that problem since I have Cg installed.
If 0.0.8 does not help, could you provide me the "./ecksdee[_static] -verbose=-scf" output ?

Thanks

[charlieg]

I'm not sure if it's mentioned already in this thread, but Danger from the Deep (http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net) is shaping up really, really nicely.

[chadk]

Wow! Look at those graphics on Danger from the Deep. Cool.
XD looks like penguin racer.

[nickless]

I tried planeshift, but I must say that it... well it, ... lets say it wasn't my type, or something. Very strange controls and confusing for beginners. Not very good graphics, lagged on my computer and definitly not enough player models. I tried Sauerbraten today and it really rocks. It is exactly what I was searching :D