LINUXGAMES

Linux.com has posted a review of the Linux-Gamers Live DVD distribution:

There are no productivity tools, Web browsers, or package managers here; this disc is all play and no work. Because it’s a live DVD, no hard drive is required to run the games. Once you burn the downloaded image to a DVD, you have a portable arcade that will run on any x86 system with 512MB or more of RAM. A 3-D accelerated video card is also required for most of the games.

In an interview with Boing Boing, Virgin America’s Charles Ogilvie mentions that the airline is organizing an open source game competition for their Linux-based in-flight entertainment system. I’ve tried to find more details on the contest without much luck so far; if anyone knows any additional info, please let us know!

• Splash Damage has released the map sources for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which can then be imported for conversion to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars maps, so I expect homage maps from the community in short order :)
• Also, the latest installment of their Snap to Grid column profiles two community projects in alpha testing: the Retake of the Andes map and the Wheels of War mod.

Free Gamer pointed out glc, a utility that can capture video and sound from OpenGL games. Features include:

• The complete source code is available and licenced under zlib-style licence.
• Thread-based architechture takes full advantage of multicore-CPUs.
• Support for multiple simultaneous audio and video streams.
• Reads frames asynchronously from GPU using GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object extension.
• Does enforce fps cap only in the captured stream.
• If the application can play audio using ALSA, glc can record it regardless of sound card’s capabilities.
• Support for recording voice to a separate audio stream.
• Stores color correction information and applies it at playback.
• Minimal application overhead (eg. slow HDD does not slow program down).
• Fast arbitrary ratio video scaling with bilinear filtering.
• Does colorspace conversion to Y’CbCr 420jpeg which cuts stream size in half.
• Compresses stream with lightweight LZO or QuickLZ compression which saves additional 40%-60%.

It’s great to see a robust capture utility available for Linux!

Download: [ ath.cx ]

RuneSoft announced the following concerning their port of the adventure game Jack Keane:

After the completion of the Apple Macintosh version of “Jack Keane”, the young British man is now ready to start his adventures on the Linux platform as well. The Linux version is currently in Beta testing and should start shipping this summer.

About Jack Keane

Colonial England. Under a certain amount of… duress… Jack takes on a job which will not only cause him a great deal of trouble, but also bring to light the answer to a mystery out of his distant past. A lack of money leads Jack to accept a charter to take a British secret agent to mysterious “Tooth Island”. When Jack’s ship shatters on the mysterious island’s cliffs on arrival and the secret agent quickly becomes a meal for a monster in the jungle, Jack is soon left to cope with the situation on his own.

“Tooth Island” is ruled by the strange Doctor T, who is cultivating man-eating plants and has his own dastardly plans for the British Empire. And why does he seem to know Jack, who can’t remember ever having been on Tooth Island? What are Doctor T’s plans? And what does he know about Jack’s past?

And then there’s the young and naive Amanda, who is filled by an almost fanatical drive to prove her worth. In the beginning the young lady is employed by Doctor T, and part of her task is to track Jack down and take him prisoner. It doesn’t take long before she begins to wonder if she is really on the right side, or if she shouldn’t join her opponent, the charming Captain Jack, instead.

A hair-raising hunt across the length and breadth of the dangerous island finally airs the mystery surrounding Jack’s past and leads to a spectacular showdown with a dark and deadly enemy and his nefarious henchmen.

Key Features

The Funniest adventure game in the footsteps of Monkey Island

Enthralling story including many allusions to famous movies, videos and computer games

More than 40 funny characters

An abundance of cinematic movies and cut-scenes

Countless locations stuffed with interactions

Suited for both beginners and, due to increasing difficulty levels, advance players

Two playable characters: The very ironic, slightly clumsy daredevil Jack Keane, plus the attractive and adventuresome lady, Amanda

3-D levels presented in a classic adventure atmosphere

Plenty of diverse locations such as London, the high seas, Cape Town and the Indian jungle

KatsBits has a tutorial for creating idtech (”the same model can be exported out to a *.map and used in Quake 3, Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey and Quake Wars”) maps in the Blender 3D graphics creation suite:

With the addition of an export option, Blender 3D can now export meshes and models directly out to the *.map format most often used in games like id software’s ‘Quake’ series. These ‘converted’ models can be loaded directly into QeRadiant or GTKRadiant ‘as is’, so it is now possible to ‘model’ a level for use in game.

Vulcando Games sent in a new update regarding their upcoming massive multiplayer game Celetania:

Seeing as the Grogg ships are well known to you now, Vulcando Games presents you the S.E.C.C.T.S. chassis.

The S.E.C.C.T.S. are cybernetic entities which emanated from the humans of today. Contrary to the Grogg their preference is not trading but rather advancing technically and warfare.

This distinct property can be seen on their ships as well – they are more aggressive and powerful. While a fleet of hostile S.E.C.C.T.S. ships ramble through the galaxy, no one would voluntarily stand in their way because it is quite safe to assume that they are well armed.

You can find videos and descriptions for the chassis, that are the base element of every spaceship, on the official website . Utilizing these chassis in our sophisticated construction kit, you will be able to individually assemble these the way you desire.

In two weeks Vulcando Games will be publishing information about the weapons of the S.E.C.C.T.S. which will turn unperilous ships into raptors!

Celetania is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) title with gameplay similar to Ascendency or Master of Orion, albeit with scores of other players.

The authors of Really Rather Good Battles In Space, a RTS project, let us know they have a new release featuring:

• Faster gameplay
• less verbose tutorial
• Unicode is supported for mission scripts
• Various other minor changes and additions
• Linux bug and makefile fixes

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

OpenFracas a free software version of the popular board game Risk, is at version 0.5 (thanks Free Gamer). Changes:

• Sounds and Music
• OpenFracas now supports up to 8 players
• New troop count drawing algorithm
  • Better placement of troop counts
  • Scales troop counts to fit within smaller country
• Options to restart a game or reuse the current map
• Streamlined User Interface
• Map Editor improvements
• More player colours to choose from
• Help documentation, revised from Fracas help, now available

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ openfracas.org ]

GamesRadar conducted an interview with id Software’s John Carmack about the first-person shooter developer’s upcoming Quake III: Arena derivative, Quake Live:

It’s completely free - there aren’t any micro-transactions. Quake Live is completely ad-supported on the web browser pages and [through] in-game advertising. Of course, this is speculative - we’re going to have to see how this works out. Early on, we were tossing around two different orders of magnitudes - anywhere from 50,000 to 5 million people playing. We have no idea where it is going to be in there.

[...]

Historically, id Software has been a PC gaming company, with consoles a secondary business that happened later. And even though the PC doesn’t get the focus that it used to, in many ways our hearts are still there, and we’d like to do things where the PC is the appropriate platform. [We’d like to] do something that really speaks to the future of where the PC can be superior to consoles.

Version 1.1.0 of Wine, the Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix has been released.
New items in this release includes the following:

• Many more gdiplus functions implemented.
• Improved graphics tablet support.
• Many Richedit fixes and improvements.
• Support for HWND_MESSAGE windows.
• A lot of new MSHTML functions.
• Many fixes in MSI registry handling.
• Initial implementation of the inetmib1 DLL.
• Improvements to the quartz renderers.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [ Wine 1.1.0 ]

Wheels of War, an action driving modification for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, has a new release:

It features a small amount of bug fixes, three new vehicles, a whole new ‘Championship Racing’ game mode, 5 racetracks for that racing mode (which include the 3 for DM Campaign matches), and web-based stats in the form of a global best-lap leaderboard.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ colsoft.biz ]

Linux Game Publishing sent in the following regarding their previously reported copy protection system:

LGP has announced a new copy protection system that is to be used on future games. Due to the immense publicity that has surrounded this announcement, we have written a statement clarifying the system, our motives, and reasons.

The 2D vertical-scrolling shooter Chromium B.S.U. has had a new release after a lengthy hiatus:

• replaced non-free font code, sounds and music with free versions
• added patches accumulated in Debian, SuSE, Gentoo and the tracker
• depend on external libraries instead of embedding them
• add a manual page, freedesktop menu file and icon
• switch to autoconf and automake for build & install
• fix lots of memory leaks and other bugs
• compatibility with OpenAL Soft

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

TommyTwisters sent in the following press release:

Earthlings Wiped Out By Their Own Creation!

MARTIANS VS. ROBOTS

Who could have believed it? The Earthlings invented a race of robots and wiped themselves out! Now the Martians are the only ones left in our solar system that can clean up the mess. They better hurry though, because the Robots are growing fast and consuming all the crystal ore to be found! It’s a race for resources! And no matter how well the Martians were able to hide from the humans, a confrontation with the Robots is inevitable!

Game Features:

• Classic Asteroids style single player arcade mode
• LAN or Internet Multiplayer (supports up to 24 players at a time)
• Randomly generated maps
• Build your own custom maps and share them!
• Full technology trees for each side that your team can research together
• Multiple ships for each side and a full arsenal of weapons to go with them!
• Homing Missiles, Beam weapons, EMPs, Cloaking, Teleporters, and more!
• Real Physics mode (for those who are brave enough!)
• Gravity Wells, weapon turrets, and more!

Immediately available at $19.95 for all major operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux).

Please come visit us at www.tommytwisters.com and download the demo today!

Screenshots:

Martians Vs. Robots is developed by Tommy Twisters, an independent game development group who’s goal is to make books and games that are creative, fun, and interactive. For more information about us, please visit our website at http://www.tommytwisters.com.

The Tremulous site was updated last week to request community assistance with the next version of the open source FPS/RTS hybrid game. In particular, they need play-testers for game balancing (instructions) and feedback on their forums.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun spent some time recently with Introversion’s upcoming multiplayer sequel to Darwinia, Multiwinia:

I’ve been in the possession of Multiwinia preview code for the last month or so. It’s a slice of the game, playable against bots, and is the first anyone outside of the Beta have really had a chance to play. Which means I’m going to yabber on at length as I Know Things You Don’t Know.

Version 0.7.5 of Ultimate Stunts, a 3D racing game with stunt-oriented gameplay, is out:

This version contains another major improvement in the track editor: the route information will now be automatically re-calculated when you make changes to the track. This is an important step towards completeness of the track editor. Other changes are a more user-friendly settings editor, and a different slip model, which should make the car handling a bit easier.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ ultimatestunts.nl ]

Hedgewars, an open source turn-based strategy game like Worms but with hedgehogs, is at version 0.9.4 (thanks Linux Game Tome).

• In-game chat
• New maps
• Two new themes
• New animations
• New weapons

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ hedgewars.org ]

Freenukum is a project that clones the first Duke Nukem platforming game (the original’s art assets are required however).

Download: [ launchpad.net ]