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Linux Games Page 1 of 7 Linux Games INTRODUCTION such as the number of players and the size of the map, then you start the game. Once the game is running clients may Hello. My name is Andrew Howlett. I've been using Linux join the game. Clients connect to the game using TCP/IP, since 1997. In 2000 I cutover to Linux for all my projects, so it is very easy to play multi-player games over the except I dual-booted Windows to play games. I like to play Internet. Like many Free games, clients are available for computer games. About a year ago I stopped dual booting. many platforms, including Windows, Amiga and Now I play computer games under Linux. The games I Macintosh. So there are lots of players out there. If you play can be divided into four groups: Free Games, native don't want to play against other humans, then Freeciv linux commercial games, Windows Emulated games, and includes some nasty AIs. Win4Lin enabled games. This presentation will demonstrate games from each of these four groups. BZFlag Platform BZFlag is a tank combat game along the same lines as the old BattleZone game. Like FreeCiv, BZFlag uses a client/ Before I get started, a little bit about my setup so you can server architecture over TCP/IP networks. Unlike FreeCiv, relate this to whatever you are running. This is a P3 900 the game contains no AIs – you must play this game MHz machine. It has a Crystal Sound 4600 sound card and against other humans (? entities ?) over the Internet. The a GEForce MX440Video Card. The video card has two BZFlag shell includes an easy to use utility which will seek outputs: one to my monitor and a second to the TV – the out game servers. Like FreeCiv, there are many variables screens are exactly the same, NVidia calls it “TwinView”. that the server operator may define prior to the game, so I am using the proprietary accelerated NVidia drivers. each BZFlag server has a different feel. Below is a Because of the TV, I have reduced video resolution to screenshot from a game using laser beams and reflecting 800x600. shots. The game can be played as a plain old shoot 'em up, On the software side, this computer runs Red Hat Linux 8 or can be played as capture the flag (thus the word “flag” with the K Desktop Environment and XFree86 4.2.0. It in the game's name). For more information visit bzflag.org has wine version 20030318, winex 3.0, and win4lin version 5. FREE GAMES Linux is a Free OS so it makes sense to start with some free games. When I say Free, I mean it in the Free Software Foundation sense: free to use, modify and distribute. There are hundreds of free software games, so I will demo five games which recently made the happypenguin.org “best 25 games” list, then two others. FreeCiv FreeCiv made the best 25 list and happens to be my favourite linux game. It is also an excellent example of a Free game in that it works in 18 different architecture/OS combinations. FreeCiv is a clone of Microprose Civilization 2. Like many Free games, it uses a client/ server architecture. First you start a server. The server runs Figure 2: BZFlag in text mode. You define the game properties on the server, NetHack: Falcon's Eye Nethack is a classic Unix game. But Nethack Falcon's Eye updates the old game with a graphical front end. The Falcon's Eye home page says that you have to compile from source for linux, but if you check the links page you will find sources of deb and rpm files. So install from rpm or deb and use the command “nethack” to start the game. You get to customize your character slightly, then it's slash, hack and explore. For more information visit http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/nethack.html Figure 1: FreeCiv Linux Games Page 2 of 7 the Net – do a google search).It's a big download (38 MB), but if you are interested in this sort of thing, then you should try FlightGear. TuxRacer TuxRacer is not Free Software, but it is Open Source ... at least, I will demo version 0.61 which is Open Source. The current version, 1.1, is commercial closed source at the moment, but the creator says that he will eventually open its source. Despite the licensing, version 0.61 is free as in free beer, and if you share a computer with kids then TuxRacer is a must have. For some reason, a penguin belly surfing down a hill at 100 km/h really appeals to kids. Plus, tuxracer works great with a joystick. You can get Figure 3: Nethack Falcon's Eye downloads at rpmfind.net or your favourite debian server. Frozen Bubble If you really like version 0.61, then the commercial version 1.1 includes more courses and is available at tuxracer.com Frozen Bubble was voted the #1 Free game in the recent for $15 US. Happy Penguin poll. Plus it's written in Perl, which is pretty cool. The homepage is frozen-bubble.org, and you can find links to download sites. A word of warning – you will also need perl-SDL. Frozen bubble reminds me a little bit of tetris. It can be played in two-player mode. Figure 6: Tuxracer TuxTyping Tux Typing is part of the tux4kids.org project. It is a Free typing tutor aimed at the 5-15 age bracket. It features pumping music and bright graphics guaranteed to give an Figure 4: Frozen Bubble adult a severe migraine, but kids seem to like it. FlightGear One peculiarity I've noticed: the game installed to /usr/ local/tuxtype on my machine, and it must be run from Flight Gear is a Free flight simulator. I have no idea how to that directory. If it is launched from another directory it use a flight simulator – I can start the application, but I will be unable to find its files. can't demo it. The website is flightgear.org and they provide debian binaries (rpms are available elsewhere on Figure 5: Flight Gear Figure 7: Tux Typing Linux Games Page 3 of 7 LINUX COMMERCIAL GAMES • Deus Ex • Soldier of Fortune There are some linux clients available for commercial Unreal Tournament games. You won't find the linux versions at CompuCenter • or Electronic Boutique. The Happypenguin.org forums and • Descent 3 the linux games faq (http://icculus.org/lgfaq/) are good • Civilization: Call to Power places to look for clues. • Heavy Gear 2 • SimCity 3000 Unlimited Quake 3 Arena • Eric's Ultimate Solitaire Happypenguin voted Quake 3 Arena as the best • Heretic 2 Commerical Game. This choice might seem a little strange • Heroes of Might and Magic III since the game is more than three years old. But even • Myth 2: Soulblighter though Quake 3 Arena was released three years agao, the Q3 game engine powers lots of recent titles, such as Medal • Railroad Tycoon II of Honour Allied Assault which is a very popular new Demos of most of these games can be downloaded from game from Activision. I happen to have a copy of Quake 3 the net, or you can order the full demo CD from xplinux. Arena, purchased from Loki Entertainment Software biz for $3. before they went out of business. Other Commercial Games with Linux Binaries These games are also known to have linux binaries: • Return to Castle Wolfenstein • SiN • Warcraft (i.e. the FreeCraft engine) • America's Army WINDOWS EMULATION Because most game (and other software) companies distribute Microsoft Windows versions of their product, but not Linux versions, there is a lot of interest in creating an emulator which will Windows games on Linux platforms. There are several such projects. The foremost Figure 8: Quake 3 Arena Free Software windows emulation project is the WINE project. (Strictly speaking, Wine is not an emulator, but we Loki Entertainment Software will leave that as a topic of debate for Computer Scientists.) Loki was a short lived software company which ported popular commercial games to linux. Unfortunately, not The WINE Project enough people bought the linux versions (freely Here is how the Wine Project describes itself: distributing the linux binaries to add to Windows versions might have been part of the problem). But some of their Wine is an implementation of the Windows Win32 and games are still around. Here is a copy of SimCity 3000. I Win16 APIs on top of X and Unix. Think of Wine as a won't demo it, because SimCity gives me a headache. Loki Windows compatibility layer. Wine provides both a also ported the following games to Linux: development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing many • Postal Plus unmodified Windows 3.x/95/98/ME/NT/W2K/XP • Rune: Halls of Valhalla binaries to run under Intel Unixes. Wine works on most • Tribes 2 popular Intel Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and • Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri Solaris. • Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2 Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a • MindRover completely alternative implementation consisting of • Rune 100% Microsoft-free code, but it can optionally use native system DLLs if they are available. Wine comes • Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns Linux Joystick Support You might have noticed me using a joystick during my demonstration. Linux supports many types of joysticks (I am using a Microsoft Sidewinder).