LINUXGAMES

Esquire Magazine posted an article profiling the author of Passage, Jason Rohrer (thanks ohsix):

Rohrer is trying to make art in a medium that most people don’t even think is capable of art. He can create this space of pure freedom, as artists have done in the past — isolation, introspection, ascetic poverty. But ultimately he has to send these works out into the world, and people have to respond to them. And right now the audience doesn’t know what to do with them.

Also included is a new game from Rohrer, Between:

These things that appear are ugly and non-procedural: indecipherable transmissions bubbling up through static, faded messages floating in bottles, and charcoal handprints on cave walls. Evidence has reached you through time of unknown duration and distance of unknown magnitude, but stale evidence is still evidence.

Somewhere, across whatever barriers stand between, is an other.

edit: Woops, Rohrer has another game we missed, Gravitation, a game about “mania, melancholia, and the creative process”.

Also, I had to make a small change to Between’s source to compile on a 64-bit system:

--- game7/gameSource/WebRequest.cpp.original	2009-01-07 00:53:58.000000000 -0600
+++ game7/gameSource/WebRequest.cpp	2009-01-07 00:54:20.000000000 -0600
 -289,7 +289,7 @@
                     int resultLength =
                         responseLength
                         - strlen( contentStartString )
-                        - ( (int)contentStart - (int)responseString );
+                        - ( (long)contentStart - (long)responseString );

                     mResult = new char[ resultLength + 1 ];
                     memcpy( mResult,

Warzone 2100, a freed real-time strategy game, has had a version bump to add new soundtracks, improved AI, and other new features.

There’s documentation online for new players.

Download: [ wz2100.net ]

The physics-oriented sandbox game Phun, which we haven’t mentioned in a while, has a redesigned website with tutorials, videos, and the requisite FAQ.

Word War vi, a Defender-style retro shooter inspired by the vi text editor, is at version 0.24 (changes).

Video: [ View ] Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

Wired is reporting that the massive multiplayer space game EVE Online has passed the 45,000 simultaneous player mark. EVE has a Cedega-based Linux client.

New patches are now available for Knights and Merchants and Ballistics, to address a connection issue with PenguinPlay, Linux Game Publishing’s new multiplayer matchmaking service. These can be downloaded immediately using lgp_update.

The developers of the open source game project Yo Frankie notified us of a new contest:

To kickstart some new levels for Yo Frankie I have decided to run a six week competition to create new levels for the game. These can then be included in a future release of Yo Frankie, which will include updates for the next Blender release and bugfixes.

The contest runs from January 16^th to February 28th; here are the rules:

• Collaboration is fine, but I’ll only accept an entry from a single person.
• Final level must be under 100mb compressed.
• No modifications to the player logic (jump height, glide distance etc) - bug fixes are an exception.
• Your level must be under the same creative commons license as all existing YoFrankie levels.
• No node based materials (just use material-textures for more efficient shaders)
• You can enter more then one level
• Level cannot have been entered into a previous competition

The project was conceived as a way to validate open source 3D game creation and features third-person perspective platforming. You can read more about Yo Frankie’s design at the project wiki.

The Annchienta project is a free, single-player graphical 2D tile-based RPG engine. Fall of Imiryn, the official Annchienta-based game, takes place in an isometric fantasy world, where you battle to complete a tragic quest. Changes:

• Most graphics were updated, shadows were added to all objects to improve the sprites.
• An intro scene was added in the beginning of the game
• Many glitches were fixed (especially in cutscenes)
• Added and improved cutscenes and dialogues
• Many balancing changes
• Added battle music
• Polished up parts of the game engine

Download: [ sourceforge.net ]

The groundbreaking open-sourced first-person shooter DOOM reached 15 years of age last month; meanwhile, new features and content for the game continue to appear:

• Chocolate Doom, which aims to replicate the behavior of the original DOOM builds for DOS, had a new release with various bugfixes.
• Freedoom, which aggregates openly licensed art assets and maps for DOOM, is at version 0.6.3.
• Doomworld pointed out that a sequel to The Plutonia Experiment has been made available twelve years after the original IWAD’s retail release with Final DOOM.

Platinum Arts sent in the following update concerning Sandbox, their educational game design tool:

The moddb.com mod/indie game of the year awards are currently underway.  The first round of voting ends on January 16th and then starting on the 17th the finalists are voted for.  So if you vote for us please remember to do it in BOTH PHASES!  To vote for us you can go to http://www.moddb.com/games/platinum-arts-sandbox and click vote in the profile, registered voters count more!  Please consider voting for us :) Thanks for your support!!

We have a ton of goodies for you in this new release dubbed 2.3.

• New 3D sidescroller Mario like mode!  Also there is a seperate RPG project, check the wiki!
• Hotkeys that make it easier to save games, add materials, and lots more!
• New in game help section that displays all of the binds/key commands!
• Snow has been tweaked and updated :)  Be sure to check out the new version of house :D
• Maps now generate cfgs on save!  Also many various map tweaks.
• New main menu theme!  To try other themes check out the options menu.
• Loads of new textures and new player skins.
• Tons of under the hood bug fixes and features.
• Thanks to ZKAT of virtualdarkarts.net there is a brand new great looking launcher!

Be sure to check out the new Sandbox video courtesy of NoesisInteractive.com and moddb where I talk about the mission of Sandbox, my success of using it with kids, useful development software, and a lot more!  Check that out over here at:

http://www.moddb.com/games/platinum-arts-sandbox/features/noesis-presents-moddb-tv-sandbox-interview

Download: [ platinumarts.net ]

Tycoon Games let us know about Heileen, a historical-fiction visual novel game with multiple endings:

The game tells the tale of a young girl from the 17th Century, Heileen. Her merchant uncle leaving her no choice, she undertakes a voyage to the New World. She’ll meet old friends, like her childhood friend Marie, and get the chance to befriend other people, like John, the young, dashing sailor, Marco, the ship’s cook, and Lora, the shameless mistress accompanying her uncle on the voyage.

The game features over 4500 screens of dialog, 8 chapters and 3 different endings.

A free three-chapter demo is also available.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ heileen.com ]

This post was submitted by rei1974.

Version 0.9 of DeSmuME, the popular Nintendo DS emulator, has been released. This version focuses on a complete rework of the 3d core which fixes a number of bugs which leads to better compatibility and speed.


Download: [ DeSmuME 0.9]

A new version of Cstat has been announced. This tool allows you to gather real-time statistics from Cube and Cube engine 2 game servers which includes the following games: Cube, Sauerbraten, AssaultCube and Blood Frontier. Changes in this release includes:

• updated AssaultCube support
• updated Sauerbraten support (CTF Edition)
• updated Blood Frontier support

Download: [ Cstat 0.5.4 ]

The latest development version of Wine, version 1.1.12, has been released. Changes in this release includes the following items:

• Some simple 64-bit apps should now run.
• Support for subpixel font rendering.
• 64-bit code generation in the IDL compiler.
• New version of the Gecko engine.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: [ Wine 1.1.12]

At Andrew Min’s blog, there’s an entry advocating game development for Linux as being crucial to wider adoption of the platform:

Finally, Linux companies also need to start paying attention to the open source gaming community. Why? It’s lacking. However, gamers can get excited about free games. They just have to be up to par with commercial games. The problem is, commercial companies pay hundreds of employees to build a game for several years, while many competing gaming projects only last several years before the developer moves on. It’s time for open source developers to start getting paid for their jobs. Who better to pay them than the companies that benefit most?

I can’t say I think it’s likely Canonical or Red Hat would start sponsoring game development, and I think the apathy of the game publishers in general towards Linux is unlikely to change until there’s a bigger audience. It’s a chicken-egg issue, but unfortunately in this case I believe we’ll have to muddle through expanding the userbase without game parity with Windows; Mac OSX has at least twice as many gamers, and they have the same problem.

Another item I should have gotten to before now, this one from Linux Game Publishing:

Today is a day that we at LGP have worked towards for over two years. We are very excited to announce the launch of LGP’s new site, PenguinPlay, a Multiplayer matchmaker for Linux.

Linux gamers can use PenguinPlay to find other gamers to play against, post about games on the PenguinPlay forums, and keep track of just how good they are on our highscore tables.

Coinciding with this launch, we are releasing patches for Knights and Merchants and Ballistics, to incorporate the new PenguinPlay library into these games. Patched for other LGP games are forthcoming, and our new titles, Jets’n'Guns and Sacred will be released with PenguinPlay support.

The developers of Vendetta Online, Guild Software, notified us that they have partnered with MMORPG.com to offer free one-month trial keys to the massive multiplayer space combat game. As of this writing, 335 keys remain.

Moreover, version 1.8.52 was released to subscribers recently:

• Demand for mined minerals and ores in stations now increases at a drastically higher rate (over twice as fast for low-value ores, a little less for high-value ores).
• Fixed storm fog bug with grey asteroids.
• Fixed storm fog bug when changing resolution/window mode/antialiasing mode.
• Fixed crash on startup for video cards with greater than 256 megs of RAM.
• Fixed crash when logging out with Behemoth Heavy Miner ship and logging back in without restarting the client.

One of our most sharp-eyed readers, vadi4, sent in the following:

Interesting article by Jeff of Wolfire games about supporting Macs and Linux. Includes a very nice cake.

Wolfire developed the third-person action title Lugaru for Linux; the blog entry mentions that the Linux port generated additional interest in the game, and that Linux users made up 5% of their sales (which is pretty much unchanged from the Quake III sales over 10 years ago if I recall correctly). Wolfire’s next game is a sequel to Lugaru, Overgrowth. You can find more info about it on Facebook.

We missed this one for quite a while: Out of the Park Baseball 9, the latest installment in an award-winning series of baseball management games, has been released for Linux. Features:

• Multiple styles of play
• Solo or online
• Realistic statistical engine
• Complete general management
• Unparalleled customizability
• Play-by-play model

You can try the game in a demo mode, then purchase the full version online. Also, there’s a holiday sale price lasting until January 1st (two days from this writing).

Download: [ ootpdevelopments.com ]

We received the following announcement for a new PyChess build:

The release is named after Howard Staunton, who is regarded as the world’s strongest player from 1843 to 1851. And while we are still using the old theme for the chess pieces, we hope to get a real Staunton theme before going final.

The release contains a lot of general improvements, but the two most important changes in this release are the possibility to play different variants of chess, as well as chat on the online chess community, FICS.

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