Introversion Software, the developers of Uplink and Defcon, have been posting tutorials for Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest, the upcoming multiplayer sequel to their real-time strategy game Darwinia, in their weekly Multiwinia Mondays feature. The first installment describes Domination mode, where the player must battle for spawn points, while the second gives an overview of King of the Hill, which adds additional point-laden zones.
Linux.com posted an article about capturing video from your OpenGL games with GLC:
Like any true gaming fan, I like to share my gaming moments of glory — that multifrag shot, and that super smooth drift around the S-bend. But most free and open source games don’t record gameplay videos. Even those that do don’t always make it easy to export videos out of the game. GLC is an audio/video capture tool that can capture videos in a variety of ways, and also encode them so that you can host them on your blog or upload them to video-sharing Web sites.
The jClassicRPG team has released its new pre-alpha snapshot for the public (thanks timong!):
It contains a lot new things waiting to be tested and reviewed. It has a working combat, character leveling and new smooth terrain visualization.
Detailed changelist:
- Turn based playable Combat phase added
- New animated models (boarmen thug and mage by Zphr)
- New house and town models (by Zphr)
- New static monster model (kobold by Surt)
- Total redesign of jungle plants, new plants for continental,
- New Encounter Ground system that separates the encounter scene
- Inventory enhanced (equip,attach,give,drop)
- New Loot Window after combat
- Character leveling
- New ground tile generation system with smoothed ground
- New 2D elements, some refactored UI images
- Optional support for secondary ground textures
- Optional texture splatted ground tile blends
- New spells, skills, items, artifacts, objects
- Bard instrument concept available with one implemented item
- Particle system with lights for spells added
- Support for continuously playing sound sources like waters, forest ambient
- New environment & humanoid sounds added
- New Body Part system that enables critical impacts
- Optimizations: tree trunk batching, cutting of non-visible interior parts, more locking
- Bug fixes
- Far view mode is disabled till fixing it for the new ground system
Download: [ sourceforge.net ]
vadi4 let us know that the Savage 2: A Tortured Soul forums have an instructional video with tips for the first-person gameplay mode of the mixed-genre fantasy-themed multiplayer game:
It’s made for 2 things:
~ Showing the combat of Savage2
~ Tips for basic and advanced combat.It’s 18 minutes long, features a ton of different situations, fights as well as commentary.
The video is 440 MB with a 720×480 resolution.
This is the first of what I hope to be many videos of Savage2 PvP.
Here ya’ go:
http://files.filefront.com/Savage2+Vid+HQavi/;11382037;/fileinfo.html
Thanks to sawyer for letting us know that YS Flight Realism is out, which adds better sounds, more add-ons, and has edited plane models for the simulator YS Flight 2008.
Download: [ flightsimhq.org ]
Welp, another QuakeCon is behind us, and the main items of interest came out of the annual id Software keynote; in particular, the audience question and answer session with id’s technical director John Carmack:
Question: What are your current views on the Linux situation [...]?
Answer: I can’t say I have really high hopes for it. If Quake Live does well, Mac is our next target on that, but I would not be shocked if we wind up with a Linux target on there. It’s an under served community [...] and I’m happy to see Quake Live there. It is unlikely that the big titles [Wolfenstein, Rage, Doom 4] will have anywhere near simultaneous releases. If one of the guys internally says I want to go port to Linux on my weekend or whatever, I’ll be supportive of that, but it’s not something we’re probably going to devote company resources to on there.
The bright spot for Linux on gaming might be Android, mobile space. There’s still no real sign that that’s going to take off, but if it does that could be a significant and useful thing. People wrote about the death of PC gaming, but PC has problems relative to the consoles, but all of those problems that the PC has are just an order of magnitude worse on the Linux space. So it’s not really a good target.
Every year or so somebody comes up with or plans some Linux-based set-top box that has gaming features, and it never really amounts to anything, and I don’t see any conditions that are going to be forcing that to change in the future. There are certainly aspects of it that I would like, there’s Linux on my flight computer, it’s a good tool for a lot of things. And it might make a useful tool, more so than being Linux, there’s nothing that I think Linux would bring to a console operating system, but there is something that open source would bring to it: those two days that I spent frustrated about my deadlock against Microsoft’s video codec on there I’m sure could’ve been solved much more rapidly if all of it was actually completely open. But there’s nothing that really bothers me about Microsoft or some of these operating system levels there; they’re done competently. Linux would probably bring more trouble than benefits to those things. If the world changed and there was a huge uptake of Linux on PC’s all over the place, it’d be nice, I wish the platform well, but it’s not even on our radar right now for our current projects.
Carmack also reiterated that the current plan is to open source Doom 3’s engine sometime next year; and they will continue the practice unless something unusual happens, like id losing a patent troll’s lawsuit based on released code.
What we can’t do is we can’t take time away from [other projects]… it does take effort to get these things together. If we are still heads down trying to get Rage out the door, I’m not going to task somebody with putting together the Doom 3 source distribution. But when Rage ships, you can expect the Doom 3 source code to be coming out.
The Khronos Group has released the OpenGL 3.0 specification including GLSL 1.30 at SIGGRAPH2008 yesterday as expected, after it should have been finalised in September 2007 previously.
There has been quite some discussions about the missed goals of what “Longs Peak” should have been. First it was intended to be released as version 2.x, then version 3.0 and now the restructuring has been postponed again. John Carmack was reportedly not amused.
nVidia’s Barthold Lichtenbelt, OpenGL ARB Steering Group Chair, commented on the reasons and new plan for the missing changes, including the most-anticipated new object model:
5) We will keep working on object model issues. Yes, this work has been put on the back burner to get OpenGL 3.0 done, but we have picked that work up again. One of the early results of this is that we will work on folding object model improvements into the core in a more incremental manner.
Not everyone is upset, some are even GLaD:
We are very pleased to see the release of OpenGL 3.0, which includes numerous features and extensions that will help us and other ISVs bring amazing gaming content to OpenGL-based platforms,” commented Gavriel State, founder & CTO of TransGaming, Inc.
Eschalon: Book I, a role-playing game from Basilisk Games, can now be purchased via the Greenhouse game distribution platform:
Greenhouse is committed to bringing independent developers and gamers together. As part of our mission, we are looking far and wide for new games for you to discover. To start, our goal is to bring something special to you once a month. While not all games will support every operating system, we certainly will pay special attention to those that do and we are happy to report that Eschalon indeed supports Windows, Mac and Linux.
homerj pointed out that Eschalon is also now being offered at a cheaper price point, $19.95.
Greenhouse is also the home of the Penny Arcade game On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.
The TuxGames and Linux Game Publishing websites have posted an update about the downtime they’re currently experiencing:
Currently we are experiencing an extended outage caused by the complete failure of British Telecom. This failure is ongoing and we have had so many conflicting reports of what to expect that we can no longer be sure when our service will be back. We are hosting this message on a server that is capable of hosting this message, but not of the entire system for running the company.
Our fault lies in lack of adequately prepared backup measures in the event of a catastrophic failure of service. We will be putting plans in place to remedy this over the coming months.
Just to stress: Our company is still in business, and we have not gone bankrupt, or any of the other rumours that have been flying around
A timeline of events is included; we’ll relay additional updates as they happen.
Edit: Tux Games and Linux Game Publishing are back online since Monday. Their local LUG is helping out until that phone company gets their act together.
Vulcando Games sent in a new update regarding their upcoming massive multiplayer game Celetania:
You have patiently waited since February and now you shall be rewarded: The first in-game screenshots of a prerelease version of the 4X MMOG Celetania!
The screenshots deliver you a great first impression of what awaits you in Celetania. As such you will be able to see scenes from a space battle as well as a tactical overview. Additionally you will be able to take a glimpse at the construction menu of the planetary surface.
You will be able to find the above mentioned screenshots on the Celetania website.
New in-game screenshots will from now on be added regularly - next you can expect to see the research as well as the galaxy / universe overview.In the next news Vulcando Games will be announcing the exact release date for Celetania and a date for the start of the beta phase.
Thanks to benasselstine for letting us know that basic network play has been introduced for the 8-player turn-based strategy game LordsAWar:
The networked-play feature will eventually be released with version 0.1.1, but it needs your testing.
Check it out by compiling the tarball at: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lordsawar/lordsawar-0.1.1.tar.gz
acord let us know that:
Blood Frontier Alpha 2 has been released after getting a total overhaul by a Linux friendly programmer. New features include online AI - the precursor to online co-op, new maps, new models, new guns, better textures, online play featuring mutators, and the same bad-assed level editor that everyone knows and loves from Sauerbraten.
Get online and give us your feedback :)
Thanks to vadi4 for letting us know that getdeb.net has announced Playbuntu:
getdeb.net, a leading provider of new and updated programs for Ubuntu is announcing the start of a gaming repository for Ubuntu. The repository (codenamed “Playbuntu“) will provide all games available on getdeb.net in an easy to use repository format - enabling you to receive updates for your favourite game via the Update Manager tool. Additonally, if a game has several packages, installing them is quite easy as it’ll be automatically handled.
While work on the repository is still just beginning, you can obtain new and updated games from getdeb.net here.
We do, however, need your help in making this a reality. If you’re able to provide a mirror, or would like to help us package - contact us. Otherwise, please consider making a donation - the money will be spent in purchasing mirrors, so we have enough bandwidth and acceptable speeds for this.
Bill Kendrick sent in the following announcement:
The CRT X-Y Library (libcrtxy) is a simple graphics library built on top of libSDL. The purpose is to provide an easy way to create video games based on nothing but vectors, similar to arcade classics like Asteroids, Battlezone and Lunar Lander.
libcrtxy is special in that the user (or packager) of your software decides how the game is rendered. Slower systems can turn off effects such as alpha blending, anti-aliased lines, and forthcoming effects like blur. The game programmer doesn’t even specify screen size; that’s up to the user, too! And since I’m targetting slow systems, all math is done in fixed-point.
An alpha version is now available. Check the website for details and a link to download it off of the project’s SourceForge page. libcrtxy is released as LGPL and requires libSDL and SDL_image.
I’m seeking help perfecting this code, adding realism effects (so that games look more like real X-Y CRTs in the arcades), and adding an OpenGL backend.
S2Games has reduced the one-time fee for a full account of Savage 2: A Tortured Soul to $19.99
They have also released an update to v1.5.4 that fixes many balance issues and introduces the option to purchase customizable persistent items.
Be the Wumpus is an exclusively audio-based game where players hunt cave explorers as a blind creature:
This game is best played with an xbox 360 controller. This is the only controller for which rumble effects are known by me to work. (You will need linux kernel 2.6.26 or better as well.) Failing that, use a gamepad with two joysticks, such as the Logitech Dual Action 2 Rumble is not a bad choice. (The rumble function doesn’t work with this controller on linux though.) Headphones are highly recommended, and to really get anything out of the game, headphones not just recommeded, but mandatory.
Screenshots: [ just.kidding ] Download: [ sourceforge.net ]
Word War vi, a Defender-style retro shooter inspired by the vi text editor, is at version 0.22:
Video: [ View ] Download: [ sourceforge.net ]
Introversion Software, the developers of Uplink and Defcon, have announced a release date for Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest, the multiplayer sequel to their real-time strategy game Darwinia:
That is correct we can now confirm the release date for ‘Multiwinia’ to be 19 September 2008.
Pre orders will be kicking in shortly so watch this space.
We will also be celebrating the release of ‘Multiwinia’ by producing a small batch of Multiwinian Limited Edition Tins exclusively for our online store.
Details of the Limited Edition Tins will be Coming Soon.
I ended up taking an inadvertent sabbatical from LinuxGames for a much longer period of time than I had hoped; please accept my apologies for the lack of news of late. We’ll be back up to speed shortly - thank you!
NVIDIA has released a new Linux display driver build, version 173.14.12, for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 Linux systems that utilize their graphics hardware. Here’s what’s new:
The README has more info on installation and configuration.
Download: [ nvidia.com ]
