Linux And Games. Is That An Oxi-moron?

[HCSuperStores]

As my keyboard goes tippity-tap, I wear a smile knowing and having faith in the operating system I use. Linux ... a developers dream. What a great way to develop and test!

 

However, the fun creative side of me is starting to have withdrawls. Are there any real games out there, besides those couple dozen applets that come with the KDE and Gnome, that run on Linux?

 

What about those first-person RPG? The shoot'm up games? The sim-whatevers of the world? Do any of them work on Linux????

 

I didn't choose Linux for games, but I have some free HD space that wouldn't mind being used.

 

All work and no play ...

[borfast]

Well, there are some big names running on Linux, like Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, Savage: The Battle for Newarth, Quake 3 Arena, America's Army, Tribes 2, Never Winter Nights, Sid Meyer's Alpha Centaury, Epic just announced that, besides the next Unreal title (Unreal 3), the Unreal Editor will also run natively under Linux...

 

There are some big games available and more and more are coming up from big editors.

 

Loki (http://lokigames.com)used to make ports of games for Linux. They ported the first Unreal Tournament, Civilization: Call to Power, Soldier of Fortune, and many other famous titles. Unfortunately, loki went bankrupt but many of their games are still available to buy (http://www.lokigames.com/orders/resellers.php3).

 

Apart from that, there's also Linux Game Publishing (http://linuxgamepublishing.com, who have published some nice games, too. And they're always looking for beta-testers for their upcoming titles!

 

And last but not least, there's The Linux Game Tome (http://happypenguin.org/), which is a site that gathers news about Linux games from all over the web, including commercial games besides the Free software ones, with screenshots, descriptions, ratings and links to the respective homepages (click the "Previous 10 News Items" on the bottom left of the page to see more games).

 

There's also LinuxGames.com (http://linuxgames.com), which has news about the Linux games community and such.

 

So as you can see, you have a lot to chose from. Unfortunately, most developers still prefer to make Windows-only games, so yes, the majority of "big" games doesn't have a Linux version. But the mentalities are changing. Quite rapidly, I might add

Edited July 9, 2004 by TCH-Raul

[schussat]

However, the fun creative side of me is starting to have withdrawls. Are there any real games out there, besides those couple dozen applets that come with the KDE and Gnome, that run on Linux?

There's the kernel compile game -- it's a little like Minesweeper, but with more serious consequences.

 

Actually, like Raul says, there are a lot of options, but the commercial offerings are relatively limited. However, there's a reasonable amount of pretty good stuff available, and I use linuxgames to keep track of it.

 

One game that shows a lot of promise and is already very good is The Battle of Wesnoth (wesnoth.org). It's a turn-based strategy wargame with a ton of community involvement, and the game manages to put together a pretty good story, too: Through the course of a game you develop champions and heroes who carry over their enhanced attributes into subsequent challenges. It's not too complicated, but has a good element of strategy to it, and it's a lot of fun. It's a good example of a working and fun open source game.