Penguin
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7:30pm, TW.2.05.

Linux gaming: James and Bruce presented some Games that run on Linux, either natively or under Windows compatibility wrappers like Wine.

Software that was mentioned (or should have been mentioned) at this meeting:

Windows games and emulation

  • Wine (available in most distros via package management)
  • Cedega (Commercial product)
  • Stars (Old but still popular commercial game)
  • Other stuff James can fill in

Open source games; most of these games are available through package management, and most have a Windows version available.

Previously commercial games released as OSS; In most cases only the program code is released as OSS, 'assets' (game maps, player models, sound, etc) have been recreated by the community.

  • FreeDoom iD's GPL-released Doom engine with community-created assets under a BSD-like license.
  • Aleph One A rebuild of Marathon2 - Infinity, using Bungie's GPL'd Marathon engine with community-created assets. -- Not available through Ubuntu package management, quite tricky to install (I gave up!)
  • sauerbraten A complete redesign of Cube using the cube rendering engine. There are a number of similar mods. The cube engine is fairly low-CPU and everything is rendered in realtime, but uses a 2D-heightmap model like Doom so is somewhat limited.
  • nexuiz A 3D deathmatch-type FPS using the q1 engine
  • Open Arena A rebuild of Quake III Arena using the q3 engine and community-created assets
  • Second Life A 3D virtual world. Linden Labs recently decided to release the client as open source software. The 'grid' is still commercial. You can join second life for free, explore, and create items in special 'sandbox' areas, but to own land and do any serious building you have to pay for membership.
  • Tremulous An alien vs. human FPS game with a strong element of strategy. Based on the q3 engine.
  • World of Padman Also uses the q3 engine, Artwork mostly by German cartoonist 'Ente', in-game music by Greensun and Dieselkopf. Easy enough to install, just unpack the archive and run the program in it, but it's a 550M download. Talk to Bruce if you want to grab it on CD instead.
  • Urban Terror 4 Originally developed as a 'mod' for Quake3, now a standalone game using the q3 engine. Another 550M download, and a little tricky to get running but well worth it.

Non-Free linux games

  • Railroad Tycoon One of the first commercial Linux games, but not a commercial success on Linux due to the culture at the time. The original game is now available as a free download (but only for Windows afaik)
  • Games from iD considered the most influential of the many game development companies in the Dallas area known as the Dallas Gaming Mafia, iD develop their games for both Linux and Windows. Historically, the source code for each engine has been released once the code base is 5 years old.
  • America's Army Developed by Ubisoft for the US Army as a recruitment tool, originally for Linux and Windows but is now Windows-only. I'm not sure if Linux versions are still available, or still work on the newer servers.

Educational games

  • gcompris A collection of educational games for ages 2-10.
  • childsplay A similar collection of educational games, written in python.
  • tuxmath
  • tuxtyping
  • anagramarama
  • scratch A Free Educational programming environment from MIT. The official downloads are for Windows and Mac, but since the software is written in the squeak it's not too hard to extract the Windows version and run it under the Linux squeak interpreter.
  • alice A Free Educational programming environment from CMU. Quite similar to scratch but 3D, and written in java.
  • Firefox - there are many good educational websites available, and many educational Flash or Java games available on the web. I'll have to dig through my bookmarks sometime..

Other emulators

  • MAME An emulator for many arcade machines. Requires ROM images from an arcade machine to run.
  • Mednafen An emulator for many portable games such as Gameboy and NES. Requires ROM images from a game cartridge to run.

Rom images for MAME and Mednafen can be downloaded from the web although in most cases these are being distributed without authorization of the copyright holder. There are a number of games specifically developed for these emulators which are freely redistributable.