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OneAndOneIs2

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Tue, Jul 24, 2007

[Icon][Icon]Linux has no games

• Post categories: Omni, FOSS, Technology, My Life

This is a well known fact. There are no "proper" games for Linux, and the only 3D-accelerated software available is Tux Racer.

So last night, I wasn't bored of Mah jong and I didn't go looking through my drawers for something more exciting to play, and I didn't rediscover an old favourite. Nor was it the first time I'd played said game (because there wasn't one) on my new flatscreen monitor with a higher resolution (1400x1050) than my old CRT.

The game in question wasn't Darwinia, one of the few games I've actually considered worth spending money on. It isn't (I'm sick of all these negatives, that's the last one!) a 3D strategy game with a somewhat Tron-like feel to it. It's multi-platform, running on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

The object of the game is to wipe out the invading virus and save the little green men, AKA Darwinians. You can't directly control the Darwinians, but you can create "squads" and "engineers" - squads shoot things, engineers reprogram infected machines and gather up "souls" of dead Darwinians, infected or not, so they can be reincarnated.

You get more things as you go through, as you find "research" cubes scattered around. The first one upgrades your squads so they can lob grenades as well as fire lasers. Others let you drop bombs, arm the Darwinians, and do other such fun things.

The good thing about the game is that, although there's only so many levels, as you learn more about the various upgrades & strategies, you can play them different ways.

For instance, the first level, instead of slowly fighting your way through half the viral infection to get to the grenades, you can instead send an engineer on a rather circuitous route around the infected areas so you gain the grenades before you go anywhere. Then your squads can quickly wipe out the infection and get on with the game.

Second level, you have to disinfect as many Darwinians as possible. This can be awkward, as you have to fight your way through hundreds of infected individuals before you can reach the reincarnation machines, and you only have a short time to rescue the "souls" of dead infected Darwinians before they float away and you lose them.

So whilst fighting your way through seems the way to go, a better ruse is to use decoys: Send a couple of engineers straight through the infected area. They will be killed as the viruses follow and destroy them. But they'll leave a clear path behind them that you can use to send an engineer right the way around the island, where it can reprogram a reincarnation unit for you, before you've killed a single infected Darwinian.

Then you can put a squad there, and attack from the rear, and almost every Darwinian can thus be saved.

My next goal is to upgrade the Darwinians as fast as possible, because the sooner they upgrade, the sooner they'll be armed with guns and lasers. When that happens, you can use them as a fairly intelligent attack squad that takes the burden off you having to use squads, which only work when you actively direct them.

If you fancy a go on the game, download the free demo - it's how I got started!

16 comments

Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
This is a well known fact. There are no "proper" games for Linux, and the only 3D-accelerated software available is Tux Racer.


What about OpenArena? A FOSS version of Quake III arena and just as good?
http://openarena.ws/

And what about games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III (even if they are proprietary)?

There are enough 3d games for Linux if one looks around. A lot... in fact.
24/07/07 @ 16:19
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
There are actually plenty of 3d accelerated games for linux (a bit of research can go a long way)

http://www.3ddownloads.com/index.php3?directory=/linuxgames/

I know there aren't *that* many as Windows, but there are enough to keep any gamer entertained.

And while looking in the Debian repository, I think can find a lot more.
24/07/07 @ 16:22
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
This seems to be another great source of Linux games:

http://www.happypenguin.org/

(drat, your blog prevents posting urls, just copy the urls and paste)
24/07/07 @ 16:31
oneandoneis2
Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/
Yup. I was being facetious. Hell, Doom 3 should have been the end of the "There's no decent 3D games for Linux" nonsense but you still see it raised as an argument by every MS fanboy when there's any hint that Linux might make it big on the desktop anytime soon.
24/07/07 @ 16:35
oneandoneis2
Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/
P.S. The URLs thing - I'm ambivalent about re-enabling it, as spambots love posting comments with links, so leaving it set to the default "no links" has genuine advantages.
24/07/07 @ 16:37
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
I want to create a comprehensive collection of Linux games sometime...
24/07/07 @ 16:37
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
I meant a *list* of Linux games.
24/07/07 @ 16:38
oneandoneis2
Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/
http://www.tuxgames.com/ used to have some good links, no idea if it's still any good tho..
24/07/07 @ 16:39
Comment from: andrewtheart [Member] Email · http://www.freewebs.com/andrewtheart/
You could have cut the sarcasm in this post with a knife. I'm surprised you guys didn't pick up on it.
25/07/07 @ 04:04
sokuban
Comment from: sokuban [Member] Email
But I do think that Linux doesn't have enough games. Darwinia is for Linux, but it also is for Windows. A lot of the above listed games are also for windows too. (It sounds boring to me though, we all have are own different tastes when it comes to games. Most native Linux games aren't that interesting to me either.)

I'm really into Japanese games, and there are tons of Japanese games that have no Linux version, and almost none are native to Linux. Can any of you name a Japanese visual novel game that is native to Linux or has a Linux version? I can't.

Luckily for me I don't play much PC games so I lived. The only PC games I really got into are the Touhou (Shanghai Alice) games and Key/Visual Arts games.
25/07/07 @ 07:06
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
I'd love to see a Train Simulator for Linux similar to Microsoft Train Simulator.

Now that's one Microsoft product I love (actually it's programmed by somebody else, but marketed by MS game studios).
25/07/07 @ 14:02
oneandoneis2
Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/
There's a train simulator??

One can only assume it's not modelled on British Rail...
25/07/07 @ 14:10
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
Seriously never heard of it before?

See this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Train_Simulator

There is talk about a new version of MSTS based on the Flight Simulator engine coming soon.

I just love taking a train on a long ride... pointless to some people, but I'm a train addict.
25/07/07 @ 16:21
oneandoneis2
Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/
Seems a bit odd - I mean, flight simulators you have to steer through all three dimensions. A train just trundles along its tracks..
25/07/07 @ 16:39
Hari
Comment from: Hari [Member] · http://harishankar.org/blog/
It's based on the same underlying 3d Engine, but I think they'll probably code it differently... obviosuly :-p
26/07/07 @ 03:20
Club Penguin Glitches
Comment from: Club Penguin Glitches [Visitor] · http://club-penguin-secrets.com
I have found quite a few games for lin. Never heard of this one tho. I will check it out. thanks for letting us know
07/12/09 @ 06:35

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[icon] Advice From a Single Girl

So Friday (last) started out so well, I knew it was going to be an awesome day.

I slept in (ahhh, bliss) and went for a morning walk to mail some....er...mail (because, seriously, what else can you mail? turtles?) and it was sunny and warm and I hadn't had any caffeine yet so I got myself a Slurpee. Nothing says awesome Summer day like a 10 am Coke Slurpee cooling you down in the sun.

But do you know what really tipped the morning into full-blown awesomeness? The two shirtless, amazingly hot guys who jogged past me, sweaty and gorgeous as I walked home. Ahhhhh, sugar, sun, and sexy, my own personal Summer trifecta.

I went over to where C-Dawg was staying and picked her up (so there would be no driving necessary) and we came back to my apartment, poured ourselves a summer-worthy drink and headed out on the town.

We wandered through downtown, people watching and talking and laughing and window shopping and then we headed to one of the local patios and ordered up a pitcher and some appetizers.

And that's when the real fun began.

You see, C-Dawg and I love people watching. And more than that, we love making up little stories about people and trying to guess who they are. We'd soon discovered that Friday would have to be known as "Everyone Looks Familiar Day" because I kept on seeing people that I thought looked familiar but I couldn't tell if they actually were or if I was just imagining it.

We decided that the couple next to us had just boated in on their yacht and that the guys across from us were all discussing their volleyball league's last game.

We also tried to narrow down which men C felt were too young for me and which she deemed "just right." Once we'd narrowed my age-group down to a ten year span she tested me to see if I could actually tell which guys were ok and which were in the "are you crazy, he's way too young" category.

I did not do well at this. (sigh)

As the pitcher got emptied, a table behind us became filled with a bunch of guys. C-Dawg, needing to "get out of the sun" (which we're pretty sure the guys could tell was an obvious ploy for her to be able to stare at the guys instead of having to pretend to look around and can I just say thank goodness for sunglasses and how easy they make it to check out cute guys?) sat next to me and we started to figure out the back story for these guys.

Later, C decided to choose which of the guys she'd set me up with and when she did she very kindly me that I could go out with the nice, sweet, geeky one because I'm a geek too at which point I protested until she promised she was a geek as well and it wasn't a bad thing. (Strangely enough I know what she means.)

At one point, the waiter came over and there'd been this on-going joke between the three of us because servers kept on trying to bring us food we hadn't ordered and I kept on making this dumb joke about it and then when C-Dawg told me the joke was getting old and the waiter laughed, I turned to him and said (and I quote) "Hey, I'm just going to keep saying it because it never be's not funny!"

At which point he suggested that this wasn't our first patio of the evening and I couldn't stop laughing because I couldn't believe I'd said "be's" and how as I'd said it it had TOTALLY been a word.

Ahhh alcohol, what silly things you do to my brain.

We hit up a few more places after that and went for dinner at my favourite place and then watched an awesomely bad movie back at my place. (Hi, I'm Victoria and I'm going to say the word 'place' as many times as possible in one sentence. I are a good writer.)

It was pretty darn awesome and I'm sure there's more I can think of, like how she wet-willied a statue and how she almost convinced me to give nice geek guy my number and how we sat outside the best ice cream place in town and convinced a bunch of other people that yes, they really should go inside and get a cone.

A good day, a great afternoon, a fun evening. It always be's like that with the C-Dawg. I can't wait til we get to do it again.
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