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Linux Software

LinuxGames Gets an OverHaul 33

Lakini writes "I'd just like everyone to know that LinuxGames has launched a new site design and some of the documentation has been updated also. " It's so excellent to see that Linux has enough news to support an active site like this. With Q3, Civ, and rumors of so much more, its great to see that Linux is almost a viable gaming platform.
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LinuxGames Gets an OverHaul

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  • Okay, here's my opinion, since you say you don't need more than Q3.

    I've never really liked most of the games from id software out of the box. They are really good at showcasing new 3d graphic technology, but the gameplay in every game i've played from them was just plain boring. It took for them to release editors and programming languages (like quakeC) and for some really cool gameplayers to make mods that make the game fun. Granted, they in large part launched the whole 3d gaming genre (wolfenstein and Doom), but they don't innovate much on the gameplay side, nor do they really take into account the "little things" that add to the environment of a game. For example, 3d Realms Duke Nukem 3d I preferred over Quake out of the box because Duke had a name, and was this wise cracking character. Duke3D also had a USE key (automatic doors, whose idea was that), so you could flip light switches, turn on gears, and other things. Also it let you see the shells eject from your gun (hey, I like that stuff) and had an inventory (jetpack!!!). Granted, Duke3d's build engine was a true 3d engine, but the game was more fun. So I played quake only when there were mods on it (like teamfortress), and i've never played quakeII, because I don't really care to play a game just for eye candy.

    If you wanna try a really good 3D game from a gameplay standpoint, play Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six [rainbow6.com]. It has action, strategy, and simulation in a single game. Although, it has some really horrible bugs in it, was probably released WWWAAAYYYY to early (shoulda fixed the bugs), and has some blaring unrealisms in a game that is trying to be as realistic as possible.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I agree on your comments about 800x600 and I have fixed these problems, (thanks Crusader) as for fitting the entire page in a table, it was necessary to get the effect we were after. Everyone at Linuxgames has great passion for the site and wishes to see it flourish and be a resource that makes gaming in Linux a pleasure and not a fortnight worth of late nights and headaches.

    As for my design... well everyone has different opinions, thats what makes the world such an interesting place.

    My main focus on the site was keeping the Telefragged theme because Linuxgames is part the TF network. Plain and simple. as for the colours? Well I used real penguin colours to give a very dynamic Feel to the site, it's bold and it states that Gaming in Linux is here and it can only get better.

    From what I've seen in the last 6 months on the gaming seen, Linux has a very prospective future.

    However, your comments on Style Sheets are un-justified. Your not thinking of all the people who have lesser browsers than you and would have problems with things such as style sheets.

    Unfortunately I do run on a very tight time shedule and I think 3 hours work re-designing a site I have always had a keen interest in gives me a feeling of self worth, and a feeling of doing my bit for Linux. (see what can I do for Linux even though I can't program? from about 6 months ago)

    Also seeing the Negative comments posted somewhere as well as the postive ones helps me greatly. 640x480 support anyone? =)

    ReV [mailto]
  • In Communicator, it had loaded 60K and STILL could not start to render.

    Slashdot is showing the same symptoms .. some kind of stoopid HTML tricks that delay rendering while yer sposta sit there and carefully read and reread a banner ad.

  • Well, if you have multiple resolutions set up in your XF86Config file, you can use CTRL+ALT+numpad+/numpad- to switch resolutions on the fly.
  • Well realize they were and still are a horrible development platform (with exception of MacOS X with BSD kernel.. and even then I'm not very fond of ObjectiveC).

    Not to mention Apple did horrible things to their developers in terms of licensing and that damn "made for macintosh" deal.

    --
  • still like using xemacs with its cc mode, integrated gdb etc. the only things it lacks are
    something to browse the structure of the code and
    something like sgis (who was also once known as sgi) opengl debugger. perhaps one of the IDEs
    being worked has stuff like this?
  • And it doesn't even fit in smaller windows (about 800 x 600) properly. I thought HTML designers have finally realized that putting the ENTIRE page in table tags is just not a cool thing to do, edpecially when it's a page as big as linuxgames. If you need to align columns over the entire page just use style sheets, that's what they're for.
  • There are many IDEs available. I knew when I moved over from DOS/Windows land, I liked xwpe. Pretty similar to Borland's interface which almost everyone knows how to use. Its not something I'd use for huge programming projects, but I usually use it as an editor, have a compile terminal open, and sick ddd on it when I need to debug stuff. Larger scale traditional IDEs include code crusader,gIDE(still alpha), and others. Then again there's always emacs. ;)
    As far as using Visual Studio, that is about the worst IDE I've ever had the displeasure of using, and mikey$oft's C++ compiler is has got some bad ju-ju in it. I'd take a GNU compiler any day of the week.
  • Bah... not until it has a flight sim like Falcon 4 will the Linux game world be complete... xpilot is fun, but I miss my laser guided bombs.

    Chris
  • I am a fan of linuxgames.com since the very early days and visit it at least once a week.

    Without doubt linuxgames.com brought a bigger audience towards linux and it could be the foothold to get linux onto desktops.

    Btw, linuxgames was already shown on nation-wide german/european television at several occasions (at least once at wdr3 and twice on giga-nbc and not, don`t flame me, I never watch giga-nbc :-).

    Now about the new layout. Not bad, but... I liked the old more. The new one is using tiny fonts, needs a huge and wide window (850 pixels at least) and I don`t like the yellow background. imho of course.
  • Press Ctrl Alt + or Ctrl Alt - to change resolution.

    Voila!
  • Ya!

    It looks real Cool! [linuxquake.com]. Hope everyone remembers to bring quality news and stuff and not just stop at the cool looks!

    Rock on linuxgames & linuxquake!
    --
  • Without a game by Sid Meier and friends Linux will never be a viable game platform. Please note Civ:CTP is not a Sid Meier sanctioned game:(

    Get to Firaxis [firaxis.com] or Alpha Centauri [alphacentauri.com]
    And demand a port of SMAC

  • An integrated development environment would be nice. Makefiles and gdb are no where near as productive as MS Developer Studio. Games these days are many hundreds of thousands lines of code and source code management and debugging tools are of high important. A SoftIce port to Linux would be nice and some nice front ends to cvs would be nice too.

    On the plus side, egcs (gcc 3) seems to be more stable and fully featured than MS VC for C++ development. I guess I've been using an IDE for too long ;)

    If anyone has a favourite development environment under Linux, share the wealth.

    Styx.
  • I must say I'm rather proud.

    Hardest part of the battle was getting a CD-ROM in there that Linux could talk to. Once I did that and I had my 2nd HD plugged into the right plug, it went OK.

    Got my 3dfx drivers, installed KDE (that was easy!) and configured X (trial and error. Xconfigurator can't seem to let me have >1 resolution enable) and instlled linuxquake3.

    I got no sound (my card isn't supported) but I got good framerates and I have to say that KDE is really nice. My only gripe: how come we can't have a "Monitors" or "Display" control panel to switch monitor resolutions? Xconfigurator may be a step up from the Old Ways, but it still kinda sucks. I'll go RTFM before I complain more, though. Network set up was a breeze, though.

    *VERY* much looking forward to benchmarking q3test on Win32 to q3test on Linux (same machine). Which OS has more overhead I wonder?
  • The new wave of games for Linux will bring with it the next wave of Linux users. It's the next logical step to claim the desktop and then the world :)
  • More apropriately, go to

    http://alpha.owo.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cg i?action=topics&forum=The+Game&number=2&Da ysPrune=5&LastLogin=

    On another note, several other people and I are in the planning stages of a port of Star Control 2 (otherwise known as the greatest game to have ever existed). We plan on just redoing the engine and using the data that you get when you buy the game (I'd say about 40% of the data formatting has been reverse-engineered). It's being discussed at http://www.cam.org/~lafranc/sc4board/ and a preliminary web page is at http://info3.tech.klte.hu/~mudry/fscp/ (which is often down) and mirrored at http://www.duke.edu/~ahc4
  • Quite possibly - they ARE hosted by Telefragged, after all! (Or at least part of the same network)
  • but did they have to make it so much like telefragged [telefragged.com]?
  • with civ3 for and Q3 what need do i have for more games? this are IMHO the best of there kind. and in Q3's case if anyone uses the engine for another game most of the porting is done so we most likely will some more FPS's... ( not that we need more then Q3, well maybe Tribles) all that im saying is that civ3 and Q3 rock and if we dont get more game linux will still gamers platform cause we got some of the best games out there. although more games of diffrent types we be nice. :)

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • coherent,
    could be.
    fun what then but
    would it
    be...

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • ...but my eyes could do without the unreadable black-and-blue-on-dark-grey color scheme. Wired is the worst thing that ever happened to graphic design, almost like a "what not to do" object lesson but some people don't seem to get the joke.
  • I am looking to the day when games are available for Linux! Hopefully, Q3 will lead the way or commercial game companies to begin to release their products for Linux. Now, if Valve Software releases Linux 2/3 life, then we will be all set. I hope game manufacturers recognize the potential to have their games running on systems that dont crash!
  • I have no doubt Win98 has a lot more overhead than linux, considering how MS bloats the OS with each new release. If Id Software is capable of programming for Unix with the same quality as for Windows, i would say Q3 will be a good way to compare - i'm going to try it eventually myself, on the same machine as you said.
    I am in the process of deciding what distribution to choose and working on backing up my hard drive before i install linux on this nmachine. My only experience is with Amiga OS, which is um...sort of like Unix, it seems.
  • I agree... Linux *only* needs the "best-of-the-best" when it comes to gaming. Of course, Macintosh users have often used this same argument to prove the simple point that Macs are a viable gaming platform as well. Didn't mean that they weren't slaughtered in the press, gaming, and computing circles as a piece of crap platform.
    While off the subject... We Linux users better stay on our toes if we hope to survive and get more software companies porting to us. It's easy to say that we will kick MS's butt because we have a better OS, millions of users, and major software companies porting soiftware to us.. but if we're not careful we will be marginalized by MS's FUD campaigne. Keep this in mind: There are at least twice as many Macintosh users than Linux users (with phenominal growth for mac purchases in the past year) and even though macs have more games and more software and more users is any one of us willing to say that the Mac is not a "dying platform"?
  • I might be wrong here, but those "stoopid HTML tricks" you're talking about are called tables. Netscape loads all of the data before displaying anything, and unfortunately the whole page is in one table, except the banner. Who knows, maybe it is intentional, but who'd blame him?

Ummm, well, OK. The network's the network, the computer's the computer. Sorry for the confusion. -- Sun Microsystems

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