GamniX

A new alpha release of The Goblin and the Butterfly, a free 2nd MMORPG, has been released. Changes in this release:

• scripted stories implemented
• prophets and heralds will give informations about running scripted stories in local chat
• haircut depends on gender and race
• more pathes on maps, to help players not to get lost
• minor bugfixes

Download: [ The Goblin and the Butterfly 1.0.0.8 ]

Crystal Space 1.4 is out. Features include improved animations (“integrating vertex based animation with skeletal animation”) and terrain (“improves rendering and handling of large outdoor areas”), OpenAL for sound and an internationalization plug-in.

Panda3D has a prettier website, it released version 1.7.0 and apparently has a web-plug in. The new version makes it easier to crash the computer, but also gives a performance boost – with the magic of ‘pointer textures’.

Read more at Free Gamer

A3P is an indie online shooter that combines the best aspects of the Third Person Shooter and Real-Time Strategy genres. Load out your units with weapons and special abilities, then lead them to victory on the battlefield!

Play for free!

Back in 2007, I wrote an article on free games for Linux and thought it was time to write a bit more on the subject. Actually, I had a lot of fun doing the research for this article and telling my sons that I really was “working.” I don’t really play that many games, so when I do, there are a few things that I look for.

Since there are so many very good games out there, I don’t waste my time on games that run poorly, or aren’t aesthetically appealing. I also don’t have time to read reams of documentation in order to get started, though I will make an exception now and then if a game is particularly intriguing.

I have a reasonably beefy machine to work and play on. I use an AMD64 Dual Core 4200+ with 1Gb of RAM and a GeForce FX 5200 video card. Most game players have much better hardware, but this is primarily a work machine. You can use these specs to get an idea of how well a given game will run on your system.

Read more at Linux Journal

The fifth beta for 1.8 is ready. Feel free to celebrate the new release with us in this forum thread.
As with the last releases, we continue to offer two versions of changelogs: a rather nice to read players changelog that only includes changes every player will probably notice and the (rather) complete changelog with (almost) all the details, which is likely to cause a serious headache…
At the moment the Windows package and the MacOSX packages are ready. You can find them at the download page. Once the others are done you can find them at the download page, too. Please keep in mind that it is a development release which might include quite many bugs. If you find one, report it.

Based on Linux, the GP2X Wiz (nice name!) is a completely open multi-functional handheld entertainment device. The makers, GamePark Holding from Korea, say it’s different than other shanzhai video game consoles in that it uses a completely “open source” approach. Supposed to be released in late 2008 with a retail price of USD 179.99, there have been massive delays and troubles with the company, but now, finally, it is apparently ready to go.

Read more at Shanzai.com

I admit, I’m one of those people who dual-boots so I can play video games. I’ve tried running programs like CrossOver Games in order to feed my need for fragging, but in the end, it seems I always have to install Windows to enjoy some real gaming fun. Thankfully, I’m not the guy in charge of things worldwide, because the folks over at www.supergamer.org have created a bootable, dual-layer DVD full of native-running Linux games. Yes, I said native. Check out the impressive list of preinstalled games you’ll get when you download the ISO:

Read more at LinuxJournal

Bitfighter 012 has been released for Linux, OSX and Windows. This is primarily a maintenance release, but does have some new features. With this release, players can drop flags, level designers can include asteroid spawn points, and there are fixes for several crash conditions.

Download the new version today; see the changelog on the download page for the full rundown of what’s new.

ZDoom version 2.4.0 has been released. Visit the downloads page to get it. If you were observant and already downloaded it when you noticed the downloads page was updated yesterday, you might want to do so again, since it has been updated with newer zdoom.pk3 that fixes one minor problem with Heretic’s weredragon.

More details later.

We have switched the release cycle to one release every three months, and this version is the first to follow this pattern. The changes in this release are:

• Client-server handshake rewrite
  While this may sound rather boring and technical, rewriting the setup code fixed several bugs, streamlined the Lobby form a bit, and we also implemented some other changes along the way. These are colorized chats, proper client authentication, the display of player titles, and guest players that can watch a game without participating.
• Interface improvements
  A crude version of variable mouse cursors and an overview map were added. Some of the standard dialogs can now be closed by a simple click. A couple of drawing glitches when scrolling around were fixed.
• Various other improvemens
  The external libraries have been updated, the changelog is now read from an external file, and the code base got a big boost in comments, and was simplified in some parts.