GamniX

Brought up in the Phoronix Forums yesterday by a reader was a reference to Ryan Gordon’s resume that he was contracted to port Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 to Linux. This led a Phoronix reader to email Ryan “Icculus” Gordon and now we managed to get our hands on Ryan’s e-mail response.

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 was released for Windows back in 2006 and runs off the older Linux-compatible Unreal Engine 2.5 (not the newer Unreal Engine 3), but to date we have not seen any Linux client of this game developed by Tripwire Interactive that takes place during World War II. Ryan clarified that he was contracted to just perform the Linux server port and then for Mac OS X he did the server port too, and he is also doing a Mac OS X client port for this game and that version will soon be released.

Read more at Phoronix

Developers who want to accelerate game development benefit enormously from tools known as game engines. This type of software application helps games to be coded efficiently and easily without compromising on its quality. Game engines employ state-of-the-art technology to ensure that developers can concentrate on generating new scenery, models, and sounds, or to put an alternative spin on existing game material.

To be eligible for inclusion in this list each game engine needed to meet the following requirements:

Free to use without restrictions

Not in the early stages of development

We have included OGRE and Irrlicht Engine in this feature even though they are technically graphics engines rather than game engines. However, they warrant inclusion because whilst they do not offer a complete solution, they represent first rate engines for creating games with first rate graphics.

Read more at LinuxLinks

My today selection for Linux gamers are three nice opensource games, the games are

* Go Ollie! : At first sight Go Ollie! looks like a game for kids, but once you play it you realize it can be fun for anyone, no matter what age.
* Bos Wars : A futuristic real time strategy game (RTS)
* Scorched 3D : A simple turn-based artillery game and also a real-time strategy game in which players can counter each others’ weapons with other creative accessories, shields and tactics.

For more games you can check our section of Gaming on Linux

Read more at Unixmen

Blog of helios isn’t a game review blog…it’s a blog to discuss Linux-related stuff and to keep you posted on The HeliOS Project goings-on. Some have asked why we cover games as much as we do. Some have complained loudly.

It’s simple. When a game developer ports their work to Linux, it’s news. At least in the Linux World. Linux users are hungry for games. The slashdotting of our coverage of the Linux port of World of Goo and Penumbra should be an indication of the importance placed on Linux ports.

Read more at The Blog of Helios

This month there’s been the Humble Indie bundle whereby anyone can purchase this game bundle consisting of World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture for any price they want. Part of the proceeds would be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity. With the success of this bundle, they then decided if they generate more than a million dollars in revenues they would open-source the games. Well, they have achieved this milestone!

Read more at Phoronix

Game engines offer huge benefits to game developers. The main functionality they provide is the library of core functions used in a computer game. This often includes a realtime rendering engine for 2D or 3D graphics, physics engine with collision detection, a character animation system, scene graph, sound, artificial intelligence, threading, networking, input, streaming localization support, debugging tools, integration with languages, and the provision of performance monitoring and optimization tools.

Game engines play a crucial role in the fast creation and development of computer games. As they offer a collection of visual development tools, and are often presented in an integrated development environment, they vastly accelerate the development of games. Game engines are referred to as “game middleware” because they provide a flexible and reusable software platform.

Read more at LinuxLinks

When Edgar’s father fails to return home after venturing out one dark and stormy night, Edgar fears the worst: he has been captured by the evil sorcerer who lives in a fortress beyond the forbidden swamp.

In The Legend of Edgar, you take on the role of Edgar as he ventures across the world, battling fearsome creatures and solving puzzles whilst trying to find and rescue his father.

* Added the Armoury map, you can get to it via the Fortress Ground Floor
* Fixed a problem with some key mappings
* Added some statistics, such as play time and enemies killed
* Fixed a bunch of memory leaks
* Added more Medals to earn, check Parallel Realities for details
* Scripts no longer freeze when they are interrupted when loading a game

Linux users are starved for quality games – there is no doubting that. Bring up the topic of a Linux port on most gaming forums and you will typically see responses about the market share of the operating system, that Linux users are cheap (thus why they use a free operating system) or there are too many package formats to support (which really is a non-issue). I’m not even going to bother trying to argue the point of market share, we all know Windows is a large majority and Linux is the under dog – lets leave it at that.

Read more at Thoughts on Technology

It’s ‘common knowledge’ that Mac and Linux gaming are so unimportant that they might as well not exist. Everyone ‘knows’ that Mac games sell a tiny fraction of the amount that Windows games sell, and that Linux games simply don’t exist.

But are these ideas based on reality? Where did these figures come from? Anyone who has ever worked with statistics knows that it’s unwise to trust ‘common knowledge’ without data to back it up. I decided to ask some developers about their sales distribution, and get some real data about Mac and Linux game sales.

Read more at Wolfire Blog

Formula Retro is an actively developed “Sega’s Virtua Racing look-alike”. I found it to be somewhat buggy (but stable) and I like the look.

Windows releases are available for download and here are GNU/Linux compile instructions, you will need to have irrlicht installed:

svn co https://formularetro.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/formularetro/trunk formularetro
cd formularetro
find . -exec sed -i ‘s|../irrlicht/include|/usr/include/irrlicht|g’ {} \;
make
./dist/Debug/GNU-Linux-x86/formularetro

Read more at FreeGamer