Alien Arena 2010 has been released today for windows and linux users! This release features new content, bugfixes, and a variety of improvements and upgrades throughout!
Some of the new features in this release:
For a complete changelog look HERE
Winch Gate Properties Ltd, the developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online science-fantasy role playing games, is proud to announce the release of the source code and artistic assets of the popular MMORPG Ryzom to the Free Software Development Community.
Developers can now access the source code of the end-user client, content creation tools and server in order to make modifications, enhancements or to create their own virtual worlds. This move marks a milestone in Ryzom’s long history and dedication to the free software movement. In order to ensure that Ryzom continues to grow and foster as a free software project, Winch Gate is now releasing Ryzom under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU Affero General Public License.
Winch Gate is also excited to provide the free software community with high quality professional artistic assets including 3D objects, animation tracks, particle effects and thousands of textures. All of the Ryzom artistic assets will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike to ensure that they and any derivative art will be available to all free software projects. These assets will be hosted in a new online repository in partnership with the Free Software Foundation.
By freeing Ryzom code, Winch Gate is transforming the MMORPG marketplace and is setting a precedent for how gaming software should evolve–in freedom. The source code released totals over two (2) million lines of source code and over 20,000 high quality textures and thousands of 3D objects.
Welcoming the news, Free Software Foundation executive director Peter Brown said, “This is a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field to accelerate the production of free games and 3D worlds. We recognize the importance of gaming and the current dominance of proprietary gaming software, so today represents a significant breakthrough from which our community can benefit.” The FSF has published more information about the scope of today’s release, and suggested ways for developers to get involved
Vianney Lecroart, Chief Technology Officer of Winch Gate says, “The Free Software community often has a difficult time finding great graphical assets that they can use in their own projects. We are sure that the thousands of textures and 3D objects we are releasing under the CC BY-SA will help a lot of Free Software projects.”
Winch Gate intends to incorporate certain code changes and enhancements into the official version of the Ryzom game. All code developed outside Winch Gate’s in-house development staff will be thoroughly reviewed to ensure quality standards, stability and security. In order to engage and foster growth in the Ryzom project, Ryzom will have a group of community managers who can manage patch submissions and feature requests. Support will continue to be given for the official Ryzom software only, with third-party projects unsupported by Winch Gate.
Initial projects will include bug fixes and porting to operating systems such as GNU/Linux and Apple Mac OS X. Timeframes for these enhancements will vary depending on the scale of the project and the project team. The level and world data associated with Ryzom will not be released as free content and their use will remain exclusive to players of the Ryzom game.
The source code and additional information will be available from the Ryzom Core Development Portal
The Ryzom’s free media assets are available from Ryzom’s Asset Repository
About Ryzom
Ryzom is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing or MMORPG Game set more than 3.000 years into the future, on a living, evolving virtual world: beautiful Atys, where after creating your own personal avatar you will guide it through this strange fantastic planet to uncover its mysteries.
The game boasts a unique science-fantasy setting, a distinctive and artistic visual style and a sophisticated plot based upon the conflict of two mysterious supernatural powers. The storyline was awarded “Mmorpg.com Best Story” award. Gameplay is highly adaptive to your personal preferences and the actions/skills system is remarkably unique, sophisticated and profound.
Ryzom Ring is the proprietary innovative free expansion that brings MMORPGs to a new level. Ryzom Ring allows you to create your own role-play and RPG Adventures on the world of Atys.
About Winch Gate
Winch Gate Properties Ltd is the developer and publisher of the massively-multiplayer online science fantasy role playing game Ryzom since 2009. Former employees from Nevrax joined the company to continue to work on Ryzom.
For more information contact:
Vianney Lecroart, Chief Technology Officer
vl@ryzom.com
irc: #ryzom on irc.freenode.net
For many individuals, computer gaming is nowadays an essential part of everyday life. This should not be seen as a negative. Whilst violent computer games have sometimes been identified as contributory factors in criminal activity, and undeniably they can be very addictive, it is important to recognise the real benefits that games offer besides simply providing a means of great entertainment.
For example, computer games can help to improve hand-eye co-ordination, enhance creativity, create team players, help children gain self confidence, and even provide a welcome distraction for children and adults who are suffering from poor health.
Fortunately, there is a huge number of Linux games that are available to download for no charge. This pool of games is ever increasing. However, finding the best games is time consuming given the vast number that are available to try. Games which are visually unappealing can still be frantic, fast, and fun, whereas games with gorgeous graphics may have little gameplay.
Read more at LinuxLinks
PlayOnLinux 3.7.6 is now available !
Two major bugs fixed :
- Using an old wineversion to install a program caused problems
- Compatibility with Lucid Lynx : Install window crashed when the user clicked on Install button.
We strongly recommend you to upgrade PlayOnLinux
A proverb that often springs to mind during the day is that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Breaking up the monotony of the daily grind (also known as work) cannot be underestimated. Computer games are a great form of entertainment, less passive that watching the TV, just as challenging as completing the Times crossword, but much more fun.
However, games are not only important for amusement or as a diversion. They can actually stretch the mind, help to improve short-term memory, enhance your communication skills, heighten spatial awareness, advance teamwork, and encourage logical thinking.
Wesnoth 1.8.1 has been released. This is a bugfix release for the stable 1.8 branch. The main change does affect multiplayer users by reintroducing the old lobby as (default) option. If you want to use the new lobby, you do have to change the corresponding preference entry. Some other important multiplayer related errors (eg. “Missing WML Child”) were fixed, too. For information about further changes in this release, have a look at this forum thread.
We 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.
PlayOnLinux 3.7.5 is now available!
- Improvement on icon managing. Thank you Congelli501 for the patch
- Manual installation now supports .msi files. PlayOnLinux automaticaly detects if the setup file is a .exe or a .msi file
- Highest rank category added in install menu. (You can vote for your favourite script)
- Most downloaded category added in install menu
- Stars behavior improved in install menu
- Added a patch category in install menu
- Added a testing zone in install menu.
Enjoy !
There are several resources out there to assist you in being a Linux gamer. The WINE project (www.winehq.org) is a great, free example of this as it allows you to run Windows programs (and games) on Linux. Transgaming’s Cedega (cedega.com) software also allows you to do the same but the difference is that there’s a cost associated with this software. Today, though, we’re going to introduce you to another option for being a Linux gamer– the Linux-Gamers project (live.linux-gamers.net).
The Linux Gamers project is very unique in that the entire project is encapsulated within the confines of a live distribution (aka distro). Version 0.95, its most recent offering, of the project provides you with 34 free and open source games that run natively in Linux. I downloaded the “Big ISO” which is the DVD offering but you can also download the “Lite ISO” (CD) as well as the “Lite USB” and the “Big USB.” Your computer will have to be an i686 or better, have at least 512MB RAM and have a video card that supports 3D acceleration.
If Linux is going to make significant strides in increasing market desktop share, it needs to be able to compete with Windows in all areas. The average computer user typically just wants a single operating system to use for their work, to surf the net, to keep in contact with family and friends, and to have some fun. Having to reboot between operating systems is frankly too inconvenient for many users, as well as being perceived as too difficult. Whilst you can run many Windows software from Linux (e.g. by using virtualisation software, or Wine), again this simply appears to add to the complexity of using the PC. Furthermore, whilst Wine does allow some of the hottest Windows games to run under Linux, it is inevitable there will always be some incompatibility issues.
Even though PCs face increasing competition from dedicated gaming consoles, PC gaming will never die. If Linux is going to dominate the desktop market, it needs a good stream of native games. However, commercial gaming companies are only going to port games to Linux if they can realise a tidy profit from that work, and in the main that requires a significant gaming base. In many ways, open source games represent a solution to the Catch 22 situation, making Linux more attractive from a gamer’s perspective, and increasing the possibility of more commercial games being released on the market.
CodeWeavers has just announced the release of CrossOver Games 9.0 Beta, which is just coming about nine months after releasing CrossOver Games 8.0. The 9.0 release still needs more testing and work, but for those interested customers they can grab the release today.
Many new games are supposed to be working with CrossOver Games 9.0, but the big feature for CodeWeavers in particular is compatibility with Valve’s new 2010 Steam client for Windows, which we just talked about a few minutes ago. CrossOver Games 8.0 does not work with this Steam update, but for the past few weeks while beta testing the Steam Windows update, CodeWeavers has managed to get it running with their newest 9.0 code-base.
