GamniX

PlayOnLinux 3.7.3 is now available !

What’s new for the users ?

• PlayOnLinux automatically extract icons during the installation process to use them in the main menu.
• A bug corrected preventing user from changing a program icon
• Few translations were corrected
• Definitive correction (we hope) of $PROGRAMFILES variable problem. Script are being rewritten.
• PlayOnLinux is now available in Greek (Thank you kapcom01)

A little bit more technical for the scriptors …

- POL_LoadVar_PROGRAMFILES was created to assign the name of Program Files directory to $PROGRAMFILES variable. In few case, when the directory was called “Program Files”, the following commande returned %ProgramFiles% instead of the real name, and it was the cause of many bugs in all the scrpts.

- POL_LoadVar_PROGRAMFILES is automatically called on prefix creating. There is no need to use it in the scripts, we just need to erase old lines that cause bugs. To be sure that the scripts will be compatible with the old version, we started to replace

by :

- When you make a shortcut with POL_SetupWindow_make_shortcut, if the icon argument is empty, POL will try to extract the icon from the exe file and use it.

Enjoy !

Download

PS. A new version of PlayOnMac is also available, and compatible with Snow Leopard

While there are many open-source games available (just see the recent discussion about the most advanced GPL-ed FPS), most of them are based upon the ioquake3 game engine that in turn is based upon id Software’s open-source id Tech 3 engine. There’s also games like Nexuiz that use the DarkPlaces engine and then also Warsow that uses QFusion. There have also been projects like XreaL that seek to greatly expand upon the visual capabilities of the ioquake3 engine, but many of these projects go on without ever making it to a release stage. Today there is yet another open-source game engine in development.

Read more at Phoronix

Warzone 2100 has pretty new textures! Oh wait, didn’t I report this more than one year ago? Well.. the release after the next is supposed to feature them, finally.. But I *do* have news to offer: Building models are being re-modeled and re-textured! Slightly related: There is a tutorial on making models and texturing them on their forums.

Read more at Free Gamer

The sixth 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.

The beauty of a (puzzle) game is not only what we see and hear, but also what we feel when pressing buttons and moving the mouse. Controls are important and I prefer them crispy.

No free software puzzle game has more flavor than Krank. The player piece is a string of circles, which follow the cursor to collide with smaller pieces, which need to be connected to static pieces in different combinations. Unfortunately I fail at recording videos of the game and screenshots can’t communicate the feel of the movement and sounds.. Speaking of movement, the controls are not as sharp as they should be, according to my ideal. However, this seems to fit the game very much, slow music, slow pace, ’swimming’ controls. At first I was frustrated, because trying to do precise movements quickly leads to disaster (or just a harder time finishing levels than if you would do it slowly) but then I learned to relax.

Read more at FeeGamer

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.