New Linux User » games

Linux Gaming: Blobs and Puzzles

Clair Ching — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:36:21 +0000

Once again, Jun Auza reviews a cool game that he’s running on Linux. It’s called “Blob and Conquer” ; ) Blobs on your computer out to defeat aliens. Yes, Blobs. Bob the Blob is leading the other Blobs to save the day.

What do you get from Blob and Conquer?

This is the 3D version of Metal Blob Solid. You’re in for some adventure as well as action. You could use weapons like uzis, shotguns and grenades. If you’ve played Metal Blob Solid before you will see the familiar enemies like Assimilated Blobs, Eye Droids, Spider Blobs and Sentry Guns. There are also minigames aside from the 30 missions on this game.

As for the gameplay, Jun Auza points out:

The two most important actions in the game are easily controlled via the two mouse buttons: Left-click to shoot and right-click to jump. Gameplay is based on objectives that usually involve unlocking doors, collecting items, jumping over lava, and doing a lot of shooting. They must be completed before you can exit the level.

Sounds like your kind of fun? The graphics look ok from the screenshots but I suppose it depends on what really appeals to you. The gameplay sounds like even casual gamers can enjoy it too. I might take that recommendation and try it out too.

Quantz also looks interesting. It’s a game that has been ported to Linux but only the closed source version is available. Right now they’re actually looking for people to test the Linux version of Quantz. The files are in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. It looks interesting but for those who are not comfortable with non-free software or non-open source stuff, this might not be the game for you.

I have yet to download the deb but it’s been taking forever. I want to test it out on my machine too. Hopefully this weekend will be better.

Got games you want to share? : )

Post from: New Linux User

Sonar for Power Management; Create Games

Clair Ching — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:12:12 +0000

Ever wondered how you can manage your computer’s power so that it’s being used efficiently? This is something I think laptop users would be very concerned about so as to conserve battery time. You don’t want your computer to keep on using power while you’re away right? And of course a hassle-free experience will be ideal. Amazingly enough a research group has thought of a plan: by using sonar. What would be used for this experience is your computer’s mic and speakers.

image credit: cohdra via Morguefile

Their plan:

The group developed software that, when the user is not using the mouse or keyboard, plays a tone at a high frequency and records the tone’s echo. The computer then processes the tone and filters out everything except the frequency and looks for variance.

Interesting concept, right? Because it’s not just about efficiency in using power but it’s also about your user experience. And these researchers know from experience too.

If you’re really concerned with power saving the software is said to detect your presence up to 8 feet away. The research group is looking for people to participate in the project by testing the software. This Sonar Power Manager could be tested on Linux but you’d have to compile from source. It looks like a good project to participate in testing. You and the researchers will both gain from learning more about the feasibility of this power manager.

In other news, there is now an open source game editor you could check out. It’s called Game Editor. It’s for those who want to create games for computers as well as mobile devices. Users can choose to make free and open source games but if they want to distribute the games using other licenses they have to pay USD 95 for the professional edition. Interested? Check out Game Editor and see if it fits your needs.

Post from: New Linux User

Smokin’ Fun in the Wild West

Clair Ching — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:20:26 +0000

Period movies are interesting to watch. Seeing all sorts of costumes and scenarios, as well as weapons. There are people who simply love Western movies and all things cowboy related. Must be all those shoot ‘em up scenarios in the desert, as well as the salons. I would think that some people would love to try living in those times for the awesome western adventures!

Well, games could be an interesting substitute to traveling back in time for a Western adventure or two. In this case, you could check out “Smokin’ Guns” – an open source game that lets you play with different modes of play as well as use various weapons in that match the theme. : D If you want to play in a network, you also have the option as with Counterstrike and Quake. First person shooter fans will find it a different experience in terms of the period, and the terrain too. Don’t forget the matching background music. Wild West, here comes gamers robbing banks or outsmarting each other. *lol* I read about this on Unixmen’s blog entry about Smokin’ Guns. For more details, check out the Smokin’ Guns website.

In other news, you could now buy the game World of Goo for any price you like. Yes! Name the price and it’s yours. The famous game which is available not only for Windows, but on Linux as well, is celebrating its first birthday! As a way to celebrate World of Goo’s birthday, 2Boy studios has a promo that you could get it for the price of your choice. Isn’t that a big birthday blowout or what? If you want to give the developers way more than 20 USD, no one’s stopping you either. And this is one very interesting game and I do think we should encourage its developers to keep coming up with more fun and interesting challenges that will keep us hooked!

Post from: New Linux User

Potpourri: Upgrading to ALSA 1.0.20, Quake Live, Intro to vi

Clair Ching — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:57:58 +0000

Today let’s look at the following:

vi Introduction

Not all newbies know what vi is. vi happens to be a text editor in Linux and it’s available on the command line. This editor has modes and it could be quite confusing to those who are just starting out. But there are practical reasons for learning vi such as going mouse-less, editing files on a remote Linux machine, and chances are you need to know how to use vi and this will be tested when you take exams for certification.

This guide is easy to follow as you see the commands and what happens because of the screenshots in this guide. It also gives you an idea of what you should expect in the different modes in vi.

Upgrading to Alsa 1.0.20 on Ubuntu Jaunty

ALSA or the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture is what makes us able to hear sounds on our computers by giving sound device drivers for our sound cards. And sometimes we have problems with our sound cards because of much needed upgrades, or sometimes, needed distro upgrades. This guide shows you how to upgrade to the newer ALSA version by compiling it on your computer. It has a step by step guide so don’t worry

Quake Live on Linux

Fan of shooter games? Quake Live is on Linux now. If you look at the home page, you will see the icon of Tux. It’s a 100% free-to-play arena shooter game. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, you can join. And what’s interesting about it is that you can just play it through a plugin which it will install on your browser. I am not a big fan of shooter games but it really made me curious. If you’re also interested just sign up and then the plugin will be installed automatically for you. Have fun!

Post from: New Linux User

Weekend Reads: Office Suites, Command Line Applications and ioQuake 3

Clair Ching — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:38:37 +0000

Eleven is Louder summarizes what office suites are available for us that are open souce software. Of course it has OpenOffice.org in the list. However, it reminds us that Lotus Symphony does exist and that there are other suites like the GNOME Office Suite as well as the KDE Office Suite. I’ve tried using the GNOME Office Suite before but for the sake of compatibility I am using OpenOffice.org especially because I have to collaborate with co-workers on documents. I know that OpenOffice.org is commonly included in various Linux distributions and this blog entry shows you that you have options. No need to feel stuck. Some people think that OpenOffice.org is way too clunky and annoying so other choices could possibly be better for them.

Another blog entry from Eleven is Louder is all about Command-Line Applications and it has an interesting list. It includes the following and more:

rtorrent – for torrent downloads
cdrtools – for burning CDs
cdparanoia – a CD ripper
oleo – a spreadsheet application (I am really amazed that there is one on the command line!)
zgv – a picture viewer with good svga support
hnb – a hierarchical notebook

The last read of the day comes from Tux Arena which talks about the complete guide to configure and customize ioQuake 3 in Linux. For those of you who love first person shooter games, this could be interesting to check out. I was never really into first person shooter games on the computer because I get dizzy just by looking at the screen. Those of you who are fans will appreciate this guide because it has the details on what to do so you could have new maps, weapons, character models, etc. This particular article has screenshots included for better visualization.

I hope you would enjoy these reads!

Post from: New Linux User

Release News: linuX-gamers live 0.95

Clair Ching — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:27:21 +0000

linuX-gamers.net announced its latest release linuX-gamers live 0.95. There are different versions available for download and it depends on your needs.

Lite ISO: Small CD image (700MB)

This has games suitable for children and older computers. You just burn it on a CD with your favorite CD-writing tool.
Lite USB

This has the same games as the Lite ISO version but it is made for USB keys and USB sticks (requires minimum of 1GB USB device).

You could use:
sudo dd bs=8M if=/path/to/lg-live-0.9.5-i686-lite.usb of=/dev/your_usb_device

Or: use the Flashnul utility. You could also refer to this guide to using Flashnul.
Big ISO

Big DVD image (4.7GB) with the full games selection for adults and more recent computers.
Big USB

This has the same contents as the Big ISO but this is meant for USB drives. So yes, your USB drive must have as much capacity or you can’t write this on it. Writing method could be the same as the Lite USB version.

For the complete list of games, check this page.

I would probably get a copy of the lite versions so that I could give it to my co-workers who have children. Some of them do allow their children to use their computers but having the USB with a distro with games will probably limit their young ones so that they won’t be able to just click on anything just because it’s on the browser. I see that a lot of their children go online to play games so this will give them another option.

Post from: New Linux User

Need Some Brain Teasers? Try gBrainy!

Clair Ching — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:19:09 +0000

I’ve been playing “Brain Age” on my DSi and I’ve been having fun but it really is challenging sometimes. I just started and my brain age at the moment is still drifting between 36 and 40. The ideal brain age is 20 so I need some training! The game encourages daily training. Just some short games to help make your brain age younger. And guess what? A similar application exists on Linux! gBrainy is available to test your memory, logic and calculation.

Playing the game:
You could choose one category to start with or you could select the “All” option which gives you a mixture of all these categories. Some questions are of the multiple choice type but others require you to compute the values and give the answer directly on the space given. Just press the enter key when you’ve answered the question already. To get to the next item, press enter again. When you’re done, you will see a graph of how well or how poorly you did in the game.

There are also settings you could tweak for the game:

Level of difficulty. Choose: Easy, Medium, Master. The default is Medium.
Number of seconds for you to memorize the puzzle/problem in the memory game.
Number of games to be saved.

You don’t have to get bored at work anymore. gBrainy will help you by challenging your brain to do some mental math or figure out some logic puzzles.

Post from: New Linux User

Warsow your Linux online first-person shooter game

Clair Ching — Sat, 10 May 2008 07:48:16 +0000

If you love first-person shooter games, Warsow just might be the thing for you. It is based on the novel “Chasseur de bots” which is a French E-novel. (You could read it in English here.)

Those familiar with the gameplay of Quake, you might enjoy Warsow. You can do various kinds of jumps as well as slide and dodge. Similar to Quake, there are ammo boxes in the map. There are strong weapons too.

I am not much of a gamer and first-person shooter games make me dizzy but Jun Auza’s review gives a pretty ok review.

If you know more Linux games, please don’t hesitate and share them here.

Post from: New Linux User

Linux gaming: Savage 2

Clair Ching — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:54:14 +0000

For Linux users who love games, you don’t need to feel deprived of playing Savage 2. It’s an online real time strategy and/or action game. It depends on what role you want your character to have. As they’ve said on their site, you could choose to be a commander (hence the RTS aspect) or you could use a warrior type character and you’d be able to hack and slash to your delight. Sounds good, right? You could download the game here. For accounts, you need to pay a fee worth USD 29.99 but demo accounts let you play for 5 hours free.

Post from: New Linux User