[kwlug disc.] Linux game

[Charles McColm]

Speaking of games, I just did a quick check on my gentoo system, and there
appears to be lots to try (800+ packages, not all games per se, but game
related).  Has anyone seriously given the list of available linux games a
try on hardware that can handle them?  What is your favourite?

Recently I've tried Alien Arena 2007 (3D uses Quake engine, Northland for
Linux, iMaze, and KBattleship. Of the four I have to say I prefer iMaze and
KBattleship. Both games are simpler than Alien Arena or Northland, but I
think what makes them better is the controls. Alien Arena is your typical
FPS, and while it is network playable I was never one for deathmatch gaming.
Northland has just too many confusing controls (half right click, half left
click), plus a host of keyboard controls. If you like really complex games I
suppose Northland would be appealing, but I found even after playing 4 or 5
hours a couple of days, the commands were still unmanagable.

iMaze is a deathmatch-type game. And while I said I didn't like them, I like
iMaze because it's extremely simple. You play the part of a pacmanish figure
going around a maze trying to hunt down other players. You can set
additional computer players. It's simple, networkable, and fun.

KBattleship is the same story. It's simple, and fun. I've played this one
with a few people and everyone I played it with seemed to enjoy it. It's KDE
Battleship, playable over a network. Unlike iMaze, it's only 2 player, but
the graphics are okay, and the sound is pretty decent.

I'm looking forward to Savage 2, which is suppose to be released for Linux
soon. It looks Neverwinter Nightish....

Here's some URLs:

Alien Arena 2007: http://red.planetarena.org/
Northland:
http://www.rune-soft.com/englisch/Projektseiten/northland/northland.html
iMaze: http://home.tu-clausthal.de/student/iMaze/
KBattleship: http://games.kde.org/kbattleship/
Savage 2: http://savage2.s2games.com/

The other day I tried a multi-player session of NJam. NJam is a multi-player
pacman game: http://njam.sourceforge.net/
In one of the scenarios we finished most of the screen, but there were some
dots we couldn't collect because they got boxed up, making the game
impossible to finish. We also couldn't get more than 2 clients working,
though it appears to support up to 4 clients... but we didn't try really
hard.

Cheers,

Charles