linux games

[miriam_e]

I don't play games. I don't know why. Some part of me is missing, perhaps. Sports, board games, card games, gambling, arcade games, role-playing games, computer games... it doesn't matter. They just don't seem to hold my interest. I know how brilliant many games are. I have tried some text-adventure games in the past, and probably due to their similarity to books, I have enjoyed some of those, but even then they don't hold my attention for long.

Dan, my nephew, shows me some jaw-dropping games whenever I visit my family. The graphics, the backstory, the immersion, are all quite amazing. Because Dan blew my mind with "Dear Esther" I posted about it here recently.

I'm visiting my family at the moment and I'd just watched my Mum playing a puzzle game and wondered what stuff might be out there, so on an impulse I did a quick search to see what Linux games exist. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

http://www.penguspy.com
http://www.lgdb.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Linux_games
http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

...a couple of blogs with game lists and reviews
http://www.dedoimedo.com/games/linux-games-best.html
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20080510052539217/Games.html

...and a commercial game publisher
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com

Comments

[greylock]

Oh, and as a complete aside, since it is relevant, you may remember Wing Commander (or, if you are like me, you might like to forget Wing Commander).

That series of games, which was the biggest thing ever at the time, has been reborn as an OSS game series: http://www.metafilter.com/114155/I-heard-human-blood-boils-in-space

I haven't looked into the details, but like Abandonware, it's pretty neat that customers are taking over the means of production.

[miriam_e]

The kit was really easy to build. I and my girlfriend at the time built it. Good fun. I doubled the amount of memory the standard version was supposed to have. I can remember thinking, "Wow! 2,000 bytes! How will I ever use up all that memory?!"

Heheheh. Now my main computer has around 9 Terabytes and it still isn't enough. :)

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing friends play Wing Commander.
http://www.wcsaga.com/
Looks interesting. Pity it is war stuff. If it was exploration stuff I might be tempted. :)

Having the customers and programmers take over commercial stuff does happen. The brilliantly high quality, free for download, 3D modeling program, Blender, is the result of the parent company going broke then being bought out by its programmers and customers. Weirdly, giving stuff away can be more profitable than a standard business model. I keep getting the feeling that great changes are afoot in the economic world that are barely noticed by most people. It will be interesting to see if the dictatorship will give way to democracy in business, and that sharing will be the driving force for innovation. I live in hope.

I look at my phone and and I am amazed every day.

Yes. My feelings exactly, except that I don't use mine as a phone, but purely as a computer. All that wonderful processing capability in my hand. Wow!