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Top 10 Free Linux Games
techgage.com — For some reason, there is a constant mindset that there are not many games for Linux when in fact there are many. I don't mean the small ones that are included with GNOME or KDE, but full blown projects that deliver captivating and deep game play experiences.
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- arsgeek, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29Aarrrrrrrr. Neverball. Deeply, deeply addicting!
- justinjacobs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Don't forget the bundled Neverputt. The two games combined makes time go by really fast.
- ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -13/+7Why isn't Quake 4 on this list? I would say that Quake 4 is a pretty decent game and all... ;)
--
Oops "Free" ha ha never mind :D
Still it runs on Linux which is cool. - coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Neverball's great, But i'm saddened to see that Legends did not make the list, We could use some more players : /
If you've never heard of Legends, It's a free FPS similar to Tribes. Movement is very different from normal games, You can 'ski' across the outer terrain and use jetpacks to propel yourself around. Very different, Highly skillful, and incredibly fun and challenging gameplay. It runs on windows too. Check it out via http://legendsthegame.net or http://digg.com/gaming_news/Legends_the_game_--_Amazing,_free_multiplayer_Tribes-like_FPS - rickbauls, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Arrrrr!
- ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Legends looks pretty cool. I'm downloading it as we speak. Thanks coredump0x01.
(I never thought I would be thanking a core dump :D) - grapeape25, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5America's Army was discontinued for Linux and Mac 2 versions ago...
- coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ZaNkY
Let me know what name you use, I'll show you around the game like tactics and routes, etc. Too many newcomers end up getting frustrated and leaving the game due to it's deviance from traditional FPS games, And because they have never been properly introduced to tactics necessary for winning. - ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'll probably just use zanky. I can't play now, but contact me through my gmail (in Digg profile) when you get the chance. By the way I friended you.
If it's anything like Tribes, I'm game. I LOVED tribes, and still play it on occasion :)
How does the strategy and tactics stack up against Tribes? - Megatog615, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Coredump: Or was it because the game liked to crash at random times?
Yes, I've played the game, and had a hard time staying in a server due to the game crashing every 5 minutes. - coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Or was it because the game liked to crash at random times?"
Yes it's a little unstable in this state of development. However it does not crash if you disable music, And the soon-to-be-released version (0.4.2.0) fixes the crashy music bug
- Kalo, on 10/12/2007, -16/+2There are many, unfortunately it seems as though not many hit the mainstream and give people the idea that there are few - which is incorrect(depending on your view of 'many'). :)
- ilyag, on 10/12/2007, -10/+7The obvious reason for that is that, compared to the commercial video game industry, open source game projects are about 7 years behind, both in terms of technology (graphics, AI) and gameplay mechanics.
I applaud all the thousands of volunteer programmers who contribute to and build these projects, but for now no one will think of these larger-scale OSS games as anything other than simple curiosities. - drag, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3"The obvious reason for that is that, compared to the commercial video game industry, open source game projects are about 7 years behind, both in terms of technology (graphics, AI) and gameplay mechanics."
The graphics aren't as nice and the games lack the same amount of depth which you can only get with large teams of artists... But as far as AI and Gameplay it's not that big of difference.
In new commercial games the only thing they have newer then older games is pretty much graphics. Look at something like the original Quake or Quake2 game vs Half life 2.. Besides graphical improvements what do you realy get?
Slower more newbie friendly gameplay for HL2 vs fast over-powering QuakeWorld/Quake2...
You get to ride a sort of water bike thing in HL2
Gravity gun.
???
Otherwise what is the big big improvements? Newer hardware means bigger environments and more detail, but otherwise if you gave HL2 simple graphics it would fit right into 1999 games. Any sort of multigaming innovation happenned way back with the original Counterstrike mod and CS:source is basicly the same exact game with a more modern rendering engine.
The only games that are realy interesting nowadays from commercial stuff is stuff that tries to innovative... Like that Spore game or back when original 'The Sims' was released. That was pretty nice. Nintendo is doing some cool stuff with their DS. Some strategy games are taking on a more larger graphical 3d look that is exciting, but the actual gameplay mechanics are about identical to something like Sid Meirs Gettysburg meets Romance of Three Kingdoms.
And graphics can change and games ahve improved considurably in that arena in the past year or so. For open source gaming engines people have much improved Quake engines to play around with. Ogre3d and Crystal Space have quite visually stunning graphics capabilities even when compared to new stuff.
Everything is starting coming together. Modern Linux now has 3d animations suites, lots of audio proccessing, advanced programming IDEs like Eclipse that rival Microsoft's stuff, 2d stuff, gaming engines, level editors, multitude of physics and scripting libraries, etc etc.
What it is going to take is for people to realise that if you ever wanted to make a game you can. If you want to work with people you can. If your a musician and want to have music in a game you can do it. You want to make models and have a game for it, you can. It doesn't cost anything, you can do it as a hobby, and if your good enough you can make money from it. The tools are freely aviable and there are a large community of people that all they want you to do is to download their games for Free, play with them, mod them and just realy have fun making and playing games. That's all. You want to work on a racing sim, or a flight sim, or contirbute models for a MMORPG, or make levels or create entire planets or spaceships or whatnot you can and people would want you to do it.
If people start to figure this out then I think your going to start to realy see Free software gaming take off. It won't displace commercial games, but it doesn't have too.
- ilyag, on 10/12/2007, -10/+7The obvious reason for that is that, compared to the commercial video game industry, open source game projects are about 7 years behind, both in terms of technology (graphics, AI) and gameplay mechanics.
- rynoon, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21They left off Super Tux? There goes that lists credibility in my eyes.
- LocDawg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12and Nethack...
- burke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ah, I forgot about nethack... screw this list... portage, here I come.
- kettlechips, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I just downloaded Pingus. Great game!
- linnerd40, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Ironic isn't it that one of the games is Enemy Territory but its site requires Flash 8, which isn't out for linux... hmmm...
- Recuso, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15http://duggmirror.com/linux_unix/Top_10_Free_Linux_Games
- kafitz22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Great...another duggmirror of a multipage site.
- i440, on 11/07/2007, -37/+8Er, this should really be retitled:
"The 10 Free Linux Games"- beckerist, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2excluding anything you can run using WINE of course!
- i440, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6@beckerist
Native Linux games? - theWrkncacnter, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Cedega is better for games I think
- coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11"Native Linux games?"
Here's a list of native Linux games I play: Sauerbraten, Legends, Nexuiz, Neverball, Doom 3, Globulation 2, Postal 2, Apocalypse Weekend (Postal 2 expansion pack), Quake 1,2,3,4, Liquid War, Tribes 1, UT2004, America's Army, BZFlag, Enemy Territory, Tremulous, Mania Drive, and (sometimes) Frozen Bubble.
Games I play under cedega: Red Faction and Red Faction 2, GTA 3, Vice city, and San Andreas, Mafia, Tribes 2, Tribes Vengeance, Need for Speed Underground and Most Wanted.
In my eyes there's no shortage of quality games that run under Linux. There is, however, A shortage of public knowledge of these games. So just because you don't see TV ads or huge billboards for Linux games, Don't assume they don't exist. Articles like these help bring to light at least a few of the gems of Linux gaming. Sites for linux gaming: http://happypenguin.org/ http://www.linuxgames.com http://www.icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php http://www.tuxgames.com/ http://games.linux.sk/ http://www.linux-gamers.net/ http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ - Stonekeeper, on 11/07/2007, -6/+3i440:
I actually get your sense of humour ;)
- sdubois92, on 10/12/2007, -17/+4site down.
- thecodemonk, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5That's what duggmirror is for *points to the comment above*
- djlosch, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8the duggmirror points to the first page, which is devoid of any in depth info. no digg.
- Tsiolkovsky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It would be great if there were some new adventure games for Linux. Something like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango or Sam & max.
- runep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Do they even make games like that for Windows anymore? Anyway, you should check out ScummVM - http://scummvm.org/ - it plays loads of the old point'n'click adventures, including Monkey Island and Sam & Max.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There is a port of the Scumm engine AFAIK.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I notice scummvm had to take their paypal button down due to legal harrassment. Kind of reminds me of how Blizzard sent a cease-and-desist to the Freecraft project because it had five letters in common with two of their games.
It sure is convenient that we have all these legal restraints against our tiny geeks-only nobody-uses-it-anyway platform - gee, you'd almost think we were some kind of a threat to somebody! - alej744, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What's AFAIK?
- gildude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@alej744
As far as I know, AFAIK means as far as I know. - mancat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Too bad nobody has ported the SCI engine. I have a full deck of Space Quest games going unplayed.
Edit: I take that back.. http://freesci.linuxgames.com - alej744, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thaaaaaanks.
- laplacian, on 10/12/2007, -18/+2this list reminds me why I dont play games on linux.
- vinbob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I think I should remind you that this is a list of the top 10 *FREE* linux games.
- laplacian, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1vinbob: What non-free linux games are there?
- dougmc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4`What non-free linux games are there?'
There's a few. Quake 3, Simcity 3000, Civilization CTP, Kohan, NWN, UT, Railroad Tycoon, etc. Unfortunately, it turned out that there's not a lot of money to be made in commercial Linux games (I won't get into why here), or at least nobody has figured out how to make this money and actually done it, so the list is relatively small and the games generally aren't the latest and greatest.
But commercial Linux games DO exist. - Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Also Quake 4 & Doom 3; NWN 2 will be supported and many games run in Cadega faster than they do on Windows.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1At the moment its too difficult to be certain that a Linux game will work on all platforms. All the games that work on Linux do so because users put a lot of the installing effort themselves (or a third party creates an installer, the Loki installers for NWN are quite good).
As things like the LSB move on we should see more Linux games. Of course the increasing amount of Java being used should help as well. - Hootyea, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1There aren't a tonne of commercial games, because a portion (certainly not all) Linux users like the "free". I know I'm in Univeristy, and I just can't afford a (legal) Windows. The games are also a drain, which I can't afford. I'll visit a torrent site time to time, but multiplayer is where it's at, and you don't get multiplayer from ripped copies.
- vinbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Almost all iD games are also linux native
Cold War is a new one that looks pretty decent...
Also looking forward to UT2007 - vinbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1...also to back up Mejogid's comment, Cedega also enables you to play tons of Windows games on Linux which is my experience often benefit from a smoother 'feel' and improved hard disk performance (compared to FAT32 & NTFS file systems) resulting in quicker loading times.
You can find the Cedega game compatabilty database over at http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/ - hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Unfortunately, it turned out that there's not a lot of money to be made in commercial Linux games "
As opposed to the XBox, which is legendary for the bountiful profits it reaped for it's company.
- laplacian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1110. KMahjongg
9. America's Army
8. Armagetron Advanced
7. Cube
6. Pingus
5. Neverball
4. Nexuiz
3. Enemy Territory
2. Frozen Bubble
1. Battle for Wesnoth
- theWrkncacnter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Wesnoth! That game completely ruined my GPA.
- PigThief, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's Sauerbraten (Cube 2), not Cube. Otherwise, THANK YOU SO MUCH.
- OneAndOnlySnob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wesnoth is very fun, but I'm pretty bad at it. Wish I didn't suck so hard. I find like the 5th mission on the first campaign (I think) to be damn near impossible.
- mc4_a, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4Until they have Half-Life and Counter Strike...
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Speaking of Half-Life, I never met the ID software first-person shooter yet that didn't run on Linux - nor many others which didn't run in Wine. Which goes to show, there is nothing magical about Windows running games, Linux is as if not more capable, but sometimes it requires a fake environment to fool the program into thinking it's running on Windows so it doesn't refuse to work.
- deter1ii, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2Uhh, Do they run on Widows?
- SocialPoison, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No real reason they shouldn't. Pingus and Frozen Bubble both have windows ports, if you go to their site.
- motang, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Mahjongg...is the bomb.
- Hootyea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd say sex. But yes, I've jerked off over Mahjjong too.
- eosp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Jerking off over sex? Never.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hey, Falcon's Eye! Super Maryo! Tuxracer! And some of the stuff at PyGame! Aw, heck -
Here, two Linux live CDs devoted to gaming:
Wolvix gaming edition - not many of these even require a graphics card, but hopefully your hardware is easy to detect:
http://wolvix.org/node/24
Linux Live Gaming Project (LLGP):
http://tuxgamers.altervista.org/llgp.php?tg_lang=en
LLGP is much more graphics-card reliant, but any OpenGL-capable system should have no problem. - KrocCamen, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2And you people bash Mac gaming? Greif.
- Don_Gero, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3It's not that people say there are no games for Linux. It's that there are next to no commercial titles on it. There are the ID games and a few others, but even when you include WINE the argument still stands that the majority of titles aren't playable on Linux. Most people don't care about Armagetron or Planet Penguin Racer, just like nobody cares about Microsoft's 3D Pinball that is included with XP.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4There is no program that is actually "not runnable on Linux". There are programs which *refuse* *to* *run* *without* *Windows* because somebody deliberately coded them that way. That's what Wine is for.
- i440, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3@hosiah
Let's not be ridiculous here. - damentz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yes, those applications are usually a danger to windows itself, so i avoid them. Usually well coded programs, even complex ones, work well in wine if the programmer is not an asshat. Blizzard is a fine example of good coding.
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3aaaaw, what's wrong wit widdle i440? Are we a widdle bit afwaid it might get out about how commercial support such as offered by Cedega or free projects like Wine prove that there is no generic reason why *ANY* Windows PC program shouldn't run on Linux, even compiled binary executables?
I *did* tell you how it took me all of five minutes to HACK a modem gateway to run on all three of my Linux machines despite how the ISP asserted that they supported nothing but Windows? All I had to do was ignore the "install" CDs that came with it (and signed you up for an unneeded MSN account in the process). Fun story!
Hey, by the way, you *did* know that much of MS's code base is in C-based languages, and I don't have to tell you what platform originally ran C, right? - akinder, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2hosiah: If I pay for my pizza, will you take your OSS religious zealotry elsewhere?
- mancat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@hosiah
They "deliberately" coded them for Windows because DirectX is incredibly easy to write for, and most major game developers have almost a decade of experience writing games for DirectX. SDL is a nice framework, but does really not even begin to compare to DirectX. For most game developers to begin writing their games using SDL, they would basically have to throw away a skillset that they have spent years mastering, just so that their games can run on an OS that comprises less than 3% of the desktop market. Not worth it.
- pcheaven2k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3While I don't play Wow, Counterstrike, etc.....(I love Frozen Bubble though) I definitely believe one of the major limiting factors to the sucess of Linux as a readily used alternative to windows is it's lack of COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE and GAMES. There are numerous languages (like python) that can be used for programming the software/games so that they are platform independent and will work on Linux, OSX and Windows without having to have major re-writes.....WTF aren't commercial title developers using one of these languages.....
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Funny, isn't it? Kind of like how Flash worked with no problem on Linux right up until Adobe bought out Macromedia and then they're delayed porting Flash 9 to Linux because all of a sudden aaaaaalll these problems just came up...
I call it the "Internet Explorer" factor: Who would guess today that IE was built on a codebase purchased from Mosaic, the original browser which ran on Unix?
- hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Funny, isn't it? Kind of like how Flash worked with no problem on Linux right up until Adobe bought out Macromedia and then they're delayed porting Flash 9 to Linux because all of a sudden aaaaaalll these problems just came up...
- enveloop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5http://www.glest.org (3D opensource RTS)
- lowlevel, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3When it comes to games, usually you get what you pay for. ;)
- noseeme, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1So you are saying that there are no good games that don't cost any money to play?
...Pretty stupid.
- noseeme, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1So you are saying that there are no good games that don't cost any money to play?
- lftl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Wow.. tremulous (http://tremulous.net/) is a pretty glaring ommission. It's significantly better than #4 Nexuiz, and very comprable in quality to #3 Enemy Territory.
- rynoon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I've never even heard of tremulous. I guess I'll try it out.
- bjohnsonwsu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Things I'd like to have seen on the list:
Glest ( http://www.glest.org )
Savage 1 (yes, it's 100% free now - http://www.s2games.com/savage/downloads.php )
Warzone 2100 ( http://www.wz2100.net )
And if you want easy installers, each of these is available with a Loki installer: www.liflg.org - rynoon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Tremulous was a pretty fast download/install. Too bad my schools network blocks it.
- pzt2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0strange there's no tremulous in top 3
- benplaut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Agreed -- tremulous really belongs on that list.
Not only does it have great gameplay (and infinite replay), but it runs quite well on older computers, as the 'low graphics' mode is quite a bit lower than most games.
- atezun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What? No Stepmania!?!? Bollocks!
- FluffyArmada, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anyone else think that they really need bzflag on here? How does kmahjongg get on there and bzflag not?!
- lowededwookie, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Rockstar is the better concept in that it's all about show casing the full spectrum of talent.
They have to write and perform their own stuff and not just the lyrics for new Supernova or INXS songs. In fact that is part of the criteria for selection.
Idol is crap because it's nothing but vocal ability and looks. All they ever do is sing other people's songs.
Think about the artists still going today. Compared to manufactured music their vocals are crap and yet they're still going today... 30 or more years on. Bob Dylan is a great example of this. The reason is that they have passion for what they do. They write their own songs while also providing their take on other people's songs.
Let me ask you this. Where is Britney now? Where are the Spice Girls? Where is Robbie Williams?
Manufactured artists and music have a very short life span.
Take note RIAA THIS is why we don't buy music anymore. We're sick of being force fed ***** music. - DnasTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Whoah! Where's Star Control/Ur-Quan Masters? This game is probably one of the best games I have ever played on any OS,
http://sc2.sf.net - inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How can everybody forget about Eternal Lands. http://eternal-lands.com/
This is the BEST MMORPG free and open source.
there is also plainshift but plane shift feels alot incomplete. - Stonekeeper, on 10/20/2007, -2/+2May I also add Tremulous: http://tremulous.net/
If you haven't played it: play it!!!! Superb!!! - lowededwookie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Where's VegaStrike in the list?
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net
That game is awesome
Oh and sorry for the Rockstar post above. That was meant to go on another post but somehow wound up here. I must have selected the wrong tab. - inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Scourge is also becomming a really great game (NWN a like) http://scourge.sourceforge.net/
- tropican8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3One word...BZFlag
- nars, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2http://www.warsow.net
'nuff said. - Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nexuiz over Alien Arena 2007, Warsow, and Tremulous? Wtf? I do play Nexuiz every now and then, but hell it's based off of the Q1 source and it shows in the models look and feel and movement.
Don't get me wrong, Nexuiz is fun with AWESOME maps, but the best FPS? I dunno about that....... - fatas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ET should have been number one
- gommle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Printable:
http://techgage.com/print/top_10_free_linux_games - raseel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Man !!
Just going through this comments, I have discovered SO MANY Linux Games, I did not even knoe existed. - lukas88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I have played the number 1 game, "battle for wesnoth". It is mildly entertaining but their is never a doubt that you are playing a game made by amateurs.
- zeth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What, no xjump?
- timseal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0qgo is my current favourite. http://qgo.sourceforge.net/
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