The State of Linux Gaming

With all the talk about Linux for the Desktop, Linux for the Server, Linux for the Toaster, and Linux for the Masses there's one area that gets consistent criticism: gaming. Popular wisdom is that Linux will never be good for gaming because open source developers don't write games. Open source developers don't like to have fun, apparently.

Well, it's not true. None of it is true.

I did a fairly exhaustive search for Linux games, installing them and running them on my own machine, and this article is entirely about what I found. Like many applications, each game is lacking in some area. Since most of these games are pre-1.0 versions, it's not surprising at all. I ruled out any game that crashed my X server, requires root privileges, or is unplayable for any other reason. I've also ruled out games that are generally bundled with CD distributions, since you already know about those. So here is a list of games that are playable, relatively stable, and fun.

My test hardware consists of an 800mhz Duron processor, 256MB of DDR RAM, an nVidia TNT2 video card, and VIA's infamous AC'97 onboard sound system. These games all ran well on my system, so you should be able to compare your system specs to mine and easily extrapolate how well they should run on your own system.

Blobwars 0.91

Blobwars is a pretty standard platform game. It is structured in levels, but organized as missions. You play Bob, a blob whose purpose is to rescue soldiers that are marked Missing In Action due to an alien invasion and subjugation. The game is playable and has many levels, an excellent mod-based soundtrack, and some pretty polished graphics. Some of the graphics and levels are reminiscent of the old arcade game Strider, and the plot itself is similar. Game play is different, for the most part. According to Parallel Realities' website, Blobwars is story-complete and all that's left for a 1.0 release is testing and bug fixing.

I installed Blobwars from the generic Linux RPM provided, and it ran fine. Like most Linux games, it uses a selection of SDL libraries. Blobwars is licensed under the GPL.

SDL Vexed 0.6

SDL Vexed is a SDL-perl clone of the popular PalmOS game, Vexed. Vexed is a puzzle game. Your goal is to eliminate all blocks on a level by placing each one adjacent to one another. When you move a block, you can move it left or right. If there is empty space under it, it will fall. Game play is slightly different than the PalmOS version, so if you've been a fan of the original game you will have to adjust. The soundtrack appears to be minimal but good, and reminiscent of the soundtrack in Frozen Bubble. Here, again, I don't have any idea what is planned for a 1.0 release, but the 0.6 release has many levels. In fact, I looked in the levels subdirectory and saw that the game was written to use the levels in the original Vexed game. There don't appear to be any new levels over the existing Vexed for PalmOS, but it does look like SDL Vexed may well provide a path to a level editor that will be advantageous for both games. The graphics are good, but still a little rough around the edges.

The game doesn't actually install, you just need to make sure you have SDL-perl installed. Then unpack the tarball, cd into the directory, and run it. SDL Vexed is released under the GPL.

Armagetron Advanced 0.2.7.0

(A slight disclaimer, I am somewhat involved in this project.)

Armagetron Advanced is a fork of the game Armagetron. You may already know Armagetron from your distribution, it comes with Mandrake, SuSE, and possibly others. In Armagetron Advanced you are a light cycle on a grid, and wherever you go this big wall appears behind you. The object of the game is to coerce the other players to crash into your wall. It's an excellent 3d gaming version of the light cycle sequence from Tron. Like all of the best games in history, game play itself is very simple, but the game is not. Played as a network game, you will find servers that range in abilities; some will have a steep learning curve for survival, while others will be more friendly to new players. There is a sizeable and growing community around this game. Armagetron Advanced has a decent collection of sound samples and does a good job panning the sounds. Many players have become dependent on the sounds as clues to what is going on around them. The graphics are excellent and fairly well-polished, but the game is lacking a musical soundtrack. Sound effects are present, non-intrusive, and actually reflective of the game you see. The game is playable now, and continues to get better.

I installed Armagetron Advanced using the generic Linux RPM provided by the project. I was also able to successfully build it with the SDL libraries provided by Mandrake. Armagetron Advanced is released under the GPL.

Cube 2004.05.22

Cube is a first person shooter game. It appears that Cube brings some interesting innovation to this field; according to this statement from their web page: "Cube is a landscape-style engine that pretends to be an indoor FPS engine, which combines very high precision dynamic occlusion culling with a form of geometric mipmapping on the whole world for dynamic LOD for configurable fps & graphic detail on most machines." Whatever that means.

I enjoyed the game when I played it. Cube appears to have a very active community of players and servers, and it doesn't take long to find a server for you to get your brains blown out. Game play was fairly typical of first person shooters, but the Cube developers have made some real strides in eliminating lag, the biggest problem facing first person shooting. Speaking as a metal-head, the heavy metal soundtrack was outstanding and varied. The sound effects themselves were good, and with the polished graphics combined well to make a fairly realistic playing experience.

I almost didn't include Cube because it didn't fit some of my criteria. Namely, it has a tendency to run out of memory and crash, leaving my X environment stuck in Cube's native resolution. Cube also didn't surrender my mouse gracefully after one session. I decided I could safely ignore these problems since they are doubtless bugs that will be fixed soon. If you want a good open source first person shooter, Cube is it.

Cube includes binaries for all supported platforms in one tarball. It is released under the Zlib license.

Battle for Wesnoth 0.8

The Battle for Wesnoth is a fantasy turn-based strategy game with a twist. It is story-driven. Victory conditions for maps range from "Destroy the bad guys" to "Run a player character to a specific point on the map". There are even factions on the maps that are allies, but you don't get to control them. I found myself getting sucked into a world of trolls, orcs, elves, and magic even though I had thought I had outgrown such things. The soundtrack is pretty complete with a good variety of music and sound effects. All the little bells and whistles appear to be present, with fun animations for combat, walking units, and even standalone hexes on the map. The map itself doesn't have grid lines by default, and unless you turn on the grid lines, you may not even notice the map is hexagonal.

I did have a little trouble installing Battle for Wesnoth. The Mandrake packages provided didn't install on my system, so I built the source code tarball. The build went smoothly although it did take some time. Naturally I recommend building from source, but you may find the packages work for you. Battle for Wesnoth is released under the GPL.

Crimson Fields 0.4.4

(A disclaimer for this one as well, I am pretty involved with Crimson Fields.)

Crimson Fields is a turn-based strategy game set way in the future on another planet. You are the leader of the Free Nexus Army, a rebel group whose purpose in life is to overthrow the alien invaders and bring independence back to the planet of Nexus. Crimson Fields draws a lot of inspiration from the old Battle Isle series, and supports the map format from that series. It is still a very young project and only comes with a few maps, but it is playable now. You can play by email, hot seat, or locally against the computer. It has a soundtrack of exactly one song, and during extended play you may find that one song to be worth disabling after a while. Sound effects are pretty minimal as well, but both are at the level expected for a pre-0.5 release.

I have installed Crimson Fields every which way, and it installs smoothly. There are user-contributed packages for every operating system under the sun, and the project directly provides a source tarball, source rpm, and generic Linux rpm. Crimson Fields is released under the GPL.

FlightGear 0.9.3

FlightGear is a flight simulator. FlightGear claims to have a huge selection of airports and accurate scenery to accompany its airports. I was unable to confirm any of this because the few times I managed to get the plane off the ground it crashed. That is actually my litmus test of how good a flight simulator is. If I can't get the plane off the ground, it must be good. I'm starting to suspect I'll have to go to flight school to be able to play this game, so if flight simulators are your thing, you definitely need to check this game out. I can say, however, that I'm dying to see the beautiful scenery that I see in their screenshots. FlightGear only ran at about 10 frames per second on my machine, you will definitely need more powerful hardware than what I have.

FlightGear can be tricky to download. For some of their packages they depend on rpmfind.net, and for others you have to surf through their ftp mirrors. I have built FlightGear from source before, so it's definitely possible, but it's a build on the order of the Linux kernel itself--it takes a while. When you manage to find a binary download it's going to be very large, 98MB large. Luckily they offer it on CD as well, so if either bandwidth or patience are problems you are currently experiencing, consider ordering a CD. FlightGear is released under the GPL.

Gaming Resources

There are a number of web sites you can visit that keep tabs on the Linux gaming community. Here is a list of those websites:

• LINUXGAMES - A community news site that accepts story submissions from its readers.
• The Linux Game Tome - attempts to catalog every single game available for Linux.
• The Linux Gamers' Game List - A searchable list that offers filtering and sorting of the games in the list. The list is fairly old, but is still a good way to find established games.
• Games for Linux - Another searchable list that supports user ratings.

---

(Log in to post comments)