World of Goo available for Linux [LWN.net]

A Linux port of the commercial game World of Goo has been announced. It is DRM free and available for 64 bit systems as well as 32 bit systems.

* About 12% of Linux downloads are of the .rpm package, 30% are of the .tar.gz package, and 57% are of the .deb package.

* More copies of the game were sold via our website on the day the Linux version released than any other day. This day beat the previous record by 40%. There is a market for Linux games after all :)

(Thanks to Joey Hess)

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 20, 2009 21:20 UTC (Fri) by dannyobrien (subscriber, #25583) [Link]

It is a great game -- I splashed out for the paid version after seeing the demo, and I'm still nowhere near the end.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 20, 2009 22:21 UTC (Fri) by ehovland (subscriber, #2284) [Link]

Shucks, I am hooked on goo as well. I bought the windows version for my Dad for Christmas. Liked it so much I came back for more when the Linux one became available. The nice thing about it, is that it works very well on Linux. A real high quality port.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 21, 2009 3:31 UTC (Sat) by amituttam (guest, #55962) [Link] (1 responses)

Too bad it doesn't work for PPC Linux :(

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 21, 2009 12:32 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

If only it came with source code ;)

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 21, 2009 13:37 UTC (Sat) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link] (1 responses)

Indeed, it's a world of fun. While the windows version worked good in wine (And in Crossover Games) this feels much more real.

Big kudos to the porting as well as to the original coding. This feels great to play.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 21, 2009 21:56 UTC (Sat) by jbreiden (guest, #7090) [Link]

Not only did it play perfectly under Wine, but I was able to keep all the in-game progress when switching to the native Linux client. Amazing. Computer stuff is pretty much never this reliable / compatible / easy.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 22, 2009 2:20 UTC (Sun) by Requiem (guest, #51519) [Link] (2 responses)

I cannot for the life of me find a 64 bit demo, and there's no information saying if the pay version has it or not :(

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 22, 2009 4:18 UTC (Sun) by robertm (subscriber, #20200) [Link] (1 responses)

The actual quote on the blog is "works on 64 bit systems too". It's a 32-bit executable, but it certainly works fine on my system (Debian amd64). You'll need the ia32-libs package installed.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 23, 2009 1:12 UTC (Mon) by Requiem (guest, #51519) [Link]

Have that... will try overriding dpkg and making it install anyway

Goo games on Linux

Posted Feb 22, 2009 2:52 UTC (Sun) by Webexcess (guest, #197) [Link]

I have to point out another old favorite of mine: Gish is a great goo-physics-based platform game that also runs on Linux.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 22, 2009 21:44 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

My machine can only just barely cope with this, with juddery music and 60%
CPU usage. I don't care. Once I've exhausted the demo (to prove my
crapness at computer games doesn't render me incapable of playing it), I'm
going to buy it anyway. It'll still work when I upgrade, and it's so
unbelievably cute.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 22, 2009 23:22 UTC (Sun) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (3 responses)

I've had the same experience: the game was slow on my machine and the large levels (e.g. Tower of Goo) unplayably so. I assumed it was because 3d acceleration wasn't working for some reason (the machine has Intel onboard graphics) - is there a foolproof way to check this?

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 23, 2009 0:56 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

For me the *sound* juddered, not the graphics, and the level size didn't
affect the judderiness. (The problem was that I was trying to get it to
run in native res on a 1680x1050 display: reducing res to 1260x787, and
forcing ALSA use to eliminate PA CPU overhead, fixed it.)

Try running it with the environment variable LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose set, and
see what's displayed. It may be useful.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 23, 2009 13:18 UTC (Mon) by pharm (guest, #22305) [Link]

I ran the windows version under wine flawlessly on a 1920x1200 monitor.

Sound issues may be due to WoG picking the wrong sound library: there's details included with the
game on how to switch. See /opt/WorldOfGoo/linux-issues.txt

Anyone tried the multiple mouse multiplayer mode yet?

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 23, 2009 12:54 UTC (Mon) by ikm (guest, #493) [Link]

Do 'glxinfo | less' and look for 'direct rendering: ' line. If it says 'Yes', then you have it accelerated.

Btw, the soundtrack of the game is freely available off its website. It's fabulous.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Feb 23, 2009 16:28 UTC (Mon) by leoc (guest, #39773) [Link]

A great game, well worth the measly $20 they are asking.

World of Goo available for Linux

Posted Oct 18, 2009 19:57 UTC (Sun) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

atm they have a birthday sale. Pay whatever you want. A few hours left ..