Get your Linux game on!

[Firewing1]

Hello,
After this, no one can say Linux doesn't have any good games! I've been on the quest for games lately, and found some really superb ones. Here's a list I've compiled of games worth mentioning:

- LBreakout2 (pad at the bottom, bouncy ball and a bunch of bricks you have to remove)
- BZFlag + BZFed (Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) tank-shooting game)
- Lincity-ng (Upgraded version of SimCity)
- fish fillets-ng (Puzzle game)
- Gnome-Sudoku (Self explanitory )
- ppracer (Upgraded tuxracer, the Linux penguin that races on snowy racetracks)
- SuperTux (Super Mario Bros, but with Tux!)
- Gweled (Similar to Bejeweld on popcap games)
- Virus Killer (Kill those viruses with your laser beam powered by the kernel!)
- Neverball (Marble Blast Gold ripped this game. Control the ball to collect coins for points and the reach the endpoint)
- Nexuiz (best game IMHO, 1st person shooter)
- Frozen-Bubble (3 like-colored adjacent balls disappear. Try to clear the level before the balls reach the bottom of your screen)
- CUBE (Online & Single player 1st person shooter)
--> Edit: Sauerbraten, aka 'CUBE 2', is now available.
- Chromium (Fly that spaceship of yours and destroy oncoming ships!)
- gl-117 (Flight simulator, proceed to the missions to start the battling)
- Freeciv (FreeCiv = Free Civilization(tm). Free version of the commercial game Civilisation)
- Torcs (Car racing game)
- Penguin Commander
- Lucidlife (Game of Life)
- Diablo I, Diablo II, Starcraft (with or without Brood War expansion), Warcraft III (again, with or without Frozen Throne) via Wine - see below for installation instructions.

First, make sure you have the RPM Fusion repository enabled. If you have not enabled it on your system yet, see RPM Fusion's configuration page.

Now you're ready to install some games via yum:

su -
yum install game_name_without_capitals

For example:

su -
yum install bzflag lincity-ng nexuiz

will install the games bzflag, lincity-ng and nexuiz.

The basic game packages are fun but aren't that amusing in my opinion. They consist of gnome-games and kdegames. To install them, type:[code
yum install gnome-games kdegames[/code]

For a full install, type:

su -
yum install bzflag freeciv gnome-games kdegames gnome-sudoku gweled neverball nexuiz ppracer nexuiz-server nexuiz-data viruskiller supertux gl-117 frozen-bubble torcs torcs-data torcs-data-cars-extra torcs-robots torcs-data-tracks-road lincity-ng lincity-ng-data fillets-ng lbreakout2 lucidlife

And see the additional instructions below.

Yum can install most of the games listed above for you. The rest must be installed manually. For these games, see the specific instructions below:

FOR BZFed (Bzflag map editor)
NOTE: This doesn't seem to work with FC5.

su -
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bzfed/bzfed-0.1.tar.gz
rpm -Uhv http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/files/rpm/checkinstall-1.6.1-1.i386.rpm
gzip -d bzfed-0.1.tar.gz
tar -xf bzfed-0.1.tar
cd bzfed-0.1
./autogen.sh &>/dev/null
./configure
make
checkinstall -R
<keep hitting Enter until RPM build finishes>

rpm -i /path/to/RPM/built[/code]

FOR Cube II / Sauerbraten

su -
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sauerbraten/sauerbraten_2008_06_20_ctf_edition_linux.tar.bz2
mv sauerbraten /usr/local/share/
echo '[Desktop Entry]
Name=Sauerbraten
GenericName=Sauerbraten
Comment=Sauerbraten FPS
Exec=/usr/local/share/sauerbraten/sauerbraten_unix
Icon=/usr/local/share/sauerbraten/data/crosshair.png
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Categories=Application;Game;' > /usr/share/applications/sauerbraten.desktop
chmod 644 /usr/share/applications/sauerbraten.desktop
cd /usr/local/share/sauerbraten
gedit sauerbraten_unix

Now, see this line:

CUBE_DIR=.

change it to:

CUBE_DIR=/usr/local/share/sauerbraten/

FOR Penguin Commander

su -
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/penguin-command/penguin-command-1.6.11.tar.gz
yum install SDL-devel SDL_image-devel SDL_mixer-devel
rpm -Uhv http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/files/rpm/checkinstall-1.6.1-1.i386.rpm
tar xzf penguin-command-1.6.10.tar.gz
cd penguin-command-1.6.10
./configure
make
checkinstall -R
<enter>
<enter>
rpm -Uhv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/penguin-command-1.6.11-1.i386.rpm

And now, to add a shortcut in the games menu, paste this into /usr/share/applications/penguin-command.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Categories=Application;Game
Name=Penguin Commander
Comment=Missle-shooting game
Icon=redhat-games.png
Exec=penguin-command
Terminal=0
Type=Application

FOR Blizzard Entertainment games (Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft):
1) Type

winecfg

into a terminal, and set your Windows version to Windwos 2000 or Windows XP.
2) Install the games under Wine:

wine /media/CD_LABEL/setup.exe

replace CD_LABEL with the label shown on your Desltop for the CD, for example BROODWAR.
3) Some games have had issues "self-patching" the game in the past. If the patch fails after clicking "Battle.net", go to the Blizzard site and download the full patch files. Those should install fine and when you restart the game, it will be updated to the most recent version.
NOTE: In Diablo II, if you want to do TCP/IP games, it may complain about an invalid IP address. The solution is to add a non-localhost line to /etc/hosts (unfortunately , this usually requires a static IP address). For example, with a static IP of 192.168.1.2, you could add:

192.168.1.2           MyHostName           MyHostName.localdomain

and set my hostname to "MyHostName.localdomain" in /etc/sysconfig/network.

As well, you'll notice the installer hangs at a few points when installing Diablo II. This is actually because it's prompting you to switch disks, but the dialog is behind the progress window. Just switch play/install disks and hit <enter> until the install continues.

Per request, I added Enemy Territory to the list. Although, to download it, you must sign up. For those who wish to see http://games.activision.com/games/wolfenstein/

Enjoy. My favorites are BZFlag, Lincity-NG and Nexuiz.

[perry753]

Hey! You are forgetting Enemy-Territory and America's Army. Those are the best!

[Ray Kovecses]

Yes you are certainly forgetting Enemy-Territory Americas Army and True Combat Elite. These games put nexuiz to shame. But BZFlag is also very cool.

[bob]

How about Torcs (from Extras) - nice auto racing game.
And for the puzzle freaks: PyTraffic (Dries & RPMforge) - addictive and very hard at the upper levels.

[axelseap]

gnomes-sudoku is spelled wrong is should be gnome-sudoku

great list of games, but as others mentioned how dare you forget enemy territory that's the greatest game ever

[hiberphoptik]

youare all forgetting:

rollemup (rare hard to find yet awsome pinball game) (free)
space tripper ($)
mutatnt storm ($)
darwinia ($)
Never Winter Nights ($)
Wolfenstein ($)
foobillard (free)
Frozen Bubble (free)
snes9x (play all SNES games)
ePSXe (play playstation games!)

some of these cost $ but they are linux native and they are top quality!

and if you want to really get serious you can add all the cedega stuff too.. but lets not go there

[Scytale]

I didn't know NWN worked under linux, I used to play it in windows a year or two ago, one of the best DND based games I've played. Does it need a seperate set of discs or is the linux version on the windows CDs, if the later is the case I may have to hunt my cd's down (I know they are around here somewhere)...

[liquidBass]

You need the data files from the windows NWN disks. Then you need the linux binaries and related files. You can get those from the bioware site, for free. The download is big though - 1.29 GB if I remember correctly.

Full instructions are at Bioware's NWN site http://nwn.bioware.com

[RedFedora]

Just to clear this up a bit, you don't need the Windows disks to install NWN on
Linux. You can download everything you need from the Bioware website, assuming
you have a valid product key.
The download is large, but it is well worth it. I found NWN actually worked smoother
on my old Linux machine than my Windows box.

[axelseap]

yes you don't need the disks for the normal version but you do for the expansion packs.
for nwn, the binaries weren't the best because the movies don't play and there is no nwntoolset but you can fix both of these. search around in the nwn linux forums and you'll see nwntoolset runs under wine and there's a nice little fix to the movies

[Firewing1]

youare all forgetting:

rollemup (rare hard to find yet awsome pinball game) (free)
space tripper ($)
mutatnt storm ($)
darwinia ($)
Never Winter Nights ($)
Wolfenstein ($)
foobillard (free)
Frozen Bubble (free)
snes9x (play all SNES games)
ePSXe (play playstation games!)

some of these cost $ but they are linux native and they are top quality!

and if you want to really get serious you can add all the cedega stuff too.. but lets not go there

True, but the goal was for free games
I've added Enemy Territory -- the only thing is you have to register and then wait in line -- No direct download, So I can't provide a link. For those that want to install it, you're on your own.

Firewing1

[Finalzone]

What about Armagetron Advance, the excellent crossplatform version of Tron?
New version now provide non -squared lang and new freatures as well. Plus, it support more than 10 players online.
Someday, we should create a FedoraForum league there. =)

http://armagetronad.net

[perry753]

America's Army is free...

[codergeek42]

Don't forget about FreeDroid RPG (freedroidrpg from Extras). Who can withstand the awesome cuteness of Tux waddling around smashing bad guys and taking over the enemy's computer systems? Not I!

[Mat]

Battle of Wesnoth is available via yum (extras repo) too.

# yum install wesnoth

Mat