Yep, Linux gaming is FAIL...

I first came across Linux when I was 12 on a rainy day when I randomly decided to install my brother's TurboLinux 6.0 cd onto my pentium 2. After 3 reinstalls and 4 hours searching the web, I finally figured out how to login (I had no idea what the root user was) and was blown away by how shitty it was. Of course this was back then I didn't know Linux was free and I thought it was an expensive competition to Windows, but I also thought it that held power beyond imagination. The second is true, but Linux is no competition to Windows. First off, Linux is only a kernel (the core of an operating system, so Linux is just the base of a GNU/Linux distribution, nothing more.). For a product to compete with Windows it must be a full operating system, ie. Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, ArchLinux, Gentoo, Slackware...etc. Secondly, Linux is free, it has no competition, it was a hobby project started by Finnish College student and it's moving along strong cause it's main developers get paid more than any in the world (irony) and the countless amounts of volunteers that wish to progress the kernels power on their desktop/server machines. Finally, most applications don't try and mimick Windows in anyway. Most apps are still console based (that little command prompt thing in Windows XP) and nothing in the underlying system is really designed to be like Windows. There's no registry, no .dlls and the other crappy shit like Internet Explorer or Explorer. You'll find services and many other things that are present in Windows, but all those things were present int the old Unix days, which the Linux kernel was build to clone.

However, since I started using Linux, I switched back before and forth between the OS on and off. It was almost always due to the need of an application that wasn't avaliable on the platform (many basic applications were missing back then.) However, days have changed and now, I basically have all the programs on Fedora 9 to for fill my desktop needs, infact it's better than when I was on Windows XP. I have an Intel Core 2 Quad, with 1 GB of ddr2 ram and a Nvidia 9600GT, so my pc isn't the greatest and I decided not to waste my time with Vista. Playing with the shit Vista and watching it lag by without any useful extra features, left a bad taste in mouth. For the time being I stuck to XP, refusing to let go and forgetting the Linux penguin that left me pissed off at 3 am, while I was trying to install modem drivers through the bullshit command line (I <3 <3 <3 the command line nowadays). I never thought I'd let go... but then the time came. I was sitting, staring at the Steam window and looking through the 20 games; I had realised they were all boring as shit. It was like playing with your poop after taking a shit, almost as bad as playing fps games with thumbsticks (sry, I'm a PC gamer at heart.) Lately, I had gotten my gaming fix with Half-Life 2 Mods, because I was extremely dissatisfied with the current status of games. I'd play Sourceforts and the Empires mod, but those mods were quickly losing players and most of the servers where hosted in Europe (which is really laggy for my Canadian PC.) So, without need desire for the games on my PC, I had no need for Windows.

I prolonged my escape until about last week (June 1st, 2008) and finally uninstalled the immoral MS software in exchange for the secksy Fedora 9. I had been using Fedora as a child for a while and it grew to be my favorite operating system, but when Fedora Core 5 came it out, it was pretty lackluster and I moved to Debian and Ubuntu, keeping CentOS on my servers. However, with Fedora 7 (which was a highly underrated desktop) I was blown away by how polished and beautiful it was. Over the summer of grade 10 (a year ago), I spent the majority of my time on Fedora 7. Most things were just better than Windows in regards to computer productivity (I had scripts that did my shit for me, ie. open Firefox with my daily favorite webpages) and it just worked, except... my video card driver sucked. Ati has been known for poop support on platforms other than Windows/Mac and it was no different here. The drivers were so bad that I'd have a 220 fps difference between the same game on Windows. The drivers progressed as time went on and got a little better, but my x700 wasn't that powerful and too lose any fps was a big deal so I gave up UT2004 on Fedora and used my Windows side for that mindless game. There were many other problems too, such as extremely long program installation times (Fedora 9 is a lot better for this and I'd dare say even better than Debian.) A program like Firefox would probably take 3 - 6 minutes to install and it was a bloody pain (how many programs do you have installed on your PC?). The Adobe Flash player sucked horribly, multimedia support was sad and I just had no patience for it. I gave up and moved back. After giving up, I spent almost all my time on PC gaming or chatting on MSN/Gmail/Steam. This back story doesn't matter though (yes, I wasted your time) and that was years ago. Besides times have changed now, the only reason to keep Windows, is for backwards compatibility with all your programs.

The issue that most people don't realise is that probably the hardest thing to give up on the road to switching to Linux is gaming. Although there are games, they mostly just suck. PC gaming is already lackluster, but on Linux it's just useless. There're maybe 10 AA+ games I can name off the top of my head that are native to the platform, but most of them are really old and I've played them to death. I've spent hours looking around for commercial grade games (even small arcade games) and have yet to find any that meet the grade. It doesn't mean there aren't some good games though, you just may have to lower your standards (it's hard thing to due after playing Sourceforts... OMG I MISS SOURCEFORTS QQ.)

For now on, I'll try to get an overview of a native Linux game on Destructoid every week. This week, it's one of the best open source fps games out there, Sauerbraten. The game to be viewed will preferably have an open source (basically have the code free to the public.)

Sauerbraten is made by some really good developers, one of which worked on the first FarCry for PC and another which made many advances to the game and put in really good networking system.

The game has some basic modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture Points (kinda like Domination of UT), Instiga, Team Instiga, and some more, but the best one already avaliable in the cvs (cvs is a tool that developers use to manage all their code, because Sauerbraten is open source you can connect and download their latest cvs code whenever) CTF. Also, there's the unique feature of ingame map editing (all map editing is done ingame) and you can do this online with others to build wicked maps. It's pretty fun to build maps, but they usually get destroyed and you should make sure to keep saving backups of the map in case a greifer comes in; you can just upload it again.

The gameplay makes up for it's mundane nature by being extremely fast (not Warsow fast, but fast). Instiga with the rifle is really fun, it's like trying to shoot bullets flying across the screen, well not that fast, but it'll test you a little with the slow rate of fire on the rifle. Although, Sourceforts is imo the hardest fps I've played and I got some fps experience with it, so Sauerbraten isn't at all too difficult for me and it shouldn't be for anyone else; it's pretty noob friendly (unlike those MMOs.) There's not much to say about the gameplay, you can check it out, it's a free download, just google for it.

You'll find a decent number of people playing online and the game holds a good loyal community on it's forums/Quadropolis with many people contributing ideas, maps, artwork, and even code.

Also, the engine is pretty nice in the shader department, it's run by OpenGL's glsl (Wiki it if you don't know what it means) and even with much of the shitty texture work, it brings out some beauty in the graphics area (although if you look for beauty, you're shallow bastard.) It'll run decently even on some of the slower machines with the shaders turned off, however it'll depend on your Linux distro (Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware...etc) and especially your video card as to how fast it will run or if it will run at all. For example this isn't fact, but from trial; Fedora 9 standard edition will not work with a graphical user interface on older computers (Pentium 3 and below) at all, where as Slackware by default is really good at running on slow and Slackware being light by nature is good for gaming leaving you a lot of left over ram. Again many video cards lack decent drivers, my 9600GT is one of the best off being a fast video card with near Windows grade drivers. However, even with a good video card/setup it's hard to find a map with good textures that bring out the true power of the engine, PLZ MAKES SOME SECKSY TEXTARES.

There are many coders that do work for free, like the many volunteers for the Linux kernel and the coders of Sauerbraten, but it's very hard to find someone that will do artwork for free and like coders, it's even harder to find people that are good at it (especially coders.) In all games like this, that are open source, you'll find flaw and they are not going to look or performance (in gameplay) as well commercial games that have people devoted through a 8 hour a day high paying job. If you wanna see how the game is made or contribute, it comes with the C++ source code in the src directory, but it's not object oriented and I'm too retarded to make any use of it. You'll find many free games on the internet for download, but most will be missing the majority of logical/engine game code; you'll click on a spell and a message box will appear saying, "not implemented yet." Then you click the okay button and it doesn't work and just incomplete games plague the open source world.

Anyway, I pretty much just run around the maps in the game and judge texturing work, I'll start playing when the June 15th release comes out, but not too many people have the cvs release.

To play it on a Linux distro, you need to satisfy the dependencies. Remember I said there are no .dlls, so you have to download all the libraries needed by the program separately.
On Ubuntu the packages should be libSDL_mixer and libSDL_image, remember I don't have the distro, so idc.
On Fedora the packages needed are SDL_mixer-devel SDL_image-devel.
These packages will allow you to play the game and compile the source code if you please.

btw, the Postal 2 multiplayer was released for Linux(and Windows/Mac) free of charge about a week ago... Not really my kind of game though.

I hope to maybe give a look into a MMORPG next week; it'll have to be a good one though... Linux games just suck...

Some screenies, look at the last one, it's what I'm talking about with ugly texture work, it ruins the atmosphere to have a nice brick texture with a normalmap and a crappy grey ground texture.







tbh, I just realised I wrote more than 2000 words :(.