The Node

Posts Tagged ‘games’

Popular Unity3D powered simulation game, Kerbal Space Program gets a Linux port with the latest release, 0.19. Since Unity3D (not to be confused with Unity, Canonical’s desktop manager for Ubuntu) got a Linux export option back with version 4.0, it’s only been a matter of time until developers released Linux versions for their Unity3D powered software.

Kerbal Space Program is a space simulation game where you have to help the cute little inhabitants of Kerbin get into space. Currently, there are no fixed objectives as the game is going the Minecraft route of releasing beta software with continuous updates for paying customers.
It’s very much like Microsoft’s Space Simulator program from the early nineties with added construction of your own spaceships, rovers, space stations and landers. New features are being added all the time and if you ever wanted to know about thrust to weight ratios or orbital dynamics in order to help your little Kerbals into space, head on over to the official site to try the demo or to buy your copy (around £15 in the UK). Windows, Mac and Ubuntu Linux officially supported but it shouldn’t take much to run on other Linux distributions. If you want to know more there is an active subreddit for KSP or you can check out the wiki.

The official site is getting hit hard right now as returning and new users all try to download/buy the update at once so be patient if you can’t get in immediately :-)

Happy launching, Linux users!

Since I recently upgraded my Nexus S to a Galaxy S3, I’ve been spending more time looking at the Android gaming. Here is a collection of what I consider to be worth spending a few quid on.

Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom – A hybrid real-time strategy game with RPG elements, it really is (as it says) a fantasy kingdom in your pocket. Well worth checking out.

Delver – A great first-person dungeon crawler with a lovely 8-bit look very much in the spirit of Minecraft. Random dungeons and perma-death make this something that you’ll replay. Constantly updated with new features.

Great Little War Game – Basically an updated version of the Nintendo classics “Advance Wars”, this is turn-based strategy with a sense of humour. It’s pretty difficult, though, but then I sucked at the Nintendo versions too :)

Mass Effect: Infiltrator – It’s a mini Mass Effect adventure. If the ending of Mass Effect 3 didn’t kill your enthusiasm for this sci-fi series, this is a great addition to your collection.

Radiant HD – A great old shoot vertical shooter with simple controls and great graphics and sound.

Aftermath XHD – A well-made third-person 3D zombie shooter with intelligent touch-screen controls. Zombie goodness.

Shadowgun – The first Madfinger Games entry on this list, this is essentially a mobile version of Gears of War built for your mobile.

Dead Trigger – The second entry from Madfinger Games, this has caused a bit of uproar of late by going freemium but to be honest, I don’t see the problem so far. The graphics and sound are first-rate and the first-person zombie shooting action is frantic enough. Due to the free-to-play model, this game is constantly being updated with new features and weapons. I’m not really a fan of the freemium gaming model, but I’ve not found it too objectionable. Great game.

Organ Trail – Director’s Cut – A zombie take on the old 8-bit classic Oregon Trail. It’s quite hard but certainly captures the old school zombie apocalypse.

NOVA 2 HD – Gameloft’s clone of Halo for your phone. It’s as derivative as it gets, but good fun.

Legends of Yore – A superb 8-bit RPG with charming graphics and masses to see and do. The free version let’s you play the game up to level 20 which is more than enough time for you to decide to buy the full version or not. I did.

Velox Reloaded – There are at least three versions of this time attack stunt racer on the Play Store. This version is the best and includes more tracks and better ghost racers than the other versions. Best played with a good gyroscope controls phone.

Final Fantasy 3 – Easily the most expensive game on this list, this is the DS remake version of Final Fantasy 3 for your phone. If you’re into FF games and missed the DS version, this is probably what you want.

Grand Theft Auto 3 – It’s the original GTA 3 on your phone. Enough said.

Pocket RPG – Not really an RPG, more of an action dungeon crawler in the spirit of the Zelda games with great boss fights, this is still a fine piece of mobile gaming.

Zookeeper DX – The Touch edition of the criminally addictive “match two” game.

Riptide GP – A very high quality console-style 3D racer in the spirit of the N64 game “Wave Race”. You’ll need a fairly beefy phone to run it, but if you can, you should.

Minecraft: Pocket Edition – The indie hit now on Android. I was fairly unimpressed with this to start with, but now it has more of the adventure/survival aspects of it’s desktop cousin, this is worth the money. Now if they’d only allow it to interface with my Linux Minecraft server, this would be perfect :)

Slipheed Alternative – Probably the closest you’re going to get to Wing Commander-style 3D space combat on your mobile.

Deadly Dungeons – A throwback to grid-based RPG gaming in the spirit of “Eye of the Beholder” and “Dungeon Master”.

Asphalt 7: Heat – Not as good as Asphalt 6, this is still a solid “Burnout” style racer. Freemium model does mean that you’re going to hit a wall on progress eventually unless you pay, but you will probably move on to Asphalt 8 before then :) The draw distance is bafflingly short so if this bothers you, you might want to pay for 6 instead.

WarGames: WOPR – The 1980′s classic movie tie-in in the familar “match” puzzle gameplay. The graphics and gameplay tweaks make this a worthy puzzler.

Dragon Fantasy – Possibly my favourite 8-bit style RPG at the moment, this mixes a charming premise and humour with decent retro graphics to make a solid mobile game. Check it out.

Max Payne Mobile – It’s Max Payne. On mobile. We must be living in the future or something :)

Uniwar – A turn-based multiplayer war game. If you like strategy, you’ll like this.

XenoWar – This is basically X-COM/UFO Unknown for your mobile. At least until somebody ports the original X-COM to Android. The 3D graphics are a little too minimalist for me, but the core gameplay is there, along with destructable terrain.

C.H.A.O.S. – A 3D chopper flight sim. Doesn’t appear to work on Android 4.1 (Jellybean) at present, but if you’re rocking ICS, this is it.

Dead Space – The console survival horror classic returns on mobile. Essentially a brand new Dead Space game. That cannot be bad, right? :D

Plants vs Zombies – The PopCap zombie defense classic on mobile. If you know about it, you probably want it.

Well, that’s what’s on my phone at the moment. If you think I’ve missed out a particularly good game, recommendations are welcome in the comments :-)

Mostly because I’ve rediscovered gaming. I downloaded Mass Effect from Games on Demand and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. I also revisited Borderlands after I got stuck around level 5. I’m now a level 29 Rifleman :-) Borderlands has no real overall plot to speak of but it’s one of the purest videogames on the market. First person shooter looter with RPG elements would be a good description. The downloadable content such as The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned is also of a consistently good quality. Recommended for both single player and co-op. If anyone wants to help me out on quests, my gamertag is Jon256. See you in the badlands…

A few months ago, an intriguing rumour that Steam, Valve software’s games delivery client, might well be coming to Linux. The idea of having such smash hits such as Half Life 2 and Portal available natively on Linux would go a long way in lending legitimacy to Linux on the desktop. The rumour was started by the following snippet of code in the OSX launcher of Steam for Mac: -


elif [ "$UNAME" == "Linux" ]; then
PLATFORM=linux32
# prepend our lib path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${STEAMROOT}"/${PLATFORM}:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
fi


However, it seems now that Steam will not be coming to Linux after all….at least, not yet, according to Valve’s marketing VP Doug Lombardi said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz: -

Question: Final question, and one I’m sure you’re not super-keen to answer, but I promised one of our tech guys I’d ask it. What truth is there to rumours that you’re also working on a Linux version of Steam?
Doug Lombardi: There’s no Linux version that we’re working on right now.

So it seems that Steam will not be coming to Linux for now, although I’m hesitant to dispell any hopes outright. I can easily forsee a future where, say, Steam was made available as a .deb package for Ubuntu. I imagine many of the complaints against Linux would be the many different distributions that Valve would then be compelled to support. Really, though, how many people interested in games and Linux are running anything but Ubuntu on the desktop these days? OSX is also simply UNIX underneath (albiet with Apple stuff on top), so most of the really hard work of porting Steam from Microsoft’s DirectX to OpenGL will have already been done. I wouldn’t discount a Linux Steam client just yet, although my prediction will be that Ubuntu will be the distribution to reap the benefits of this if/when it happens. This might well spur the other Linux distributions to up their game to become “Steam compatible” in future anyway. Wishful thinking?