Multiplayer Linux Games 654
gooshy1 writes "Ok it's getting near the end of the year and people are beginning to wind down for the holidays. What I want to know is are there any decent multiplayer games that an office of about 4-7 can play, preferably action. The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question. A favorite is BZFlag due to its playability and nice tunable graphics. All thoughts welcome, and Merry Chistmas/Happy Holidays :-)"
Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Umm... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Funny)
SCO's business plan doesn't involve software development (in fact there is only one full time programmer, and two part time programmers). It involves 20 lawyers making false claims.
A Pentium 4? 2 year old video card? You poor soul!
I'm stuck with a 5 year old computer:
* Pentium 3/450 MHz
* 576 MB RAM
* Diamond Viper V550 (TNT) PCI 16 MB
Plus a 32 MB AGB TNT2 card purchased 2 months ago. If my other half didn't have a shoe fettish or jewellery obsession, I would be running with more clicks.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from the nerds in Melbourne.
Mike
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm stuck with a 5 year old computer:
* Pentium 3/450 MHz
* 576 MB RAM
* Diamond Viper V550 (TNT) PCI 16 MB
Plus a 32 MB AGB TNT2 card purchased 2 months ago. If my other half didn't have a shoe fettish or jewellery obsession, I would be running with more clicks. Beat this -- I'm connecting to slashdot via Bongo [eagle.auc.ca] drum. Beat that! So there! HA!
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Funny)
my girlfriend is an avid gamer and for her birthday i bought her a 256 mb video card [msi.com.tw]. So, it has dual 400 mhz processor and 256 mb of ram. This is more than the 700 mhz w/ 128 mb of ram on my main computer!! *sigh* It's a good thing I love her...
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah, I totally fucking feel your pain, you bastard.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Funny)
Damn his wife's insensitive clogs!
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I read about the following 20 posts and nobody else was rude enough to ask whether the cards were set up with the proper _accelerated_ drivers. So it's up to me. Maybe with stock drivers Quake 3 wouldn't be so good even on those machines.
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Informative)
You do know that Quake 3 runs natively on Linux, right? :)
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Insightful)
While I'm here I might suggest something. Doom Legacy. [newdoom.com] This is great fun. You'll need to dig out your old Doom / Doom2 wads, but it is really a blast playing through the levels on a lan in cooperative mode. Give it a try.
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Informative)
The mo
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Informative)
Team Fortress with that and he should be set..
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Come on, let's just come out and say it... (Score:3, Insightful)
I submit that if he was able to find BzFlag, he already knows how to find good Linux games. I also submit that if he thinks a P4 1.7 GHz and a GF3 isn't enough to run any Quake game he is a moron.
So he's asking a question he already knows the answer to based on a false premise.
Sorry, but that's just stupid.
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Informative)
If you cannot run q3 on a 1.7 ghz machine, then it has NO video card, I can't think of any other reason.
Hell, my dual 400 can run Unreal Tourney with a little work.
And yes, I would kill for more 1.7 ghz machines. I am still on a dual 400, and I can still play q3 on it!
wtf (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wtf (Score:3, Informative)
Re:wtf (Score:2, Informative)
Re:wtf (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wtf (Score:3, Funny)
Heh, I never realized my iPAQ was faster than P4 1.7Ghz,... heh. No wonder I still use a P1, these things just keep getting slower and slower...
Re:wtf (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, this is slashdot.
No Quake? (Score:2)
Hmm... you sure you can't play Quake on those machines? I'm pretty sure you can get that running with no problem, but then again, I could be wrong.... we are talking about the original Quake, right? I would look into it.. a great game for LAN play!
Re:No Quake? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No Quake? (Score:2)
Personally, I don't think they need 90 frames per second to enjoy the game. Especially when dealing with an office-owned Linux machine.. beggers can't be choosers.
Re:No Quake? (Score:2)
I think that all of us non-hardcore gamers think that that is the most anal thing to say.
What are you going to do when Doom3 comes out with its fixed cap? Or do you think that Carmack isn't "hardcore" enough?
Wrong logic (Score:5, Informative)
However, when frames are refreshed (in a game), they do not "dim". What I mean is, old frames don't expire. If you are staring at the same thing that doesn't change, it won't matter if it updates 200 frames a second or 1 frame a second--YOU WON'T KNOW. In a game, people will know the difference between 90 fps (fluidity) and 30 fps (not fluid around fast jerking around of mouse.) The person will FEEL the difference in speed. There will be a laggier feel as opposed to the 90 fps. 30 fps doesn't just mean less fps, it also means there's more time needed for the computer to draw that frame before showing it. People will see much faster updates at 90 fps, regardless of hz your mointor supports. 2/3rds of the frames the gamer gets are older than the ones the 90 fps guy gets, only 1/3 (every third) frames might match up with the new 90 fps the faster comp guy gets. You are missing the point about fps. It's not for eye candy. Higher fps makes you a better player, gives faster response time, and allows less bottlenecking. Lower fps shows a deficiency on the computer to run the game properly, and in a low fps case, you know that if it's that low, then networking and other systems might be affected. While at 90 fps, you know that everything is going smoothly for you to get that high.
Re: Legends! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, not unique entirely. Some might even argue that the game is nothing more than an independent resurrection of a type of gameplay that was accidentally (bug) introduced in the first game of a franchise, was LOVED TO PEICES by the fanbase and introduced thousands of players to the game, and then was nixed in the second installment because an arrogant jackass (*cough*he made Planetside*cough*) who got owned every time he played the game in multiplayer decided that player skill was overrated and unfair to the majority of players.
http://hosted.tribalwar.com/legends
My work here is done.
Summary:
Legends. A team-based multiplayer FPS with a very deep and well-developed movement-and-combat model.
OMFG! Tribes! (Score:3, Informative)
In case anyone doesn't know, it wasn't anything about the gameplay that doomed Tribes 2. It was the copyright protection. Not only did it require a CD key to play online, which is fair and understandable, but you had to have the disc to play and the disc was uncopyable. So no letting your friends try it out at LAN parties. The lawyer who talked the publisher into that should be hanged...
Re:No Quake? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Quake? (Score:5, Informative)
i've played q3 for 3 years on a p3 733mhz with a tnt2 and 384mb of ram. i get around 100 fps constant, which is perfectly fine.
since it doesn't seem to be working for him he's doing something wrong. he probably needs to change settings on his vidio card.
(1) turn 'anisotropic filtering' off / set 'texture anisotropic setting' to 0 x.
(2) turn 'vertical sync' off
(3) set option for 'mipmap detail' to best performance
(4) set 'hardware acceleration' to full
(5) in the quake 3 system window lower the resolution to 1024x768, 800x600 or 640x480 (i've always used 640x480).
(6) in the quake 3 system window choose 'normal' or 'fast'
(7) if that's not good enough go to www.esreality.com and read how other people do it, there are tons of tricks.
Re:No Quake? (Score:5, Interesting)
But there's another reason, so people may want to leave vsync disabled after figuring out the tweaks they want. It's almost too simple to bother typing out: "Because it gives higher frame rates".
You said "faster frame rate in numerical terms". But that just means "faster overall".
surely it means that your monitor is showing two or more frames at once (eg the top 1/3 of your screen showing two frames ago, middle 1/3 showing one frame ago, bottom 1/3 showing current frame)?
Not three, just two. Your description is as if there was no such thing as hardware pageflipping. In reality, there will be a single "tear" line going horizontally across the screen, with the prior frame above it and the current below. (vertical syncing forces that line to always stay at Y=0 at the top of the screen, meaning you see only one frame)
The reason the tear-line doesn't matter at all is a fundamental principle of visual perception. "Persistence of vision". I won't go into lengthy details, just look it up.
Hint1: A movie projector shows you fully black screens 50% of the time, yet that doesn't bother anybody.
Hint2: the higher the framerate is, the smaller the difference between the prior and current frame will be, making the "tear" even less detectable. At above 50 fps, it's hard to see, even if you're looking.
If your monitor is set to 100hz vertical refresh then that's your optimal frame rate. No more. No less.
Absolutely not, especially in games based on Quake. There's MUCH more than your monitor to consider. There's also the simulation model inside the game. The tight coupling between client and server can have weird effects. For example, if you're playing Quake3, the forward distance you can jump is maximized with a framerate evenly disible by 125. Going at 130 fps will unsync you from the underlying physics code, cutting 4-7 units off your jump height, and generally impairing all your movements (by a tiny amount, but serious deathmatches are won by slim margins)
(I don't know if other games exhibit fps effecting the server's processing, but that phenomena is well documented in Quake)
Re:No Quake? (Score:3, Interesting)
Suppose your monitor has "100hz refresh", and configuring the game with low or medium graphical quality will give you 100fps in normal use. So naturally you'd leave it on medium, to get a more detailed image onscreen.
But then suppose occasionally 7 enemies come over a hilltop and shoot you with laser-guided rockets. There's so much going on, that the card simply can't output 100fps. If VSYNC is on, you're dropped down to the n
Re:No Quake? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that the APIs aren't designed properly, and don't expose a proper vsync interrupt to the application. This means that vsync lock in the API actually means, "Wait for vsync when given a flip command" which is completely wrong. It means that the game gets stalled waiting for a page flip, when in fact it should be calculating the next frame while the current one is queued, and flush the current frame on the interru
Re:No Quake? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not exactly, but that bug would make it horribly more blatant.
With a proper game engine and graphics API, there is no reason any sane person would ever turn off VSYNC.
Even if your specific game library is free of blocking-for-flip bugs, players will still want to have the fastest drawing possible.
With VSYNC off, the screen shows part of the prior frame, and part of the current one. Enabling VSYNC means you only see the p
Re:No Quake? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the player movement code snaps the player's velocity vector (floors each component) after every player command is processed. Player commands are sent every client frame.
If you're getting a solid 125 FPS and the gravity is at 800 (always is), your frames last 8ms, and your downward velocity will almost always have
The other magic framerates are 200 (.6 units error) and 333 (.8 units error).
The truncating saves about 120 bytes/sec. I suppose that would matter a lot to someone playing over 56k.
Not too good? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not too good? (Score:2, Informative)
I play Quake3 and TFC for Half-Life on my Pentium 233mHz with 128 MB of RAM and a Voodoo3 32 MB. If I can do that, I think a P4 1.7GHz with even a GeForce2 beats the crap out of my comp for games.
I can just imagine it... Oh no, I can't play Halo! Oh me oh my, what shall I do?
Re:Not too good? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not too good? (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot the part about two feet of snow, with a headwind, and you were grateful.
xpilot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:xpilot (Score:3, Interesting)
http://xpilot.sf.net
Not that great? (Score:2, Interesting)
NeverWinter Nights works very well on the same system. There's lots of options.
I can remember working the Christmas shift and playing Warcraft many years ago on much lesser systems (albeit on Windows back then)
No Quake?? (Score:2)
-molo
Needs WINE, but its dirt cheap (Score:5, Informative)
It is old, came out around 1998 or so. Single best multiplayer game. Infinite skill ceiling, fast gameplay, dirt cheap, and runs well on anything. I still play it regularly. (can you tell?)
Re:Needs WINE, but its dirt cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. They still won't give it away. Releasing it for free might mean that someone will grab it any release an improved version (still for free), and that it might get a few users, and those people might have less time to buy the company's upcoming for-profit releases.
That's the real reason the entertainment industry wants eternal copyrights- not because old works are still earning them money, but because they'd be competition with their new releases.
Wanna Trade? (Score:5, Funny)
Where have we come as a nation, as culture when a P4 1.7Ghz is classified as a "not all that great" machine.
Re:Wanna Trade? (Score:3, Insightful)
Precisely! I recently purchased a computer for a family member who will only use it for some basic uses such as word processing, email, etc. Anyways, when I was out shopping at one store, the sales guy stated "This machine will be on sale the day after Thanksgiving, although it's only 2.6 GHZ..." ONLY?!?! What in the hell? Anyways, I ended up getting the person a Thanksgiving special at a di
Re:Wanna Trade? (Score:3, Funny)
the devil is in the details. (Score:3, Funny)
Fucking rich? Cool, I like being here.
A P4 can look like real shit if it's got a 100MHz FSB and sdram to match it. In that case, an Athlon 1600 with DDR can run circles around it. When top of the line is 800MHz FSB the 100s are over anyway.
That being said, Quake 2 is playable on a 650MHz slot 1 with crummy old pc133 sdram. Playable, but "not that great"
Enemy Territory (Score:5, Informative)
We've managed to also include managers and some people 40+ who haven't played FPS games before, and after a week they become a lot more proficient.
Currently running it on a linux server (700 MHz box next to me), and we play it from our 2.0Ghz desktop PC's.
Best thing about it.. it is FREE.
Re:Enemy Territory (Score:5, Informative)
Downloads for Enemy Territory (Linux/Windows): here [splashdamage.com]
The background behind why it's free, is that the developers Splash Damage [splashdamage.com] were working on a single player and multiplayer expansion for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but in the end ditched the single player version, and released the MP version free!?
The map we play is small and fun, available from here [rtcwfiles.com].
Re:Enemy Territory (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Enemy Territory (Score:3, Informative)
Just remember to patch the game with the 2.56 update [www.ngi.it], else you won't be able to join the majority of servers.
What's cool about Enemy Territory is that the win32 and linux clients were released simultaneously. It's certainly something I'd like to see happen more often in the gaming industry and it's a boon to linux gaming in general. I've got fingers crossed for DooM3 as well, since iD software has always been very concerned about the linux game
Re:Enemy Territory (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah.
It doesn't take all that long to figure out how to type in "OMFG..WTF?!? HAX!" or to understand that when all hope is lost poor shots turn to the flamethrower for solace.
Seriously, though... Enemy Territory (which is totally, 100% free-as-in-beer free and plays under Winders and Linux nicely) or Return to Castle Wolfenstein are awesome games... especially if you want to emphasize that whole teamwork thing. We used to play RtCW after hours, and it did a lot for the whole "I got your back" mentality in the office.
ET will be more graphics hungry than RtCW, but I currently play ET on a Ti4000 without too much hassle, and was running RtCW on a honest-to-gawd 3dfx Voodoo 3000. Something like Quake3 should be no sweat for the systems you mentioned (I've played all 3 on a 850Mhz duron).
Counterstrike (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Counterstrike (Score:2)
Even better is also look at the many quality mods for HL. Like Coop Sven. Or that Pirates one.
Lots of fun. HL is still a great game.
Re:Counterstrike (Score:2)
Look at the other mods for HL besides CS.
Re:Counterstrike (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Counterstrike (Score:4, Informative)
A regular version of Wine (not WineX or whatever) runs Halflife perfectly and has done for a couple of years. The menus seem to be a bit flakey (I don't know for sure as I've never seen Halflife on Windows) but the game itself runs just fine.
Armagetron (Score:3, Informative)
cube (Score:5, Informative)
http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
you are insane (Score:2)
i run a dual 450 and i play all the half-life mods and they run better then ever. i "use to" play all the time on a voodoo3! so don't give me that you can't play any of the good games. they might load slow but once they load they should run fine.
Unreal Tournament (1999) (Score:2)
Tetrinet (Score:2, Informative)
Loads of fun, multiplayer, great for an office enviornment, and very light on hardware...
Wolf: ET (Score:2, Informative)
A quick google search turned up this URL, for example, to download from..
grab from here [4players.de]
Freedoom (Score:3, Informative)
A good option (Score:3, Funny)
If my _great_ P2 450MHz machine with 128MB RAM and an Nividia TNT2 with 16 MB of VRAM can play Counterstrike via Wine, I'm really not sure what to recommend for your "not that great" machines...
xtank (Score:2)
LEGENDS IS FREE! (Score:2, Informative)
Unreal Tournament (Score:2, Informative)
There are lots of mods for it if you get bored with the factory DM, CTF, and assault modes.
Also, as many have mentioned, quake3 runs fin on a box like yours.
Netrek (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:America's Army (Score:3, Informative)
3 year old computer (Score:2)
linux games (Score:2, Informative)
Freeciv || XPilot (Score:4, Interesting)
Hearts (Score:3, Funny)
So if this is the case fire up a good old game of Hearts. I've played it over the network on a P133. With all the eye-candy turned on and full resolution.
few ones (Score:5, Informative)
strategy
FreeCiv [freeciv.org] - new version was just released, FreeCiv is not as good as Civ3 in single player, but it's very playable in mp
TEG [sourceforge.net] - if you want simple strategy (it's risk clone)
[sourceforge.net]
lgeneral - panzer general clone
action
[activision.com]
RTCW ET - IMHO best team action game
Cube [fov120.com] - simple multiplayer FPS, with nice graphics
Armagetron [sourceforge.net] - 3D tron implementation
sport
CannonSmash [sourceforge.net] - table tennis simulation
foobillard [sunsite.dk]- billard simulation
misc
Scorched 3D [scorched3d.co.uk] - scorch (or for younger slashdot users: worms) clone
scorched3d (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe pathetic, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Just get version 0.10.x (for Gnome 1) because 0.11 (for Gnome 2.x) crashes under Gnome 2.2 and 2.4 (only works in 2.0).
Not an action game, and not going to fit 7, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ravage's Installers (Score:5, Informative)
Alteria
Devastation
Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition
Freespace: The Great War
Freespace: Silent Threat
Freespace 2
Kingpin: Life of Crime
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
Rise of The Triad: Dark War
Soul Ride
Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror
Unreal: Return To Na Pali
Unreal Gold
Unreal Tournament 2003 Digital Extremes Bonus Pack
Unreal Tournament 2003 Epic Bonus Pack One
All you need is original Windows CD for the games, and possibly some graphics cards tweaking. I've used these installers to get Unreal Tournament and Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror working on my Debian (woody) box.
Check out the ravage's web site here: http://www.icculus.org/~ravage/ [icculus.org]
How about... (Score:3, Funny)
if you have a table, of course
LiquidWar (Score:3, Informative)
Worth a try.
Enemy Territory (Score:5, Informative)
The best Linux dis ever (Score:3, Troll)
The fact that somebody must ask Slashdot if there are any games that their office can play on decent hardware is, um how shall we say it, ouchie.
Ya, ya, troll post. Don't bother flaming, I run Linux too.
Re:The best Linux dis ever (Score:3, Informative)
steveha
Savage (Score:4, Informative)
in the full version, there are 2 races, humans and beasts. There are also more maps.
check it out.. http://www.s2games.com
Mangband (Score:3, Informative)
mangband! [mangband.org] It's kind of like a realtime, multiplayer nethack. Not quite as advanced as nethack in terms of creatures and items, but a huge amount of fun nonetheless. And I promise your graphics cards will handle it.
For something a little more flashy there's Crossfire [real-time.com], which takes the graphics all the way from Nethack levels to Gauntlet levels. I've had some problems at LAN parties with the Windows client, but if you're all Linux you should be OK.
These games prove that fancy graphics aren't necessary to make a game fun. Plus, call me a wuss if you want, but I like that they can be played cooperatively.
Armagetron (Score:3, Informative)
Armagetron is a networkable, 3D light cycle game, as seen in Tron the movie. Check it out at http://armagetron.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]. Latest version even supports Internet multiplayer!
XPilot (Score:3, Informative)
The official homepage [xpilot.org] gives you some tips on how to play the game (it DOES takes a little while to learn). It's rated the #11 best game on www.happypenguin.org, works under most Unixes, linux distros and even windows.
It is basically Multi user thrust and while that might sound a bit boring and the graphics look a bit boring, it is actually really great fun, once you have perfected control with the mouse it becomes a game of lightening reactions. Don't let the basic graphics confuse you, but you knew that already right. There are hundreds of game parameters and client parameters you can change, and loads of maps, of different modes, some of them are pure power games where you collect as many power ups as you can, there is also a race mode where its pure speed, and then there is a team play mode where you try to steal each others treasure.
You might want to check out a branch that some of us are working on too which gives the ability to define maps in XML and use polygons and as high an FPS as your machine will allow, and also has an SDL/opengl client in it (much nicer graphics same gameplay). You can find that in the CVS linked from here [slashdot.org]
It's great just to start a local server in the office on a machine and let the fun ensue. Try out a map called bloods music, where you attempt to steal each others "ball" (same idea as a flag in quake). Warning though it takes time to get into but once into is VERY! addictive.
Regards
Quadra! (Score:3)
Quadra homepage [sourceforge.net]
Re:Easy (Score:2)
How about a nice game of chess? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:America's Army (Score:5, Informative)
It's an up-to-date engine (unreal 2003) and seems to work fine even with older cards and laptops that have graphics accelerators. It has lots of adjustments to sound and graphics quality to tune performance for slower machines.
If you run your own server you can relax the playbalancing requirements so people can get any weapon they want.
I've found it's kind of a pain sometimes to download, with all the primary sites being slow but if you search for it on Google you can usually find a secondary site or bittorrent server for it.
There is also a self configuring linux bootable CD of it for people who don't want to install it on their hard drives.
Linkage (Score:3, Informative)
Here are the burnable ISO images:
Enemy Territory (torrent) [gentoogames.com] (ftp) [oregonstate.edu]
America's Army ISO (ftp) [oregonstate.edu]