4 ms·

Linux had a pretty strong amateur game scene back in the day before Steam came along. I spent so much time trying out different games from The Linux Game Tome.

Linux had a pretty strong amateur game scene back in the day before Steam came along. I spent so much time trying out different games from The Linux Game Tome. SuperTuxKart is one of those games that has been in development for years and years. It was originally forked from TuxKart by passionate people with overly optimistic plans. Looks like it's come a long way now though. Another similar project is https://www.supertux.org/ https://www.supertux.org/. Tux Racer is another notable Tux game, but it's commercial fork meant it felt less collaborative than the others.

Lammy 6y ago
> Tux Racer is another notable Tux game, but it's commercial fork meant it felt less collaborative than the others. Don't forget the arcade version! It was the first (I assume proof-of-concept) arcade machine by RoXoR Games, running on Debian Linux. They got rather famously tied up in legal drama with Konami for their second arcade machine, In The Groove, based on a 2004-era codebase of the FOSS “Dance Dance Revolution” simulator StepMania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Corp._v._Roxor_Games_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Corp._v._Roxor_Games_In....
hyakosm 6y ago
The original TuxKart website is still alive: http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net/ http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net/
Fnoord 6y ago
Icculus.org's Ryan C. Gordon was instrumental for the Icculus community, many (proprietary) ports of software and Loki Software. For some history on Linux gaming, see his Wikipedia entry [1]. There have been fantastic games and emulators (and Wine) for Linux, its only getting better and better. Back in the days I played the original Counter Strike in Wine and it ran more stable than Windows 9x. I remember playing Dune 2 in Dosbox. I played Tetrinet in Gtetrinet. And something simple as Mahjong was part of Gnome and KDE. The problem has always been that particular games didn't work on Linux, and that's now less and less, mainly thanks to Steam and Proton, and the long breath of Wine/Codeweavers itself. The only reason I currently use Windows to game is that in World of Warcraft I use a repeater (so that when I press '1' it spams '1'). I'm unable to get that to work on Linux, it works with AutoHotKey. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon
- rzzzt 6y ago
  Props for mentioning Icculus. I always wanted to play with Black Shades at the time, but the display adapter just wouldn't cooperate: http://icculus.org/blackshades/ http://icculus.org/blackshades/ (I also vaguely remember a single-file Quake 3 installer from the era which started as a shell script, but snipped itself off from the beginning when run and continued on as a binary archive. It was interesting to peek into it with a text viewer, only to see the readable part randomly devolve into garbage.)
- senectus1 6y ago
  this man helped to keep me entertained for years. I wonder if I can get Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri going on Linux again due to this mans great work?
II2II 6y ago
> Linux had a pretty strong amateur game scene back in the day before Steam came along. It's wonderful that Linux has a huge collection of games these days, and it's even more impressive how far Linux has come with respect to native games and the ability to run Windows games. That being said, I often find myself missing the amateur game scene. There used to be a lot of unique games and games with a different take on more popular titles.
- crtasm 6y ago
  Have you seen itch.io? https://itch.io/games/platform-linux https://itch.io/games/platform-linux
heavyset_go 6y ago
BZFlag[1] was a favorite from that era, and it's still being developed and played online. [1] https://www.bzflag.org/ https://www.bzflag.org/

Lammy 6y ago

> Tux Racer is another notable Tux game, but it's commercial fork meant it felt less collaborative than the others. Don't forget the arcade version! It was the first (I assume proof-of-concept) arcade machine by RoXoR Games, running on Debian Linux. They got rather famously tied up in legal drama with Konami for their second arcade machine, In The Groove, based on a 2004-era codebase of the FOSS “Dance Dance Revolution” simulator StepMania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Corp._v._Roxor_Games_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Corp._v._Roxor_Games_In....

hyakosm 6y ago

The original TuxKart website is still alive: http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net/ http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net/

Fnoord 6y ago

Icculus.org's Ryan C. Gordon was instrumental for the Icculus community, many (proprietary) ports of software and Loki Software. For some history on Linux gaming, see his Wikipedia entry [1]. There have been fantastic games and emulators (and Wine) for Linux, its only getting better and better. Back in the days I played the original Counter Strike in Wine and it ran more stable than Windows 9x. I remember playing Dune 2 in Dosbox. I played Tetrinet in Gtetrinet. And something simple as Mahjong was part of Gnome and KDE. The problem has always been that particular games didn't work on Linux, and that's now less and less, mainly thanks to Steam and Proton, and the long breath of Wine/Codeweavers itself. The only reason I currently use Windows to game is that in World of Warcraft I use a repeater (so that when I press '1' it spams '1'). I'm unable to get that to work on Linux, it works with AutoHotKey. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_C._Gordon

rzzzt 6y ago
Props for mentioning Icculus. I always wanted to play with Black Shades at the time, but the display adapter just wouldn't cooperate: http://icculus.org/blackshades/ http://icculus.org/blackshades/ (I also vaguely remember a single-file Quake 3 installer from the era which started as a shell script, but snipped itself off from the beginning when run and continued on as a binary archive. It was interesting to peek into it with a text viewer, only to see the readable part randomly devolve into garbage.)
senectus1 6y ago
this man helped to keep me entertained for years. I wonder if I can get Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri going on Linux again due to this mans great work?

II2II 6y ago

> Linux had a pretty strong amateur game scene back in the day before Steam came along. It's wonderful that Linux has a huge collection of games these days, and it's even more impressive how far Linux has come with respect to native games and the ability to run Windows games. That being said, I often find myself missing the amateur game scene. There used to be a lot of unique games and games with a different take on more popular titles.

crtasm 6y ago
Have you seen itch.io? https://itch.io/games/platform-linux https://itch.io/games/platform-linux

heavyset_go 6y ago

BZFlag[1] was a favorite from that era, and it's still being developed and played online. [1] https://www.bzflag.org/ https://www.bzflag.org/