Linux vs Windows vs Mac

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A Mac version of FlatOut 2, the carnage-laden driving game originally developed by Bugbear Entertainment is expected out in September, for just $39.95.

If you’ve wanted a game that’s the spiritual successor to the legendary “Carmageddon” series, FlatOut 2 could be for you. You get behind the wheels of cars as you take to the streets in a series of progressively more difficult races against computer-controlled foes (there’s also online multiplayer support for up to eight players). You can try to take your biggest computer-controlled rivals out of the race — slamming them headfirst into a bridge, stealing the race by using a shortcut or using a nitro pack to get ahead.

You can smash into objects around the track — fences, walls, debris, other vehicles and much more — as you try to come in first in each race. You’ll also get rewarded for being the most destructive, performing stunts and more. there are also a series of “Stunt” minigames which will keep you entertained for hours.

As you win races, you can turn your race winnings over into new vehicles and customizations. The game features “ragdoll” physics that will throw your driver out of the car if slammed into a wall at high speeds; some of the minigames also emphasize this ragdoll physics capabilities, with objectives like using your driver to score a field goal through a series of upright pylons.

The game also features a soundtrack with offerings from Megadeth, Papa Roach, Audioslave, Rob Zombie, Wolfmother and others.

Mac gamers will be pleased to find out that Runesoft’s Dream Pinball 3D is now available for Mac.

Description:

A great pinball game should not only be amazing from the start, but should continue to be entertaining every time you play it. This was the thinking behind the development of the newest pinball sensation - Dream Pinball 3D - with its’ 6 cutting edge tables that are beckoning you to try your luck.
We did not skimp on the technology with this game as there are six different style balls, made of different materials, that not only look different, but whose ballistic characteristics will affect the very rolling behaviour of each one of them. Add to that incredible acoustics, state of the art particle technology, HDRI and multiplayer 3D sound, realistic tilt function and motion blur effects, and you have the best pinball experience.

Features:

• 6 tables with various themes
• Balls made out of 6 materials (steel, two kinds of wood, marble, ivory, gold) with various ballistic characteristics
• Multi-ball with up to 3 balls at once
• Supports state of the art particle effects
• Motion-blur-effects
• Brilliant lightning because of HDRI-textures
• Individual sounds and music for each table
• Multiplayer mode for up to 4 gamers
• 6 dynamic and one fixed camera position
• Individual graphic settings for less powerful systems

System requirements:

• Mac: OS: MacOS 10.4.11 or higher
• CPU: MacIntel with 1.66 GHz or faster
• Memory: 512 MB RAM
• Graphic: 3D graphic card like ATI X1600 or better or GeForce7300 or better with 64 MB or better
• DVD drive
• Internet access

More info and screenshots with Dream Pinball 3D on game’s page.

Robosoft announced that Battlestations: Midway had been fully ported to Mac.

The complete version of the game packs around 60 war machines including bombers, battleships, destroyers, carriers, planes and submarines for massive air, sea and undersea battles in WWII’s Pacific theatre. Players commanding multiple warships, planes and submarines have to step up to the controls of the war machines whilst commanding the entire fleet, offline or online in huge multi-unit battles with up to eight players. Up to 100 Warships, Aircraft and Subs face off over the Mac multiplayer gaming service that is GameRanger. Battlestations Midway is a blend of action and strategy, featuring memorable battles, from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Midway.

Battlestations: Midway reinforces Robosoft¹s commitment to being a market leader in porting AAA titles from PC and Consoles to the Mac. The Robosoft engineering team has managed to bring this popular title to the Macintosh using a combination of OpenGL and some of Apple’s own developer tools.

Our collaboration with Feral Interactive has been an extraordinary experience

said Rohith Bhat, MD and CEO, Robosoft Technologies.

Battlestations was one of the graphics intensive AAA titles handled by us with extensive use of vertex and fragment programs. Our experience with XCode, in-depth knowledge on both Windows and Mac technologies has enabled us to successfully map the advanced game features from Windows and optimize performance for the Mac.

Battlestations: Midway minimum system requirements call for a 1.83GHz processor, 512MB RAM, a 128MB graphics card, 4.3GB HDD space, a DVD drive and mouse. For the optimum gameplay experience, you will need: Processor - 2.4GHz, RAM 1.5GB, Graphics - 256MB, Hard Disk - 4.3GB, Drive - DVD, Input - Multi-button Mouse. Battlestations Midway does not support GMA graphics cards with shared RAM.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced a new patch for Warcraft III for Mac - new features, a slew of fixes and new maps.

The new Warcraft III update is aimed at both the standalone game and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. This latest update brings the game to version 1.22 introducing the following feature additions and bug fixes:

What’s new:

• A replay auto-save feature in the options menu. Replays are automatically saved to the "replay" folder.
• The game is now automatically saved in the event of a potential disconnect. These saved games are placed in the "save" folder.

Bug fixes:

• The cooldown on unlimited usable items (example: the staff of preservation) now persists after the item is dropped or traded.
• A cooldown exploit with potions has been fixed.
• When you unburrow a Crypt Fiend, its auto-cast will no longer be toggled off.
• An exploit bug in which items could lose their cooldowns when transferred between heroes has been fixed.
• Fixed DotA-specific sound effects on Intel Macs.
• Fixed sound falloff on Intel Macs. Distant sounds should now still be audible.

Mac gamers should be pleased to find out that Blizzard Entertainment unveiled Diablo III for Mac.

"It’s just before lunch in Paris, and city of lights has been invaded by hordes of Blizzard fans, eagerly flowing into the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center," reads a Gamasutra piece. "They’ve come from across Europe to the Worldwide Invitational, and during the opening ceremonies, they witness an announcement that the billion-dollar-a-year developer will be releasing a new PC and Mac title, Diablo 3."

Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, said: "I know you’ve been wondering if we have any big news for you at this event. Well… as it turns out… we do." During the presentation, the lights turned red, while an acoustic guitarist came up to perform the theme from Diablo II. As a fan, you’re probably getting the tingles just by reading this. Soon after, "a rich cinematic trailer" for Diablo 3 began.

As soon as lead designer Jay Wilson was introduced, he demonstrated gameplay footage from the title, beginning to show off the Forgotten Tombs level. The gameplay is "exceedingly atmospheric" while the "user interface is clean," Gamasutra points out.

Another exciting new aspect is that environments are now destructible, while Wilson confirmed that "Diablo 3 will be filled with more story and quests than any Diablo before." Well, no one would have less, I’m sure.

The game has also been confirmed as a co-operative title, which introduces a new class, namely the "Witch Doctor." Wilson stressed out that some of these details (and the smaller ones we left out in this article) are subject to change, should Blizzard encounter difficulties with the development of the title.

Jay Wilson also noted that Diablo III would be "one of the first games to… have a lot of replayability through randomness." Wilson asked: "Is there randomness?" He answered his own question confidently stating: "absolutely there is," weighing in on random monster encounters and items. Wilson claimed this was actually a key feature of Diablo III.

"We could just make Diablo 2 again – and the fans would probably be happy with that," Wilson went on explaining why they took so long to make the announcement. He went on saying that, "in order to be worthy of Blizzard and worthy of the fans, the game had to be a significant step forward," Gamasutra posts.

Lastly, Diablo III should be seen "as an extremely fast-paced combat game," Blizzard’s designer concluded.

Fedora Core 6, Fdora 7/8 & RHEL5

If you wish to install the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver on a Fedora Core 6, Fedora 7/9 or RHEL5 system, please ensure that your system meets the following requirements:

* the latest update kernel is installed and in use
* a kernel-devel RPM is installed that corresponds to the kernel that is in use. Note, FC6 has a known bug which occasionally installs a kernel-devel RPM that is a different arch than the kernel (i586 & i686 mixed). See: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla….cgi?id=211941
* the pkgconfig and xorg-x11-server-sdk RPMs are installed (only applies to FC6)
* Xen kernels are not currently supported

The items above can be addressed with the following commands (they need to be run as  root):

# yum install kernel-devel xorg-x11-server-sdk pkgconfig
# yum update
# reboot

If you are using an SMP (multi-CPU and/or multi-core) enabled system in FC5(only), please replace kernel-devel with kernel-smp-devel in the command above.

The SELinux requirement can be addressed via two mechanisms after the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver has been installed:

1)  If you do not wish to use SE Linux  enforcement, you can disable it by running the `setenforce 0` command before starting X, or by adding selinux=0  to the end of the kernel  line in  /etc/grub.conf  and rebooting.

2) If you wish to use SELinux enforcement, you will need to change the security context of the NVIDIA X driver module and of the server-side NVIDIA GLX extension module. To achieve this, please run the commands listed for your platform below:

Linux/x86

(32-bit):

# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so.1.0.9631
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.1
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1.0.9631

Linux/x86-64

(64-bit):

# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so.1.0.9631
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib64/libGLcore.so.1.0.9631
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib64/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.1

Debian GNU/Linux or [K]Ubuntu with Xorg 7.x

If you wish to install the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver on a Debian GNU/Linux or Ubuntu system that ships with Xorg 7.x, please ensure that your system meets the following requirements:

              * development tools like make and gcc are installed               
              * the linux-headers package matching the installed Linux kernel is installed
              * the pkg-config and xserver-xorg-dev packages are installed
              * the nvidia-glx package has been uninstalled with the –purge option and the files /etc/init.d/nvidia-glx and /etc/init.d/nvidia-kernel do not exist

If you use Ubuntu, please also ensure that the linux-restricted-modules or  linux-restricted-modules-common packages have been uninstalled. Alternatively, you can edit the /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules or /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common configuration file and disable the NVIDIA  linux-restricted  kernel modules (nvidia , nvidia_legacy ) via:

DISABLED_MODULES="nv nvidia_new"

Additionally, delete the following file if it exists:

/lib/linux-restricted-modules/.nvidia_new_installed

Please note: unfortunately, it has become difficult to keep track of the pre-/post-installation steps required for [K]Ubuntu, and the above instructions may be incomplete. If in doubt, it is recommended that you use your distributor’s NVIDIA Linux graphics driver packages, exclusively.

Updates for xorg-server 1.4.99.901 and higher and Fedora 9

Fedora 9 ships with a prerelease version of xorg-server 1.5. This server has improved autoconfiguration that allows it to function without a configuration file. Because /etc/X11/xorg.conf does not exist, nvidia-xconfig will create an /etc/X11/XF86Config file instead. While this will work, some people may find it confusing.

Unfortunately, xorg-server 1.4.99.901 removed support for the RgbPath option, so X configuration files generated by nvidia-xconfig will not work. For these servers, I recommended that you delete everything but the "Device" section and leave the rest up to the X server’s autoconfiguration:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "NVIDIA Device"
    Driver         "nvidia"
EndSection

Future releases of nvidia-xconfig will be better equipped to handle these minimalist configuration files.

Changes v0.9.3 (linuxtag2008-release):

• Base and mastering environment rebuilt to support custom mastering
• Easy network configuration gui
• Support for chipsets of recent boards
• Easy display setup gui
• Video settings saved to usbstick

About LinuX-gamers.net:

The project live.linuX-gamers.net was founded with the idea to present Linux games at the Linuxtag exhibition in a novel way. A collection of games should be shown to directly run from DVD without the user in need to know about Linux or care about his system. After some intense brainstorming sessions the team decided to create and publish this DVD as a live distribution project. Thus an additional and very difficult problem had to be solved: The dvd should run on every x86 PC out there.

At the very beginning the team was split up into two groups. The first group was meant to create a live-dvd based on any existing live distribution and to include games appropriate for younger players. The second group should create a live distribution from scratch, designed for high performance 3d games.

Unfortunately the first team dedicated to the family suited games failed in finding a good live distribution which could be taken to create a base system fitting our ideas. But luckily the second team was successful. They created a livedvd based on archELinux, an embedded distribution arisen of ArchLinux. The archELinux project is still undocumentated yet, but the documentation is currently done in course of a diploma thesis by one of the team members. More details about the technical part of this project will then be available on the archELinux page, please be patient.

After a hard day at work, you decide to relax and play a nice game on your Linux system. As you don’t want anything too complex that could require a lot of attention, you decide to find a game that’s simple and fun to play.

     Based on the fact that Tux, the penguin, is the most popular guy in the Linux world (besides Linus Torvalds, of course), you could try Extreme Tux Racer, a very popular racing simulation game where you drive… Tux! You control the popular penguin as it slides on the mountain, to catch as many herrings as possible. Also, you will have to finish the race in time, or you’ll lose.
The game menu is nice, packed up with some cool things… cold as ice, I could say. The cursor is an icicle and on the background you see snowflakes falling, which will swarm around your cursor when you move it around the menu.
Speaking of the main menu, here’s what you can find in it:

1. Enter a campaign
2. Practice
3. Highscore
4. Configuration
5. Credits
6. Quit

     If you want to see who worked on Extreme Tux Racer, so you can enjoy the game, you should click on "Credits". This will also show you what version of ETR you’re running and a short info about it. After you satisfy your curiosity about the persons behind ETR, you should go through "Configuration" and set the game to fit you. The menu is not so well organized, which I’m sure you’ll also notice. For example, we have "Graphics" and "Video". It would have been nice if there was only one category for graphics. Another thing that seemed odd was the fact that the user had to select the language of the game from… "Graphics". From "Video" you can change your resolution as well as the color depth and you can enable FSAA (Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing). If you enable this option - and if your card supports it - you will enjoy a much smoother gameplay. Also, you will notice that everything looks much better after you select FSAA.
     In "Audio" you can opt for sound effects and music or none of them, the bits per sample and samples per second. The "Keyboard" menu lets you select what keys to use for the actions Tux will take in the game, like turn left/right, paddle (which is an interesting feature that can help you only in some moments of the game, while in others it will make things much harder), jump (you will have to press the assigned key and hold it, then when a jump is imminent, release it and create a larger jump), trick (Tux will do a trick in mid-air) and reset (resets Tux’s position back on the track).
     Okay, after configuring the game, it’s time to play! I recommend you to start with Practice, before selecting "Enter a campaign". This way, you get a hang on how everything works in the game, and there’s nothing to limit you. Also, you can test all the tracks available in the game and get used to them before you take on them. I almost forgot about the fact that you can select the way Tux will go down the slope: using a snowboard or on its own belly. It’s funnier if you see it go down the slope on its belly, though. By the way, Tux looks a little bit weird, like it is made of plastic, or maybe it’s something inflatable.
     I’ve started practicing, so I can learn some tricks with Tux. The HUD is made up of a timer, the number of herrings you catch, a speedometer and the current race progress. I managed to get to a speed of 200 km/h, which is very fast for a fat penguin like Tux! Some big holes in the tracks did a great job in stopping me to get to the finish line, but I found a way to get past them (this is called cheating, right?). If I press "R" just before the moment I get into one of these gaps, my position is reset somewhere safe, and I can think about a way to get past the gap next time.
     I think it’s somewhat hard to find which track is designed for a beginner and which one is for an expert. There’s nothing in the menu to select the difficulty level, but there’s a way to differentiate which of the tracks are harder: those that are not available from the start of the game seem to be for experienced users. For every track, you have a limited number of tries – or lives – to complete it and advance to the next one.

The Good:

Extreme Tux Racer is one of the games that help you relax after some hard work and I think it’s very good for children, mostly because there’s no violence in it, and it’s also funny.

The Bad:

The menu is not very organized, and Tux looks like a plastic puppet; also, when it is on the snowboard, Tux looks like the board is glued to it. I think that after playing ETR once, you get bored with it, as it is not very interactive.

The Truth:

I found out from "Credits", in the main menu, that a new version of Extreme Tux Racer is being worked on and it will be much more different than those we were used to. I can hardly wait for this version, maybe the developers will make it look and perform better. And the most important thing: increased interactivity!

Here are some screenshots with Extreme Tux Racer in action:

SOURCE: softpedia.com