gaming

An Introduction to Linux Gaming thanks to ProtonDB

Zachary Renz — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 17:00:00 +0000

Video Games On Linux?

In this article, the newest compatibility feature for gaming will be introduced and explained for all you dedicated video game fanatics.

Valve releases its new compatibility feature to innovate Linux gaming, included with its own community of play testers and reviewers.

In recent years we have made leaps and strides on making Linux and Unix systems more accessible for everyone. Now we come to a commonly asked question, can we play games on Linux? Well, of course! And almost, let me explain.

Proton compatibility layer for Steam client

With the rising popularity of Linux systems, valve is going ahead of the crowd yet again with proton for their steam client (computer program that runs your purchased games from Steam). Proton is a variant of Wine and DXVK that lets Microsoft Games run on Linux operating systems. Proton is backed by Valve itself and can easily be added to any steam account for Linux gaming, through an integration called "Steam Play."

Lately, there has been a lot of controversy as Microsoft is rumored to someday release its own app store and disable downloading software online. In response, many companies and software developers are pressured to find a new "haven" to share content with the internet. Proton might be Valve's response to this and is working to make more of its games accessible to Linux users.

Activating Proton with Steam Play

Proton is integrated into the Steam Client with "Steam Play." To activate proton, go into your steam client and click on Steam in the upper right corner. Then click on settings to open a new window.

Steam Client's settings window

From here, click on the Steam Play button at the bottom of the panel. Click "Enable Steam Play for Supported Titles." After, it will ask you to restart steam, click yes and you are ready to play after the restart.

Your computer will now play all of steam's whitelisted games seamlessly. But, if you would like to try other games that are not guaranteed to work on Linux, then click "Enable Steam Play for All Other Titles."

What Happens if a Game has Issues?

Don't worry, this can and will happen for games that are not in Steam's whitelisted games archive. But, there is help for you online on steam and in proton's growing community. Be patient and don't give up! There will always be a solution out there.

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The Best Command-Line-Only Video Games

Bryan Lunduke — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 17:00:00 +0000

by Bryan Lunduke

A rundown of the biggest, most expansive and impressive games that you can run entirely in your Linux shell.

The original UNIX operating system was created, in large part, to facilitate porting a video game to a different computer. And, without UNIX, we wouldn't have Linux, which means we owe the very existence of Linux to...video games.

It's crazy, but it's true.

With that in mind, and in celebration of all things shell/terminal/command line, I want to introduce some of the best video games that run entirely in a shell—no graphics, just ASCII jumping around the screen.

And, when I say "best", I mean the very best—the terminal games that really stand out above the rest.

Although these games may not be considered to have "modern fancy-pants graphics" (also known as MFPG—it's a technical term), they are fantastically fun. Some are big, sprawling adventures, and others are smaller time-wasters. Either way, none of them are terribly large (in terms of drive storage space), and they deserve a place on any Linux rig.

AsciiPatrol

AsciiPatrol is, in my opinion, one of the most impressive terminal games out there. A clone of the classic Moon Patrol, which is a ton of fun already, this terminal-based game provides surprisingly good visuals for a game using only ASCII characters for artwork.

It has color, parallax scrolling backgrounds, animated enemies, sound effects—I mean, even the opening screen is impressive looking in a terminal.

Figure 1. Shooting Aliens and Dodging Potholes in AsciiPatrol

For a quick round of arcade-style fun, this one really can't be beat.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is absolutely huge in scale. Think of it as a top-down, rogue-like, survival game with zombies, monsters and real end-of-the-world-type stuff.

The game features a crafting system, bodily injuries (such as a broken arm), bionic implants, farming, building of structures and vehicles, a huge map (with destructible terrain)—this game is massive. The visuals may be incredibly simple, but the gameplay is deep and open-ended.

Figure 2. Running from zombies in Cataclysm

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Game Review: Guard Duty

Marcel Gagné — Thu, 02 May 2019 16:15:00 +0000

by Marcel Gagné

Guard Duty from Sick Chicken Studios launches today! You can get it from Steam for $9.99.

It's a thousand years ago in the kingdom of Wrinklewood and you are Tondbert, a dwarf/huma-halfling palace guard. After a night of heavy drinking, most of which you're happy not to remember, not only do you wake up to discover you may have been responsible for getting the princess kidnapped by an evil wizard, but also your clothes and armor are missing, and after you fall from the tower where your tiny bedroom sits, you get stung by a swarm of angry wasps, your face is all swelled up, and nobody can understand the mumbles coming out of your mouth, so you get no respect from anyone—not that you ever did.

Welcome to Guard Duty and oddly enough, that's not where the game starts—a thousand years ago, I mean. It actually starts out in our future, in 2074 to be precise, a mostly unremarkable day except for that whole part about the destruction of the Earth and all.

I've spent several hours now, enjoying the sometimes frustrating new game, Guard Duty, from Sick Chicken Studios. Did I say "frustrating"? Because I meant it, but in a good way. The Sick Chicken people have spent way too many hours watching Monty Python and reading Terry Pratchett novels, and it shows. They also have a thing for golden-age point-and-click games, classic 320x240 resolution pixel art, all combined with comedic and sometimes touching storytelling.

Figure 1. Castle Wrinklewood and the Surrounding Countryside

As I said at the beginning of this review, the story starts, strangely enough, in our future where a demonic monstrosity sets out to bring the end of the world and the destruction of our planet. Like our hero of ancient times, named Tondbert, there's another knight of sorts, embarked on a quest to save what is left of mankind before there's nothing more to save. You get to meet him later, I'm told, though I'm still trying to get my halfling's ghost to stop feeling sorry for himself.

Figure 2. The Future, Right before the World Ends

What makes this particularly interesting is that your actions (or Tondbert's actions) in the past, will have an effect on what happens in the future, when you finally get there. How the threads of centuries wind their way into hero number two's battle is something I have yet to discover, but I'm seriously looking forward to working with him—once I rescue the princess, that is.

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Game Review: Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements

Marcel Gagné — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 17:20:57 +0000

by Marcel Gagné

Welcome, young initiate. Do you have what it takes to become a full-fledged mage?

I've been playing a pre-release version of Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements, a classic role-playing game from Himalaya Studios, done in the style of Sierra On-Line's classic King's Quest series. This is only so surprising given that the people behind this new game worked on creating those classics and their remakes. Mage's Initiation is a medieval-style fantasy game with puzzles, treasures, labyrinthine settings, magic, spell-casting battles and monsters. Mage's Initiation began its life as a Kickstarter where it has been hotly anticipated. If you want to check into all that, I link to the Kickstarter page at the end, but right now, I just want to tell you about the game.

In Mage's Initiation, you play a student mage, taken from your family at the age of six to a mystical tower in Iginor, a seemingly idyllic land. In the Mage's Tower, you spend years studying the power of the elements. After ten years, it's Initiation Day, and you are ready to discover which of the elements has chosen you as its champion. In my case, I wound up following the path of water, but you can play (or replay) any of the four classic elements.

Figure 1. Initiation Day, Following the Path of Water

My young initiate's name is "D'Arc", which is, of course, an interesting name partly in what it might conceal. You find out that D'Arc dreams of demons which, he is told, means greatness. He also learns that the road to greatness is dangerous.

The colorful two-dimensional animation is reminiscent of games I played more than 20 years ago, and it's wonderful. I was taken in right away. There are plenty of characters, all with their own personalities, and the voice acting is varied and excellent. In the first part of the game, you'll wander the halls of the Mage's tower, taking in details, talking to other students, collecting various items, and most important, gathering information about what is to come next. This is, after all, the day of your initiation, and you will face a number of quite possibly, deadly trials before the day is out. Ask lots of questions. Pay attention. No detail is too small.

There are several halls that you access by an element-themed transport pad with a large gem in the center (pay attention, and don't forget the combinations). Each hall may be populated with different characters who will provide you with what you need to continue.

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How Can We Bring FOSS to the Virtual World?

Doc Searls — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 12:30:00 +0000

by Doc Searls

Is there room for FOSS in the AI, VR, AR, MR, ML and XR revolutions—or vice versa?

Will the free and open-source revolution end when our most personal computing happens inside the walled gardens of proprietary AI VR, AR, MR, ML and XR companies? I ask, because that's the plan.

I could see that plan when I met the Magic Leap One at IIW in October (only a few days ago as I write this). The ML1 (my abbreviation) gave me an MR (mixed reality) experience when I wore all of this:

Lightwear (a headset).
Control (a handset).
Lightpack (electronics in a smooth disc about the size of a saucer).

So far, all Magic Leap offers is a Creator Edition. That was the one I met. Its price is $2,295, revealed only at the end of a registration gauntlet that requires name, email address, birth date and agreement with two click-wrap contracts totaling more than 7,000 words apiece. Here's what the page with the price says you get:

Magic Leap One Creator Edition is a lightweight, wearable computer that seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds, allowing digital content to coexist with real world objects and the people around you. It sees what you see and uses its understanding of surroundings and context to create unbelievably believable experiences.

Also recommended on the same page are a shoulder strap ($30), a USB (or USB-like) dongle ($60) and a "fit kit" ($40), bringing the full price to $2,425.

Buying all this is the cost of entry for chefs working in the kitchen, serving apps and experiences to customers paying to play inside Magic Leap's walled garden: a market Magic Leaps hopes will be massive, given an investment sum that now totals close to $2 billion.

The experience it created for me, thanks to the work of one early developer, was with a school of digital fish swimming virtually in my physical world. Think of a hologram without a screen. I could walk through them, reach out and make them scatter, and otherwise interact with them. It was a nice demo, but far from anything I might crave.

But I wondered, given Magic Leap's secretive and far-advanced tech, if it could eventually make me crave things. I ask because immersive doesn't cover what this tech does. A better adjective might be invasive.

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Meet TASBot, a Linux-Powered Robot Playing Video Games for Charity

Allan Cecil — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 14:06:30 +0000

by Allan Cecil

Can a Linux-powered robot play video games faster than you? Only if he takes a hint from piano rolls...and doesn't desync.

Let me begin with a brief history of tool-assisted speedruns. It was 2003. Less than half the developed world had internet access of any kind, and YouTube hadn't been created yet. Smartphones were rare and nascent. Pentium III processors still were commonplace, and memory was measured in megabytes. It was out of this primordial ooze that an interesting video file circulated around the web—an 18MB .wmv labeled only as a "super mario bross3 time attack video" [sic]. What followed was an absolutely insane 11-minute completion of the game by someone named Morimoto replete with close calls, no deaths and Mario destroying Bowser after apparently effortlessly obtaining 99 lives. The only other context was a link to a page written in Japanese, and the rough encoding that Windows Media Video format was known for in that era made it difficult for casual viewers to observe that it was an emulator recording rather than the output of a real Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console.

Figure 1. Morimoto's 2003 Super Mario Bros. 3 (SMB3) Time Attack Video

The video encode had in fact been made with the Famtasia NES emulator using Tool-Assisted Speedrun (TAS) re-recording tools consisting of a "movie file" of the sequence of all buttons pressed along with the use of savestates, or CPU and memory snapshots allowing returning to a previous state. Morimoto had in essence augmented his own human skill by using tools that allowed him to return to a previous save point any time he was dissatisfied with the quality of his play. By iteratively backing up and keeping only the best results, he had created what he considered at the time to be a perfect play-through of the game. I didn't know anything about how it was made the first time I saw the run, but it blew my mind and had me asking questions to which I couldn't find answers.

The human speedrunning community members were naturally highly offended by what they saw as an unlabeled abomination akin to a doped athlete being allowed to compete in the Olympics. Their view was that anything that augmented raw human ability in any way (even as rudimentary as keyboard macros in PC games) was considered cheating, and Morimoto's run was nothing more than a fraud best left ignored. There was fascination, intrigue and division. It was, in retrospect, the perfect recipe for a new website.

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Game Review: Lamplight City

Patrick Whelan — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 14:07:03 +0000

by Patrick Whelan

A well lit look into Grundislav Games' latest release.

The universe of Lamplight City is rich, complex and oddly familiar. The game draws on that ever-popular theme of a steampunk alternative universe, adding dashes of Victorian squalor and just a pinch of 1950's detective tropes. Is it just a mishmash of clichés then? Yes, but it all works well together to form a likable and somewhat unique universe—like a cheesy movie, you can't help but fall in love with Lamplight City.

Figure 1. The Lamplight City Universe

Figure 2. Some Protesters

In Lamplight City, you play Miles Fordham, a disgraced detective turned PI following the death of his partner in Act I at the hands of a mysterious killer. Miles is accompanied by the ghostly voice of his partner Bill as a sort of schizophrenic inner monologue. It's creepy, and it's a perfect example of taking a classic trope and turning it into one of the game's biggest strengths. Bill's monologues add witty flavour to the dry protagonist and a way to explain details and scenarios to the player.

Figure 3. Miles Fordham's Schizophrenic Dialogue

Lamplight City features multiple cases that are all tied together with an overarching story. More impressively though is the overarching story's effect on the individual cases. In my play-through, mistakes I made in one case affected another and effectively led to another case becoming unsolvable. This is a system I instinctively hated. It seemed unjustly punitive to punish players for simply exploring dialogue options. Over time, however, as the music and art slowly enveloped me into a universe I truly enjoyed exploring and experiencing, I began to see how subtleties are at the center of this universe. What at first is dismissed as unimportant or underwhelming later appears as a subtle smack in the face, with that familiar feeling of "Oh, I knew I shouldn't have done that!"

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Weekend Reading: Gaming

Carlie Fairchild — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 10:00:00 +0000

by Carlie Fairchild

Games for Linux are booming like never before. The revolution comes courtesy of cross-platform dev tools, passionate programmers and community support. Join us this weekend as we learn about Linux gaming.

Game Review: Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements

Welcome, young initiate. Do you have what it takes to become a full-fledged mage?

Game Review: Lamplight City

A well lit look into Grundislav Games' latest release, Lamplight City

Review: Thrones of Britannia

A look at the recent game from the Total War series on the Linux desktop thanks to Steam and Feral Interactive.

Crossing Platforms: a Talk with the Developers Building Games for Linux

In the last five years, the number of mainstream games released for Linux has increased dramatically, with thousands of titles now available. These range from major AAA releases, such as Civilization VI and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, to breakout indie hits like Night in the Woods. For this article, K.G. Orphanides spoke to different developers and publishers to discover the shape of the Linux games market and find out what's driving its prodigious growth.

Would You Like to Play a Linux Game?

A look at several games native to Linux. There are, of course, tons of games for the Linux platform if you're willing to install Steam. For the sake of this article, however, Marcel Gagne want to show you some games that are available native to Linux—none of this firing up Java so you can play something on your Ubuntu, or Fedora, or Debian or whatever your personal flavor of Linux happens to be.

Two Portable DIY Retro Gaming Consoles

A look at Adafruit's PiGRRL Zero vs. Hardkernel's ODROID-GO.

Meet TASBot, a Linux-Powered Robot Playing Video Games for Charity

Can a Linux-powered robot play video games faster than you? Only if he takes a hint from piano rolls...and doesn't desync.

Build Your Own Arcade Game Player and Relive the '80s!

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The Gaming Issue of Linux Journal is Here!

Carlie Fairchild — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:56:09 +0000

by Carlie Fairchild

Games for Linux are booming like never before. The revolution comes courtesy of cross-platform dev tools, passionate programmers and community support. Join us this month as we take a Deep Dive in to gaming.

Deep Dive features:

Crossing Platforms: a Talk with the Developers Building Games for Linux
Would You Like to Play a Linux Game?
Meet TASBot, a Linux-Powered Robot Playing Video Games for Charity
Review: Thrones of Britannia

Also featured in this issue:

ModSecurity and nginx
Clearing Out /boot
VCs Are Investing Big into a New Cryptocurrency: Introducing Handshake
Edit PDFs with Xournal
FOSS Project Spotlight: Nitrux, a Linux Distribution with a Focus on AppImages and Atomic Upgrades
Stop Killing Your Cattle: Server Infrastructure Advice

Regular columns include:

Kyle Rankin's Hack and /: Two Portable DIY Retro Gaming Consoles
Shawn Powers' The Open-Source Classroom: Globbing and Regex
Reuven M. Lerner's At the Forge: Bytes, Characters and Python 2
Dave Taylor's Work the Shell: Creating the Concentration Game PAIRS with Bash, Part II
Zack Brown's diff -u: What's New in Kernel Development
Glyn Moody's Open Sauce: What Is the Point of Mozilla?

Subscribers, you can download your September issue now.

Not a subscriber? It’s not too late. Subscribe today and receive instant access to this and ALL back issues since 1994!

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Two Portable DIY Retro Gaming Consoles

Kyle Rankin — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 12:33:21 +0000

by Kyle Rankin

A look at Adafruit's PiGRRL Zero vs. Hardkernel's ODROID-GO.

If you enjoy retro gaming, there are so many options, it can be tough to know what to get. The choices range from officially sanctioned systems from Nintendo all the way to homemade RetroPie projects like I've covered in Linux Journal in the past. Of course, those systems are designed to be permanently attached to a TV.

But, what if you want to play retro games on the road? Although it's true that you could just connect a gamepad to a laptop and use an emulator, there's something to be said for a console that fits in your pocket like the original Nintendo Game Boy. In this article, I describe two different portable DIY retro gaming projects I've built and compare and contrast their features.

Adafruit PiGRRL Zero

The RetroPie project spawned an incredible number of DIY retro consoles due to how easy and cheap the project made it to build a console out of the widely available and popular Raspberry Pi. Although most of the projects were aimed at home consoles, Adafruit took things a step further and created the PiGRRL project series that combines Raspberry Pis with LCD screens, buttons, batteries and other electronics into a portable RetroPie system that has a similar form factor to the original Game Boy. You buy the kit, print the case and buttons yourself with a 3D printer, and after some soldering, you have a portable console.

The original PiGRRL was based off the Raspberry Pi and was similar in size and shape to the original Game Boy. In the original kit, you also took apart an SNES gamepad, cut the electronics and used it for gamepad electronics. Although you got the benefit of a real SNES gamepad's button feedback, due to that Game Boy form factor, there were no L and R shoulder buttons, and only A and B buttons on the front, so it was aimed at NES and Game Boy games.

The PiGRRL 2 took the original PiGRRL and offered a number of upgrades. First, it was based on the faster Raspberry Pi 2, which could emulate newer systems like the SNES. It also incorporated its own custom gamepad electronics, so you could get A, B, X and Y buttons in the front, plus L and R buttons in the back, while still maintaining the similar Game Boy form factor.

Figure 1. PiGRRL 2

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