Quoting: Linux_Rocks

Quoting: gbudnyI like playing Postal 2 for Linux, including expansions. Sadly, RWS didn't add them to GOG, which is a disappointment for me. I hope RWS will reconsider its decision regarding the Linux version of Postal 2 on GOG.

They didn't add the soundtrack for the first game on GOG either. They added it to Steam and the second game got it on GOG, but not the first one.

Thank you for mentioning it

I didn't know about it, but they should add it, too
I have the Steam version of Postal 2. However, I treat Steam as a way to quickly install a game to check if I like it or not.

When I download something from GOG, it means that I want to play a specific game on Linux for the upcoming weeks/months.

I must admit one disappointing fact about the DRM-free games, which I can't ignore. The DRM-free games are awesome, but they exist only until a user or the company has a backup of the Linux version.

Unfortunately, the best versions of games for me are digital shareware games with offline keys, emails, usernames, etc. When I have the key that I bought, or I can still purchase it, then I can download a shareware version to activate it without issues.

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I like playing Postal 2 for Linux, including expansions. Sadly, RWS didn't add them to GOG, which is a disappointment for me. I hope RWS will reconsider its decision regarding the Linux version of Postal 2 on GOG.

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Quoting: IronownerThis was my Tomb Raider 🥰

I always thought that Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.² for Linux was something that I could recommend for Tomb Raider fans in the past.

I still remember some of my recommendations of native games for Windows Users before 2012

Counter-Strike (Windows) - TrueCombat: Elite/Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror (Linux)
Diablo (Windows) - Sacred Gold (Linux)
Portal (Windows) - Grappling Hook (Linux)
Call of Duty (Windows) - Medal of Honor: Allied Assault/Return to Castle Wolfenstein (Linux)
etc.

Maybe you know more examples.

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For a second, I thought of Witchspire Games, founded by Eron Hennessey, when I saw the title of your article. Witchspire Games was a company that created Madblox! for Linux in 2004, which looked like Tetris, but it was a very different game

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Quoting: rea987Microsoft has to re-release Heretic II!

I dream that Hyperion Entertainment will come back to releasing games for Linux, and then they will port Heretic II to our system. They did it with Heretic II for AmigaOS in 2024.

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Thank you for your response.

Quoting: HamishSure, and it runs just the same, as it is in software mode on the CPU.

I start to wonder if Quake: The Offering works with GeForce 3, which is better in many ways than even the GeForce 4 MX 440 (but not the Ti version). You probably know that Cold War doesn't work with GeForce 4 MX 440, but you can play it with GeForce 3.

Quoting: HamishSurprisingly, more modern GeForce cards had issues with Quake: The Offering for Linux. Can you elaborate on this? Was it an issue with the GeForce cards specifically or was it a conflict with using a later distro for the newer cards?

Yes. I didn't spend too much time trying to solve these issues, but I've included some details below that I remember:

SuSe 9.0
GeForce 7600GS 512MB
NVIDIA drivers: 1.0 8874
squake - graphical glitches (unplayable)
quake.x11 - works
glquake.glx - it doesn't start

Red Hat 7.3
GeForce4 MX 440
NVIDIA drivers: 1.0 6XXX

I had a black screen when I tried to install drivers 1.0 4XXX or 1.0 5XXX.

I'm not sure, but I think only squake worked well. I have an issue with the buffer in probably two other versions. I read that I had to make a change in one of the files and rebuild it. Of course, I couldn't do it with binary files from this game. I can't find this post on one of the forums anymore.

The GeForce4 MX 440 is a budget-friendly card, and you may want to experiment with binary drivers. When you see a black screen, you can always switch to nv if your system doesn't start. You can also transfer drivers to your computer with a flash drive and a Live CD with more modern versions of Linux.

Does Terroid work on your computer?

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Quoting: HamishYep, it runs just the same as with the Rage 128 Pro, you are limited to the glquake.glx binary for 3D acceleration.

Thank you for your response.

Can you play Quake: The Offering using quake.x11 or squake with GeForce2 MX 400?

Quoting: dubigrasuWell, at the ridiculous (as we see it now) resolution of 640x480 it wasn't that bad. Probably the framerate wasn't also that great, but something like 30 fps was so sweet for a PS1 player like me, accustomed with 24 fps or less, add some overclocking, some graphical tweaking, the TV placed 2 meters away (less sensitive to low fov and fps)...it was great! 😄

The screen resolution or low settings weren't a problem for me. I think 32-bit processors aren't great for playing these two games. I do not doubt you did a lot to improve the performance of Doom 3. Sadly, I remember Doom 3/Quake 4 started to slow down when I got closer to the doors in buildings. I saw videos with more powerful computers that had the same issue.

Quoting: dubigrasuFrom what I understand, Quake 4 was more graphically intensive than Doom 3, but I did played it with the same card (...I think?), both awesome games. Apparently these Linux versions had some features disabled, which would explain them running better on Linux, but my eyeballmeter couldn't see a difference back then. It still was a blast.

They were awesome games, but graphically, they were much ahead of their time, which was problematic for owners of older computers. I can't make any comparisons because I didn't play any of them on Windows.

I remember that Gnome in 2004/2005 required 256 MB of RAM to run smoothly. In this case, I used twm when I wanted to play Doom 3 or Quake 4.

When I first started out though, the received wisdom was that if you were serious about gaming on Linux, you needed to get yourself a Nvidia card and use their proprietary drivers.

I think GeForce and Sound Blaster Live! (the OSS emulation in games) was a nice combo of hardware to avoid many issues on Linux back then. Surprisingly, more modern GeForce cards had issues with Quake: The Offering for Linux.

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@Hamish

Thank you for the article.

Can you play Quake: The Offering for Linux with GeForce2 MX 400?

Quoting: dubigrasuThat Nvidia white splash brings back sweet memories, the first "serious" card that I used for gaming on Linux was a Geforce4 MX, and it was the card I used to play Doom 3 with.

You reminded me of how painful it was to play Quake 4 on Linux with this graphics card back in 2005. I remember that Doom 3 didn't have a better performance, but it was a long time ago. I started to enjoy playing both games when I had a more modern computer with an Intel 2 Core Duo.

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Quoting: Technopeasant

It's an interesting opinion from a person who created SDL, and we didn't have most of these games for Linux without his project. Everyone can agree or disagree.

It would be an interesting opinion for him, but unfortunately I meant Scott Draeker. I got my S names mixed up.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020202221402/http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/24/2118235 [External Link]

Thank you for your response.

I know that LGP also planned to publish the original game for Linux, but they have never finished it. I wish to see a screenshot of it one day.

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Thank you for your response.

Quoting: TechnopeasantThe main issue is that Linux has never really had any exclusives. For most of our history we have been a very small fish in a large pond, so the majority of our commercial titles have been ports or developed cross-platform.

We didn’t have too many exclusive titles for Linux, but we had some commercial games developed on Linux and ported to other systems.

I switched to Linux because I noticed that I can play commercial games on this system, and I didn’t have many games from Windows that I wanted to play. I didn’t have these issues because I couldn’t be an experienced Windows gamer after more than a year of using it.

In 2004, I noticed that I could play Serious Sam, SOF, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Majesty and many companies were releasing new games for Linux every year. Many source ports for AVP, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen, and others were available for Linux. It wasn’t a system for users playing the very specific genre of games, including World War 2 first-person shooters, because we had a few of them. I had to be less picky and choose between different genres of games if I wanted to have a better experience with Linux. Next, it wasn’t a system for users interested in playing AAA games every month. Rather, some of them + indie games.

Sadly, we didn’t have the online store with more than 40 games because everything was fragmented, and the majority of companies had their own online store with 1-3 games. Desura and USC partially fixed this problem, but they didn’t survive.

Quoting: TechnopeasantMeanwhile, our independent games have largely been free and open source (Tux Racer, SuperTux, Tux games in general), which is objectively great, but it does mean that most of these also saw releases on Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, and your toaster.

Indie games are a very interesting topic when it comes to commercial games for Linux.

Let’s focus on Linux without looking at Windows, Mac, AmigaOS, Morph OS, AIX, or even HP-UX with two commercial games (SimCity and Dominions). We had some well-known titles released for Linux between 1994 and 2000, with some rare releases of indie games. I only focus on comparing games released for Linux, including triple-A titles and indie games, released every year.

In 2001, indie games had become more noticeable on Linux with Mobility, Bunnies, Odyssey By Car, Absolute Patience, and many others. From now on, small companies have started releasing more indie games than commercial triple-A titles for Linux. Back then, every company released one or two indie games for Linux. Meanwhile, the popular games had been published mostly by LGP, Runesoft, ID, etc., and some of them were frequently ported to Linux by Ryan Gordon. They gradually became a minority among indie games.

Companies like GarageGames and Absolutist were among those with the highest number of indie games published for Linux. The general growth of commercial games continued to 2010-2011. In 2010, we didn’t have any triple-A titles for Linux, but just indie games, and we had many more of these.

For example, Kristanix Games released 11 games for Linux, which was incredible.
Many new companies joined, including Blendo Games, Kot-in-Action, Lost Luggage Studios, and Red27 Studios, among others. The success of HIB and the availability of Desura and USC probably motivated Valve to release Steam for Linux.

Quoting: TechnopeasantThe only ones that didn't were either games that were never popular enough to begin with (and so were forgotten regardless), or titles that were directly tied to Linux/Unix only libraries such as the early X11 games (which were mostly clones of arcade games anyway). Simply put, there has never been a reason by and large where you HAD to run Linux in order to experience a given game.

What was more important for me was whether Linux had more or fewer commercial games released every year. For example, Voltley, which was exclusively available for Linux, was an interesting tidbit. However, we had some games developed on Linux, including Inner Worlds, Professor Fizzwizzle, and, less popular, The Last Sorcerer. Maybe, more.

Quoting: TechnopeasantMeanwhile, Mac OS had a shareware scene even during the darkest of times for that platform, through the likes of Ambrosia Software and similar (most notably early Bungie), not to mention all the amateur games made in Hypercard. The Amiga meanwhile had developers that adopted it when it was genuinely a leading game platform (and had many releases where the Amiga version was considered the superior version to the DOS release), and even in its twilight its attempts to keep up with the PC were still unique, such as Doom-clones like Gloom and Alien Breed 3D.

I don't think it's necessary constantly look back at other systems. Many users are unfamiliar with commercial titles released for Linux in the past. In this discussion, you found a game, Last Defender, which I never heard of during 22 years of using Linux.

Comparisons to other systems are important and interesting, but are too well-known topics for many who read these comments. I can give you more examples. However, it's difficult for me criticize companies for just trying to port more games to Linux. Many other systems existed years before Linux.

Sam Lantinga and Loki developed libraries that became more successful for other systems. Linux has survived many difficult situations, including the disappearance of major companies like Loki or LGP, as well as the loss of interest in porting games by notable developers such as ID Software or Runesoft. There were many others, but it's not part of this discussion. I appreciate every one of them for doing what they could and helping me play many great games.

Quoting: TechnopeasantLoki's Sam Latinga even touched upon this when he admitted that if he were to do it all over again he would have developed original Linux games instead of ports. Maybe he was right.

It's an interesting opinion from a person who created SDL, and we didn't have most of these games for Linux without his project. Everyone can agree or disagree.

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