As we mentioned before, Games Kernel is going to focus on a different Linux Gaming topic every few weeks. This fortnight we’re going to be looking at MMORPGs, that’s Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.

During this period we’ll be discussing the range of games that are available under Linux, the issues surrounding non-native MMORPGs, the Linux community in online games as well as providing some native games reviews. As ever, we welcome guest posts and suggestions, feel free to contact us or leave a comment below.

The Poll

Our new poll is up, and this time we’re asking you about your online gaming preferences. Have you played MMORPGs before, and do you have any favourites to recommend? Please vote below, and share your thoughts in a comment.

Photo by mysza831

Games Kernel has now been around for a few weeks, and I hope you’ve gathered a taste of what the site is about. The post concludes our series of introduction posts, both to Linux gaming and to ourselves, and we’ll be back with a new topic tomorrow.

Round Up

If you missed some of the series, here’s a reminder of what we covered:

1. We started things off with an introduction to our site.
2. We looked at native Linux gaming and what’s available.
3. We discussed playing Windows games in our guide to Wine and Cedega.
4. We considered the future of Linux gaming and the availability of commercial games.
5. and we saw our first three Friday Reviews.

Remember you can keep track of our posts by subscribing to our RSS feed.

Poll Results

Our first poll asked you: “What One Improvement Would You Make To Linux Gaming?”. The results showed that 44% of you would like to see more commercial games available for Linux, whilst one third would like to see more or higher quality native games. Just 11% of voters would like to see higher compatibility with Windows games.

Personally, my vote would go to having more commercial games available for Linux. I think the operating system being taken seriously by more games developers will help more users make the switch to using Linux on the desktop - though perhaps more desktop Linux users are required before developers will take us seriously. In the end though, I don’t mind paying money for games, I’d just like more high quality releases for Linux.

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who has supported the site so far, by submitting posts to StumbleUpon or Digg, by commenting and by linking to us. Every little action helps us to grow. We hope everyone will continue to participate in the Games Kernel community and share their opinions in future.

Thanks also to the owners of the photography used on the site. Todays photo was taken by KellyB.

I’m back again with this week’s game review - today I’m looking at the FPS Tremulous.
Ok, what to say about Tremulous? First of all, show of hands, who plays FPS games? You? You? You? Good, so I won’t need to explain that much as I’m feeling lazy. Now, Which of you play RTS games as well? Hmmm… enough to make this fairly easy.

The first comparison I should (or perhaps should not) make is with the second Alien Versus Predator game. Given the game wasn’t too great, but in multiplayer the satisfaction you got from pouncing, screaming out of a dark crack and ripping the guy next to you’s head off, causing the player to rip their headset off. Anyway, enough of my youthful memories. Back to the game.

Tremulous takes what was most fun about games like that and adds a Real Time Strategy element to it. To begin with, when you join a server you have to choose either human or aliens. Simple choice for me, being decidedly strange for a human anyway I always go alien. Then you get the choice of type, one type of alien builds things and one runs around and slimes people. Wait a second… builds things? In an FPS? Yes. This little dude can build eggs (spawn points), acid tubes (turrets) and some sort of energy creating… thing to power the above mentioned constructs. Humans have an engineer that can do a similar thing.

This is then where it gets interesting. I don’t know how much effort went into balancing out the sides but humans are definitely easier for a beginner. You get a choice of a few different standard types and you can try and persuade the engineer to build you an ammo station to refuel. You have guns. Aliens on the other hand start off as tiny super fast spiders and have no ranged attack (no aliens do I think) The only way to hurt or kill a human is to wipe some of your acidic snot onto it. Lovely. However aliens aren’t that bad a choice. You might start off as a minute spider but you can run on walls and upside down (great fun to get your head hurting at 3am when you’re running on pure caffeine!) on top of this aliens can evolve into bigger meaner aliens. Each alien gains in size and in power. One for example can use it’s jump repeatedly to propel itself along tunnels at a great speed, as well as pounce and rip the oncoming human’s heads off. One thing you lose as you get bigger is the wall walking, but so be it. Trading a useful skill in for something that will maim the enemy sounds a fair deal to me.

Again with this game as with all open source games modding and mapping are actively encourages (infact it’s the only way that content is going to be created normally) and there’s even a wiki for helping with this, it is however more complicated as it can include non standard models, textures etc. There are a load of servers and most people don’t mind if you join their game. I didn’t even get kicked off on my terribly slow and laggy connection (woo, for once I have an excuse for playing badly!)

As some form of conclusion, Tremulous is a great game, it is of a very professional quality and runs very smoothly. If you are in any way interested in this type of game take a look, you will not be disappointed.

Jimmy Atkinson has posted up his Top 25 Linux Games For 2008 at WHDb.com. If you’re new to Linux gaming or just looking for some suggestions for what to play, this list hits right on target. All the games mentioned are high quality ’serious’ games - no card games and puzzles in sight.
Many of the games mentioned are ones which we’ll be reviewing here at Games Kernel over the next few weeks.

Over To You…

Have you played any of these games? What did you think?
What’s going to be the hottest game in 2008?

Wasting Time With Mike And Ari recently wrote an interesting comparison between Linux and Windows Vistafor playing older Windows games. Whilst the study was more than a little biased and perhaps not technically sound, a more complete attempt is likely to follow in future.

Personally, as a Linux gamer I don’t really care what does and doesn’t work under Vista. However, I’m still a firm believer that in the long run, more Linux users and Linux gamers can only benefit the scene in general, and “It runs more games than Vista” seems a pretty good counter argument to the usual “I won’t run Linux because I can’t play my games”. It’s common for us to look at the games Wine and Cedega CAN’T play, this is a nice reminder that actually, compatibility is going pretty well.