Archive for the ‘Games Linux’ Category
Monday, January 30th, 2012 Kraptor is another Raptor Shadow of Death free software, open source clone arcade game for GNU/Linux, DOS and Windows (98, XP etc.).
The game is not under active development anymore since 2004. Kraptor features a powerful engine for creating quickly 2D shooter games, so the game should be a good learning curve for people interested into creation of arcade game shooter games.
The game just like Rafkill is built upon DUMB sound engine.
The game intro is quite entertaining 😉 The intro plays one by one the text:
Near Future:
Blobalization
Imperalizm
Corporations
Megalomaniacs
Money and Power. Slaves of the New Millenium!
After years of oppression, the slaved people of the world have raised against their masters. You, has a mercenary pilot, has been
contacted by the popular rebellion to fight against the forces of oppression.
In the morning, you jump into your cockpit and start up the engines. It's time to get airborne and start the attack. Get ready to
scramble the scum hired by the masters. Murder for freedom is the only way, you're on a mission, don't defraud us...
Like Rafkill, Kraptor is one man masterpiece created by a free software Argentinean geek known under the Kronoman artistic pseudonim. The game is really incredible for a one man work … a true masterpiece.
The game is licensed under MIT License.
Even though Kraptor is older game than Rafkill, the design is more resembling the original Raptor game. The game music is high quality stereo. Besides that music and fx sound effects are quite awesome. After each level you have a Raptor like weapons "blackmarket", where you can buy new weapons, recharge ship energy, upgrade ship etc.
The blackmarket implementation part of the game is probably the worst moment in the game along with the game menus (in my view).
Talking about graphics Kraptor supports really high number of resolutions ranging from 320×240 to 1280×1024! 640×480 is the standard resolution in which the game is running.
Something I really like in the game is the number of multiple weapons your ship uses during play. Even if played in Easy mode it is taught.
There are game Saves after each level, so thanksfully you don't have to start again from zero once death.
At the end of each level there is a huge bad BOSS you have to destroy ;).
Installing Kraptor on Debian / Ubuntu and deb derivatives is with:
debian:~# apt-get install kraptor
On most rpm based Linux distributions, you can install the game by converting the deb package to rpm with alien or by building from source from Kraptor's sourceforge page
Its interesting the game name e.g. Kraptor is also a death / grind metal band name, (Maybe Kronoman is metalhead big fan of Kraptor and that's how he came up with the playful name. For all the old school game addicts there is the joystick support. I've tested it with my Genius analogous joystick and it works fine.
The game is lacking .desktop gnome definition and after once installed it only appears through Debian (section) GNOME menus and not in Applications -> Games :
Applications -> Debian -> Games -&act; Action -&t; Kraptor
Just like Rafkill on Debian the game exacutable binary is located in /usr/games/kraptor . Also like with the Rafkill case when launched the game has troubles with choppy sound and music caused by the stupid buggy! pulseaudio
Analogously like with Rafkill's case, the work around to the problematic music en sound is to use a little bash shell script like:
#!/bin/bash
pulseaudio -k;
/usr/games/kraptor
pulseaudio --start;
You can dowload Kraptor fix sound issues wrapper here
To install it on your Debian / Ubuntu and hence make the game sound play good issue with root:
debian:~# cd /usr/bin
debian:/usr/bin# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/bshscr/kraptor.wrapper.sh
...
debian:/usr/bin:# chmod +x kraptor.wrapper.sh
debian:/usr/bin:# mv kraptor.wrapper.sh kraptor
Tags: active development, arcade game, Argentinean, Auto, clone, Corporations, curve, Draft, Engine, freedom, game menus, game music, geek, gnu linux, joystick, Kronoman, learning curve, level, Linux, linux dos, man work, Megalomaniacs, money and power, new millenium, number, oppression, plays one, power, pseudonim, pulseaudio, quality stereo, quot, raptor game, raptor shadow, rpm, scum, shadow, shadow of death, shooter, shooter games, software, software open source, text, time, true masterpiece, Ubuntu, work, wrapper
Posted in Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | No Comments »
Saturday, January 28th, 2012 I've earlier blogged on playing Apogee's Raptor Shadows of Death arcade on GNU / Linux with dosbox
All the old school raptor addicts will be interested to hear Kazzmir (Jon Rafkind) a free software devotee developer has created a small game resembling many aspects of the original Raptor arcade game.
The game is called Rafkill and is aimed to be a sort of Raptor like fork/clone.
Originally the game was also named Raptor like the DOS game, however in year 2006 it was changed to current Rafkill in order to avoid legal issues with Apogee's Raptor.
The game is not anymore in active development, the latest Rafkill release is from January 2007, anyhow even for the 2012 it is pretty entertaining. The sound and music are on a good level for a Linux / BSD shoot'em'up free software game . The graphics are not of a top quality and are too childish, but this is normal, since the game is just one man masterpiece.
Rafkill is developed in C/C++ programming language, the game music engine it uses is called DUMB (Dynamic Universal Bibliotheque). By the way DUMB library is used for music engine in many Linux arcade games. DUMB allows the Linux game developer to develop his game and play a music files within different game levels in "tracked" formats like mod, s3m, xm etc.
The game is available in compiled form for almost all existent GNU/Linux distributions, as well as one can easily port it as it is open source.
To install Rafkill on Debian, Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Linux Mint en other Debian based distros
root@debian:~# apt-get install rafkill
Installing on Fedora and other rpm based is with yum
debian:~# apt-get install rafkill
...
Once rafkill is installed, in order to start it on Debian the only way is using the rafkill (/usr/bin/rafkill) command. It appears the deb package maintainer did not wrote a gnome launcher file like for example /usr/share/applications/rafkill.desktop
Just to explain for all the GNOME noobs, the .desktop files are a description file GNOME reads in order to understand where exactly to place certain application in the (Gnome Applications, Places, System …) menu panel.
Even though it miss the .desktop, it is launchable via Applications menu under the Debian section e.g. to open it from the GNOME menus you will have to navigate to:
Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Rafkill
This "shortcut" to launch the game is quite long and hard to remember thus it is handy to directly launch it via xterm:
hipo@debian:~$ rafkill
or by pressing ALT+F2 and typing rafkill :
Starting the game I got some really ugly choppy music / sound issues.
My guess was the fizzling sounds were caused by some bug with the sound portions streamed through pulseaudio sound system.
To test if my presume is correct, stopped pulseaudio and launched rafkill once again:
hipo@debian:~$ pulseaudio -k
hipo@debian:~$ rafkill
This way the game was counting on ALSA to process sound en the sound was playing perfectly fine.
I solved this problem through small wrapper shell script. The script did kill pulseaudio before launching rafkill and that way solve gchoppy sound issues, once the game execution is over the script starts pulseaudio again in order to prevent all other applications working with pulseaudio.
Finally, I've placed the executable script in /usr/bin/rafkill :
Here is the script:
#!/bin/bash
pulseaudio --kill
/usr/games/rafkill
pulseaudio --start
You can download rafkill.wrapper.sh here
Or write in root terminal:
debian:~# cd /usr/bin
debian:/usr/bin:# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/bshscr/rafkill.wrapper.sh
debian:/usr/bin:# mv https://www.pc-freak.net/bshscr/rafkill.wrapper.sh rafkill
debian:/usr/bin:# chmod +x rafkill
Interesting in Ubuntu Linux, rafkill music is okay and I suppose the bug is also solved in newer Linux distributions based on Ubuntu. Probably the Debian Squeeze pulseaudio (0.9.21-4) package version has a bug or smth..
After the change the game music will be playing fine and the game experience is cooler. The game is hard to play. Its really nice the game has game Saves, so once you die you don't have to start from level 1.
I've seen rafkill rolling around on freebsd.org ftps under the ubuntu packages pool, which means rafkill could probably be played easily on FreeBSD and other BSDs.
Enjoy the cool game 😉
Tags: active development, arcade game, arcade games, Auto, BSD, c c programming language, c programming language, clone, deb package, Desktop, desktop files, different game, dos game, Draft, Engine, file, form, Free, game developer, game levels, game music, Gnome, hipo, level, Linux, linux distributions, linux game, menu, mod, music engine, Open, open source clone, package, package maintainer, pulseaudio, quot, script, shadows of death, share applications, small game, software, software game, software open source, Ubuntu, Universal, wrapper, year
Posted in Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 19th, 2012 Since its early days dosbox has elolved a lot. For all those who haven't heard of dosbox, it is x86 Free Software Linux / FreeBSD DOS emulator
DosBox supports, almost all the game classics we used top lay in oldschool times when DOS (Disk Operating System ) version was running on top of most personal computer.
The most spread versions of DOS people used to use on their PCs were Novell (DR-DOS) more rarely used, and MS-DOS (The Microsoft DOS ver.).
I'm sometimes being sentimental about the past so I remembered for Raptor – Call of the Shadows !
Having a bit of experience with DOSBox to run few DOS games I've decided to give a try with dosbox.
First I have to dig for this shareware, since this game is part of the sharewares, nowdays a binary version of it is freely distributed on the net.
Finding the game however took me about 10 minutes, as most of the download links for Raptor, were either dead or required some kind of registration. After a bit of look I found it on an old torrent with few seeders and succeded downloading.
For the convenience of people who would like to download run the Raptor arcade classic game check here
Nicely Raptor works out of the box directly launched with dosbox emulator.
Dosbox has packages for most Linux distributions.
I personally used it on my Debian Linux so installed via apt:
debian:~# apt-get install dosbox
...
The game works without any dosbox hacks, just download, unarchive and launch with dosbox:
hipo@debian:~$ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/Raptor_Call_of_The_Shadows_Apogee_arcade.tar.gz
...
hipo@debian:~$ tar -zxvf Raptor_Call_of_The_Shadows_Apogee_arcade.tar.gz
...
hipo@debian:~$ cd Raptor/
hipo@debian:/home/hipo/Raptor$ dosbox rap.exe
People like me 😉 who lived in that glorious times when DOS was a standard for a desktop operating system pretty much like MS Windows is today, certainly remember the awesome games produced by Apogee Software a company later known as 3D Realms
Apogee until this very day remain one of the greatest game creation companies in history of games. 3D Realms played a crucial role in development of PC game industry as well as has a great santimental value to probably million of old school arcade game addicts.
They can be ben undoubtedly can be praised for having created some of the most awesome arcade games for all times.
Some of the early hit games they created you probably know, few of the titles are:
- Duke Nukem I, II
- Arctic Adventure
- Monster Bash
- Stargunner
- Commander Keen series
- Wolfenstein 3D
- Blake Stone
- Terminal Velocity (Terminal Reality)
- Shadow Warrior
- Death Rally
- Blood
Apogee was also notable for being a company to had established the so spread mostly during the late 80s up to the early years of the second millenium.
ShareWare model of distribution is an interesting phenomenon, that co-relates more or less with the ideas of Free Software.
The idea of ShareWare games was games are distributed for Free and the end customer (gamer) is asked to pay for a game only if he likes it.
Some of the shareware published games was available for free download and play, however the game was only bundled with only a number of game levels to unlock the rest of the game levels you had to play some money.
The shareware games produced were then freely published and shared via dial up access BBS nodes (A text based Bulletin Board System similar to nowdays Forums).
BBS has historically been the major way of sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas and opinions preceding the massive rise of the WEB.
Today most computer users would probably even haven't heard about BBS, if you like to have a general idea on how BBSes seemed to look dahmer.vistech.net .
ShareWare started to loose speed with the decline of BBS and the emergence of Free Software.
Some of the conceptual ideas of ShareWare found its way in "Open Source & Free Software", and commercial companies like RedHat and SuSE.
If you have tried some other Apogee games with Dosbox on Linux and FreeBSD and you can positively confirm they work it will be great. In theory all of the DOS games of apogee should work fine with dosbox. Any feedback or game recommendations of your favourite games of the DOS years are mostly welcome in comments. I'm curious to hear what was your favourite DOS game. Maybe when I have time I'll prepare a list of my favourite games put them here 😉
Tags: apogee, arcade game, Auto, BBS, binary version, bit, BSD, Call, classic game, convenience, debian cd, Desktop, desktop operating system, Disk, dos disk, dos emulator, dos games, dosbox, dr dos, Draft, exePeople, favourite, Free, game check, game classics, glorious times, GNU, gnu linux, hipo, Linux, Microsoft, microsoft dos, most linux distributions, MS-DOS, Nicely, Play, quot, raptor call of the shadows, seeders, Shareware, sharewares, software, software linux, tar gz, terminal, wget, zxvf
Posted in FreeBSD, Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 7th, 2012 I always love so much to go back to the times, when games were games and people had still valued words like moral and respect.
In that great days of old school computing, we used to play the awesome old schools Tyrian and the Nintendo 1941 game (hopefully some still remember).
For all who don't Tyrian is one of the best Spaceship Arcades of all times!, and especially for DOS operating system the best I've personally seen.
Recently I was checking the arcade games available for install on my Debian GNU / Linux and happily come across a game called KETM.
KETM acronym stands for the memorizable KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES and is free software distributed game under GPL.
The original creation idea was probably to resemble the so famous in the '90s spaceshooter games.
KETM is pretty addictive just like tyrian and has santimental meaning for me since it brings me memories for my arcade gaming years 😉
The game is easy to play and has a feeling of "diversity" especially in type of weapons your ship can obtain and use against enemies.
The powerups you get is quite plenty compared to the enemy ship types you should destroy 😉 In overall the game is quite easy to play, this however is also a good thing, as you can play more smoothly without dying every few secs like it is in so many arcade games…
The game has only 4 game levels and on each level end there is a big spaceship "the boss" which is the last in line to destroy in the tradition of the 2d arcade games.
Kill Everything That Moves is available for Debian and Ubuntu as a deb installable with apt. To install the game on Debian and Ubuntu
debian:~# apt-get install ketm
...
ketm's official latest available source and binary of time of writting this article is at version 0.6 and as far as I checked it unfortunately seems like the game development is stucked and the code seems a unmaintained.
I'm sure ketm has a lot of potential en hope somebody will adopt the code and will push further its development.
The game runs by default in the annoying windowed mode, I don't like this so I always run it fullscreen:
debian:~# ketm -f
KETM also reminds a bit on GEKI 2 / 3, which I have previously blogged about but I found KETM to be more enjoyable than gekis.
I've seen KETM has RPM ports as well so installing the game on fedora will be probably as easy as downloading the respective RPMs fulfilling the RPM package requirements and installing with rpm -i. I would be glad to hear from people who had succesfully run the game on Fedora and other RPM based Linux distributions?
The only thing that prevents the game to feel a bit more awesome (in my view) is the missing sound & music … Even though in the game settings inside the main menu there is an option for Sound On / Off the game runs by default without any sound or music (at least on my Debian).
I hope you will have some fun with KETM just I like I did! 😉
Also if you haven't played Tyrian yet, then I strongly advice you download Tyrian from here and try it out with dosbox – (a dos gnu linux / bsd game emulator)
Interesting fact to mention here, while looking for the native tyrian game info , I found tyrian has an open source version under development called – OpenTyrian . I'll check the game and write on it when I have time.
Tags: acronym, arcade gaming, arcades, Auto, bit, code, computing, deb, debian gnu, diversity, dos operating system, Draft, enemies, enemy ship, everything, fullscreen, game development, game levels, Geki, GNU, gnu linux, kill, last, level, Linux, linux game, Nintendo, official, old school, quot, rpm, secs, ship types, software, Sound, spaceship, spaceshooter, time, type, Ubuntu
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux | No Comments »
Monday, January 2nd, 2012 Some might remember Psychosis Lemmings that we used to enjoy back in the glorious days of DOS 😉 I remember Lemmings used to be among the played game in one line with other top arcades like Dangerous Dave, Commander Keen, Xenon etc.
The game used to be quite unique for the time and it was quite cool that it worked on quite old machines lime my old 8086 XT with 640kb of memory. It even supported two player mode! 😉
I was happy to find out actually Lemmings remake is available in the Free Software OS realm . These Lemmings clone game is called Pingus
Instead of governing a group of lemmings which had to move to an exit door by making a save path using various tools and combination of team member character skills, the main heroes in Pingus are cute little penguins 😉
Pingus is built on TOP of SDL libraries and has a combination of awesome graphics and enjoyable music soundtrack and as a game play is a way better than its original predecessor.
If i have to to rank this game I would put it among the best 20 free software games ever produced for Linux / BSD.
pingus is available for almost all kind of Linux distritubions as well as is included in the FreeBSD port tree:
On Debian its available as a package ready to be installed with aptitude or apt by issuing:
debian:~# aptitude install pingus
For FreeBSD pingus is installed via ports tree, by running cmds:
freebsd# cd /usr/ports/games/pingus
freebsd# make install && make install clean
By default pingus will run in a Windowed mode, to run the game in fullscreen you will have to run it with the -f switch via terminal, or by pressing ALT+F2 in GNOME and typing:
$ pingus -f
The game is quite hard to complete in that resembling the lemmings. It has an embedded Mapeditor , by which new levels can be easily constructed and sent to the game developers (in that way helping the game development).
Pingus is also multi-platform, licensed under GPL2 and is also ported for Mac OSX and MS Windows, allowing others non free software users enjoy.
Pingus Windows and MacOS X binary as well as source can be downloaded here
Playing Pingus has few benefits, one is it can be nice to kill some boredom (for sysadmins) or / and bring some good past gaming memories. It's also good for developing some elder people strategic thinking as well as very suitable for little children to help develop their intellectual (thinking) in solving complex consequential tasks. Pingus could also be beneficial for teens to develop organizational and math skills.
Tags: Alt, aptitude, arcade game, arcades, BSD, character skills, dangerous dave, door, enjoyable music, exit, Free, free lemmings, free software games, freebsd port, fullscreen, game developers, game development, game play, glorious days, Gnome, gnu linux, Linux, little penguins, mapeditor, music soundtrack, non, package, pingus, player, player mode, realm, SDL, sdl libraries, software, team, terminal, time, tree, windowed mode, xenon
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 Do you remember the old arcade spaceship shooter Xenon 2 Megablast? I do 😉 For all those who are too young to remember, here are two screenshots:
Even though Xenon 2 Megablast original can now be played using dosbox DOS emulator. Its interesting to mention I've found two Linux games that more or less can be qualitified to resemble Xenon 2.
The games are Native Free Software games and existing in package repositories of most Linux distributions and *BSD port trees.
Geki 2 and Geki 3 are of a less quality to Xenon but still, the game experience is nice and is among the Arcade shooter games to bring you fun in the boring days if you're on GNU / Linux or FreeBSD Free OS platforms.
Installing Geki2 and Geki3 on Debian and Ubuntu Linux is standard with apt:
debian:~# apt-get install geki2 geki3
...
On Debian GNU / Linux , after installed the games would not create GNOME Applications -> Games -> game startup shortcuts, however the game startups will get added in GNOME Applications Menu under:
Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Geki 2
and
Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Geki 3
The games can be launched also manually with commands:
geki2
or
geki3
Geki 2 is a way closer to Xenon 2 as it has similar look and feel and the same vertical direction the spaceship is navigated.
In Geki 3 still the shoot 'em' up spaceship like arcade is present, however instead of penguin you have to fly a flying penguin, as well as the spaceship move direction is horizontal.
Both the games have the same sound and music effects. The game music and effects are not of top quality but are not bad. In general the games surely gives some of the arcade atmosphere.
Geki 2 Xenon 2 Megablast like on Debian Linux
In the tradition of the arcade games at the end of each level in both games you face the Level Boss Enemy, you should destroy.
As you can see in below's screenshot the overall graphics of GEKI 3 is poorer while compared to GEKI 2
still GEKI 2 gampley is fun and addictive and I would say not less enjoyable than GEKI 2.
At times I even think that Geki 3 is more fun because it is more dynamic.
Maybe other reason, why I enjoyed more Geki 3 is also the fact that Geki 2 is a way harder to play. Dying only 3 times in the game you get GAME OVER and the next game you're started from the beginning of the same level you died in …
Something really annoying that affects both the games; there is no option to play them in Fullscreen mode! ARGH!
Game controls for Geki2 and Geki3 are identical as follows:
Up - Arrow up key
Down - Down arrow key
Right - Right arrow key
left - Left arrow key
Shoot - z or Space
Pause - s
Geki2 and Geki3 are fun and can kill some time, but definitely aren't that (professional) as other spaceship shoot'em'up arcades for Linux and BSD. Games like Starfighter , Critical Mass or powermanga .
Lest that they are two worthy to install and play on your Free Software OS.
Tags: action gt, arcade shooter, atmosphere, boring days, BSD, debian gnu, Dying, Free, free software games, fun, game experience, game music, game startup, Geki, Gnome, gnome applications, gnu linux, gt games, key, level, linux games, megablast, menu, most linux distributions, move, music effects, nbsp, option, os platforms, package, penguin, reason, screenshot, shooter, shooter games, software, something, Space, spaceship, startup, time, Ubuntu, ubuntu linux, vertical direction, xenon 2
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 Do you remember that oldschool Arcade VolleyBall game which was so popular on 16 bit (8086 XT) computers.
I remember this game from the years I was 12 years old, back in the days where we the gamers distributed all the DOS games on 360 KB 5.25" diskettes
I was looking over the games available to install on my Debian GNU / Linux today just to be happily suprised to find GPL Arcade Volleyball an identical game remake of the old Arcade Volleyball 8086 classic freeware game.
I remember we spend many hours with friends playing on the old Manifactured in Bulgaria Pravetz 16! computers
During communism and post communism Pravetz was the only computer brand we could buy from the market, as there was limitations on the exported and imported tech equipment within the USSR union.
Pravetz computers are a literal remake of 16 bit IBM 8086 computers and the computer design and integrals was stolen from IBM 16 bit 8086 / 8088 PC architecture
Arcade Volleyball has set a mark on my generation and I believe many people will remember the times this game was a hit with a bit of Nostalgia 😉
Besides being an identical remake of PC Arcade Volleyball , GPL Arcade Volleyball is even expanded as it includes extra features which the original game lacked. Game includes:
- Network Volleyball client / server Game (up to 4 players)
- 6 Game Themes which completely change the game look & feel to be modernistic
Here are few GAV screenshots of the different existing game Themes:
Yisus GAV Theme gameplay screenshot
GAV – Unnamed Theme Gameplay
GAV – FaBeach Theme Gameplay
GAV supports both Window and fullscreen modes. To enable Fullscreen mode, while inside the game use:
Extra -> Fullscreen (Yes)
Saving preferences is also something which I if I recall correctly the original game lacked. This is done by navigating to:
Extra -> Save Preferences
GAV is said to support Joystick in resemblance to the original DOS game, though I've never tested it with a joy.
One of the greatest GAV game (hacks) is the Inverted Theme. Selecting it inverts the order in the game, where the game player becomes the volleyball ball and the ball becomes the player 😉
GAV does not yet not have a Free / Open / Net BSD port as far as I currently see, anyways since the game is Free Software probably soon a port will be available for BSDs as well.
The default GAV game controls are a bit untraditional. By default the one player game starts you play Volleyball game player positioned on the left.
For left player the default control keys are:
- z – move player left
- c – move player right
- left shift – jump
Right player controls are:
- Left – left (arrow key)
- right – right (arrow key)
- jump – up cursor key
GAV supports also a shortcut key for switching between windowed and full screen game mode by pressing F10
Installing the game on Debian and Ubuntu Linuces is done with:
linux:~# apt-get --yes install gav
Unfortunately gav does not have a definition to be added to GNOME or KDE Applications menus, thus to start the game after installed one has to do it manually by typing either in gnome RUN (Alt+F2) or on command line:
linux:~$ gav
Happy playing 😉
Tags: amp, architecture, arrow, bulgaria, change, client, client server, communism, computer brand, computer design, debian gnu, dos game, dos games, equipment, EXTRA, Free, freeware, freeware game, fullscreen, game themes, Gameplay, generation, Gnome, integrals, joystick, Manifactured, mark, modes, move, nbsp, nev, nostalgia, pc arcade, pc architecture, player, Pravetz, quot, resemblance, right, screenshot, server game, something, ussr, volleyball game, window, Yisus
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux Audio & Video | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011 
Alex the Alligator is a Free Software (Open Sourced) arcade game licensed under the General Public License (GPL)
The game is quite of fun and especially the music totally kicks ass! 😉
The game plot is simple but fun in the good Spirit of oldschool Super Mario like arcade games.
In the game you are a little cute crocodile whose (crocodile) girlfriend is kidnapped with a helicopter by the evil human poachers.
As you love her too much and you're determined to grow a crocodile family with this croco-girl you start a long quest to save her from possible zoo slavery or killing for a crocodile skin boots.
The quest for kidnapped girlfriend (LOLA) liberation wents through the harsh jungles.
Alex The Alligator has a version for both Windows and Linux ports. The Linux port is available for most major distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora etc.
To install the game on Debian and Ubuntu with apt-get issue:
debian:~# apt-get --yes install alex4
...
After installing the game can be run from command line using cmd:
alex4
The game controls are as follows;
- Arrow Keys – Movement
- Alt – Jump
- Ctrl – Fire (if you have previously collected Eggs
Alex the Alligator is also equipped with a MAP editor, so if you really want to contribute the game development, take some time create some maps and submit to game's official website http://allegator.sourceforge.net/ . On the game website there are few other variations of the Alex the Alligator as well as extra game maps.
Explanation on which keys can be used to create maps is found in the game manual, e.g.:
debian:~$ man alex4
If you have downloaded some extra game maps from the game sourceforge website, to load them you can use:
Shift+L
Will Alex succeed in saving his girlfriend ? It's up to you 😉
Tags: alex the alligator, alligator, arcade game, arcade games, arrow keys, croco girl, crocodile, crocodile family, crocodile skin, family, Free, game controls, game development, game maps, game plot, game website, GameBoy, General, girlfriend, gnu linux, good spirit, helicopter, jungles, license gpl, linux port, linux ports, lola, map editor, music, nintendo gameboy, oldschool, Open, plot, poachers, Public, retro, retro style, simple, skin, slavery, software, software game, Spirit, style, Super, zoo
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux Audio & Video | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 
While looking over the installable packages in System -> Administration -> Software Center on my my Debian powered notebook, I’ve accidently rolled over a game called Abe’s Amazing Adventure , as a big oldschool arcade game fan, I’ve immediately clicked on Install being impatient to see the overall game atmosphere and gameplay as well as storyline.
Abe’s Amazing Adventure is available under the debian package name abe and can be installed by issuing:
debian:~# apt-get install abe
I was pleasently surprised to find out the gameplay and the overall game feels like the golden classical arcade game Dangerous Dave
For youngsters who never played the amazing absolute killing arcade ! as well as for people who feel nostalgic about Dangerous Dave 2 here is a nice gameplay screenshot:
Here is also a screenshot of Abe’s Amazing Adventure gameplay:
You can see the great resemblense between the two games even by the screenshot; In both games you have to collect keys to open doors and diamonds which gives you points. Of course there are some differences as you can see Abe’s Amazing Adventure ‘s graphics has some additional items like Baloons with which your main character can fly over distances (for a limited time). There is also more diversity in the enemy types you face on the road to unlock the different doors. The game has also a red stars which while taken saves the game so if you quit the game on next game load up starting the game automatically starts you from the last save point.
The ( 6 ) baloons seen in the screenshot on the left upper corner can be used occasionally to fly some distance by pressing Enter .
There are health recovery kits one can take to recover, some health damaged by hitting obstacles on the way.
The game story is short but entertaining, just like the general game feel:
The game music is relaxing and more or less in the spirit of arcade games, the keyboard interactivety is pretty good as well.One thing I see can be improved to make the game better are the graphics, they’re a bit childish and too cubical, where sometimes some more general characters and obstacles animation will give the game a better look. Anyways for the year 2003 and for a free software arcade the game is not bad. For children and growing kids the game is just perfect, even for big kids like me its good to spend an hour of jump and run fun 😉
Tags: Administration, Amazing, animation, arcade game, atmosphere, baloons, center, character, course, dangerous dave, debian package, distance, fan, freebsd, fun, game, game atmosphere, game fan, game load, game story, gnu linux, gt software, health, health recovery, img, Install, interactivety, jump, left, linux freebsd, name, oldschool, package, quot, red stars, resemblense, road, s graphics, screenshot, software, software center, story, storyline, substitute, system, time, two games, way, year, youngsters
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 3rd, 2011 
Gcompris is a great piece of software to educate children in the age interval of 2 to 10 years old.
Gcompris is a tool of educative and funny interactive computer applications many of which has a form of games.
Gcompris is teaching the children on the following fields of knowledge:
- understand the computer – keyboard, mouse etc.
- Algebra – Summing up numbers, enumarations, table memory, mirror image etc.
- Science – The Canal lock, the water cycle, how a submarine works, elementary electric simulation
- Geography – Find out about country locations, Place the country on the map
- Games – Learn how to play chess, improve memory and memorization, sudoku etc.
- Reading – Learning to read fluent, reading practice
- Learn to proerply tell time, solve puzzle games and learn famous paintings, basic cartoon making, vector drawing
All the funny activities Gcompris educative kid tool offers 100+. Gcompris is in active development so with time more and more activities gets added.
Gcompris is a Free Software and among with its native GNU / Linux support it has ports for Windows and Mac OS X
The Free Software nature of Gcompris gives possibility to be easily adapted and further developed! Its really funny not only for kids, but even for adults. If you had a stressy day and you want to relax in a childish way and feel like a kid again, give it a try and you will be amazed how much light and happiness this computer program can bless you with 😉
Many of Gcompris activities has a little cute penguins and in general its capable of introducing the kids to the nice concept of the free software.
As a free software Gcompris is really great as among the rest of the so popular free software freedoms: to distribute and modify the software it comes absolutely free of charge (in money terms). This is great news for parents who are growing their kids in the “developing world”, the so called 2nd and 3rd world as well is a good alternative to the many available paid costly application and games aiming at kids brain development.
The name Gcompris is also known in free software realm under the name I GOT IT .Gcompris has currently Sound and text support for 33 Country Languages, here is a completele list of languages currently supported:
Arabic, Asturian, Bulgarian, Breton, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Indian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Indian, Norwegian, Dutch, Norwegian, Punjabi, Portuguese, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, Chinese
Some of the languages supported still does not have a 100% translation but partially translated as its a question of time that enough translators are found to make the translations for all available major languages. The only 100% completed trasnlation as of time of writting is in French, Slovenian and Spanish
Gcompris is already included in almost all available moderm GNU / Linux distributions. A packaged version of it is part of Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.
For all those parents who wish to educate their children on Fedora Linux install it with the GUI installer or yum with cmd:
[root@fedora ~]# yum install gcompris
...
On Debian and Ubuntu Gcompris is installable via apt from repos:
debian:~# apt-get install gcompris
...
To add a text and sound translation to Gcompris its also necessery to install the relevant gcompris-sound distribution package, for example to add the sound translations for my native Bulgarian language I had to install the package gcompris-sound-bg, e.g.:
debian:~# apt-get install gcompris-sound-bg
...
Gcompris is developed to use the Gnome’s GTK and is a perfect match for Linux users who already run a Gnome Desktop on their PCs.
Most of Gcompris versions should run without much hassle on Mac OS X and Windows so all mommies and daddies on Windows or Mac can install it and use it to educate their kids 😉
Here are few more screenshots of Gcompris
Gcompris also fits well with Tux for Kids Linux / Windows ready games also suitable for kids development. Gcompris and Tux for Kids makes Linux and free software more “children mature” and is a perfect to be used on kids educational computers in kindergartens or any educational institutions aiming at children development.
To sum it up, if you want to make your children smarter or you’re bored to death and you need to have some rest by going back to your childhood years give gcompris a try 😉
Tags: active development, age, canal lock, cartoon, computer keyboard, cycle, developing world, famous paintings, Free, gcompris, Gnome, gnu linux, how to play chess, intellect, interactive computer applications, keyboard mouse, kid, Learn, linux support, linux windows, mac os x, memorization, mirror image, money terms, nbsp, package, piece, puzzle games, quality educational software, quot, reading, reading practice, software, software nature, Sound, submarine, support, text, time, tool, Ubuntu, water cycle
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »
