Many of us have adapted Linux as their OS of choice at home. Linux has
come a long way since its infancy in the early 1990s, and has gotten
friendlier both to users and to the plethora of hardware that's been
thrown at it.
About the only arena in which Linux still lags perhaps is the availability
of commercial games for it. After all, Linux is still considered a
non-mainstream system and the gaming industry/entertainment industry
depends largely on revenue generated by "majority".
There are a number of game companies that develop Linux versions of their
products, and one that focuses on porting titles over to Linux (Loki)[1].
I'm curious though if any local folk are trying their hand at developing
games under Linux, even just simple games. Maybe you would like to share
your experience with us, or even just let us know that you're working on a
game? I'm sure many of us will be interested to hear from you.
p.s. I'm currently working on several games that run under Linux, but I'm
not at liberty to disclose information about them all. Maybe I'll write
about the ones that I can talk about at a later date.
<end of main text... skip the rest if you find my drivel dragging>
[long sidebar: how we used games in our work]
There are quite a number of Linux games that I have become fond of, and
not solely for their entertainment value. I've actually found some
outright silly reasons for using games at work, though many will probably
frown at the idea.
One of the very first commercial (shareware) games I played on Linux was
Doom. In fact, Dr. Cito Maramba and I utilized Doom in DOS and Linux as
our network application tester. Back in 1994, when we first set up a LAN
at the UP College of Public Health with Dr. Noel Lawas, we had lagundi, a
Pentium running Slackware Linux 2(?) as our network file server and email
server. Lagundi's partner, Sambong was also running Linux. The end-user
machines were running DOS 3.30 (or was it DOS 6.2x) with Crynwyr TCP/IP
packet drivers and generic NE2000 clones for NICs. We used NCSA Telnet and
FTP for DOS to log into lagundi and sambong, and squirreled out the
shareware versions of DOOM onto the client machines. This was our informal
method of measuring network throughput. Since the zip files of DOOM
weren't that small, it was a good way for us to transfer a high volume of
data over the network. We would then install DOOM on the client machine
and then start a network game of DOOM, one of us on the client machine
running DOS DOOM, and the other with Linux DOOM at the other end. We later
ran into a Linux version of DOOM where the monsters represented processes.
Logged in as a superuser, killing a monster would result in the equivalent
killing of the process it represented. So much for using games to help
perform our jobs. :)
Another "game" that we used in the course of our work was a MOO[2]. A
what? A MOO. What's that you say? No. No bovines involved here. MOO is
short for MUD Object Oriented. It's a virtual environment much akin to
chat but more closely related to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). One of the
more interesting aspects of the MOO/MU*s over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) or
IM (Instant Messaging) applications is that of object persistence. Rooms
in the MOO stay put regardless of whether it is inhabited or not. Objects
abound in the MOO universe as well. These objects have properties, which
can be observed by using the appropriate verb. One can look at another
virtual inhabitant on the MOO and you would "see" an appropriate (or not
so appropriate) description of the other. Much like in IRC, you can
communicate with others using the say verb, and talk to others in the same
room. You can also page fellow MOOers who are not in the same room, and
the paged message is a private instant message. Posing, the equivalent of
/me in IRC, abounds in the MOO world, but here's the neat thing about
MOOs. You can actually -program- in the MOO environs. What amounts to
macros on IRC clients would be entire programs that range from simple
poses to complex virtual toys or models of existing or imaginary objects.
These programmed objects, as I pointed out earlier, are persistent. When
the object's owner logs out of the MOO, the object can still be active and
played with. We had used the MOO as a communication tool back then, to
keep in touch regardless of where we were on the network. And at a certain
point, I had used the MOO to model the network that was emerging at UP
Manila and used it to help me perform some of my administrative functions.
[end of sidebar]
1. Loki Games (http://www.lokigames.com)
2. The MOO Page (http://www.moo.mud.org)
3. TinyFugue - my preferred MU* client (http://www.muq.org/~hawkeye/tf)
___ eric pareja ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ~-=[O]=-~ Here, have a clue. Get the picture.
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v "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."
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