Vamos is a very young project concentrating on being an automotive simulation framework with an emphasis on thorough physical modeling and good C++ design. Vamos includes a real-time, first-person, 3-D driving application.
It also includes a number of cool real-world locations, with tracks such as Germany’s Nurburgring and Japan’s Suzuka Circuit, among others. However, this won’t be a major draw card of authenticity just yet, as the graphics are still at a level comparable to a 286, and the cars resemble something more like what Postman Pat would drive. As a result, the project’s author is inviting anyone to contribute to the effort. Still, it looks promising, especially as parts of its code are being borrowed from another project.
For more info and download this game engine, feel free to visit here.
Urban Terror is a free multiplayer first person shooter
Urban Terror is focused on blending realism with the fast-paced action of shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes.
The weapons available are real-life, have recoil, are less accurate when fired while moving, and require reloading after a magazine has been expended. The number of weapons and other gear that can be carried is limited.
Damage is also realistic, based on dividing the player target into discrete areas. In addition to the damage system, wounds require bandaging, and wounds sustained in the legs or feet slow the player down considerably until they are bandaged. A stamina system is also present, and is depleted by activities such as sprinting or jumping; crouching down allows the stamina bar to recover faster.
Depending on the map being played, external environments are more realistic too and can include weather effects such as rain or snow.
Urban Terror 4.1 can run on Quake 3 Arena or on the free ioUrbanTerror. The .zip and the .exe installer have exactly the same files in them and both include ioUrbanTerror, so you only need to get 1 installer. There's only FULL packages, no upgrades. The installers are about 700MB. You can download this great action game at here.
Racer is a free car simulation project, using real car physics to get a realistic feeling. Cars, tracks, scenes and such can be created with relative simplicity in mind (compared to other driving simulations). The 3D and other file formats are, or should be, documented. Editors and support programs are also available to get a very flexible and expandable simulator.
It uses OpenGL for rendering. It attempts to do well at the physics section, trying to create life-like cars to emphasize car control and doesn't cut back on realism in the interest of fun. If you've played Grand Prix Legends from Papyrus, you'll know what I'm talking about.
General Features:
- It's totally free! (for non-commercial use)
- Available for multiple platforms; Windows 2000/XP (95/98/ME may work but have some trouble with fonts), Linux and Mac OS X.
- 6 DOF chassis movement (the car can move around freely); around 15 DOFs in a total car (wheels/engine/clutch etc).
- Uses motion formulae from actual engineering documents from SAE for example.
- Incredible flexibility; almost everything is customizable through ASCII files.
- Commercial-quality rendering engine (with smoke, skidmarks, sparks, sun, flares, vertex-color lit tracks).
- Support for Matlab (log files can be converted into Matlab format for further analysis & processing).
- Support for Matrox' Surround Gaming. See the corresponding page on Matrox' site.
- Lots of addon cars and tracks available on the web (over 100 tracks & cars).
- Easy integration of your own cars and tracks that you create in ZModeler, 3D Studio Max(tm), Maya etc.
- At least 15 degrees of freedom for a regular car (6 DOF for the car body, 1 for each wheel's vertical motion and 1 for each wheel spinning, and 1 for the engine, several more for the driveline). Depending actually on how many wheels you put on the car.
- Real-time internal clock; no physical dependency on framerate. Controller updates are also done independently of the framerate.
- Not limited to 4 wheels; anything from 2 to 8 wheel vehicles are currently supported (but mostly untested, and some problems with hardcoded differentials for example may exist (v0.5.0)).
- Not much constraints on the track data; surface info is taken from polygon data (VRML tracks), and splines are used to smooth out the track surface (polygons are too harsh for driving on just like that).
- Tools to modify the cars & tracks are freely available on this site (though some external utilities like 3D Studio Max are recommended for best results).
- Some used algorithms are explained on this site, so this site can be interesting to learn from if you create your own car simulation software. Also, links and references are available.
Physics Features:
- Full 6 degree of freedom motion of the car chassis.
- Independent suspension for all wheels.
- Suspension features: springs, dampers, anti-rollbar, rollcenter, anti-pitch.
- Wheel features: camber, wheel hop (the wheels have mass), toe.
- Tires: Pacejka tire model, relaxation length.
- View frustum culling for increased framerate.
- Shader system for Quake-style rendering.
- Fog definable per track.
- Environment mapping for shiny materials.
- Live track environment mapping.
Btw, you can download Racer for Linux stable version at here and the new beta version at here. Enjoy!
After posted Three Racing Games for Ubuntu's article, now I will tell you about other genre games here, the 5 popular 3D Action games that run in Linux.
Nexuiz
Nexuiz is a 3d deathmatch game project, created online by a team of developers called Alientrap. Nexuiz is a free, cross platform, first person shooter distributed under GNU General Public License by Alientrap Software. It started back in May 31 2005 with version 1.0 using DarkPlaces, a significanlty modified quake engine. The current version, 2.2.3, was released on January 26, 2007.
While Nexuiz has improved in all areas, it still stays true to its mission to bring deathmatch back to the basics, with perfect weapon balancing and fast paced action. The engine received a massive overhaul, resulting in a huge performance increase in the 50-500% range and much more smoother netplay. It runs faster, renders more beautiful, introduces sharper effects and brings you even closer to the action than ever before.
Taking advantage of the improved engine, Alientrap and contributors added new maps, retouched and rebalanced the guns and reworked most texturing effects. The new maps, textures and general additions to Nexuiz have almost tripled the file size since 1.0 and almost doubled it since the last release 2.2.3.
Nexuiz 2.3 brings along a new way for gamers to compete with each other and measure their skills: the new team mode 'Keyhunt'. Moreover, the online experience is enhanced by the new netcode, which also feels safer as 2.3 sports an anti-wallhack function. The offline singleplayer campaign offers improved, more human-like bots while the new maps add a fresh thrill to both offline and online play. For a totally original way to experience Nexuiz we created 'Nexuiz Pro', a server side mod that drastically changes the physics and weapons. Do not shy away from its name: it's just as fun for the young and old, for the new and experienced players.
Features of the Nexuiz:
- Multiplayer (up to 64 players)
- Ability to generate bots for practice sessions
- Dynamic lighting system similar to Doom 3
You can download this game at here.
Enemy Territory Quake Wars is the ultimate online strategic shooter: An objective-driven, class-based first person shooter set in the Quake universe. This game is a first-person shooter follow-up to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. It also has the same science fiction universe as Quake 4, with a story serving as a prequel to Quake II.
Quake Wars is the second multiplayer-only game in the Quake series after Quake III Arena. The gameplay is almost the same as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, but with the addition of controllable vehicles and aircraft, asymmetric teams, much larger maps and the option of computer-controlled bots. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is being developed by Splash Damage for the PC using a modified version of id Software’s Doom 3 engine and MegaTexture rendering technology.
You can view more and download this game from here.
America's Army
Amrica's Army is one of the most popuar PC ation games played online. It provides playes with the most authentic military experience available, from exploring the development of Soldiers in individual and collective training to their deployment in simulated missions in the War of Terror.
America’s Army is a tactical, multiplayer, first-person shooter owned by the United States Government and released as a global public relations initiative to help with U.S. Army recruitment. The first version, Recon, was released on 4th July 2002. Now, it has in version 2.8.2.
It’s the first well known computer game used for political aims. The game is used as a playable recruiting tool and critics have charged the game serves as a propaganda device. A counter on the homepage of the PC version shows over eight million registered accounts as of 2007. GameSpy tracked the game usage and reported an average of 4,500 players at any one time between 2002 and 2005. It is enough for America’s Army to rank in the Top 10 Online Games chart.
Download this game at here.
Tremulous
Tremulous is an open source team-based first-person shooter with a game play that is similar to Gloom(a quake 2 mod) and Natural Selection (a Half-Life mod).
The game features two teams, humans and aliens, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The game has been downloaded over 200,000 times and was voted “Player’s Choice Standalone Game of the Year” in Mod Database’s “Mod of the Year” 2006 competition and has been nominated as a finalist in the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards.
Download now Tremulous by click here.
Alien Arena 2007
Alien Arena 2007 (AA2K7) is the latest version of a freeware online deathmatch game that was first introduced to the public in October, 2004. Since that initial release, nearly every aspect of the game has been revamped, in fact, all of the content and code from the November 2005 release of Alien Arena 2006 has been redone as well. It's like an entirely new game, and it may shock people just how much it has improved in less than a year's time. With over 30 levels, seven modes of play, loads of mutators, built-in bots, 11 player characters, 9 weapons(with alt-fire modes), the game has an endless supply of replayability. With so many new features, AA2K7 is nearly an entirely new game when held in comparison to it's predecessor.
With the trials and tribulations of software development, endless hours of playing, gathering feedback, COR Entertainment has been able to not only fine tune and perfect it's flagship game, but add completely new dimensions to it.
Using the CRX engine, which is based on the Id GPL source code, AA2K7 now includes modern effects such as real time vertex lighting and shadows, lensflares, light blooms, reflective water, textured particles, stainmaps, 32 bit color, shaders, fog, and much more. Built into the game is a easy to use server browser which allows the user to query information about each server. CRX features rewards systems, as well as colored player names, winner podiums, and weapons stats. The best thing about the CRX engine however, is it's netcode and speed. Even on a modest system, you will get excellent framerates, and movement is still extremely smooth and fast, even on high ping servers.
Bot AI has been improved with each release, and for AA2K7, a number of improvements and enhancements have been made. These bots are among the most human acting bots in any game, and also some of the toughest if you choose them to be. They are fully configurable using an external editor, and skill levels can be set in game.
Alien Arena is a fast paced, furious frag fest with arenas ranging from the small, to the massive. With a large built-in player base, it's never hard to find a good match going on, at any hour of the day. The community is friendly, as well as prolific. Dozens of maps, models, and various accessories have been created by community members to add on to the game experience.
Alien Arena features team based gameplay as well, such as Team Core Assualtl, a mode in which players must work together to disable their enemy team's central metal spider. Don't forget about the Team Deathmatch, Cattle Prod, Capture the Flag, Deathball, and All Out Assault mode(in which players can enter vehicles) either. For the 1v1 players, Alien Arena now features a duel mode!
Download AA2K7 at here.
Here are three racing games for Linux
TORCS
If you want a powerful racing game, look no further than TORCS, The Open Racing Car Simulator. It's gone from a 1997 2D soapbox derby simulator to a powerful 3D racing game with championships, tons of tracks, a thriving community, and all the third party tracks and cars you can download. There are even two online championships: TORCS Driving Championship and
The TORCS Racing Board.
To install TORCS, just use your favorite package manager (apt, aptitude, Synaptic, Adept, etc) to install the 'torcs' package from the universe repository.
VDrift
Want realistic racing? Then you need to try VDrift. First released in 2005 by Joe Venzon and inspired by Gran Turismo, Venzon created a simple racing game powered by the Vamos Automotive Simulator. Two years, three programmers, and a ton of code later, it's got extremely realistic physics, 28 cars, 19 tracks, AI players, networking, and great looking graphics.
VDrift hasn't (yet) made it into the Ubuntu repositories (though the data package made it in. Odd). Luckily, GetDeb includes an Ubuntu package for it.
Trigger
If arcade-style racing is your style, give Trigger a try. It's simple: they give you a car, and you have to navigate a tricky path full of off-road terrain with an extremely tippy car.
Go too fast, and you risk flipping off of the road. But move too slowly, and you risk being dominated by your cunning AI opponents.
To install, just use your favorite package manager to grab the 'trigger' package in
the universe repository.
Bos Wars is a futuristic real time strategy game
In a RTS game, the player has to combat his enemies while developing his war economy. Everything runs in real-time, as opposed to turn-based games where the player always has to wait for his turn. The trick is to balance the effort put into building his economy and building an army to defend and attack the enemies.
Bos Wars has a dynamic rate based economy. Energy is produced by power plants and magma gets pumped from hot spots. Buildings and mobile units are also built at a continuous rate. Control of larger parts of the map creates the potential to increase your economy throughput. Holding key points like roads and passages allow for different strategies.
It is possible to play against human opponents over LAN, internet, or against the computer. Bos Wars successfully runs under Linux, MS Windows, BSD, and Mac OS X.
Bos Wars aims to create a completely original and fun open source RTS game. You can download it from here.
