Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts

Zero Ballistics – a rather addictive native 3D tank shooter

Zero Ballistics is a 3D tank shooter, a mix of FPS and “tank” (if that’s a genre) that is actually rather addictive, although unrealistic.
The multiplayer-only (although it has support for bots), cross-platform game, which is free to download and open source, was originally developed by QuantiCode in Austria a few years ago.
It sports some pretty nice 3D graphics and a semi-destructible landscape (trees can be destroyed and they fall over rather dramatically, but buildings don’t take damange) and has a few interesting features such as upgrades to your tank, multiple views and weapons and different game modes.
Unfortunately it’s not particularly tactical – so if you were looking for a realistic tank simulator then you’ve come to the wrong place.
“Zero Ballistics is a unique blend of multiplayer first person shooter and tank combat game. Easy to learn, difficult to master was our mantra during the development of the game. Set in lush alpine environments covering all seasons, playing Zero Ballistics is as thrilling as it is relaxing.”

Getting started

Weighing in just under 60mb, the download was a breeze from Sourceforge.
After installation I ran Zero Ballistics, greeted by a nice menu I quickly found a hosted game with 5 other players – this isn’t Call of Duty: Black Ops so don’t expect millions of other players, but luckily it appears at least a dozen people are online at any one time for you to destroy and the multiplayer implementation is flawless.

Gameplay

Playing the game is easy, simply moving the tank around with the W, A, S and D keys and then controlling the turret view with the mouse seemed second nature. The graphics are nice for a 4 year old GPL game, and the resolution support is decent.
Gameplay is rather arcade-like with the tanks moving pretty quickly (everyone seemed to have six-wheeled LAV’s rather than full on tanks like the Abrams). Shooting the main turret is done with the left mouse button, machine gun with the right. It’s not entirely clear why a machine gun is necessary as it appears to have no effect on your opponents and there is a lack of infantry to gun down.
After a few kills I was presented with an upgrade screen which allowed me to choose to spend my points on my weapon, armor or speed, a nice touch.
“Explore 81 different tank setups to be ready for any given combat situation. If you want to be sneaky, use mines and the heal skill to wreak havoc among your unsuspecting enemys. You are more the frontal assault type? Combine the ram bucket and the flamethrower to eliminate your enemies up close and personal.”

Summary

Overall the game is pretty damn fun for a quick thrill, everything comes together rather nicely and presuming you can find others to play with, I’m sure some strategies would emerge.
However I’d love to see more work done on making the game a bit more realistic. All too often the battles would simply end in a cluster of tanks circling around trying to destroy each other at close range which felt like a waste when the levels are wide, open expansive spaces.
I suggest you give it a try and let us know how your thoughts in the comments!

Install World of Padman Ubuntu

Popular first person shooter World of Padman has received a much-awaited new release which brings the 6 year old game up to version 1.5.
The game, originally started in 2004 as a modification of Quake III: Arena, is an open source cross-platform shooter loosely based on the Padman comic strip for the magazine Playstation Games which originated in the 1990s.
The current iteration of the game now runs on an enhanced version of the ever-so-prominent ioquake3 engine to deliver some updated slick visuals which compliment the fun gameplay.
Version 1.5 brings a heap of new changes as the announcement boasts:
“Countless things have been revised and partly modified. There is a new game type, new maps, new player models, a new weapon, new powerups and much more. You might be in for some surprises.”

Download it now

You can grab the latest version of World of Padman for Ubuntu by heading over to the official announcement and choosing a mirror.
Be warned, the download is 900mb!

Install Xonotic Nexuiz Ubuntu 10.10

Xonotic, a fork of popular and graphically beautiful first person shooter Nexuiz, has had its first preview release, 0.1.
Nexuiz has been around a while and is well known as being one of the nicest looking games available to run natively under Linux. The open source project hasn’t had a release since late 2009, and many speculate that the project is officially dead.
Not wanting to leave such a great game untouched and let it sink into the ground of the vaporware graveyard, the Xonotic project was born. Promising new features, graphics, physics and maps (not prescription medicine as the name suggests), they are determined to inject new life into the stranded FPS.
“The last release of Nexuiz (2.5.2) was on the first of October 2009, and when we decided to fork early March 2010 we continued where we had left off with Nexuiz. Large parts of the code, graphics and music have been redone and have improved immensely. In over a year we have managed to make huge progress on pretty much every part of the game.
However this release is still a preview, which means that bugs are likely to exist and that some of our decisions turn out to have unwanted side effects.”

What’s new?

Today, the project released a preview, Xonotic 0.1, which sees a whole host of new stuff added, as well as a heap of bugs as one should expect from such an early release. This is of course great news for Linux FPS fans who have been following the project eagerly awaiting some news.
The new release sees features such as:
  • Performance and graphics improvements
  • A new dynamic and configurable HUD
  • New informative cross hairs
  • New game menu
  • Tweaks to physics and weapon balance
  • New player models and animations
  • New maps
  • Client authentication and encryption
Phew! Quite the changelog.
For the complete list of changes and a detailed description of each, you should direct your browsers to the press release and have a read.

Download it now

You can grab the game from these handy dandy links.
Download via torrent
Download via HTTP
md5sum: aafb43893aa66e01488c817e3a60d96d

Install SuperTuxKart Games in Ubuntu 10.10


It’s here, racing fans – a brand new version of iconic Linux game ‘SuperTuxKart’ is now available for download.
SuperTuxKart 0.7, which has been in development for over a year, sees some great new features and improvements added to the game, including: -
  • New graphics engine
  • New GUI
  • New Kart and track animations
  • New and improved tracks, karts, and items
  • Shortcut/alternative way support for tracks
  • Asian font support
  • Bugfixes

Download

Dying to get your racing helmet on? You can nab the latest release by adding the following PPA (in bold) to your software sources.
To do this using a Terminal enter: -
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stk/dev
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install supertuxkart

Launch Via Applications > Games > SuperTuxKart
Alternatively you grab the source @ sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart

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