Gaming in Linux Mint!

Anything related to gaming on Linux Mint including game discussion or questions concerning Steam or Wine.
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mandoman
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Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2013 9:51 pm

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by mandoman »

No one seems to have mentioned the game Oolite. It's a 3D first person space simulator. You start out with very little, and are given the chance to build yourself up to a higher level. The greater your rating, the more difficult it gets.

You start out as a trader pilot, flying what they call the "Cobra MkIII", which is a middle of the line ship, and your name is Commander Jameson. You can change your name at your first "Save Game" if you wish. The ship is very basic, and you only have a few credits to start, but the goal is to fly through Witchspace between star systems, dock at the System Stations that orbit the main planets, and there you can sell, and purchase items. There is also where you can get ship upgrades, or even whole new ships, but they cost a good chunk of credits, so you end up trading a lot at first.

The exciting part involves legality standings of other, non-player, ships. Some are traders, like yourself, with either a lot of armament, and shields, or just on the basic side. Others are in the "Illegal" catagory, and are either "Offenders", or "Fugitives", though most Ooliters refer to both as simply pirates. They're goal is to destroy your ship, and then scoop up any cargo you are carrying. You have weapons also, but very weak at first, and need upgrading as your finances allow. It is even possible for the player to become a pirate, if one so chooses, but by doing so you risk being pursued, and fired upon, and destroyed by the GalCops, or bounty hunters. All ships are given a bounty status, zero being an honest, non-offensive trader, and the bounty can go up quite drastically from there, depending on the level of offense.

One of the neat things about the game is what are called Oolite Expansion Packages, or oxps, for short. These oxps can take the form of ships, equipment, sounds, visual effects, etc., built by players of the game, and then uploaded to Box, from which you can retrieve the ship, or other types of oxps, and install them into your game.

Maybe you all know of this game, and I'm just rambling, but I thought I would throw it out for consideration. :)
What was that code again?
dazdaryl

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by dazdaryl »

I play company of heroes and bioshock through wine without problems, I couldn't get far cry 3 or total war shogun to work though.
Pymanda

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by Pymanda »

At the moment I play "Faster than light" over Steam. I like the Sci-Fy setting and the sandbox like gameplay. It's a great game. And of course I play some games from the humble bundle like Legend of Grimrock or Closure. Both are very good games.
Jessey Lawson
Level 3
Level 3
Posts: 105
Joined: Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:42 pm

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by Jessey Lawson »

I play many games.
Wine/PlayonLinux/Vineyard:The Sims 3 (series)
Emmulation:Dolphin(Gamecube, Wii, Wii U) DOSBox(DOS Games), Vice(C64 games), VBA (Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Adavance) to be a few. I also have some for NES, and N64
Native Games:
Gweld, Supertux, Supertux 2, Supertuxkart, openttd, openciy, linciy,atris, frozen bubble, kpat, freecol, aisleriot
pysolfc, freeciv, brutal chess, dream chess, blockattack, pingus, micropolis, xgalaga, pinball, ltris, gnome-hearts
hannah, smc, freedink, simutrans, ri-li, bsdgames, ace of penguins, minecraft, minetest,
renpy
phill1978

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by phill1978 »

my steam immediately closes when trying to browse the store. but the game browser is ok?


i seem to have had most of the bug / issues :( i guess thats what you get by running an amd card and xfce rather than ubuntu and an nvidia or intel gpu though. Most of the desura games advertised for linux dont work that i have tried, even after 32bit libs, they simply dont launch.

could it be xfce display manager is largely incompatible? if so how is it different from ubuntus?
gemini89

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by gemini89 »

phill1978 wrote:my steam immediately closes when trying to browse the store. but the game browser is ok?


i seem to have had most of the bug / issues :( i guess thats what you get by running an amd card and xfce rather than ubuntu and an nvidia or intel gpu though. Most of the desura games advertised for linux dont work that i have tried, even after 32bit libs, they simply dont launch.

could it be xfce display manager is largely incompatible? if so how is it different from ubuntus?
I assume you are using LM 14 XCFE, is that correct? Do you use propritery drivers for your AMD GPU? I have noticed differences amongst different DE´s and distros. LM 14 XFCE used to work a few months for me, but then suddenly Steam would not work anymore. Tried LM 15 with both Cinnamon and MATE, but then I got the same problem as you have. Right now I´m on Ubuntu 13.04 Gnome and everything works fine, although I hate stupid Gnome.

One thing about Steam is that they only support Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 with Unity, Gnome or KDE. I´ve never tried Desura though so I would not know how it works.
phill1978

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by phill1978 »

gemini89 wrote:
phill1978 wrote:my steam immediately closes when trying to browse the store. but the game browser is ok?


i seem to have had most of the bug / issues :( i guess thats what you get by running an amd card and xfce rather than ubuntu and an nvidia or intel gpu though. Most of the desura games advertised for linux dont work that i have tried, even after 32bit libs, they simply dont launch.

could it be xfce display manager is largely incompatible? if so how is it different from ubuntus?
I assume you are using LM 14 XCFE, is that correct? Do you use propritery drivers for your AMD GPU? I have noticed differences amongst different DE´s and distros. LM 14 XFCE used to work a few months for me, but then suddenly Steam would not work anymore. Tried LM 15 with both Cinnamon and MATE, but then I got the same problem as you have. Right now I´m on Ubuntu 13.04 Gnome and everything works fine, although I hate stupid Gnome.

One thing about Steam is that they only support Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 with Unity, Gnome or KDE. I´ve never tried Desura though so I would not know how it works.
Yes i have mint 14 xfce and proprietary drivers for AMD. I have also experienced the same with mint KDE and recently i installed OpenSuse which has the awful gnome interface ((its awful because i need widgets on my taskbar and proper minimize and close buttons + the menu may look flashy but Synapse is better for finding things and docky is nicer as a launcher)) and again it automatically closes steam when clicking through the store.

So FYI:

Gnome (mint or suse)
KDE mint
XFCE mint
MATE (haven't tried but im sure its the same)

All close, yet they didn't close a few months ago? :roll: same shit different update..

So I deducted two things:

1. AMD official drivers are just terrible on the desktop and with 2D .. this is true the opensource ones work fine.
2. AMD official drivers are with 3D as the opensource are with 2D (90% of games) are great (not brilliant) .. this is true as some 3D steam games like counter strike run very well.


So I have a problem. A rock and a hard place. 2D desktop = opensource 3D applications = official

It sucks so much and i dont want windows anymore that i will have to sell my trusty AMD card and buy an Nvidia instead $$$$

So.. the final thing is that ubuntu may be the answer that they have noticed and worked around some of the official drivers niggles ... but then again Gnome/Unity isnt nice, the whole desktop takes 1.5gb ram usage compared to 250 on xfce (100+ mb just for official GPU drivers!) also there is stealth adverts and as much as i admire the focus of canonical I cant help but feel they are closing the open with their approach

So i could just buy a PS4 and have done with it i guess but i so wanted to support gaming on linux
jdrs

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by jdrs »

I run Maya XFCE and steam works fine. Although the "Connecting to steam" takes a lot longer now. I'm also using 6770HD and 13.6 beta catalyst.
phill1978

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by phill1978 »

jdrs wrote:I run Maya XFCE and steam works fine. Although the "Connecting to steam" takes a lot longer now. I'm also using 6770HD and 13.6 beta catalyst.
Steam connects fast. It closes fast for me (perhaps dependant on speed i have a good connection) it will play games but closes when i click on an item in the store (recently tried clicking on the cubemen advert and it closes, you may want to try that)

the games performance is generally 'ok' but there is always something not quite right ATM. For example Trine 2 even on not the highest settings doesnt run smooth, its playable but there is frame latency (i.e low FPS) there is also a shadow glitch in certain areas and misses some of the smaller effects from its windows counter part.
counter strike is the only game that runs flawless out of the ones i have. Killing floor has terrible performance my card is faster than yours as its a Ati 5850.

I got many more cinnamon desktop crashes with the official driver, but not with the opensource? also firefox smooth scroll is not smooth with the official driver....

why i mention this is that i think as has been noticed by others that the official catalyst 2D performance is poor but this effects 3D games a lot because quite often assets in a game are 2D and this introduces lots of slow down smoke clouds. fire animations etc..

so as soon as AMD fix their 2D performance i think my games will be close to windows in performance :)

how many months/years that is away i cannot say :(
phill1978

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by phill1978 »

just to say my gaming days with mint have come to an end. I cannot fathom how easy it is for a minor update to trash a desktop entirely in Linux

for anyone who used to getting problems with mesa updates. Avoid the latest one, it blows everything away. I recommend sticking with Ubuntu (as much as overall Linux mint feels nicer :cry: )

damn you pointless update manager !
HarzVieh

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by HarzVieh »

Here is some good explanation from Bernd Lehahn, Managing Director, EGOSOFT GmbH, why he did choose Steam platform
in "Open letter regarding Steam and a few announcements."
[url]http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/201305_1_44News.html[/url]
RavenLX

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by RavenLX »

I think people will not like me if I say this but I'm a casual gamer so here goes:

I like the Shisen-Sho game and PySolFC. Thanks to PlayOnLinux I can play BigFish Games such as Fairway Solitaire and Burger Shop. And thanks to DOSBox I can enjoy old Atari and ActiVision games! I guess you can say I hate to give up the old stuff. I'm just glad Linux can run them.

I really don't play games too much, only when I need a break or am waiting on something else to finish.

I do like SuperTux2, Billiard-GL, and Enigma as well as KBounce. Just small games.

What I'd like to see is stuff like Candy Crush or Angry Birds on Linux!
HarzVieh

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by HarzVieh »

I think people will not like me if I say this but I'm a casual gamer
Why? Most people are like you.. :) that explains the rise of smartphones, people play in bus and train, and other places where they must wait..
I am not a core gamer too.. in fact I did play all the X games from Egosoft, that I consider as just one game steady developing over years. And earlier, I did play Alpha Cetrauri and Alien Crossfire from Firaxis Games. That's it.. and I play only in winter for long time, because of my apartment, it's really hot here in sommer, so I don't wanna produce even more heat with my PC..
RavenLX

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by RavenLX »

I guess what I meant to say was people may not like that I use Windows and DOS based games instead of Linux based. But that's because I still like some of these games and am glad they will run in Linux somehow.

I have quite a few casual games on my Android tablet too. I think you're right that many would be more into casual stuff due to mobile computing, etc.
Jessey Lawson
Level 3
Level 3
Posts: 105
Joined: Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:42 pm

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by Jessey Lawson »

Wine, I hate it. Games did not work on Mint 13 and I had to upgrate Mint 14 to get theme to work. The problum is that Wine can not dectect my grahics card, yet Linux Mint can at least 14 and up. 13 boots and freezes and nothing works. I don't know how to install Wine 1,6 and that ticks me off. Then you have little games on BSD, Hiaku, React OS, and Pure Darwin. I also tried the Darling project and I hope it will someday be better then Wine. You think that Linux would have a decent hearts game, but no. All we got is Gnome hearts. How come linux does not even have one card game better then windows. Oh then you have opencity. I mean come on no documentation, broken menu, and little devlopement just like Civitas, witch I was banned from its forum for trashing Windows.
Last edited by xenopeek on Sun Jun 30, 2013 2:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Swear words and bashing removed.
HarzVieh

Re: Gaming in Linux Mint!

Post by HarzVieh »

Wine, I hate it.
Jessey.. don't. See, the word "haesslichkeit" in German translates in English to "Ugliness" but the core of the word is "Hass" and it means "hate".. so the deep meaning of people's wisdom is: if you hate too long, you become ugly.. :|
I agree with you.. what Wine is trying to achieve is discribed in another wisdom from east europe.. they compare this situation, to a procedure, when a doctor pull your teeth trough your ass.. :lol:
About Steam:
it will play games but closes when i click on an item in the store
[url]http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/games/483802-flashplayer-steam.html[/url]
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