Fedora Daily Package - Friday Fun

Friday Fun: The Battle for Wesnoth - Strategy Game

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:01:00 -0400

The Battle for Wesnoth is a well-developed turn-based strategy battle game. It offers single-player, multi-player, and network modes and has a easy-to-use and engaging hextile user interface. It's a lot of fun to play -- but easily addictive.

What I find most impressive about this game is the size and activity of its community, which has developed extensive documentation, a built-in tutorial, nice artwork, a large number of maps, and a great soundtrack, and maintains very active forums and game servers. Open source at its best!

Note: The main package, wesnoth, appears in the Browse view of the Fedora 8 Pacakge Manager (Pirut), but don't miss the optional wesnoth-server and wesnoth-tools packages which do not appear in the Browse view -- these packages provide a network server and a game editor.

Thanks to Gayathri Swaminathan for suggesting this package!

Installing from the command line: yum install wesnoth
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > wesnoth
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Battle for Wesnoth
Command: /usr/bin/wesnoth
Upstream website: http://www.wesnoth.org/

Friday Fun: Quarry - Multi-purpose game board

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:01:00 -0500

Quarry is a multi-purpose graphical game board for playing Go, Amazons, or Reversi. By itself, it permits users to play against each other, but the addition of GTP (game text protocol) game engines such as gnugo or grhino enables play against the computer. Quarry's features include timed moves, timed games, the loading and saving of games in standard formats, annotations, game tree view, and more -- plus, of course, a nice graphic presentation of the game.

Adding a game engine is straightforward:

Find and install a suitable GTP engine for your game. Fedora includes gnugo (Go) and grhino (Reversi).
Determine the command line for the GTP engine which will start it in GTP mode:
- For gnugo: gnugo --mode gtp
- For grhino: gtp-rhino
Click the Preferences button in the Quarry Control window, then select GTP Engines, then click Add.
Enter the command line in the appropriate field. Click Add, then click Close to close the Preferences window.

You can then select the GTP engine as a player (or both players!) when setting up a new game.

Installing from the command line: yum install quarry
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available in the Browse view; use the Search or List views to install quarry
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Quarry
Command: /usr/bin/quarry
Upstream website: http://home.gna.org/quarry/

Thanks to cvr for suggesting this package! If you have a package you'd like to see covered, please suggest it using the form on the right side of the main page.

Friday Fun: ksudoku - Sudoku Game

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:01:00 -0500

I admit it -- I've never understood the appeal of Sudoku. But I'm the only person in my family -- or extended family -- who doesn't play it, so I'm plainly the odd man out.

Ksudoku is a Sudoku game included in Fedora. It can generate Sudoku puzzles and many variants, including Roxdoku (3D) and Samurai (5 overlapping grid) versions. These may be played online, or any of the 2D versions can be printed out for traditional cordless pencil-and-paper play.

Installing from the command line: yum install ksudoku
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > ksudoku
Menu location after installation: Games > ksudoku
Command: /usr/bin/ksudoku
Upstream website: http://ksudoku.sourceforge.net/

Friday Fun: Super Tux Kart - Go-cart racing game

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:01:00 -0500

Super Tux Kart is a simple but fun go-kart racing game (similar to some that you may have played on an older-generation game console). One or two players race against other cartoon drivers in a go-cart. This game features simple 3D graphics (using OpenGL), easy controls, and the option of picking up powerups and money along the course.

Installing from the command line: yum install supertuxkart
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > supertuxkart
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Supertuxkart
Command: /usr/bin/supertuxkart
Upstream website: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/

Friday Fun: Escape - Tile-based puzzle game

nospam@example.com (r.k.ryale) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Escape is a tile-based puzzle game where you must strategically plan maneuvers to reach the end of the level, which is shown as a little exit sign above a door. You must arrange the blocks with your player to safely reach the exit. Almost every level introduces a new obstacle or advantage, for example, in one level there is "hugbots" which move towards you how ever many spaces you move. There are also lasers, inacessable areas of the playing field, color-coated transportation systems and blocks with special properties.

Installing from the command line: yum install escape
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games > escape
Menu location after installation: > Applications > Games > Escape
Command: /usr/bin/escape
Upstream website: http://escape.spacebar.org/

Friday Fun: BZFlag - Capture-the-flag in a Tank

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:15:58 -0400

BZFlag is a team-based multiplayer 3D capture-the-flag game. You manouver your tank between pyramids and block buildings within a walled arena, shooting enemy tanks and collecting flags -- either to win the game (capture-the-flag mode) or to gain additional capabilities (free-for-all mode). You can play a local game on your LAN or compete against opponents on the Internet.

Installing from the command line: yum install bzflag
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games > bzflag
Menu location after installation: > Applications > Games > BZFlag
Command: /usr/bin/bzflag
Upstream website: http://bzflag.org/

Author's note: I posted an article about another package earlier today -- but accidentally chose a package from a 3rd-party repository. My apologies for any confusion caused, and a thank-you to Finalzone for pointing out the mistake.

Friday Fun: TaxiPilot - Drive a Space Taxi

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

TaxiPilot is a strange 2D game where you become the pilot of a space taxi in the year 4017. You must pick up and drop off passengers without landing on the passengers or crashing your vehicle. The faster you complete each trip, the more you make in tips, but inertia and gravity conspire against you. Comets, switches, doors, the gravity of secondary objects, and zooming obstacles all add to the challenge.

Written for KDE 3, TaxiPilot is loosely modeled after the SpaceTaxi game on the Commodore 64. A variety of missions are provided, ranging from ugly-but-helpful tutorials to beautiful, sometimes-humorous, and sometimes nearly-impossible levels contributed by several different authors.

Installing from the command line: yum install taxipilot
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > taxipilot
Menu location after installation: > Applications > Games > Taxipilot
Command: /usr/bin/taxipilot
Upstream website: http://taxipilot.sourceforge.net/

Friday Fun: Really Slick Screensavers

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

The Really Slick Screensavers (RSS) -- OpenGL screensavers originally developed on Windows -- have been ported to work with X and integrated into the GNOME and KDE screensaver systems. RSS provides a number of fun visual effects, but the most impressive is probably the Skyrocket fireworks hack, which provides a full helecopter view of a fireworks show complete with smoke, clouds, and stereo sound effects.

Since the screensavers have been integrated into the GNOME and KDE screensaver systems, there are separate packages for each of the desktop environments.

Installing from the command line: yum install rss-glx-gnome-screensaver OR yum install rss-glx-kde
Installing using the graphical installer: Desktop Environments > GNOME Desktop Environment > rss-glx-gnome-screensaver OR Desktop Environments > KDE (K Desktop Environment) > rss-glx-kde
Menu location after installation: > System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Screensaver OR Control Center then Appearance and Themes > Screen Saver
Command: (none)
Upstream website: http://rss-glx.sourceforge.net/

Friday Fun: Kbilliard - Billiard simulator game

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Kbilliards is a billiard game simulator. As the name implies, it's KDE-based. You can play against yourself, another user, or the computer. When you start a new game, you can also select "Training Mode", which enables you to move any ball to set up complex practice shots.

Unfortunately, Kbilliards doesn't appear to have any documentation or online help describing the controls; fortunately, play is simple:

Click anywhere on the table to set direction (or use the arrow icons on the button bar) -- a dotted line will be drawn from the cue ball to the location of your click (your invisible cue stick is assumed to be on the other side of the ball)
Right-click (or click on the cue ball icon on the button bar) to start the bar-graph meter in the button bar oscillating. Right-click or click the icon again to take the shot with the force currently indicated in the meter.

Installing from the command line: yum install kbilliards
Installing using the graphical installer: Desktop Environments > KDE (K Desktop Environment) > kbilliards
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Kbilliards
Command: /usr/bin/kbilliards
Upstream website: http://www.hostnotfound.it/kbilliards.php

Friday Fun: BSD-Games - Text games

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0400

In the 70's and 80's, many Unix systems came with several dozen text-based games and amusements. Some of these simply displayed cute animations on the screen (worms and rain); others provided hours of entertainment (wumpus and adventure). If you're feeling nostalgic or if you've never encountered these classic games, it's worth checking out the bsd-games package.

This package includes: adventure, arithmetic (arithmetic quiz), atc (air traffic controller), backgammon, battlestar, bcd (punched card emulator), boggle, bsd-fbg (tetris clone), caesar (caesar cypher frequency-based decoder), canfield, cfscores, cribbage, dab (dots and boxes), go-fish, gomoku, hack, hangman, hunt, mille (Milles Bornes), morse, mpoly (Monopoly), number, phantasia (rpg), pig (pig latin filter), pom (phase of the moon), ppt (paper tape emulator), primes, quiz, rain, random (prng via exit code), robots, rot13, sail, snake, snscore (snake scores), teachgammon, trek, vert-banner (vertical banner - large text writer), worm, worms, wtf (acronym expander), wump, and huntd (server for hunt).

Most of these games have a man page. Experiment and enjoy!

Installing from the command line: yum install bsd-games
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > bsd-games
Menu location after installation: Not applicable - run these games from the shell prompt in a terminal
Command: Many -- you can get a list with: rpm -ql bsd-games | grep bin
Upstream website: ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/games/

Friday Fun: Ri-li - Run a wooden train

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Do you remember having a wooden train set when you were little? Ri-li is a neat little amusement that will remind you of those days.

Playing Ri-li is simple: there's a wooden train set with a short train, and rail cars scattered around the track. As the train moves, you can set each switch to direct the train. You can only set the one switch in front of the train; to set other switches you must wait until the train passes the previous switch. Your goal is to collect all the rail cars, and the challenge is that each rail car you collect is added to your train, making it increasingly easy to run your train into itself.

This game is simple but very well executed. It runs in 18 different languages, has three speeds and many different levels, and has a classic simplicity (like Tetris or Same-gnome) that makes it a great way to pass time.

Note: Ri-li had an unusually high CPU utilization on a test system. If you're using this on a laptop, beware of the battery drain.

Installing from the command line: yum install Ri-li
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > Ri-li
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Ri-li
Command: /usr/bin/Ri_li (note: that's an underscore!)
Upstream website: http://ri-li.org/

Friday Fun: Stellarium - Software planetarium

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Stellarium provides an amazing, interactive planetarium experience on your Fedora system. Combining a catalog of more than 100,000 stars with landscape imagery, atmospheric effects, a lot of math, and OpenGL, Stellarium renders the sky in real time, with sufficient quality that it is used in some planetariums (and a line of planetarium projectors). You can select your location on earth, set the date and time, toggle the landscape and atmosphere on and off, and overlay planet, nebula, and constallation labels, costellation lines, and constellation artwork. If you have a telescope with an appropriate controller, you can even interface it to Stellarium.

Best of all, despite the huge feature list, Stellarium is easy to use and tons of fun!

Installing from the command line: yum install stellarium
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Educational Software > stellarium
Menu location after installation: Applications > Graphics > Stellarium
Command: /usr/bin/stellarium
Upstream website: http://stellarium.org/

Friday Fun: Ball: Buster - Breakthrough game

nospam@example.com (r.k.ryale) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0400

Ball: Buster is a game where the goal is to keep a ball bouncing off a paddle while trying to hit coloured blocks of varying strength. By varying strength, it means some blocks require numerous hits to make them fall. Also, when some blocks fall, there are little squares with different icons on them. If you also collect these with your paddle, they will do various things such as give you additional points, lengthen or shorten your paddle, give you extra balls (you have three tries/ three balls), give you four extra balls on your paddle, chang the type of ball, speed up or slow down the speed of the ball, etc. Once you've used up all your tries, you must start over. There are also different levels. The first level is just a square of blocks in the middle of the screen. The second level is a pyramid shape of blocks and the majority of the blocks are numerous hit blocks, and the levels get more and more difficult. This game is a very fast-paced game that keeps you alert and is a lot of fun.

Installing from the command line: yum install ballbuster
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games> ballbuster
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Ball: Buster
Command: /usr/bin/ballbuster
Upstream website: http://www.patrickavella.com/ballbuster.shtml

Friday Fun: Beneath a Steel Sky

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:36:50 -0400

Did you enjoy computer games back in the DOS or Amiga days? Here's your chance for some nostalgia!

Beneath a Steel Sky is a classic science fiction graphic adventure game that was originally released in 1994. It was made available as freeware in August 2003 and now works the the ScummVM game interpreter.

The graphics, designed with comic artist Dave Gibbons, have a real comic-book look to them, and the game has some great humour. The resolution is low by today's standards, but the game is a lot of fun to play, and has many interesting puzzles.

Note: Fedora 7 includes two versions of this game: beneath-a-steel-sky and beneath-a-steel-sky-cd. The CD version include an extended intro and features which are not present in the other ("floppy disk") version, and requires working sound, because character dialog is spoken instead of written. Your mileage may vary. For the backstory of both the game character and the software, see /usr/share/doc/beneath-a-steel-sky*/readme.txt.

Installing from the command line: yum install beneath-a-steel-sky (or beneath-a-steel-sky-cd)
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games > beneath-a-steel-sky (or beneath-a-steel-sky-cd)
Menu location after installation: Applications > Games > Beneath a Steel Sky
Command: scummvm -f -p /usr/share/beneath-a-steel-sky sky (use /usr/share/beneath-a-stell-sky-cd if you installed the CD version; substitute -F for -f to play in an window).
Upstream website: http://www.scummvm.org/ and http://www.revolution.co.uk/_display.php?id=16

Friday Fun: Fortune - Random wit & wisdom

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:38:12 -0400

For years, many Unix and Linux systems have greeted text-mode users with a piece of random wisdom or wit each time they log in. This daily smile is provided by the fortune program, which is in the fortune-mod package.

The actual database of sayings is stored in several files in /usr/share/games/fortune, divided into categories: for example, /usr/share/games/fortune/wisdom* contains "wise" sayings, and /usr/share/games/pets* contains quotes about pets (no lolcats, though!).

There is an additional package of sayings available: fortune-firefly contains sayings from the science-fiction TV series Firefly and the movie Serenity. This package doesn't show up in the graphical installer's browse tab, but you can find it on the search or list tabs or install it from the command line.

When you run the fortune program, it will randomly select one saying from the fortune files. You can select a short or long saying with the -s or -l options, and you can specify the message database on the command line:

$ fortune -s
$ fortune wisdom

You can also specify several databases, with a percentage probability for each. If you wanted a 90% chance of selecting a saying from Firefly and a 10% chance of selecting ASCII art:

$ fortune 90% firefly 10% ascii-art

To print a fortune each time you login (in text mode), add the fortune command to your ~/.bash_profile:

$ echo "fortune" >>~/.bash_profile

Or add it to /etc/profile so all users see a fortune:

# echo "fortune wisdom" >>~/.bash_profile

You can also use fortune to create a witty signature at the bottom of your outgoing e-mails. In Evolution, for example, you can do this by going into Edit > Preferences > Composer Preferences > Signature and clicking "Add Script". Enter "Fortune" for the name and "/usr/bin/fortune" as the script. Be aware that this will pick any random saying, which might not be appropriate for some correspondents; you may be better off creating a bash script that runs fortune with specific arguments (to select the fortune length and database) and using that script to generate your signatures (you could also add some echo statements to output additional text such as a separator line).

Installing from the command line: yum install fortune-mod
Installing using the graphical installer: Applications > Games and Entertainment > fortune-mod
Menu location after installation: (none)
Command: /usr/bin/fortune
Upstream website: http://www.redellipse.net/code/fortune