QuakeLive Game for Linux and Mac

Announced last week at QuakeCon 2009, the Mac and Linux versions of Quake Live is now active and can be accessed on your Apple or penguin-powered personal computer.

Just head on over to QuakeLive.com and register, download the plug-in, and get fragging. I loaded it up in Linux 3D OS and found it a little buggy. What is your experience with Quake Live on Linux Or Mac so far?

About Quake Live:

Quake Live is a browser plugin-based first person shooter video game developed by id Software, which first appeared in 2007. It is a variant of its predecessor, Quake III Arena, running a slightly updated version of this game's engine. The focus is on usability enhancements rather than graphical upgrades, including the plugin that runs compile code on the user's processor and a more streamlined heads-up display. Notably, this game doesn't make use of Adobe's Flash technology to run. Quake Live is free to play, as financial backing for this project comes from in-game advertising.

Don't expect any graphical wonders from this game; based on a title released in 1999, it's meant to have a quick and simple installation procedure for casual gaming or maybe aid team-bonding through lunch break tournaments.

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Sauerbraten / Cube 2

Sauerbraten, also known as Cube 2 or Sauer, is a partially (not all data is) open source Quake-like first-person shooter computer game that runs on Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. The game uses OpenGL and SDL, features single-player and multiplayer gameplay and contains a built in level editor.

Sauerbraten is a branch of the computer game Cube and expands its original concept.It shares most of design goals and philosophy with Cube, but is using a new 6-directional heightfield world model. This allows much more complex level geometry and easier editing. Much like the original Cube, the aim of this game is not necessarily to produce the most features & eyecandy possible, but rather to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game, to create fun gameplay and an elegant engine. The engine supporting the game is entirely original in code & design, and its code is Open Source (ZLIB license)

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition
Menu : Start > Games > Adventure > Sauerbraten

Among its new features added to the original Cube are:
* 3D floors (also known as Floor-over-floor)
* Editing Cubes on all six sides (including pushing/pulling faces/corners, etc.)
* Lightmaps (with shadows)
* New weapons (pistol and grenade launcher)
* New gamemodes (Capture)
* New physics (notably, grenades can bounce about)
* MD3 player-model support
* Pixel shaders
* Normal mapping
* dot3 lightmap / radiosity lightmap for normalmaps
* Separation of the gameplay and engine sourcecode
* Color coding for the console
* Better server control
* Voice announcer



Changes to the gameplay include the addition of two new weapons, the pistol and the grenade launcher. A new game mode, capture, has also been added. This mode is similar to the Domination mode in Unreal Tournament. Other gameplay changes include voice announcements for gameplay events and automatic team selection. A Browning 9 millimeter Hi-Power Ordnance pistol of the French Navy, 19th century, using a Percussion cap mechanism Derringers were small and easily hidden. ... A grenade launcher is weapon that fires or launches a grenade to longer distances than a soldier could throw by hand. ... Unreal Tournament, abbreviated UT, (sometimes referred to as UT99, UT Classic, UT1, or UT:GOTY to differentiate from Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Unreal Tournament 3 is a popular first-person shooter video game. ...


Some of the changes to the server include optimized networking code, server-side demo recording, and a "master mode" allowing players to control the server. A game server is a server used by game clients. ...


The game currently has singleplayer and multiplayer modes. Multiplayer functionality is possible with LAN, Local, and Internet play, which gets its server data from a master server. Online offers deathmatch, instagib, last man standing, and "capture" gameplay (where teams vie over control of points on the map), as well as online cooperative map editing, which is one of Sauerbraten's most interesting and popular features. There are also single player modes featuring both episodic gameplay and also deathmath on multiplayer maps with AI bots instead of human opponents over the internet.



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Elisa : All in One Media Center

The Elisa Media Center has many advanced features that will make your media center experience unique. It features an intuitive interface with a professional look and feel which can be easily used with a standard TV remote control.

Elisa is an open source media center connecting the Internet to an all-in-one media player. The Elisa Media Center has many advanced features that will make your media center experience unique. It features an intuitive interface with a professional look and feel which can be easily used with a standard TV remote control.

On the DVD : 3D OS Standard + Warnet Edition
Menu : Start > Multimedia > Elisa Media Center

Features:

• Movies - Watch your own movies and video clips as well as those found online.
• Music - Manage your music collection by artists or album covers.
• Peripheral Devices - Automatically detects iPods, cameras, hard drives, etc…
• Pictures - Watch your pictures with previews and nicely animated slideshows.
• Fully Networked - Elisa automatically finds media from other computers on your local network.
• Internet - Everything from Flickr to Youtube and other popular internet services.

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Second Life - Virtual World

Second Life : Live Your Virtual Life in a Virtual World

Second Life, established in 2002 by San Francisco based software company Linden Lab, is an alternative online game currently hyped by the media. It is based on fully customizable avatars evolving in a virtual 3D space and and incorporates a variety social networking tools. Joining is easy: You can sign up Second Life for free.

Users, called residents, create an alter ego and enter the scene as mere standard creatures. They then get to alter their avatar according to their wishes and preferences. In order to do so, Second Life residents pay any changes to their avatar or their environment with money - called Linden Dollars.

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition
Menu : Start > Games > Online > Second Life

Unlike in the real world, everything in Second Life can be created and altered according to your wishes. Be it your body or looks, real estate or clothing – sky is the limit. Second Life residents can use their avatars to wander around in the virtual landscape or may even be teleported to various Spots using a specific SLurl, a Second Life specific address.

They meet many new people and interact on various levels. Communication is a central element. Thus among the SL features you will find chat and messaging tools. Even private encounters – and (pseudo) sexual activities are possible. Everything can happen without the restrictions of the real life. Second Life is the perfect metaverse.



Linden Lab also created Teen Second Life targeted at adolescents from 13 to 17 as a response to many underage registrations. According to official Second Life statistics, about 3,5 million accounts have already been created with about 10% being weekly users.

Just like Ebay, Second Life seems to become a money generator for many of its members. More than 20,000 people actually earn more money than they spent inside the game: They create and sell items, clothes, houses – virtually everything you can imagine. It thus gives a certain twist to the entire game. Especially, because registration is completely free of charge.


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Step Mania - Dance Dance Revolution

StepMania is a rhythm video game.

It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's popular arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution, and has since evolved into an extensible rhythm game engine capable of supporting a wide variety of rhythm-based game types.

The player presses different buttons in time to the music and to note patterns that scroll across the screen.

On the DVD : 3D OS Game Center Edition

Menu : Start > Games > Arcade > Music > StepMania

Website : www.stepmania.com
Requirements : 64 MB of RAM, Video card with OpenGL drivers
Features include:

• Custom Songs ("Stepfiles"): StepMania allows users to create their own custom dance patterns to their favorite songs. The program includes a Step editor to aid the creation of the stepfiles
• Background animations: Support for many types of animations behind the arrows onscreen, including sprite-based animation sequences, a single full-motion video or multiple FMV visualization overlays
• Modifiers: Visual mods that affect the scroll of arrows and either increase or decrease difficulty. StepMania includes multiple modifiers featured in Dance Dance Revolution as well as dozens of additional modifiers created exclusively for StepMania.
• Multiple arrow types: Mines, Holds, Rolls, Lift
• Multiple game types, including partial simulation of other dance games like Pump It Up, ParaParaParadise and EZ2Dancer
• Real-time lyrics, which display on the opposite side of the screen for stepfiles that have accompanying lyric data
• Custom themes: users can create their own skins for Stepmania
• Dancing characters: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional character models that dance in the background according to a pre-defined routine.
• Network play: support for lobby-based online play, dubbed StepMania Online.
• Typically, users connect through the StepMania Online centralized server.
  

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PyTube - All in One Video Tool

PyTube - Search, Download and Convert Videos

Looking for an easy to use tool for downloading videos from YouTube ? You can use PyTube for this tasks. With PyTube, you can directly convert the downloaded video to various video formats.

PyTube allows you to search, download, and encode Online Videos. It also provides some unique features like inserting your own audio tracks into downloaded videos and creating custom ringtones for your cell phone.

On the DVD : 3D OS Standard + Warnet Edition
Menu : Start > Multimedia > Video > PyTube

Follow these step to search and download YouTube videos using PyTube :

1. Open your PyTube application from 3D OS.
2. Copy the YouTube video link to PyTube and start tthe download process.
   

Search for Videos

Download Videos

Convert video and audio

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"We're Linux" Video Contest Winners!

The wait is over! After receiving nearly 100 entries from all over the world, The Linux Foundation is exceptionally please to announce the winners and runners-up for the "We're Linux" Video Contest. These videos reflect the best of what was truly a global community effort with videos being submitted from Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

The winning video and the runners up were announced on April 8, 2009 at the annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. The winner of the "We're Linux" contest will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium, which will co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit, in October, 2009.

And now, the winners of the 2009 "We're Linux" Video Contest are :

Winner

What Does It Mean to be Free?

Amitay Tweeto lives in Bet Shemesh, Israel. The 25-year old freelance graphic designer and UI consultant entered this contest because he thinks Linux is suffering from bad PR. When people think of Linux they think "technical," gray stuff for programmers only. Amitay wants to let people get to know the other side of Linux, the flexibility they can get with no technical background. "That's the reason why I love Linux, it can be everything I want it to be."

Runner-Up #1

The Origin

Agustin Eguia is a 28-year-old Uruguayan native living in Brussels. He discovered Linux at the age of 14, thanks to people like his father Hugo Eguia, family friend Hugo Godoy, and the UYLug (Uruguayan Linux group). Agustin works in two fields quite different from each other. In the IT field, he handles server implementation (domain controllers, storage, render farms, dispatching computations, optimization), and networking, mostly for the stable income. The second field is the one that defines what he really loves to do and himself: art. Concept, design, animation, 3D, and VFX. He specializes in design, motion graphics, and 3d animation with a strong influence of dynamics, particles, and fluids.

Runner-Up #2

Linux Pub (with subtitles)

Sébastien Massé lives in Paris, France and is a graduate of the EICAR, The International Film School of Paris. He is an Audio-Visual Technician with a passion for film and television cinematography. Sébastien also devotes a lot of his time to the development of Table Ronde Films, a group that he created along with five other graduates of EICAR. The goal of Table Ronde Films is to encourage and help young artists implement their cinematic and artistic projects.

View all of the "We're Linux" Video Contest entries here.
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