3D games with substance

http://www.alientrap.org/index.php?module=zymotic
still not released though... and for quite a long time

That's a good candidate. It says it will be released somewhere next year.

Though, personally, less killing and more exploration would be great while Zymotic is all about war..

I'd also like to see GNU/Linux game developers use their skills on entertaining AND educational stuff. But they are catering to the market served by proprietary games focused on violence. There's not much money in other categories. Almost every kid I see playing on a computer is blowing up or hacking somebody.

I often ask myself, where's the GNU/Linux spirit of making things better when it comes to game development. Sure, they've produced better graphics but does it have a positive impact on the development of the GNU/Linux community at large?

So what? They're just games.

A free game with a deep plot, like a Legend of Zelda, would be fun in addition to the raw action games.

Well, yeah they're just games, and blowing stuff up occassionally can be a good way to relieve stress (unless you really get too excited and actually get even more stressful because of it).

10cents has a point about trying to focus more on different themes though. I think non-violent games can be made just as exciting as violent ones, if done right. People collaborate on writing stories using wikis. Maybe the same approach could be used for writing game stories and plots, and then just convert these into code and graphics.

One game I absolutely loved when I was on Windows is Black & White, not just because you are playing a "god" in that game, but because of realism, stories, plots, the drama. It was quite epic. A good example of a same spirited game that is available as Free Software on GNU/Linux is a Star Control 2 clone called "The Ur-Quan Masters". It's graphics are stuck in 95, but the story is fantastic. If we just combine these beautiful graphical engines with some real epic drama I think we'd get a winner.

Speaking of old graphics, there should really be a StarCraft clone. Not just alike, but clone. That game was perfect, except for being nonfree. It's so great it's pretty much the national sport of South Korea ten years after its release.

I haven't played StarCraft, though I heard of some "alike" games. Actually I wasn't in the computer field before 2000 so I missed on quite a bit. I was introduced to Star Control through the only game I bought in my life, Star Control 3, for my PowerMac 7300 (pre-G3).

Anyway, looks like the old games a treasures to learn from, and build on something incredible by combining their wit with todays graphics and hardware capabilities.

Yes, old games are really great, and I still like playing some of them.
Just recently I wrote some articles about that topic on my german blog (for whoever understands and is interested: http://www.tutorials.de/blog/dennis-wronkas-blog-6278/ ) and plan to translate them soon and also post them here to get my little blog here going too. Also the text about EnGarde I posted there is a translation from that german blog.

What I play recently is OpenTTD, it's free, but used non-free data from Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
Same with other engines I use, like Exult and Pentagram for Ultima 7 and 8.

On totally free games I just recently installed Torcs (which is quite fun for a little bit of racing) and Widelands, a free clone of "The Settlers".

Yesterday I installed FreeDOS in QEmu to try around with some other old games like Bioforge, which was a great game at it's time.

Probably my most favorite old game might be Ultima 7. The Ultima-series is a great series of RPGs, and so far I didn't find any other RPG as exciting as Ultima, not even Knights of the old Republic, which was actually pretty good, but still not as good as Ultima.

Well, I'll see that I get my posts translated and ready for my blog here.

Well I don't really play many Linux games but I feel the best idea is to use TransGaming's Cadega software to play Windows games on Linux...I do it all the time...and they run pretty well in my opinion.

They may be running fine, and there sure are some excellent games there, but I prefer not to use restrictive software. Free games with the free source code have the benefit of freedom and hence ability to build even better things on it. In time, I'm sure GNU/Linux and FOSS crowd will be able to produce games that will outrun anything from the proprietary world.

I googled for game addiction, there are 6,860,000 resulting pages, for game violence, there's 35,900,000 results. Not very scientific but the astounding amount of information out there on game violence and addiction (may not be related) does points out that these are not just games...

Making a "clone" would be difficult. There was a clone out there called FreeCraft, but that pissed off WarCraft and StarCraft developers a-like because of it's relevancy to their game in question.

Look at freecraft now. Dead. Thanks to propriatary, they got pissed off and sued FreeCraft developers and closed the project completely.

I do agree with Libervisco that there are many FPSes and not many in the other categories.
I love FPS but I know a lot of people that want better RTS and MMORPG which obviously revolves around the Red Alart,Age of Empires, and WarCraft.

I've found a few RPGs for the linux platform but I've always found that they're not OSS. Free, but not open-source software. I haven't played them because I haven't found the motivation to go and install it and I doubt the fact that it's closed-source will stop me but it feels lame installing it. The two that I'm talking about are called Regnum and PlaneShift. PlaneShift is actually quite popular. Regnum is a FPS/RTS/RPG hybrid which is quite interesting.

There are a few RTS clones out there such as FreeCraft and FreeRA but I haven't tried them either as FreeCraft is dead and FreeRA requires me to get my original CDs which I'm too lazy to do. :/
There's a few others but I have forgotten them.

A really nice racing game besides TuxRacer and SuperTuxKart which is a lot more realistic is VDrift. Quality game; not for the noobs. Oh, and there's also TORCS which is quite popular.

But back to FPS, we're in real need for a CS[:S] and Half-Life-like game.

By the way, Odamex is an amazing ever-growing DOOM port. Odamex.net is their site and if you happen to have the iwad files, go try it out! I love it. It's the best multi-platforming, fully F/OSS simplified-online DOOM port.

Anyway, that's my 2 bucks worth of stuff. Whether that was actually useful, It's there.

I agree with everything you say there.. Half-life and CS like games is what I mean by FPS with some substance (a story line, adventure etc.). Let's hope Zymotic delivers something like that. I alos like TORCS. It's easy to install and easy to play.

Regarding online multiplayer I'm not really up for it yet because of the nature of my connection (and I don't forsee that changing anytime soon), except for multiplayer with my sisters, if they ever wish to play..

Anyway, things are constantly moving and besides AlienTrap's Zymotic we may yet see some new story games too.. It should be on HappyPenugin.org.

Cheers

Alientrap are looking for experienced level designers and 3D artists for zymotic, see Helpwanted

What I really miss are RPGs (not MMORPGs!) like Ultima, which take you into a huge world with huge possibilities. I love the Ultima-series and it's by far the best RPG-series I've ever tried. It's actually one of the two I've really played (the other one that I found good enough was Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic).

Isn't TuxRacer non-free now? Isn't the free code just some old remnant of what became a non-free game? I think I remember having read something like that quite some time ago.
Torcs is a cool and fun game, though it could use some nicer graphics.

Odamex so far doesn't look very interesting to me. It seems to be in a very early stage and it looks like the original Doom (which isn't a bad thing, it's just nothing new).
For Doom 1 and 2, and other games on that engine, I use PrBoom, which has more or less the same features as Odamex lists down. For mapping I use Yadex and BSP.

TuxRacer is complicated. Its Wikipedia article explains it well.

Odamex is growing a lot further than it is now.
Be prepared to see a lot in the next few months. :]

They plan to implement map compatibilty with Skulltag and ZDaemon map formats. This probably means more to people who have migrated from ZDaemon and Skulltag though. :/