What about gaming on FreeBSD? [Archive]

paulfrottawa

December 1st, 2008, 20:54

At a forum I participate I was told this.

Gaming on any kind of "nix" is an exercise in futility. DirectX is windows only and OpenGL is becoming more irrelevant day after day.

Can anyone correct this

What kind of cool games can you play with Freebsd?

SPlissken

December 1st, 2008, 21:27

Well with wine you can play lot of game
Personnaly i play Warcraft III event in multi mode on Bnet

adamk

December 1st, 2008, 21:32

I've played doom3, quake4, Neverwinter Nights, and ut2004 on FreeBSD. There are other commercial games written for LInux that work fine on FreeBSD, and even various open source games. Most are available via the ports tree.

Adam

lme@

December 1st, 2008, 22:22

Jagged Alliance 2 just kicks ass!

dap

December 1st, 2008, 22:32

I only play OpenTTD (which is pretty good), I would also play Quake 3 if I had a suitable driver.
I quite agree on your quote, it's far easier to play games on Windows.

marius

December 2nd, 2008, 00:05

If I remember correct, Half Life 2 should work on Linux (and probably FreeBSD).

I thought people liked to run FreeBSD because they wanted a solid server or a nice workstation, but I see no reason for running FreeBSD if what you want to do is play games. Gaming isn't bad, it's not that, but why make things harder than necessary? There aren't many games out there for Linux/BSD. Anyway, Windows works fine for gaming, so that's what I use for that purpose.

To be honest I have no experience with gaming on FreeBSD. How well does it actually work?

Djn

December 2nd, 2008, 01:43

I play World of Warcraft in Wine, with ventrilo (also in wine) for voice chat. It's markedly slower than windows, but good enough, and that's perhaps illustrative of the role wine plays: It means I don't have to reboot just to do a WoW raid.

One thing openGL has going for it at the moment is that it's the only alternative on macs, and their market share is steadily (if ever so slowly) growing.

In an entirely different direction, OpenTTD is great.

rliegh

December 2nd, 2008, 01:51

To answer Marius' question -the biggest reason to use *BSD for gaming instead of Windows is because *BSD is a vastly more secure platform than Windows is. Even with anti virus and a firewall I can't escape the feeling that I've got a huge bullseye painted on me.

I haven't had a lot of luck -I've tried running Alien Arena (a 50's sci-fi styled FPS based on the quake 3 source) with no luck on 7.1-PRERELEASE. But the more I can do with FreeBSD, the less I need windows for -and that's less that I have to worry about crackers.

Eponasoft

December 2nd, 2008, 01:57

OpenGL is becoming more irrelevant day after day.
Umm...whatever. Whoever said that is a complete fanboy. OpenGL is only irrelevant if you're using Windows Vista. The majority of Vista installations are in business environments; Windows XP is still the dominant Windows OS for home users and will be for some time to come, much to Microsoft's dismay. OpenGL works wonderfully in Windows XP and, of course, in most flavors of Linux. Furthermore, current video game consoles also use OpenGL variants (exception: Xbox 360); I can even code in OpenGL on my Nintendo DS. Irrelevant? Hardly.

marius

December 2nd, 2008, 03:31

To answer Marius' question -the biggest reason to use *BSD for gaming instead of Windows is because *BSD is a vastly more secure platform than Windows is. Even with anti virus and a firewall I can't escape the feeling that I've got a huge bullseye painted on me.

I haven't had a lot of luck -I've tried running Alien Arena (a 50's sci-fi styled FPS based on the quake 3 source) with no luck on 7.1-PRERELEASE. But the more I can do with FreeBSD, the less I need windows for -and that's less that I have to worry about crackers.

There is nothing I want more than using a secure operating system, but at what cost... If I want to play I really just want to play, not configure and solve problems. Using an up to date version of Windows, with anti-virus and a firewall, should be decent enough for gaming. No one said that we had to have any "secret" or important documents or anything else on that Windows-computer :)

But of course, I do agree with you.

Dr_Phoenix

December 2nd, 2008, 07:51

The first game I play on FreeBSD is FreeCraft, it is so cool, have many innovated features, can create own large size maps with all units ever available in the game! Try it and remember old good WarCraft 2 ;))

tangram

December 2nd, 2008, 11:17

I play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (ET). It's an online team oriented world war II multiplayer game. Been playing it for over 5 years and is actually the only game I play when I have time (not much unfortunately).

You can get it at /usr/ports/games/linux-enemy-territory/. :D

MorgothV8

December 2nd, 2008, 15:47

Played Starcraft - Broodwar few times...
it was long time ago, using wine, and game was really slow but gaming was hardly possible

Elwood

December 2nd, 2008, 16:31

What's about /usr/ports/games/warzone2100 ? GPLed Game by EIDOS.
See also: http://wz2100.net/

Elwood

graudeejs

December 2nd, 2008, 17:28

OpenGL is becoming more irrelevant day after day.
That is nonsense.
OpenGL is used by HighTech design programs (cad/cam....)
for example i know for 100% that SolidWorks use OpenGL, i'm not 100% sure about MasterCam and AutoCad

As far as i know, OpenGL is much more preferred in commercial cad/cam software.
OpenGL will play important role in 3D as long as there is no better alternative

lazyBSD

December 2nd, 2008, 18:14

Funny time eater — games/bzflag.

http://bzflag.org/images/title.png

Djn

December 2nd, 2008, 18:40

Funny time eater — games/bzflag.

Hah, I think I have a copy of the IRIX version on my O2 :)

Dr_Phoenix

December 3rd, 2008, 08:02

Linx's Quake3 works very pretty on FreeBSD with linux_base enabled and Video Card OpenGL drivers installed, network playing supported great too...

kamikaze

December 3rd, 2008, 08:44

ioquake3 works very well, without the Linux stuff.

hugo

December 4th, 2008, 23:44

I play neverwinter nights, enemy territory, and quake 3. Also ran warsow for awhile.

arust

December 5th, 2008, 09:35

I play some emulator game on FreeBSD, like FC, SFC, MD

paulfrottawa

December 5th, 2008, 16:36

Thanks for answering this was very useful for another thread I started at thepeacearch (my favorite forum.

This place is good to but not for everyday politics and stuff.

hemi

December 8th, 2008, 09:40

There's an OpenArena port...I'm going to update it to the latest version sometime this week.

morbit

January 5th, 2009, 16:14

I recently installed OpenArena 0.8.1 from zip file, (http://openarena.ws/files.html , http://openarena.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_install_it_under_FreeBSD_.3F) runs nice on FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE, would prefer port installation though.

ale

January 5th, 2009, 17:40

I play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (ET).I was an ET player too. It's incredible how addictive it could be. I remember that I was able to spend 6+ hours playing it continuously. And sometimes I was playing a map or two before going to work. I was also in a clan but the server of my mates disappeared.
Unfortunately last time I checked I didn't find the servers where I was used to play.
Anyway I have installed
games/linux-quake4
games/linux-doom3
games/linux-rtcw
games/linux-enemyterritory
games/vavoom (doom1/2/final-hexen-heretic-strife)
games/quakeforge
games/ultimatestunts
but I also have
emulators/xmame (arcade games emulator)
emulators/vice (to feel nostalgia for the times when I was kid)

tangram

January 5th, 2009, 18:10

Yeah I also played competitively on a couple of clans but real life caught up eventually :D

Nowadays I just play it occasionally namely on 195.4.17.142:27960 which is http://enemy-territory.4players.de:1041/index.php game server and sometimes of Portuguese servers. I go by the name of tangram"FreeBSD~.

Also have installed RTCW and Quake3. On Linux I also used to play RTCW: Demo for a while and tried Tremulous which has a port I think.

jsa@

January 6th, 2009, 13:46

http://www.vendetta-online.com/

The Linux version runs smooth in emulation. I've been meaning to write a how-to for a while. It's really about as simple as your linux-base port, linux-gtk2, and the linux-dri. Doesn't matter which linux kernel you emulate or base port version you choose.

If enough people like it, help me show the head of the company (John Bergman aka Incarnate of Guild Software) that there is enough demand for a FreeBSD native version.

nakal

January 7th, 2009, 11:59

The best 3D-shooter I've ever played is Unreal Tournament (games/linux-ut (http://www.freshports.org/games/linux-ut)).

I played it regularly, but it's not possible anymore. :\ I have bought an RV630-based card and am waiting for DRM since a couple of months already. Fortunatelly, Mr. Robert Noland (who is my personal hero at the moment, see link to his email on freebsd-stable@ (http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=503772+0+current/freebsd-stable)) announced that he works at it and is waiting for the docs from AMD at the moment.

hugo

January 10th, 2009, 05:33

Yeah I also played competitively on a couple of clans but real life caught up eventually :D

Nowadays I just play it occasionally namely on 195.4.17.142:27960 which is http://enemy-territory.4players.de:1041/index.php game server and sometimes of Portuguese servers. I go by the name of tangram"FreeBSD~.

Also have installed RTCW and Quake3. On Linux I also used to play RTCW: Demo for a while and tried Tremulous which has a port I think.

Were you tangram GNU/Linux before? If that is so, I've seen you on the battlefields a couple of times :D

cajunman4life

January 10th, 2009, 18:19

I tried warzone2100 the other day, and during a battle it crashes. I'm going to run it through gdb when I get a chance and try to figure out why... but otherwise, this thread has been full of good ideas of games to try.

ter2007

January 11th, 2009, 10:57

I want to try the original Falcon 4. (wine). I have my doubts but you never know it might work. If it ever does work under wine, it will almost certainly run better than it ever did under Winblows 98.

tangram

January 11th, 2009, 22:30

Were you tangram GNU/Linux before? If that is so, I've seen you on the battlefields a couple of times :D

Yup :D

Those were the times I used Gentoo to play ET, nowadays it's tangram"FreeBSD~ ;)

You go by which nick?

ale

April 10th, 2009, 09:14

This has just been committed
games/rigsofrods

Looking at the video here http://www.rigsofrods.com/ , it looks funny, for a while

tangram

May 18th, 2009, 16:40

In an attempt to not this thread die... there's an HOWTO: Install and setup Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3754) over at the Howtos & FAQs (http://forums.freebsd.org/forumdisplay.php?f=39) corner of the forum ;).

Nokobon

May 18th, 2009, 17:00

In an attempt to not this thread die... there's an HOWTO: Install and setup Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3754) over at the Howtos & FAQs (http://forums.freebsd.org/forumdisplay.php?f=39) corner of the forum ;).

Soon I'm going to use PCBSD instead of openSUSE as desktop,
is there any difference between installing ET on standard FreeBSD and PCBSD?

tangram

May 18th, 2009, 17:34

I don't use PC-BSD so I'm not 100% sure whether there is already an ET PBI. If there is one use it, else the posted HowTo should work just fine.

Nokobon

May 18th, 2009, 18:02

Okay, I'll see.
And thank you for the HowTo!

tangram

May 18th, 2009, 18:16

No problem ;)

My pleasure.

Crestfallen

May 28th, 2009, 17:27

World of Warcraft runs with 50+ FPS

AMD Athlon 3600
1.5 GB DDR2
Nvidia GeForce 5700FX

copypaiste

June 23rd, 2009, 07:56

I used to run windows psx emulator in wine to play Metal Gear Solid. It preforms better than linux version of ePSXe from ports. Wine, dosbox and scummvm are enough to play some good ol' games like Nox, Rune, Scorched earth and various adventures ^_^v

amdmi3@

July 21st, 2009, 19:35

(after adding 3 more games to ports)

If you ask me, FreeBSD is an excellent gaming platform. Emulators for many many gaming platforms, dosbox and wine (now also virtualbox), Linux binary support and of course extensive collection of native (f/oss) game ports which I and many other committers and contributors are trying best to keep up to date and expand even further.

There are some problems, of course, but these mostly originate from proprietary hardware/software, not FreeBSD itself, and I believe will be solved rather sooner than later.

Also see my games-related page on wiki:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/DmitryMarakasov/Games

ericturgeon

July 22nd, 2009, 06:34

When I have time to play I shooters game like:
games/sauerbraten
games/cube
games/nexuiz
games/quake3
games/alienarena
games/linux-quake4

and sometime I play games/warsow.

drhowarddrfine

July 22nd, 2009, 15:37

The majority of Vista installations are in business environments;

Whenever anyone brings up games on BSD, and that they can't play Windows games or as many games as Windows, makes me say the same thing. The majority of BSD installations are in business environments and BSD is for professionals. If you want to play games, get a Playstation.

gr1ml0ck

August 10th, 2009, 04:08

COUNTER STRIKE SOURCE + WINE * FREEBSD = FTW!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been a player of CS since beta and can't have a computer that wont play it in my house!!!

On an Asus M50sv in 64bit Windows I get 145 fps in max settings.
On an Asus M50sv in 64bit Linux I get 30 fps in max settings.
On an Asus M50sv in i386 FreeBSD CURRENT I get 140 fps using wine with everything maxed out and running in windowed mode 1440x900!!!!!

Audio works, I don't random crashes anymore. The whole wine project is slowly becoming polished enough to handle these windows games.

I would find it hard to truly enjoy any computer system which limits my abilities to have fun.. even if it does mean that I have uber stability and power.. I want both pies.. and that cake over there.. in fact.. just push the trolley this way and i'll eat the lot!!! ROFL!!