What about gaming on FreeBSD?

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?
 
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
 
Jagged Alliance 2 just kicks ass!
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
&quot said:
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.
 
rliegh said:
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.
 
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 ;))
 
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
 
Code:
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
 
Funny time eater — games/bzflag.

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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.
 
tangram said:
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)
 
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