Exploring free Linux Games

There is a whole bunch of free games available on Linux, the amount of which is quite shocking. Didn't really try too many though, but two of those that I have, are quite interesting. The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn based strategy game with ports for both windows and linux. It reminds me of this old Sega strategy called Warsong (aka Langrisser). Graphics are 2D, not to shabby, and it is highly addictive. Bad bad!

Another interesting nugget is FreeCiv - a free version of well... Civilization! I found it amusing when one of the default names you will play as could be an "Ah Beng" or "Ah Lian" lol! You can of course play one of the more historic figures like Sir Stamford raffles or one of the prime ministers/presidents.

Have fun on linux! It's great for killing time when watching sims :P

I got a flute!

Several posts earlier, I mentioned about Ultima 5 Lazarus, and the music for it has been so fantastic. It is great to relieve a lot of the Ultima 6 music in such high quality. I have also tried to replicate music I enjoy, such as Greyson's Tale on my Native American Flute, but it's chromatic scale is slightly off tune. I don't think it's designed to be a such an instrument anyway, so I decided to get a western concert flute i.e. the one above to see if I can pick it up.

Well for a start, it's a pain! Lol. Literally. I haven't got my finger positioning and posture correct, and my thumb hurts. It's probably that because I'm learning on my own based on what I can glean from home pages on the web =)
I'm also needing to build up my breath capacity =) I thought my plastic NAF was using up a lot of air, but this little puppy needs a whole lot more! Again, probably because of my n00biness.

If not, as of last night I was practicing from C-G, will try A to hi C tonight =)

Siggraph in 2 weeks! Woot!

Just home - and wireless works!

Well it's not too much of a surprise I guess, but I had zero luck getting Edgy to work in wireless. One of the reasons I didn't use it too much. But with Feisty, the moment I got home, I just input my password, encryption type and network name, BAM! I'm in. Friggin' cool. I didn't even have to edit my /etc/network/interfaces file. I also got msn/aim capabilities via Pidgin, also installed with the OS. Everything is slowly coming together =)

GallenWolf: Now on Ubuntu 7.04 :-)

Woo! I'm digging Ubuntu 7.04 - as of this post, I'm in a transition period between XP and Ubuntu :P Running fluid sims at the office, and there's only so much one can take Mario Kart on the DS. So I brought my lappy today to the office whilst sims are running. It's 9pm here, btw :P

Let's see... MP3s are playing fine, mail's fine, blog's fine, got my graphic drivers installed, figured out how to disable the touchpad, youtube works...DOSBOX WORKS! Life is good :) What's left is to get some IM software installed and see if the GIMP is up to photoshop, and of course, install Houdini, 64 bit :-)

PS: Ubuntu is a flavour of Linux in case you are curious.

The only thing to make it better if someone would give me 4gbs of ram lol :)

Switching to Linux?

I had the opportunity to learn how to setup a dual boot windows/linux system from one of our masta sys admins here with his l33t methods and crazy vi skillz. I actually have Ubuntu 6 on an external drive that I boot into, but without knowledge of drivers, how to configure wireless etc. totally put me off. So now, I can't wait for siggraph to be over and I can setup my system to dual boot into linux! The reason? Performance! Crazy performance.

My sys admin also gave me this cool link that I thought I'd share:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32967/113/

Yesterday I also cleaned out my laptop's fan with some canned air. Helps so much with my fingers getting hot lol. Do if you lappy is getting hot, clean it out :)

Still alive and sorta kicking

So... nothing new to post. I'm just basically on my way to check out another siggraph paper, of which the link is on the left side of the blog on my CG Resources section =) With less than a month to Siggraph 07, things are getting rather hectic at work. I am currently working on 3 separate projects (!!!), two at work, and one at home, all for siggraph. All this keyboard banging is getting some stuff working, and I hope to post more about what I'm working on after Siggraph. Till then!

Ultima V: Lazarus

With Siggraph quickly approaching, I'm up to my ears in work, and as I write this I just finished learning some new Houdini tidbits. Remember on July 10th you guys get your paws on this piece of software!

Anyways, during my break I suddenly had the urge to listen to the Ultima V soundtrack... duh is there one? Who know, I had to search for it! Well the first hit was.... Ultima 5: Lazarus? Was this some kind of re-release by Origin or? Nope! Evidently many fans of the game have banded and re-released an updated version of Ultima V based on the Dungeon Siege engine. You do need Dungeon Siege to play it though, so perhaps after Siggraph, I'll check it out. In the meantime, the soundtrack for Lazarus is freely available for download (!!). So for anyone that still remembers rescuing Lord British with thy Avatar, go for it! (Me? I only won U5 once......anyone wanna go steal magic carpets and dodge gargoyles? :-) )

http://lazarus.planetdungeonsiege.gamespy.com/index.php