422 lines
13 KiB
HTML
422 lines
13 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
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<HTML
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><HEAD
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>Definitions: Types Of Games</TITLE
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>The Linux Gamers' HOWTO</TH
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT1"
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><H1
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CLASS="SECT1"
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><A
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NAME="DEFINITIONS"
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></A
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>2. Definitions: Types Of Games</H1
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><P
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>Not everyone knows the different types of games that are out there, so in an effort to form
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a common language that we can all use, I'll run through each game type and provide a very brief
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history.</P
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="ARCADE"
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></A
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>2.1. Arcade style</H2
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><P
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>Although arcade games had their heydey in the 80's, they are nonetheless very popular.
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Nothing will ever replace walking into a dark, crowded and noisy arcade gallery, popping a
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quarter into your favorite machine and playing an old fashioned game of Space Invaders.
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Arcade style games attempt to simulate the arcade games themselves. There is such a vast
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number of these things that it's nearly impossible to enumerate them all, but they include
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clones of Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Missile Command and Galaxian.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="CARDBOARD"
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></A
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>2.2. Card, logic and board games</H2
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><P
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>Computer based card games simulate a card game like poker or solitaire. The program can
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simulate your opponent(s).</P
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><P
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>Logic games usually simulate some well known logic puzzle like Master Mind or the game
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where you have put sliding numbered tiles in order inside a box.</P
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><P
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>Computer based board games simulate some kind of board game you'd play on a table top
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with friends, like monopoly, Mille Bourne, chess or checkers. The program can simulate your
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opponent.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="INTERACTIVEFICTION"
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></A
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>2.3. Text Adventure (aka Interactive Fiction)</H2
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><P
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>Once upon a time, when Apple ][, Commodore, and Atari ruled the world, text adventures
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were the game of choice of `intelligent folk'. You are given a scenario and can interact with
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the world you're placed in:</P
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><TABLE
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BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0"
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WIDTH="100%"
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><TR
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><TD
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><FONT
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COLOR="#000000"
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><PRE
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CLASS="SCREEN"
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> You are in a room. It is pitch dark and you're likely to be eaten by a grue.
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> Light lantern with match.
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You light the lantern. This room appears to be a kitchen. There's a table with a
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book in the center. You also see an oven, refrigerator and a door leading east.
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> Open the oven.
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In the oven you see a brown paper bag.
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> Take the bag. Open the bag. Close the oven.
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Inside the bag is a some garlic and a cheese sandwich. The oven door is now closed.
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</PRE
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></FONT
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></TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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><P
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>Back then, text adventures were self contained executables on a disk or casette. These
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days there's usually a data file and an interpreter. The interpreter reads data files and
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provides the gaming interface. The data files are the actual game itself, similar to the
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relationship between first person shooters (<A
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HREF="definitions.html#FPS"
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>Section 2.7</A
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>) and <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>wad</TT
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> files.</P
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><P
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>The first adventure game was Adventure (actually “ADVENT”, written on a
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PDP-1 in 1972). You can play Adventure yourself (actually, a descendent); it comes with
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“bsd games” on most Linux distros. Text adventures became popularized by Scott
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Adams (<A
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HREF="interpreters.html#SCOTTADAMS"
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>Section 11.5</A
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>) and reached their height of popularity in the late 80's
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with Infocom (<A
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HREF="interpreters.html#INFOCOM"
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>Section 11.4</A
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>) which are also playable under Linux.</P
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><P
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>As computer graphics became easier and more powerful, text adventures gave rise to
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graphic adventures. The death of commercial interactive fiction more or less coincided with the
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bankruptcy of Infocom.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="GRAPHICALADVENTURE"
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></A
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>2.4. Graphical Adventures</H2
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><P
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>Graphical adventures are, at heart, text adventures on steroids. The degree to which
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they use graphics varies widely. Back in the 80's, they were little more than text adventures
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which showed a screen of static graphics. When you picked up an item, the background would be
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redrawn without the item appearing. The canonical example would be the so-called `Hi-Res
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Adventures' like The Wizard And The Princess. Later on, the sophisticated graphical
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adventures had your character roaming around the screen, and you could even use a mouse, but
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the interface remained purely text.</P
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><P
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>Next there are the `point and click adventures' which basically have no text interface
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at all, and often have dynamic graphics, like a cat wandering around the room while you're
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deciding what to do next. In these games, you point at an object (say, a book) and can choose
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from a pull-down list of functions. Kind of like object oriented adventuring. :) There
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aren't many graphical adventures written natively for Linux. The only one I can think of is
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Hopkins FBI (which happens to be my favorite game for Linux).</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="AEN98"
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></A
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>2.5. Simulation (aka Sims)</H2
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><P
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>Simulations strive to immerse the player behind the controls of something they normally
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wouldn't have access to. This could be something real like a fighter jet or something
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imaginary like a mechanized warrior combat unit. In either case, sims strive for
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realism.</P
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><P
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>Some sims have little or no strategy. They simply put you in a cockpit to give you the
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thrill of piloting a plane. Some are considerably complex, and there's often a fine line
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between sims and strats (<A
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HREF="definitions.html#STRATEGY"
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>Section 2.6</A
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>). A good example would be Heavy Gear III
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or Flight Gear. These days sims and strats are nearly indistinguishable, but a long time ago,
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sims were real time while strats were turn based. This is awkward for modern day use, since a
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game like Warcraft which everyone knows as a strat, would be a sim by definition.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="STRATEGY"
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></A
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>2.6. Strategy (aka Strats)</H2
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><P
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>Strategy games have their roots in old Avalon type board games like Panzer Leader and
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old war strategy games published by SSI. Generally, they simulate some kind of scenario. The
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scenario can be peaceful, like running a successful city (SimCity), or not, like illegal
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drug selling operation (DrugWars) or an all-out war strategy game like Myth II. The types
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of games usually take a long time to complete and require a lot of brainpower.</P
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><P
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>Strats can be further divided into two classes: real time and turn based. Real time
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strats are based on the concept of you-snooze-you-lose. For example, you're managing a city
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and a fire erupts somewhere. The more time it takes for you mobilize the fire fighters, the
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more damage the fire does. Turn based strats are more like chess---the computer takes a turn
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and then the player takes a turn.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="FPS"
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></A
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>2.7. First Person Shooter (aka FPS)</H2
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><P
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>What light through yonder window breaks? It must be the flash of the double barreled
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shotgun! We have a long and twisted history with FPS games which started when id Software
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open sourced code for Doom. The code base has forked and merged numerous times. Other
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previously closed engines opened up, many engines are playable via emulators, many commercial
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FPS games were released for Linux and there are quite a number of FPS engines which started
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life as open source projects. Although you may not be able to play your
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<EM
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>favorite</EM
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> FPS under Linux (Half-Life plays great under winex) Linux
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definitely has no deficiency here!</P
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><P
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>First person shooters are characterized by two things. First, you pretty much blow up
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everything you see. Second, the action takes place in first person. That is, through the
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eyes of the character who's doing all the shooting. You may even see your hands or weapon at
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the bottom of the screen. They can be set in fantasy (Hexen), science fiction (Quake II),
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present day `real world' (Soldier Of Fortune) and many other settings.</P
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><P
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>Like text adventures, FPS fit the engine/datafile format. The engine refers to the
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actual game itself (Doom, Quake, Heretic2) and plays out the maps and bad guys outlined by the
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datafile (<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>doom2.wad</TT
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>, <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>pak0.pak</TT
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>, etc). Many FPS games
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allow people to write their own non-commercial datafile. There are hundreds, even thousands
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of non-commercial Doom datafiles that you can download for free off the net. Often, companies
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release their engines to the open source community so we can hack and improve them. However,
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the original data files are kept proprietary. To this day, you still have to purchase
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<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>doom.wad</TT
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>.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="AEN116"
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></A
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>2.8. Side Scrollers</H2
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><P
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>Side scrollers are similar to FPS but you view your character as a 2D figure who runs
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around various screens shooting at things or performing tasks. Examples would be Abuse for
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Linux and the original Duke Nukem. They don't necessarily have to be violent, like
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<SPAN
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CLASS="APPLICATION"
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>xscavenger</SPAN
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>, a clone of the old 8-bit game Lode Runner.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="AEN120"
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></A
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>2.9. Third Person Shooters</H2
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><P
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>Similar to FPS, but you view your character in third person and in 3D. On modern third
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person shooters you can usually do some really kick-butt maneuvers like Jackie Chan style back
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flips and side rolls. The canonical example would be Tomb Raider. On the Linux platform, we
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have Heretic 2 and Heavy Metal FAKK2.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECT2"
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><A
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NAME="RPG"
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></A
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>2.10. Role Playing Game (aka RPG)</H2
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><P
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>Anyone who has played games like Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu knows exactly
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what an RPG is. You play a character, sometimes more than one, characterized by traits (eg
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strength, dexterity), skills (eg explosives, basket weaving, mechanics) and properties
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(levels, cash). As you play, the character becomes more powerful and the game adjusts itself
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accordingly, so instead of fighting orcs, at high levels you start fighting black dragons.
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The rewards increase correspondingly. At low levels you might get some gold pieces as a
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reward for winning a battle. At high levels, you might get a magic sword or a kick-butt
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assault rifle.</P
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><P
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>RPG's generally have a quest with a well defined ending. In nethack you need to
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retrieve the amulet of Yendor for your god. In Ultima II, you destroy the evil sorceress
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Minax. At some point, your character becomes powerful enough that you can `go for it' and try
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to complete the quest.</P
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><P
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>While the insanely popular Ultima series, written by Richard Garriot (aka Lord British)
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for Origin, was not the first RPG, it popularized and propelled the RPG genre into mainstream.
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Ultima I was released in 1987 and was the game that launched 9 (depending on how you want to
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count them) very popular sequels, finishing with Ultima IX: Ascension. You can play Ultima
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VII under Linux with Exult (<A
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HREF="interpreters.html#EXULT"
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>Section 11.7</A
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>).</P
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><P
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>The canonical RPG on Linux is Rogue (the ncurses library started life as a screen
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handling routine for Rogue!) and it has infinite variants like Zangband and Nethack (which has
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many variants itself). Some RPG's are quite complicated and great feats of programming.
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There seems to be a deficiency of commercial RPGs for Linux. Not counting the rogue variants,
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there's also a deficiency of open source RPGs too.</P
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