FOSSwire

It's been some time since the last Games post here at FOSSwire. Free software isn't all work and no play, right?

We have briefly mentioned both subjects of this Games post before, in a round-up of 13 great open source games, but never in much detail.

Neverball

First of all, to Neverball.

If you've ever played a certain game containing the words Ball, Monkey and Super, but not necessarily in that order, you'll be right at home. The aim of the game is to direct the ball on screen to collect the coins and then get to the targeted exit.

You control the ball by moving the mouse, which tilts the 'board' and hence makes the ball move across it. It sounds simple, but on the harder levels quickly becomes challenging. If you tilt too much, the ball starts moving very quickly and is very difficult to precisely control!

It's a simple concept, dangerously addictive and it might even cause you to tear just a little bit of hair out at times.

Neverputt

Neverputt is based on the same engine and Neverball and is often packaged together with it. As the title suggests, however, Neverputt is a golf game.

To be more precise, it is more of a mini-golf/crazy golf game with an arcade feel. There are three different courses available, each varying in difficulty.

Again, the gameplay is refreshingly simple. You just aim the mouse in the direction you want to drive, pulling it back for more power and click to make your shot.

Of course, I mentioned 'crazy', so as you progress through, you will meet different obstacles which will make getting the ball into the hole a little more interesting.

Neverputt is personally my favourite of the two, especially when you make use of its hot-seat multiplayer feature. Just make sure you play alone for a while to get some practice first!

How and Where Can I Play?

Neverball and Neverputt should be available in almost all modern Linux distributions in one package called neverball. Search for that in the software management program and choose to install the package (or try clicking Install Now at the top if you're on that machine right now).

You will need a machine that is configured to have 3D acceleration enabled and a reasonable level of graphics horsepower, as both games make use of fancy OpenGL graphics.

Windows and Mac OS X versions can be downloaded from the Neverball website.

Interestingly, there's also a version of Neverputt available for the iPhone and iPod touch platform. It's not free (£0.59 here in the UK store or I'd imagine $0.99 in the US) but it is based on the open source Neverball engine and is created with full permission of the original author. It can be found on this iTunes Store link.

Apologies for the FOSSwire radio silence recently. I've been really really busy with university stuff. My Christmas break starts next week, so with any luck FOSSwire should get some more content over the festive period. Thanks for bearing with us!

The Amarok team have officially unveiled the 2.0 release of the popular open source music and media player application.

The world of digital music management has changed a great deal since the birth of Amarok four and a half years ago. Amarok 1 established a reputation for innovation, but maintaining development with the old framework became more difficult as Amarok grew, often in directions we never imagined.

Some of the things this new release brings to the table include:

• New user interface
• Integration with many online music services (Last.fm, Magnatune and others)
• New scripting API

Crucially, Amarok 2.0 is built against KDE 4, rather than KDE 3, making it an ideal music player for KDE 4-based desktops as it now runs natively.

There are also Beta versions of this 2.0 release available for other platforms as well - with Windows and Mac OS X versions available. The use of the Qt library underneath KDE means that the versions for these other systems integrate well (for example, Amarok 2.0 uses global menu bar when run under Mac OS X - so it 'feels like' any other Mac app).

I haven't yet had a chance to play with the new release, but you can read further release notes and download the 2.0 version from the Amarok site.

It's about time for another quick tip, and this one relates to the premier open source office suite, OpenOffice.org.

Using the built-in heading styles in your Writer document means that OOo can handle the styling automatically for you and also you can generate tables of contents and more with the built-in tools. Note that this tip assumes that all your headings are set up in this way.

In some documents, you might want or need to number your headings. Again, rather than typing numbers in each heading manually, you can set up your heading styles to number this for you.

This even works with hierarchy - your Heading 1 can be numbered '1' and a Heading 2 underneath it will then be '1.1', for example.

To set this up, first go to Tools > Outline Numbering.

In this dialogue box, simply pick the heading level on the left and then choose the numbering style you want from the Number box.

Repeat this process for any of the other heading levels (e.g. Heading 2, Heading 3). In this way you can quickly build up the hierarchical numbering system using whatever numbering style (1, I, i, a) you prefer. While you're here, you might want to go to the Position tab and change the minimum spacing between the numbering and the text of the heading so it isn't squashed up.

Once you've set your headings up the way you like, OK that dialogue. Any existing headings in the document will gain the numbers and future headings will be numbered as you've indicated. You won't have to bother manually renumbering things if you later decide to cut and paste something into a different place.

And if you're going to need this a lot, you could also save a template with this style already set up.

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