FOSSwire

Today I have for you something guaranteed to lower your productivity:

Wesnoth.

This game is one of those free software apps that is of the quality of a proprietary application. Wesnoth is essentially a MO-RTS (multiplayer online real-time strategy) game. It offers two modes: campaign and multiplayer.

In campaign mode, you can pick a storyline from those installed to play. You then are able to play the game in multiplayer style, but with CPU-controlled opponents. It is all turn based, and progresses as follows:

1. You recruit units.
2. You move units.
3. Your units fight the enemy team(s).
4. End of your turn, at which point the opponent teams can have a turn.

The game continues in that style until your leading unit dies or you complete your objective. Wesnoth really sets itself apart in the fact that it throws many wrenches into your plans. There are times when stepping into a certain area can completely flip the status of the game, either in a good way (easier modes) or bad (harder modes). Like many RTS games, it offers day and night. Depending on the campaign or mode you select, you can get added bonuses depending on the time of day, which forces you to plan ahead.

On top of all of the features it offers with its official campaign modes, there are user-made campaigns that can be downloaded into your install without ever having to leave the game. You simply click "Get Addons" and it will connect to the server where you are able to pick from an extensive list of campaigns, maps, and even characters. As soon as you download the addon, it is instantly playable.

The multiplayer mode is simplistic for the most part; you can network multiple Wesnoth games across PCs, play hotseat style, or create your own multiplayer games against CPU opponents. You can also go into online play, which is one of the key features that keeps this game popular. As long as you have the latest version of Wesnoth installed you can connect to the server and play against people from around the world for free without the need for an account. (Ubuntu users: the latest version of Wesnoth is not available in Dapper or Edgy, so the online servers will not let you in. You can manually install Wesnoth or wait for Feisty 7.04 to be released to get the latest version.)

No matter what OS you use, you can get Wesnoth completely free. You can either download it from Wesnoth.org, or use your system's preferred package manager. You may have to install a package ending in "music" or "sounds" to get all of the sound effects and game music; quite a big download but worth it to get the full experience of the game.

One last thing: make sure you don't have any plans this week if you are getting this game. Beware.

Frozen Bubble, a game similar to Bust a Move, has recently released version 2.0 of the game. The new release features multiplayer play, online play, updated graphics, and revamped background music. It truly is a great game for Linux, so if you don't have it yet, go download it now.

But wait. There is just one problem: Frozen Bubble 2.0 hasn't been put into any major supported software repository yet. Ubuntu and Debian still carry an older version. We're here to fix that. (Note: this tutorial is Ubuntu specific, but may be adapted for any APT based distribution.)

I attempted to compile this version myself and post how I did it, but that didn't seem to go too well. FB 2.0 requires a library (a file required by the game) that doesn't exist in the repositories yet. Doing a little bit of searching, I came across some repositories that have all of the required files available:

Start out by pressing Alt+F2. A window will pop up, asking for a command.

You will need to type the following, and then press Enter.

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Another window will open; type in your password to continue.

You will now see a window with a bunch of lines that start with deb. This is called the APT Repository List. I'm not going to go into detail here, this will most likely be covered in another tutorial.

Go to the bottom of the file. Depending on your version of Ubuntu, you will need to add a line to the bottom of the file.

If you are using Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10), add this line:

deb http://thomas.enix.org/pub/debian/packages edgy main

If you are using Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS), add this line instead:

deb http://mirror.randumb.org/darkmagez/repo dapper-darkmagez games

Once you have one of the lines added, save and close the file. Now we have to tell APT to update the list of programs it has. If you like to use the terminal, you can do this with a simple

sudo apt-get update

You can also do this by opening Synaptic (System > Administration > Synaptic) and hitting reload. Regardless of the method you chose, it will complain about a bad GPG key. I'm not going to cover how to fix that, it is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Ignore the error for now.

Using Synaptic or the terminal, install the package frozen-bubble. It will complain about the package not being verified again; just ignore the error. Once it is installed, you can access it from Applications > Games > Frozen Bubble. Have fun!