Why? The client seems to work fine for the first five to ten minutes. Then it’ll start to slow down and get pretty choppy. While I haven’t paid too much attention to the linux forums, I’m pretty sure that this is more of a memory leak type error than anything since it makes no sense why the viewer would start out working decently and then go into a spiral of CPU usage.

Anyone else seen this? As one of the five to ten percent of all Second Life players, it does create a somewhat of a hassle when it starts chunking.

I must say that recently? The game play has been a lot better than the previous few times that I’ve had to handle the game in Linux. For a while, the viewer would be stable and then updates to things that had nothing to do with the parts that crashed would inflict crashing…. then fixes would create more crashes. Was a true pain to get working.

These days, the only pains you have to deal with usually are whether or not your graphics card is supported when it comes to ATI and nVidia drivers, and eventually they’ll put in a voice standard. What’s interesting is that they really should be using something like openH323 or some sort of SIP standard since that’s a lot easier to implement than whatever they use currently. At least from an open source perspective. Either way though, the stability of client has drastically improved due to a number of independent developers working with Tofu and some avid linux users always testing the client and sending in feedback through the forums.

Great interview on how open source is affecting the Second Life community and how it’s changing with its Linux community.

If you’ve never played the X-Com series, then you might be able to draw parallels with this game with Civilization. Basically, the game play is turn based strategy where you develop, research, and hire with limited resources and try to beat the computer or other players in a battle for territory domination. Think of it like chess pieces where you’re not only creating pawns, but also placing them on the battle field and playing their strong sides and minimizing their weaknesses.

Game Mode: Not quite a MMO since multiplayer only supports up to six players and it’s more like server based match play. Good thing about turn-based games is that you have a little bit of time to think (on a timer) but strategy plays a key-role in these plays since it is more calculated. There is also a single player game and allows both Internet and LAN play.

Playability: The design of the interface is pretty straightforward although there are a few control screens and development screens that could be fixed to be a smoother interaction between screens and more consistency with the button placement. The game definitely brings back memories as far as how X-Com worked and was fashioned. The whole development/research cycles along with actual engagement scenes take a bit getting used to if you’ve never played the former but should be pretty easy to follow if you’ve played real-time strategy games such as Warcraft.

Cost: This is a GPL licensed game. Open-source.

Operating systems: Windows and Linux. There is even a beta for Intel-based Macs that is out.

Overall: For an open-source game, this is done incredibly well. Not many of the games have as much detail and maturity as this game with graphics that might not be directly in-par with the gaming industry, but it can pass as one of the top indie developers without breaking a sweat. Having been around since before 2004, this game definitely has a cult following. What more can you ask for, when it supports three different operating systems and allows online play? Nothing. Not a dang thing.

It’s come a long ways since 2004 when it was released. Now it boasts to be one of the best free online deathmatch games out there. And there’s no doubt about it. This could literally have you sitting around for hours if you love first person shooters. It’s nothing like F.E.A.R. or the other types of storyline driven games. This is a pure maps for online/LAN play with multiple characters out to spread the fragging around.

As you can see from the gallery shots, that the game itself is pretty fragtastic. It’s in your typical deathmatch look much like Unreal Tournament, Quake, Doom and the rest but with a Mars Attacks feel. It also has all your usual game modes: Team Core Assault, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Deathball, and All Out Assault mode. And for people that are wondering if there are vehicles, yes… there are.

The gameplay is totally similar to any other FPS.   Your keys are usually the left side of the keyboard (WASD layout default) with mouse shooting.   Depending on what type of player you are, you would probably edit these to your liking.   The framerates are pretty smooth on the geforce 5200 (windows) and also the ATI9600 (linux).    A couple games of this and thoroughly hooked on playing a full night of fragfest.  Did I mention it was free?  Yes.  Yes I did.  F-R-E-E.

Brings me back to the old days of Quakeworld Fortress, Team Fortress, and Weapons Factory Arena. Crazy isn’t it. Nostalgia. Ahh.

Unfortunately, the First Look client doesn’t have a version for Linux this time around since voice doesn’t seem to be supported. There isn’t any Windlight sexiness either which is a slight disappointment since we got to see that in the 1.16 First Look client and it was pretty fantastic. Will continue to monitor the linux client arena but so far, it seems like some of the areas where there were stability issues were finally worked out. Hopefully it stays that way as new features are rolled in.

Parallels is the virtual machine software that you can run your Windows XP on. Yes, the same box. Yes, in a window. In fact, Parallels allows you to merge your Windows application right into your MacOSX Dock as if it was a Mac application with their Coherence technology.

So what does this have to do with anything? Any Mac user can tell you that there is a limited number of MMO games out there that can be played on the Mac. Very few. Seldom. Almost nihil. But NOT anymore. That’s because with the recently announced Parallels Desktop 3.0 Upgrade for Mac, it comes with this little thing that makes it worth the purchase. DirectX support. That alone in itself will open a whole new world.

Priced at $49.99 ($39.99 if you pre-order before June 6th), and if you don’t already have this great piece of software, then you’ll have to buy the full version at $79.99.

It’s not that I don’t have a Windows computer. I have a lab full of them. It’s the fact that it’s just a pita to review MMOs on multiple machines when the test machines are not the same as your primary machine. But having both Windows in a window, and MacOSX as my primary OS makes life all the easier. And ease equates to more playable games. Win-win for everyone.

I hate to say it but 1.16.0.5 client for the linux-alpha is up to its old ways again I think. I really don’t fancy the memory leaks either but not sure if it’s just a matter of the ATI card now, or if it’s going back to its old ways. For an alpha, you would expect choppy and non-functioning clients but back in 1.13, it was running… VERY smoothly. Strangely enough, with each version upgrade, there came some memory leaks that kept coming and coming. You would launch the client, it’d be great for a little while, then suddenly would slow down and be seriously choppy. Being the only application running on a P4-1.5G ram machine dedicated strictly for testing, it’s hard to imagine what else could be doing this.

Well, then there was seriously rejoicing in the 1.15.02 and 03 versions. The leak was gone it seemed. There was much rejoicing…

But it doesn’t stop there! No, the leak just refuses to be shoved aside. No, it came back for a sequel. The brilliant 1.16.0.5 client has it again. Ick. Anyone else running into this issue? I seem to recall a forum post I started a while back in version 1.14 that spoke of this, but unsure if anyone has had the chance to encounter this beast. It doesn’t make it unplayable…. if you don’t mind choppy and laggy graphics. Nothing has really changed as far as X-server and fglrx driver versions so you want to seriously wonder what exactly is keeping it from working and why it’s been in alpha for so long. No wait, don’t answer that last one.

Seriously though. Has anyone else encountered this problem? I’m too lazy to fire up a debugger while the client is running to see what exactly the internals are doing that’s chewing up the resources.

Let’s take a look at each client in its native environment.

Windows: Not really anything to say here. It seems that this is where the majority of the client testing takes place since this is the one with the fewest client crashes, and it doesn’t seem to chew up resources and not release them (memory leak). There usually isn’t too many issues with the Windows clients and I personally have not encountered too many issues with the latest 1.15(2).

Mac: 1.13 probably was the most stable of the few I’ve had a chance to try. 1.14 was better. 1.15(2)? Terrible. So far, I’ve lost count as to how many times the client has crashes MacOSX 10.4 (Tiger) with nothing else running. The client was just launched, and the avatar sits there. Doing nothing. And then bam… crash. Actually, before I lost count, I think I was up to fifteen or so. In one instance, I crashed three times within a period of ten minutes. Again, nothing going on. Now that’s pretty bad testing if the client is crashing that often and you haven’t tested it thoroughly enough to let new versions pass.

Linux: Of all of the versions, 1.13 was the most stable by far. 1.13 on an ATI Radeon 9600, with a Pentium 4 with 1.5G ram and only Second Life running ran smooth as silk even as an alpha. No client crashes, no memory leaks that were noticeable. In 1.14, there was a tremendous memory leak in the client. This was pointed out in the alpha testers forum and a few of the testers even went through the trouble of debugging it and finding a potential cause for the problem. Obviously this was ignored, since the memory leak remained in the 1.15(2) client. A simple way to tell there was a memory leak? You launched only the client in X Windows. If your client is running smoothly at the beginning, then an hour later it skips frames and your resources are all but gone, then you know that the only application that’s being used is basically hogging all of the resources.

Unfortunately, this seems to be happening more and more. Of all of this, you would imagine that the Linux client shouldn’t work being an alpha version. But it does (which is fabulous). The Mac client however should be a bit more stable than it is. All of this ties back to the way a professional corporation should be handling the code release. Don’t put out new features if you haven’t fixed the bugs in the old. It’s the crappy but necessary part of development that all developers dread but do. Customer service goes a very long ways and if you keep ignoring your end user, then it just creates a tremendously large gap for competitors to fit through without any effort on their end.

I suppose it’s tiring with all the issues and problems. But you know what the worst part is? Many of the users are getting used to the bad code and bug developments. We’re almost to the point of not wondering if there is a stable release coming out and just taking the bugs for granted. And you know that if your users are on that end of the spectrum, it isn’t very far off that they’ll reach the fine line of just giving it up altogether. Is that what Linden Lab wants? At this point, who knows.

Update (1): I forgot to mention that if you’re running a Mac, the current OS version os 10.4 (Tiger). Most users will use VirtueDesktops in light of not having any virtual desktop capability until 10.5 (Leopard). If you are loading the Second Life client or it’s trying to teleport somewhere, do NOT switch your desktop. Wait until it’s completely loaded. If you don’t wait, this will result in a client crash. It can be reproduced since 1.13. Figured I’d throw it out now since it hasn’t been fixed yet.

Update (2): Admittedly, I didn’t provide the version of Mac as pointed out by Eloise.  Sorry about that, thanks for pointing it out.  Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo, 3G Ram, ATI Radeon X1600 (256 Ram).  Max resolution 1680 x 1050.   Although in defense of those of us that have crashing clients, it is pretty black and white.  If your version previous didn’t crash, and the one current is crashing, that means that your new code that you introduced is causing a bug.  If you rewrote from scratch the whole client, then that’s a whole other beast when it comes to code since all of your code is for sake of better term, “new”.