December 23, 2005 -- While developers around the world implement new features, maps, and various items in a variety of different games for the holiday season, the gaming gurus at id Software have released a new map pack for Christmas, or as they call it, Quakemas. The Quake 4 maps bundled in the 2005 Quakemas pack include Campgrounds Redux, Railed, and Tremors. While Campgrounds Redux map originated in Quake 3 with technology updates for Q4, the other two included maps are both brand new. Railed takes place in a abandoned and rusting Strogg facility while Tremors is an underground cavern that is riddled by various tactical objects to make it an exciting area for Capture The Flag action. The Quakemas map pack from id Software is definitely a great present for this holiday season and is very much worth the 16MB download.

December 04, 2005 -- The alternative gaming OS patron Ryan C. Gordon, or better known as Icculus, has recently finished up work on the v3369 patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux; and the Mac OS X and Windows 64-bit builds will be pumped out shortly. Beyond the few critical fixes in the Linux build, the retail version of Unreal Tournament 2004 v3369 now include render-to-texture support for implementing such visual effects as detailed shadows for the players as well as vehicles, motion blurs, vehicle headlights, Hellbender license plate, and DM-Morpehus3 scoreboard. These latest implementations in this patch have been much awaited by Linux users with the UT2k4 engine, and these latest render-to-texture objects are the focus of our interest today.

November 18, 2005 -- id Software has released v1.0.5 of Quake 4 and contained inside of this latest release is a great deal of fixes/improvements from the interface to console commands. In addition, the Linux SDK for Quake 4 is now available for download. Although none of these changes specifically relate to the frame-rate performance of this fast-paced first person shooter, are there any other improvements to note? With us today we have benchmarks from this latest id Quake 4 build.

November 04, 2005 -- Originally anticipated to be released nearly a month ago, Mindware Studios has finally released a Linux demo of its Cold War game. Playing this game, it follows the path of a freelance journalist (Matthew Carter) who is engulfed in a international conspiracy against the U.S.S.R. and he must escape before being sent to a Serbian prison camp. Although the story line is fascinating, the Linux demo is a bit short only including two levels - "Thanks, Mr. Geiger" and "The Halls of Hell". The Microsoft Windows build had shipped to retailers last month but there still is no word on when a full Linux client will be available. For reference, Dreamcatcher Games isn't distributing the Linux client of the game and Mindware Studios themselves are making available the Linux version.

October 31, 2005 -- As we look back at past America's Army releases, we find most of them to be very diminutive in their changes; generally adding a map or two, fixing numerous bugs, and a number of miscellaneous improvements. However, the latest America's Army release, Direct Action (v2.5), is quite substantial with its alterations. Some of the many upgrades include the addition of two new Special Forces maps - SF Extraction and SF Dockside, Shoot House (MOUT Training), tournament mode enhancements, and several game-play enhancements. For Linux and Macintosh users, this upgrade is even more significant with four new SF maps, two new weapons, and an updated game engine (Unreal Engine 2.5) due to the lack of a Q-Course (2.4) build. Will America's Army: Special Forces Direct Action reflect the game-play of what we'll be seeing in America's Army: Stryker-Overmatch, which will utilize the Unreal Engine3, and sport other state-of-the-art features?

October 22, 2005 -- Now that Quake 4 has been available here in the United States for a couple of days along with the Linux client and server binaries, we've gathered some results comparing the frame-rate performance of Quake 4 against Doom 3, as Quake 4 is using a tweaked version of the Doom 3 engine.

October 20, 2005 -- Released earlier today from id Software was both the client and server Linux binaries for Quake 4 and with that we bring a plethora of new screenshots. Although the v1.0.2147 release does contain a few bugs, overall these Linux binaries are phenomenal and from our experience thus far we've very much enjoyed both the single and multi-player gaming. For your viewing pleasure today, we've bundled 120 pictures from the first seven levels of Quake 4, to ensure we don't spoil this excellent gaming experience.

October 18, 2005 -- Over four years ago was the first time we had heard rumors that Quake 4 was indeed under development and that it would be developed by Raven Software while of course working closely with id Software. Quake 4, which runs off a modified version of the Doom 3 engine, is finally available today - October 18, 2005. However, the Linux binaries for the client and server remain curtained.

September 30, 2005 -- For nearly a year Ageia has been making headlines with its innovative physics technology that they hope will revolutionize game-play not only for PC games but also console platforms such as Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360. As Ageia's stance for supporting their PhysX PPU on alternative operating systems hasn't been definitively clear, we sought additional information on their potential Linux support, as well as other general information, and today we have this information clarified.

September 28, 2005 -- Whether your in search of a great OpenGL racing game to play in your time off, or would rather enjoy supporting open-source gaming projects, today we have some screenshots of the latest PlanetPenguin Racer v0.5 ALPHA release. Among various major improvements, the TCL scripting is replaced by Squirrel and now features experimental multi-player support. PlanetPenguin Racer, of course, is based upon the GPL version of the popular TuxRacer game.