Review of featured applications

[Robert Ancell]

On 26/03/10 13:16, Arand Nash wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-03-01 at 18:04 +1100, Robert Ancell wrote:
>
>> I also wanted to pick one FPS but they all seemed difficult to use.
>> The problems seemed to be similar:
>>       * Huge downloads
>>       * Opening and choosing first menu (e.g. "single player") often
>>         didn't work, there were no bots
>>       * Very slow load times
>> (...)
>
> I've tested both openarena and nexuiz.
> And the only issue there is the indeed huge downloads (oa ~300MB nx 
> ~900MB)
> They are in my opinion very straigtforward, 2-3 clicks and you're in a
> singleplayer game with fully functional bots.
> Both games also has a singleplayer "campaign" in the form of consecutive
> unlockable skirmish-levels.
Interesting.  Did you install them through the software center?  Did you 
install any additional packages?
>
> However, what might speak against them is the ~18 rating that any of 
> these games would have if sold in stores, due to their violent and 
> meatpieces-flying-gory nature.
I'd agree.
>
>> I installed Saurbraten and the ground didn't render.
>
> Sauerbraten has a very unfinished touch yes, which probably makes it
> unsuitable for featuring. But I have ran it countless times without
> seeing that issue.
>
It's probably a driver issue but I have a fairly standard Dell Studio 
laptop with an ATI card so I wouldn't expect any major issues.  (I have 
been running alpha software so it may work for me in Lucid final).
>
> For simple shoot-em-ups there is several games by Kenta Cho (nice search
> term for USC) that might be worth a look, many are still dependent on 3D
> drivers like chromium-bsu, but in my experience they seem vaguely
> playable without them, whereas chromium-bsu just turns into sirup.
>
> I've added tumiki-fighters to the wiki, and I would propose this as a 
> replacement for chromium-bsu, since it seems to run very well on my 
> no-3D nouveau drivers.
> One potential problem with these games is that they use the somewhat
> unorthodox z-key as the fire-key, also, the homepage describes them as 
> "games for windows", but those are minor things I guess.
>
Fun game, just tried it out!  I was a little confused on the keys when 
starting but after mashing the keyboard could play it fine.
>
> When it comes to Wine, if it is going to be mentioned on the installer
> slideshow:
> https://code.launchpad.net/~lielft/ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu/games-slide/+merge/15545 
>
> does it not then make sense to have it in the featured section?
> (I did even make a comment on the merge about the possibly overly 
> optimistic tone taken when describing Wine there...)
It wouldn't work in the featured section as it stands as we really want 
the one-click experience.  I personally have never got wine to work 
reliably and I cringe when people propose it as a solution :)
>
> - Arand
>