OpenArena version 0.7.0 is now available in cooker, with a bunch of new maps and models \o/

Ok, there was some initial flounderings in the packaging, because files were moved from the openarena package to the new openarena-data package and a directory was replaced by a symlink to make it smooth. But rpm failed to do the upgrade with a "cpio failed" error (#31885), it can't upgrade a directory to a symlink. This pointed out a small bug in urpmi, it exits with success code and removes the rpm file from cache if cpio fails (#31907).

A "tiny" hack (rpm-devel discussion) in a %pretrans scriptlet allows to workaround the directory to symlink conversion, by doing it "à la main"(!) before rpm extracts the new package:

%pretrans
if [ -d %{gamelibdir}/baseoa ]; then
   mv %{gamelibdir}/baseoa{,.rpmsave}
   ln -s baseoa.rpmsave %{gamelibdir}/baseoa
fi

And now, just come hurt me plenty!

To bring more fun in the Club, a new live system is available: a Mandriva gaming release with the greatests games from Mandriva repositories, with only free software games!

It includes excellent 3D first person shooters, such as OpenArena and Nexuiz, real-time startegy games (Battle For Wesnoth, Glest), and of course, the best of enhanced classics: Frozen Bubble with a network mode. If you are more into racing, don't forget to try Torcs and Vdrift, or the arcade games ManiaDrive and X-Moto.

Of course, the reference FlightGear simulator will allow you to perfect your pilot skills. For (yellow) submarines fanatics who prefer manoeuvring U-Boats, even the Danger Deep submarine simulator is included.

The youngest Club members will appreciate the fun yet educative programs in the GCompris suite, and the Ri-Li train game.

Dancers won't miss the StepMania DDR simulator, it can even use console games pads (using an USB adapter), and it's bundled with a free songs pack :-)

Technically speaking, this live system is a 3.2G DVD for the i586 platform (it will run fine on x86_64 systems as well). It's based on Mandriva One 2007.0, so it can be installed to hard disk using the "live install" feature. It also includes the 3D desktops technologies (AIGLX and Xgl), but it's better not to activate them when running 3D-intensive games.

Here's the complete list of the games included on this live DVD:

• Armagetron
• Battle For Wesnoth
• Blobby Volley
• BoboBot
• Bzflag
• Chromium
• Crack Attack (with music and sounds)
• DangerDeep
• Egoboo
• Fillets NG
• FlightGear
• Foobillard
• FreeCiv
• Frozen Bubble (2.1)
• GCompris
• GL-117
• Glest
• Globulation2
• KDE Games
• KDE Toys
• Lincity NG
• ManiaDrive
• Neverball/Neverputt
• NetPanzer
• Nexuiz (SDL version)
• OpenArena
• OpenMortal
• Planet Penguin Racer (ppracer)
• PowerManga
• Ri-li
• Slune
• Starfighter
• StepMania (and StepMix1 song pack)
• SuperTux
• SuperTuxKart
• Toppler
• Torcs
• Tremulous
• Vdrift
• Vegastrike
• Widelands
• Wormux
• X-Moto

To have a more general look into games status in Mandriva, please have at the games selection on the brand new Mandriva wiki.

Enjoy \o/

(official announce on Mandriva Club)

Yesterday, Second Life has been released as open-source. If by any chance you were on a desert island last year, Second Life is an online giant 3-D virtual world created and extended by its residents. This world even has its own money, the Linden dollar.

After a lot of fighting with the source code, I have finally managed to build a usable secondlife package for Mandriva Cooker \o/

The code looks quite nicely organized, the main problems I encountered were gcc 4.1 and x86_64 build errors. My patches, even if simple, require quite some time to do since the source code is really huge /o\. They should soon be merged upstream soon, I just have to sign some contributor agreement form to give them copyright.

The games starts fine, but unfortunately, it is really slow. The openjpeg JPEG200 decoder throws out a lot of errors, maybe I'll give a try to some SVN snapshot.

The "open source" flying and teleporting fun will have to wait, for blino Nakamura.

A new X-Moto release, integrated with online highscores \o/ (using libcurl) It also adds a bunch of new levels

Maybe I should update the kiosk bundle.

This week-end, I've finally found time to finish the StepMania package we're all waiting at Mandriva.

It's a DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) simulation game that really feels like the arcade versions, we even use it for our internal competitions at Mandriva :-p

The initial package has been created by Nicolas Chipaux (our IS Team rox!), and tested by our QA Team (yes, they do test something sometimes). The hardest work was to make the game use user home directories to find songs and write settings (and also to solve some ffmpeg breakage).

To play, just urpmi stepmania in your cooker box, and have fun!

We didn't include any songs in the package, since most are commercial hits. So, you'll have to add songs in ~/StepMania/Songs as user, or /usr/share/StepMania/Songs as root.

Following is my changelog.

stepmania package

• Patch2: fix build for changes introduced in ffmpeg 4629 and 4754
• Patch3: search files in home directory (~/StepMania/ for data, ~/.StepMania/ for settings)
• Patch4: search files and libraries in package directories
• install GtkModule in pkglibdir
• remove wrapper script since binary looks for data in pkgdatadir
• move soundwrapper for wrapper to menu entry
• lowercase package name
• mkrel
• apply patches unconditionnally
• remove hardcoded requires
• require stepmania-data
• BuildRequires gtk2-devel
• fix BuildRequires (remove lib prefix)
• install binary in _gamesbindir and data in _gamesdatadir
• use makeinstall_std
• fix rpm and menu groups
• enable mp3 by default (and allow to build without)

stepmania-data package

• lowercase package name
• mkrel please
• MIT License
• remove world-writable directories and files
• install in gamesdatadir

I've updated prboom to 2.4.1. It's a Doom engine port to Linux, and it went with some intense QA testing as usual.

It just required to get the shareware doom.wad file from DoomWorld, it then worked as a charm :)

Doom noir looks like an interesting mod to test, it transforms the graphics to black and white, hilighting only red colors. It makes some gory and film-noir effect, a la Sin City.

New release 0.1.12: new levels, and a "next level" button \o/