#10 Sauerbraten – Price: Free

Sauerbraten (a.k.a. Cube 2) is a free multiplayer/singleplayer first person shooter, built as a major redesign of the Cube FPS.

Much like the original Cube, the aim of this game is not necessarily to produce the most features & eyecandy possible, but rather to allow map/geometry editing to be done dynamically in-game, to create fun gameplay and an elegant engine.

#9 Nexuiz – Price: Free

Nexuiz is a free open-source first person shooter that runs on Windows, Linux and OSX.

Nexuiz is a fast paced 3d deathmatch game project created online by a team of developers called Alientrap. It is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux (all the same archive).

The first version was released May 31st 2005, released entirely GPL and free over the net, a first for a project of its kind. Since then it has been downloaded over 1.5 million times, and the game is still being updated and developed, currently at version 2.4 and new releases being developed.

#8 Tremulous – Price: Free

Tremulous is a free, open source game that blends a team based FPS with elements of an RTS. Players can choose from 2 unique races, aliens and humans. Players on both teams are able to build working structures in-game like an RTS. These structures provide many functions, the most important being spawning. The designated builders must ensure there are spawn structures or other players will not be able to rejoin the game after death. Other structures provide automated base defense (to some degree), healing functions and much more…

Player advancement is different depending on which team you are on. As a human, players are rewarded with credits for each alien kill. These credits may be used to purchase new weapons and upgrades from the “Armoury”. The alien team advances quite differently. Upon killing a human foe, the alien is able to evolve into a new class. The more kills gained the more powerful the classes available.

The overall objective behind Tremulous is to eliminate the opposing team. This is achieved by not only killing the opposing players but also removing their ability to respawn by destroying their spawn structures.

#7 Urban Terror – Price: Free

Urban Terror started as a realism based “total conversion” mod for Quake III Arena. Nowadays, Urban Terror is played using the free, stand-alone, ioquake3 engine modified, which doesn’t require Quake III Arena, in addition to being an add-on to id Software’s Quake III Arena.

#6 True Combat: Elite – Price: Free

TC:E, Truecombat Elite, TCElite is a modern world total conversion modification of the free, popular, stand-alone FPS (first-person shooter) Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Meaning, Truecombat Elite is an entirely free game, made by gamers, for gamers.

TC:E is currently being developed by GrooveSix Studios and TeamTerminator.

#5 Warsow - Price: Free

Warsow is a free standalone first person shooter game for Windows and Linux. It is based on the Qfusion 3D engine (a modification of the Quake 2 GPL engine), and aimed on the competitive scene, or the e-sports community.

The base gameplay is focussed around the art of movement, meaning moving, speed and tricks play a big part in the gameplay. Besides this, mapcontrol, aim, teamplay and fragging skills play their role too. For the movement we’ve basicly looked at four games: Quakeworld (legendary for it’s speed), Quake3 CPMA, Jet Set Radio and Speedball.

#4 America’s Army - Price: Free

America’s Army has ranked among the top ten online PC action games with almost 9.5 million registered players who have completed over 380 million missions from basic training to operations in the War on Terrorism. A Gamespot.com editor asserts “nothing beats going in and seeing what the Army really does…without actually having to do it”.

#3 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars – Price: $29.99

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a first-person shooter video game, and is the follow-up to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. However, it is set in the same science fiction universe as Quake II and Quake 4, with a minimal back-story serving as a prequel to Quake II. It is the second multiplayer-focused game in the Quake series (after Quake III Arena). Quake Wars features similar gameplay to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, but with the addition of controllable vehicles and aircraft as well as multiple AI deployables, asymmetric teams, much larger maps and the option of computer-controlled bots. Unlike the previous Enemy Territory game, Quake Wars is a commercial release rather than a free download.

#2 Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - Price: Free

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (also referred to as simply Enemy Territory or ET) is a free multiplayer FPS set during World War II. It was originally planned to be released as a commercial expansion pack to the popular FPS Return to Castle Wolfenstein and later as a standalone game. However, due to problems with the single-player aspect, the multiplayer portion was released on May 29, 2003 as a freeware standalone game. In early 2004 the source codemodding community. The game uses a modified RTCW engine, itself being a modified Quake III: Team Arena engine (which has been open-source since 2005). for the game logic (not the game engine) was released to the benefit of its of its modding community. The game uses a modified RTCW engine, itself being a modified Quake III: Team Arena engine (which has been open-source since 2005).

The majority of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory servers run various mods, such as Jaymod, No Quarter, and ETpro.

#1 Unreal Tournament 2004 Editors’ Choice Edition – Price: $9.99

Unreal Tournament 2004 is a multiplayer first person shooter that combines the kill-or-be-killed experience of gladiatorial combat with cutting-edge technology. Ten game modes – both team-based and “every man for himself” — provide even the most hardcore gamer with palm-sweating challenges through unbelievably detailed indoor arenas and vast outdoor environments. As the ultimate techno-gladiator of the future, players will take their fates into their hands, battling against up to 32 other players online in action-packed, frag-filled arenas. Now, in addition to the original game and a bonus DVD with hours of Unreal Editor tutorials, the Editors’ Choice Edition gives first-person-shooter fans even more: new maps, vehicles and characters, ten modules created by Unreal players and footage from the NVIDIA Make Something Unreal Contest. For the definitive gladiator sport of the future, it’s the most powerful edition ever created.

What do you think of the list? Is there something I left out or maybe even if you believe I should have listed them in a different order, feel free to leave a comment. I want to know what you Linux gamers out there think of them.

Section 1
Requirements

This guide assumes that you have Unreal Tournament 2004 installed and working.

A server is best hosted on a stand alone computer, so that all processing power can go towards the server itself.
If you want it to run even smoother you may choose to run the server without a GUI, which will save even more CPU power for the running of the server.

I recommend a computer with at least a 2GHz processor with 384MB of RAM.

Section 2
Configuration

For editing the server ini file you will need a need a text editor
such as Kwrite, Abiword, or something similar.

I highly recommend you do NOT use OpenOffice Writer
as it can add it’s own formatting and ruin your ini file.

To begin, Go to the Unreal Tournament system folder (By default it’s located at /home/username/ut2004/System/)
Locate the file called ‘UT2004.ini’ and open it.

[IpDrv.MasterServerUplink]

ServerBehindNAT=False <–Change this to true if your firewall uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to forward ports.

[IpDrv.HTTPDownload]

RedirectToURL= <–Place the URL of the redirect server here, more detailed instructions can be found here.

UseCompression= <–If the maps on your redirect are in the .uz2, set this to True.

[Engine.GameReplicationInfo]

ServerName=UT2004 <–Change this to whatever you want your server to be named.

AdminName=User <–This will appear to a user when they view your server info, Set it as your own name.

AdminEmail= <–This will show the user your Email address,
This is handy if you want feedback from people who play on your server.

MessageOfTheDay=MOTD <–This will appear to a user as soon as he/she joins your server.

You may set up to 4 lines, to create a new line you must use pipes.

Example: MessageOfTheDay=Welcome | No Cheats | No Monkeys | No Complaining

Would display as the following ingame:

Welcome
No Cheats
No Monkeys
No Complaining

[Engine.AccessControl]

AdminPassword= <–This is the admin password, you can use it to login via the console while ingame.

GamePassword= <–Add a value here if you want to password lock your server.

[Engine.GameInfo]

MaxSpectators= <–Set this to limit the number of spectators in a game.

MayPlayers= <–Change this number to raise/lower the total amount of players that can play at one time (Max 32).

[Uweb.WebServer]

bEnabled= <–Set this to True if you would like to enable the Web Admin Interface.

ListenPort= <–Set this to something other than 80 (I personally use 7757) and don’t forget to forward the port you set.

To login, type your IP (If your on the same network as the host box, you can use the internal IP) then add : then the port you have set.
Example: 192.168.1.1:7757

Section 3
Starting the Server

The only thing left to do is Start the Server.

To start your server, run the following command from a terminal:
(You must be in the /home/username/ut2004/System/ directory)

./ucc-bin server ONS-Torlan?game=Onslaught.ONSOnslaughtGame ini=UT2004.ini log=/home/username/Desktop/UTServer.log -nohomedir &

Some people may find typing this script everytime a bit irritating, so I’m going to show you how to make a simple script that does the same thing with a simple command.

Open your text editor, make a new file, and type this into it:

cd /home/username/ut2004/System/
./ucc-bin server ONS-Torlan?game=Onslaught.ONSOnslaughtGame ini=UT2004.ini log=/home/username/Desktop/UTServer.log -nohomedir &

(Be sure to replace username with your own user name.)

Then save it as ut-server.sh in /usr/local/bin/. Now whenever you want to start the server, all you have to do is open up a terminal, and type ut-server.sh.

And that’s it. If you have any problems, find any mistakes or would like to give feedback for this guide, please let me know via email at Erich.Von(at)Gmail.com.