Commercial games - The latest commercial computer games are not all ported to run in Linux. Boxed commercial games for Linux include Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, as well as about 50 first-rate commercial games that have been ported to run in Linux. Using Cedega software from Transgaming·com, you can get hundreds more commercial games to run. To see if the game you want is running in Cedega, visit the Transgaming·org Games Database (http://transgaming·org/gamesdb). Commercial Linux games are described in more depth later in this chapter.

Gaming servers - Many commercial computer games that don't have Linux clients available do have Linux game servers associated with them. So Linux is a great operating system for hosting a LAN party or setting up an Internet gaming server.

Linux gaming development - Some of the most advanced tools and application pro- gramming interfaces (APIs) for developing computer games run on Linux systems. If you are interested in developing your own games to run in Linux, check out the OpenGL (http://opengl·org) and Simple Directmedia Layer (www·libsdl·org) projects. Blender (www·blender·org) is an open source project for doing animations, 3D mod- els, post-production, and rendering that is being used today in commercial games and movie animations.

NOTE
An offshoot of the Blender project is GameBlender (www·gameblender·org). Game Blender is working to develop and share technology needed to use Blender for gaming.

While the development tools available for developing open source games are awesome, a primary goal of this book is to get you up and using Linux as quickly as possible. To that end, I want to tell you first how to get hold of games that already run well in Linux and then how to get games work- ing in Linux that are intended for other platforms (particularly Windows and some classic gaming consoles).