14 DAY TRIAL // Warsow, a first-person shooter developed to work on multiple platforms, including Linux, has just reached version 1.51.
The Linux platform is a good host for free FPS multiplayer games, even if these type of games don't have the same kind of appeal as they used to. Five years ago there were lots of title competing for the attention of the Linux gamers, but now only a handful are still being maintained and improved.
“Warsow is set in a futuristic cartoonish world where rocketlauncher-wielding pigs and lasergun-carrying cyberpunks roam the streets. It is a completely free, fast-paced first-person shooter for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.”
“Speed and movement is what Warsow is all about. Like a true cyberathlete you jump, dash, dodge, and walljump your way through the game. Grab power-ups before your enemy does, plant a bomb before anyone sees you, and steal the enemy’s flag before they know what is going on,” says the developers on the official website.
Warsow is a game that is aimed at Quake fans, and the gameplay reflects this aspect. It’s fast-paced, and the levels are large and easy to learn.
According to the changelog, the built-in HTTP server now accepts URL-encoded resource URI's in queries, the map loading times have been improved, the binary cache is now used for GLSL programs to improve the startup time (cvar "gl_ext_get_program_binary", off by default), an asynchronous texture loader has been implemented (cvar "r_multithreading", off by default), a lightweight GLSL shader is now used for simple materials with no normalmap, gloss or decals, and some of the game sounds have been normalized to 0.9 Db.
Also, multithreading support has been added, the sound mixer and background music loader now run in separate threads, the announcer volume slider is now working correctly, the Jason PadPork skin images has been optimized for better performance and visibility, the Warsow process isn't bound to single CPU core anymore, a workaround for glitches caused by NVidia's Threaded OpenGL optimization has been removed, and the gamma ramp size can now take values up to 4096.
Unfortunately, the Linux users don't have the luxury of a binary file from the developer, although it provides one of Windows and Mac OS X. This means that users will have to compile their own version of Warsow.
For more details about this build you can check out the official changelog. You can download Warsow 1.51 right now from Softpedia.