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>2. Definitions: Types Of Games</H1
><P
>Not everyone knows the different types of games that are out there, so in an effort to form
a common language that we can all use, I'll run through each game type and provide a very brief
history.</P
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="ARCADE"
></A
>2.1. Arcade style</H2
><P
>Although arcade games had their heydey in the 80's, they are nonetheless very popular.
Nothing will ever replace walking into a dark, crowded and noisy arcade gallery, popping a
quarter into your favorite machine and playing an old fashioned game of Space Invaders.
Arcade style games attempt to simulate the arcade games themselves. There is such a vast
number of these things that it's nearly impossible to enumerate them all, but they include
clones of Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Missile Command and Galaxian.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="CARDBOARD"
></A
>2.2. Card, logic and board games</H2
><P
>Computer based card games simulate a card game like poker or solitaire. The program can
simulate your opponent(s).</P
><P
>Logic games usually simulate some well known logic puzzle like Master Mind or the game
where you have put sliding numbered tiles in order inside a box.</P
><P
>Computer based board games simulate some kind of board game you'd play on a table top
with friends, like monopoly, Mille Bourne, chess or checkers. The program can simulate your
opponent.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="INTERACTIVEFICTION"
></A
>2.3. Text Adventure (aka Interactive Fiction)</H2
><P
>Once upon a time, when Apple ][, Commodore, and Atari ruled the world, text adventures
were the game of choice of `intelligent folk'. You are given a scenario and can interact with
the world you're placed in:</P
><TABLE
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><FONT
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><PRE
CLASS="SCREEN"
> You are in a room. It is pitch dark and you're likely to be eaten by a grue.
> Light lantern with match.
You light the lantern. This room appears to be a kitchen. There's a table with a
book in the center. You also see an oven, refrigerator and a door leading east.
> Open the oven.
In the oven you see a brown paper bag.
> Take the bag. Open the bag. Close the oven.
Inside the bag is a some garlic and a cheese sandwich. The oven door is now closed.
</PRE
></FONT
></TD
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><P
>Back then, text adventures were self contained executables on a disk or casette. These
days there's usually a data file and an interpreter. The interpreter reads data files and
provides the gaming interface. The data files are the actual game itself, similar to the
relationship between first person shooters (<A
HREF="definitions.html#FPS"
>Section 2.7</A
>) and <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>wad</TT
> files.</P
><P
>The first adventure game was Adventure (actually “ADVENT”, written on a
PDP-1 in 1972). You can play Adventure yourself (actually, a descendent); it comes with
“bsd games” on most Linux distros. Text adventures became popularized by Scott
Adams (<A
HREF="interpreters.html#SCOTTADAMS"
>Section 11.5</A
>) and reached their height of popularity in the late 80's
with Infocom (<A
HREF="interpreters.html#INFOCOM"
>Section 11.4</A
>) which are also playable under Linux.</P
><P
>As computer graphics became easier and more powerful, text adventures gave rise to
graphic adventures. The death of commercial interactive fiction more or less coincided with the
bankruptcy of Infocom.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="GRAPHICALADVENTURE"
></A
>2.4. Graphical Adventures</H2
><P
>Graphical adventures are, at heart, text adventures on steroids. The degree to which
they use graphics varies widely. Back in the 80's, they were little more than text adventures
which showed a screen of static graphics. When you picked up an item, the background would be
redrawn without the item appearing. The canonical example would be the so-called `Hi-Res
Adventures' like The Wizard And The Princess. Later on, the sophisticated graphical
adventures had your character roaming around the screen, and you could even use a mouse, but
the interface remained purely text.</P
><P
>Next there are the `point and click adventures' which basically have no text interface
at all, and often have dynamic graphics, like a cat wandering around the room while you're
deciding what to do next. In these games, you point at an object (say, a book) and can choose
from a pull-down list of functions. Kind of like object oriented adventuring. :) There
aren't many graphical adventures written natively for Linux. The only one I can think of is
Hopkins FBI (which happens to be my favorite game for Linux).</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="AEN98"
></A
>2.5. Simulation (aka Sims)</H2
><P
>Simulations strive to immerse the player behind the controls of something they normally
wouldn't have access to. This could be something real like a fighter jet or something
imaginary like a mechanized warrior combat unit. In either case, sims strive for
realism.</P
><P
>Some sims have little or no strategy. They simply put you in a cockpit to give you the
thrill of piloting a plane. Some are considerably complex, and there's often a fine line
between sims and strats (<A
HREF="definitions.html#STRATEGY"
>Section 2.6</A
>). A good example would be Heavy Gear III
or Flight Gear. These days sims and strats are nearly indistinguishable, but a long time ago,
sims were real time while strats were turn based. This is awkward for modern day use, since a
game like Warcraft which everyone knows as a strat, would be a sim by definition.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="STRATEGY"
></A
>2.6. Strategy (aka Strats)</H2
><P
>Strategy games have their roots in old Avalon type board games like Panzer Leader and
old war strategy games published by SSI. Generally, they simulate some kind of scenario. The
scenario can be peaceful, like running a successful city (SimCity), or not, like illegal
drug selling operation (DrugWars) or an all-out war strategy game like Myth II. The types
of games usually take a long time to complete and require a lot of brainpower.</P
><P
>Strats can be further divided into two classes: real time and turn based. Real time
strats are based on the concept of you-snooze-you-lose. For example, you're managing a city
and a fire erupts somewhere. The more time it takes for you mobilize the fire fighters, the
more damage the fire does. Turn based strats are more like chess---the computer takes a turn
and then the player takes a turn.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="FPS"
></A
>2.7. First Person Shooter (aka FPS)</H2
><P
>What light through yonder window breaks? It must be the flash of the double barreled
shotgun! We have a long and twisted history with FPS games which started when id Software
open sourced code for Doom. The code base has forked and merged numerous times. Other
previously closed engines opened up, many engines are playable via emulators, many commercial
FPS games were released for Linux and there are quite a number of FPS engines which started
life as open source projects. Although you may not be able to play your
<EM
>favorite</EM
> FPS under Linux (Half-Life plays great under winex) Linux
definitely has no deficiency here!</P
><P
>First person shooters are characterized by two things. First, you pretty much blow up
everything you see. Second, the action takes place in first person. That is, through the
eyes of the character who's doing all the shooting. You may even see your hands or weapon at
the bottom of the screen. They can be set in fantasy (Hexen), science fiction (Quake II),
present day `real world' (Soldier Of Fortune) and many other settings.</P
><P
>Like text adventures, FPS fit the engine/datafile format. The engine refers to the
actual game itself (Doom, Quake, Heretic2) and plays out the maps and bad guys outlined by the
datafile (<TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>doom2.wad</TT
>, <TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>pak0.pak</TT
>, etc). Many FPS games
allow people to write their own non-commercial datafile. There are hundreds, even thousands
of non-commercial Doom datafiles that you can download for free off the net. Often, companies
release their engines to the open source community so we can hack and improve them. However,
the original data files are kept proprietary. To this day, you still have to purchase
<TT
CLASS="FILENAME"
>doom.wad</TT
>.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="AEN116"
></A
>2.8. Side Scrollers</H2
><P
>Side scrollers are similar to FPS but you view your character as a 2D figure who runs
around various screens shooting at things or performing tasks. Examples would be Abuse for
Linux and the original Duke Nukem. They don't necessarily have to be violent, like
<SPAN
CLASS="APPLICATION"
>xscavenger</SPAN
>, a clone of the old 8-bit game Lode Runner.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="AEN120"
></A
>2.9. Third Person Shooters</H2
><P
>Similar to FPS, but you view your character in third person and in 3D. On modern third
person shooters you can usually do some really kick-butt maneuvers like Jackie Chan style back
flips and side rolls. The canonical example would be Tomb Raider. On the Linux platform, we
have Heretic 2 and Heavy Metal FAKK2.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT2"
><H2
CLASS="SECT2"
><A
NAME="RPG"
></A
>2.10. Role Playing Game (aka RPG)</H2
><P
>Anyone who has played games like Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu knows exactly
what an RPG is. You play a character, sometimes more than one, characterized by traits (eg
strength, dexterity), skills (eg explosives, basket weaving, mechanics) and properties
(levels, cash). As you play, the character becomes more powerful and the game adjusts itself
accordingly, so instead of fighting orcs, at high levels you start fighting black dragons.
The rewards increase correspondingly. At low levels you might get some gold pieces as a
reward for winning a battle. At high levels, you might get a magic sword or a kick-butt
assault rifle.</P
><P
>RPG's generally have a quest with a well defined ending. In nethack you need to
retrieve the amulet of Yendor for your god. In Ultima II, you destroy the evil sorceress
Minax. At some point, your character becomes powerful enough that you can `go for it' and try
to complete the quest.</P
><P
>While the insanely popular Ultima series, written by Richard Garriot (aka Lord British)
for Origin, was not the first RPG, it popularized and propelled the RPG genre into mainstream.
Ultima I was released in 1987 and was the game that launched 9 (depending on how you want to
count them) very popular sequels, finishing with Ultima IX: Ascension. You can play Ultima
VII under Linux with Exult (<A
HREF="interpreters.html#EXULT"
>Section 11.7</A
>).</P
><P
>The canonical RPG on Linux is Rogue (the ncurses library started life as a screen
handling routine for Rogue!) and it has infinite variants like Zangband and Nethack (which has
many variants itself). Some RPG's are quite complicated and great feats of programming.
There seems to be a deficiency of commercial RPGs for Linux. Not counting the rogue variants,
there's also a deficiency of open source RPGs too.</P
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