games for internet cafe

[sonar]

Hello all,

I am in the planning stages of an internet cafe in my 46,000 strong town. I plan on using 24 workstations split into 4 groups of 6 for network gaming. I am having difficulties deciding on which OS to use. I've been told to use a linux box for the router, but can a linux box as a client handle network games. Is there a list of games that support linux? Could you please reply to my email of renken@adams.net.

[Icarus]

Is this a new kind of double post we have not seen yet? For once someone broke the questions down into their two catagories :)

Currently the choices for Linux Networked Games is very limited. You can check out http://tuxgames.com/ for what is available and www.linuxgames.com/ for everything else coming, was and has been.

The main list so far is
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2003 (available Oct. 1st)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
(seeing a pattern yet?)
and Neverwinter Nights should be available for Linux in less then a few months...

[i_like_peanut_butter]

What sort of hardware are you rolling out?

Tried the demo of UT2003 last night and it really hammered my machine. Athlon 1.2gig, 256MB ram, GeForce2 card w/ 64MB of RAM running at 800x600. May have been the servers I tried. They were pretty full with pings in the 150-200 range.

Quake III runs great though. I can do 1024x768 and get decent frame rates. 800x600 is smooth.

Where abouts is Quincy?

[Icarus]

Hey, I didn't even notice Quency, IL...
Just where is that?
*views mapquest*

Ok, that's the other side of the state...right on the Iowa border.

If I'm ever out that way I might have to make a special stop in the future :)

[sonar]

Quincy, IL is the farthest city on the west side of the state. Take I-72 all the way west or take U.S. 24 southwest from Peoria. I don't have the cafe up yet...just planning stage.

[sonar]

I guess this solves my question about the games to run. I was planning on running more than that. Empire Earth, Sub Command, Harpoon 3, Fleet Command, and a few flight sims.

[carrja99]

Originally posted by sonar
Hello all,

I am in the planning stages of an internet cafe in my 46,000 strong town. I plan on using 24 workstations split into 4 groups of 6 for network gaming. I am having difficulties deciding on which OS to use. I've been told to use a linux box for the router, but can a linux box as a client handle network games. Is there a list of games that support linux? Could you please reply to my email of renken@adams.net.

Hey! You're from Quincy!? And I thought I was the only one around here who posted on these boards! Do you go to QU by any chance?

[Can O' Beans]

I know keeping the start-up costs down is rather important.

I would:

- Use Linux for the router.
- Use Linux for a dedicated game server for any game with a Linux server available.
- Linux for any other file/web/email/etc... server you need.

- Windows server for any game without Linux server avail.
- Windows on most of the PCs with all games loaded on them.

- 1 (maybe 2) "groups" with Linux-only for the games listed in posts above. (would save a few $$ on Win licenses). If you know most of your customers use Linux, then you can adjust the # of machines accordingly.

I would say, regretfully, you will probably have to have most client machines run Windows for ease of use for the customers. Most of them will be Windows users and they will be comfortable in the Windows environment. They will want to come in & play, not having to worry about using an OS that is "foreign" to them.


If you open the Cafe' next to a pizza shop, you could have a wonderful buisness relationship ;)

[warren612001]

There are more games that are linux native. They will be hard to find because LOKI went out of biz over a year ago.
But they ported
Eric's Ultimate Soliteire
Heretic2
Descent3
Soldier od Fortune
Rune
Civilization: call to power

HopkinsFBI (from http://hopkinsfbi.com/ )
this game has a lot of blood and guts. not good for little kids

plus a few more but I didn't find that they worked very well. Some times I still see them advertized on sites.
check out http://linuxgaming.co.uk/ good luck with your cafe' :cool: :D

[Molecule Man]

Originally posted by Can O' Beans


- Use Linux for the router.
- Use Linux for a dedicated game server for any game with a Linux server available.
- Linux for any other file/web/email/etc... server you need.

- Windows server for any game without Linux server avail.

I would say, regretfully, you will probably have to have most client machines run Windows for ease of use for the customers. Most of them will be Windows users and they will be comfortable in the Windows environment. They will want to come in & play, not having to worry about using an OS that is "foreign" to them.



For non-game use, I would highly recomend Linux. Install Netscape 7, and maybe even Netscape 4.73. While I personally use Mozilla, I have seen a few sites insist on Netscape 6/7 and refuse Mozilla.

The other thing to check about games in Linux is www.trangaming.com

[eats only heads]

I would use windows for internet cafes because lots of sites don't work with anything but internet explorer. Netscape 7 stinks and netscape 4.73 is very incompatible. I would use linux for the games. I would create my own easy to use game selector gui for this, don't have them use the windows or linux browser. Also As you are using linux, I hear you can just have one big computer running six games at once, not sure if that would be economical though, multiple processor boards are kind of expencive. At anyrate though stabilty is neccesary here so windows would not be recomended. Oh also I would like to add tribes 2 to that list of linux games.

[carrja99]

Sorry for reviving this dead thread... turns out it was posted about 5 months ago... and the person who originally posted it only posted the 4 messages on this thread his entire time at LNO.

I was hoping to get in touch with him. Good thing he left an email addy.

[Can O' Beans]

:(

LOL, well, if you get ahold of him, I wonder what he came up with, heh.