Full Circle issue 6: Top 5 Racing Games
TORCS
Homepage: http://torcs.sourceforge.net/
If you want a powerful racing game, look no further than TORCS, The Open Racing Car Simulator. It's gone from a 1997 2D soapbox derby simulator to a powerful 3D racing game with championships, tons of tracks, a thriving community, and all the third party tracks and cars you can download. There are even two online championships: TORCS Driving Championship and The TORCS Racing Board.
To install TORCS, just use your favorite package manager (apt, aptitude, Synaptic, Adept, etc) to install the 'torcs' package from the universe repository.
VDrift
Homepage: http://vdrift.net/
Want realistic racing? Then you need to try VDrift. First released in 2005 by Joe Venzon and inspired by Gran Turismo, Venzon created a simple racing game powered by the Vamos Automotive Simulator. Two years, three programmers, and a ton of code later, it's got extremely realistic physics, 28 cars, 19 tracks, AI players, networking, and great looking graphics.
VDrift hasn't (yet) made it into the Ubuntu repositories (though the data package made it in. Odd). Luckily, GetDeb.net includes an Ubuntu package for it.
Trigger
Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/trigger-rally/
If arcade-style racing is your style, give Trigger a try. It's simple: they give you a car, and you have to navigate a tricky path full of off-road terrain with an extremely tippy car. Go too fast, and you risk flipping off of the road. But move too slowly, and you risk being dominated by your cunning AI opponents.
Disclaimer: Full Circle Magazine is not held liable when your boss fires you for spending five hours straight trying to beat Trigger during that important meeting with the client.
To install, just use your favorite package manager to grab the 'trigger' package in the universe repository.
SuperTuxKart
Homepage: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/
If you're tired of realistic racing, try SuperTuxKart. It was based on Tux Kart, a game where users race around a track and throw power-ups at each other. For a while, Tux Kart did well. But it stagnated for several months. In December, a Happypenguin user named grumbel decided to fork a version called SuperTuxKart. So in 2006, SuperTuxKart was released with better AI, more characters, more power-ups, more tracks, better graphics, and tons of bug fixes.
By the time you read this, the latest version should be available via the package 'supertuxkart' in the universe repositories.
Extreme Tux Racer
Homepage: http://www.extremetuxracer.com/
In 2001 the company developing Tux Racer announced they were going commercial. Tux Racer never saw another release after that announcement. Luckily, PlanetPenguinRacer had started a fork. Although it was popular, it too was abandoned by 2006. But in March 2007 another group of programmers decided to revive the project renaming it to Extreme Tux Racer because of licensing issues.
To install, use the .deb provided by Hamish or to follow the Building an Ubuntu Package instructions at the project wiki.
