Pages for the Creations of Ryan Armstrong
When running games in Linux, especially through Wine, occasionally you will run into a game that doesn't support fullscreen and otherwise appears a bit small for comfort. In my case, I ran into this running Environmental Station Alpha and the classic Entertainment Pack version of Chip's Challenge.
The approach I …
It should go without saying that there are a lot of guides to installing GRUB and fixing GRUB stuff for Linux users (not the least of which is the Arch Wiki. This article is a smaller, more focused article on the issues I have personally run into, and their solutions …
A guide to running Caldera Open Linux 1.3 in QEMU with working networking, XFree86 setup and some information on forwarding X clients from the VM to Xnest.
The Ace of Penguins is a collection of solitaire and other computer games, mostly modelled after those included in Windows or the Microsoft Entertainment Packs.
X Solitare (xsol) is a VERY basic Klondike solitaire implementation. It doesn't have card art, it doesn't automatically flip cards and does not detect a win state.
XPacman is a fascinating, though bare-bones, clone of Pac-man.
XShisen is an implementation of the Shisen-sho variety of Mahjong solitaire. In this variety, pieces are arranged into a single rectangle and can be removed if they can be connected by three horizontal/vertical line segments.
An X11 clone of Sokoban, Cyberbox with several other unique levels.
Trojka is a falling block puzzle game, somewhat similar to Columns, but using its own matching rules. The game is played in a rather narrow well, of only 5 blocks wide. Blocks fall individually, and need to be matched in groups of three or more horizontally or diagonally, but not vertically (which would be trivial).
XEvil is a primarily multiplayer platformer deathmatch game for the X Window System.
XBill is probably the least-likely of these games to be forgotten, but I would be remiss if I covered old Linux games without mentioning it. XBill has you protecting a series of computers against an army of 'Bill' clones who seek to install a virus disguised as an operating system. You do this, of course, by clicking on each Bill to cause them to explode. Naturally.
Oonsoo is is a solitaire/patience game involving Hanafuda cards. The objective is to sort each of the twelve suits in order, such that each foundation has a single suit/season. As you play, you can deal an additional row of cards until all cards are eventually in play. In this regard, it is somewhat similar to Spider solitaire.
Another game, another clone. This time it's Minesweeper. Overall, this is very faithful clone of the Windows version, down to the smiley face and the user-friendly feature that the first click is always safe. The same difficulty presets are present, and similar capabilities for a custom game.
XVier is a single-player implementation of Connect Four against the computer.
Yup, it's a Pac-Man clone. Pretty good one too, despite being black and white. Game speed is good (though can be tweaked via compile options), ghosts are suitably evil, and fruit appears exactly how you expect it. No tunnels though.
Chomp was written by Jerry J. Shekhel in 1990 for …
XLander is a 3D wire-frame lunar lander clone. The game keeps looping after each successful (or partially successful) landing so you can earn a high score based on your landing combo. As soon as you crash, the game immediately exits and reports your final score to the terminal.
Jewel Box is a fairly faithful clone of Columns. Not a whole lot more to say about it; if you've played once of the Sega releases, or other clones, you should know what to expect. If you've been looking for something like that for Unix/Linux: congrats, you found it!
Next up for 1989 is... another Solitaire variant. This time it is the popular Spider solitaire, a whole 9 years before Microsoft's version. Spider is a popular solitaire variant with a fair amount of strategy, and this is pretty good version of it.
This specific Tetris clone is XTetris, which is an overall rather enjoyable version. It has a drop preview and both rotation directions, with hard drop as the drop method. No multiplayer, hold, T-spins, multi-piece preview or any modern Tetris trappings. Just a fun, basic Tetris marathon.
It's time for Mahjong solitaire. Computer versions of Mahjong solitaire have been around for a while. Like most, the goal is to remove all tiles on the board in pairs. Only tiles with one long edge not touching another tile is free to be used in matches.
An early Klondike solitaire implementation for the X Window System.
XMille is an implementation of the Mille Bornes racing card game. This implementation is played single player against a computer opponent. The card art is somewhat simple, but provides generally clear information on which card is which. Play is quite brisk, though is missing something without a human opponent.
So I've been recently submitting a variety of old X games to Mobygames, and figured I may as well document them here too, since it is my web site after all. Most of the games I will be posted were discovered when messing around with Caledra OpenLinux 1.3, though …
Every so often I mess with [old Linux distros](https://zerker.ca/photos/#15597798463055) or BSDs and do not always have one of the modern screenshot tools available.
Enter xwd. This tool will dump an X11 window (or the root window) to a file for later viewing.
To dump a …
This script exists to serve a simple purpose: benchmark a disk and store the results in an easy-to-use CSV format. The script will write and read a variety of block sizes to the specified location, which will gather similar statistics to the ATTO Disk Benchmark tool on Windows. The maximum …
This is a port of anago command-line NES and Famciom cartridge dumping utility for the kazzo interface board, which was previously part of the unagi project. The existing project was designed to support Windows primarily, though it was almost compatible with Linux, with some included porting notes. I've completed the …
Python library to automatically generate .desktop launchers for games.
Having had trouble with media-player sync solutions in Linux, I decided to roll my own Python script to synchonize my media player automatically, and cover format conversion & playlist restructuring. Like the gmusicbrowser script, it's not particularly user friendly. However, it should be useful for a variety of media players. Let …
Script to export m3u playlists from gmusicbrowser libaries according to a variety of criteria.
