Games: Pharaoh, Godot, Oldies, and ScummVM

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 01, 2025

• Dedoimedo ☛ How to play Pharaoh city-building game on HD screens in Linux

  Just a few days ago, I showed you how to set up Caesar III, bought from GOG, in Linux. While technically the game isn't supported on Linux, it works great. Not only that, you can also use the amazing, amazing Julius program to run Caesar III in HD. You get to enjoy one of the finest games ever made on modern hardware, you get to do it with style. But Pharaoh does not have its Julius equivalent. So what then? Well, let me show you.

• Linus Åkesson ☛ Nine Explained

  I mention sprite DMA timing a couple of times, and the need to stabilize it. What does that mean?

  DMA stands for Direct Memory Access. On every rasterline, up to eight sprites may be enabled, and the video chip fetches the pixels for these sprites by momentarily pausing the CPU in order to access memory directly. In a word, the VIC chip steals clock cycles from the CPU. Depending on which sprites are active, different cycles are stolen.

• Godot Engine ☛ Release candidate: Godot 4.4 RC 3

  We said "final" for the previous release candidate, but good things come in threes, don't they?

• HowTo Geek ☛ Which Linux Distro Do You Recommend to Gamers?

  Gaming on Linux is a niche but growing world, especially with the arrival of the Steam Deck. In fact, read discussion boards and you'll learn the Steam Deck has turned a lot of people into Linux fans, or at least Linux-curious people. If someone wants to start using Linux as a desktop and plans to do a lot of gaming on it, which Linux distribution would you recommend to them?

• HowTo Geek ☛ Minigalaxy Update Brings Easy Classic Windows Gaming to Linux

  The team behind Minigalaxy, a custom Good Old Games (GOG) client for Linux, has dropped a new update with a number of tweaks and an upgrade to the Windows game installation experience.

• Old or Emulation

  • ScummVM ☛ ScummVM has been accepted to the Surveillance Giant Google Summer of Code 2025

    Good news: We've been accepted again to the Google Summer of Code program!

    So, if you feel adventurous (or RPGous) and would like to spend your summer with the cool team, we look forward to your application.

    Fear not—we will provide enough handholding, explanations, and support if you can dedicate time to coding on our project, are an open-minded developer ready to learn, and do not hesitate to ask any questions.