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Sauerbraten

Scrap ยท 50 0.1 h played, 1 crash

Cube 2: Sauerbraten, the 2020 Edition: a fast first person shooter with bots, over 200 maps and an in-game map editor.

Genre
shooter first-person arena
Players
single player online multiplayer bots
Input
made for keyboard and mouse
View
3D first-person
Content
map editor
Needs
your own game data
Engine
Cube 2

Setting up the game data

  1. Install the game with the Install button, or sudo apt install sauerbraten.
  2. Download the official release, Sauerbraten 2020 Edition for Linux (about 940 MB): wget -O ~/sauerbraten_2020_12_29_linux.tar.bz2 https://sourceforge.net/projects/sauerbraten/files/sauerbraten/2020_11_29/sauerbraten_2020_12_29_linux.tar.bz2/download.
  3. Check it: sha256sum ~/sauerbraten_2020_12_29_linux.tar.bz2 prints cdba7c4a47cefd30d0afdd6a912199a1384319cf1619923cb7189e72e468be70.
  4. Unpack the game's data and packages folders (1.1 GB, a few minutes) into place: sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/games/sauerbraten && sudo tar -xjf ~/sauerbraten_2020_12_29_linux.tar.bz2 --strip-components=1 --no-same-owner -C /usr/share/games/sauerbraten sauerbraten/data sauerbraten/packages.
  5. Free the space again: rm ~/sauerbraten_2020_12_29_linux.tar.bz2. Then start Sauerbraten from the menu.

Sauerbraten’s maps, textures, models, sounds and music are not part of the package: their licences are mixed and much of it is Creative Commons non-commercial, so Walnut does not distribute them. They are free to download from the game’s own site, and the steps unpack them where the launcher looks.

Which edition works

The official 2020 Edition release for Linux, sauerbraten_2020_12_29_linux.tar.bz2, from sauerbraten.org (the download is hosted on SourceForge; the link in the steps on the Overview is the file’s address there). Its SHA-256 sum is in step 3 of those steps. Debian’s cube2-data is not this game: it holds the data of BananaBread, a different game on the same engine.

What you get

Only two folders of the release are used, data and packages; the release’s own binaries and source stay in the archive. They go to /usr/share/games/sauerbraten, and the launcher (/usr/games/sauerbraten, the menu entry) points the engine there. The game starts fullscreen at the desktop’s resolution and keeps its settings in ~/.sauerbraten. SAUERBRATEN_WINDOWED=1 starts it in a window. The unpacked data takes 1.1 GB.

Common problems

  • The launcher prints the game data is missing: /usr/share/games/sauerbraten has to hold the folders data and packages directly. A sauerbraten folder inside it means --strip-components=1 was left out.
  • Not enough space on the disk: the archive and the unpacked data are about 2 GB together; delete the archive once it is unpacked.