PainTown: Open-Source, 2D Fighting Game for Linux

PainTown is a 2D fighting game somewhat similar with popular titles like Street Fighter (it even allows you to play with a character called Blanka), with versions available for Linux too, besides Windows and Mac. The nice thing about PainTown is that it runs natively on Linux and it's a standalone game, so you won't need any emulator like NeoGeo to play it.

PainTown 3.2 in Debian

PainTown is completely open-source and offers a source tarball on their official SourceForge.net website.

This game is just great for its gaming type, it allows to be run in fullscreen (using paintown -w switch) or in window mode, it supports high resolutions, including 1280x1024, and comes with default background music.

PainTown menu

By default, you can move your hero using the arrow keys, and use different kinds of attacks using the A, S and D keys, SPACE for jumping, but you can customise those in the Options menu.

Characters like Blanka and Ryu from Street Fighter are available to play with

PainTown features single player or multiplayer mode with and against the computer. Even network games are possible, which can make it just great for spending an entire afternoon playing it.

Installing PainTown in Ubuntu and Debian
To install it in Ubuntu or Debian, follow the instructions below:

First, install several development packages and the compilation tools as root:

sudo apt-get install liballegro4.2-dev zlibc libpng12-dev libdumb1-dev
sudo apt-get install build-essential

Next, download the source tarball from the official website (direct link here) and save it somewhere on the hard disk, for example on the desktop. Next, uncompress it:

tar -xzf paintown-3.2.tar.gz

All you have to do now is to compile and install PainTown:

cd paintown-3.2
mkdir build
cd build
mkdir bin
cmake ..
make

I noticed I had to create a bin directory inside build, otherwise the error zip error: Could not create output file (bin/scripts.zip) would be issued.

Next, install it manually (for some reason it failed to run the right executable, the error being /usr/games/paintown: line 1: /usr/share/games/paintown/paintown-bin: No such file or directory - it is probably just a broken symlink):

Make sure the current working directory is paintown-3.2, so from where you were, in build/, issue the command:

cd ..

Then issue these commands as root:

mkdir /usr/share/games/paintown
cp -r data /usr/share/games/paintown
cp build/bin/paintown /usr/games

Then run PainTown by typing paintown as normal user in a console terminal or typing Alt+F2 and typing paintown followed by Enter.