Red Eclipse: Compiling Your Own Game

I just played one of the most fun games I've experienced in a long time.  It's only half finished, it's open source, and they want you to subscribe to a subversion repository.
My relationship with SVN is similar to the Republicans' relationship with public health care.  Not friendly.  So, I found someone who maintains their own Ubuntu-compatible repo for the game.  It took about five minutes to download and install.  The interface isn't terribly intuitive and there's no tutorial, but I managed to start a new single-player game.
I was instantly given a neat choice of weapons.  My favorite are the plasma gun and the rifle (with a scope, of course).  I ran down a futuristic city street with a few buddies until I came across a pack of bad guys.  Sadly, the person models haven't been done yet, so I was battling dozens of identical copies of the Men's Room sign.  And they don't have sound effects, so when you shoot them they sound like musical notes.  But they were armed.  And tried to swarm me.  And when I blasted them all to smithereens, all that was left was blood, bits of flesh, and the soft glow from my plasma gun.

After half an hour of this, I had killed untold bad guys, and the game informed me that I had won.  I felt supremely satisfied.
For a pure "run and gun" shooter, there's not much variety to be had.  Maybe the graphics are better, maybe the guns are more interesting.  Rarely does a shooter have something that could be considered "gameplay," nonetheless unique gameplay.  But this game does.  When I stumbled into the enemy base, I was suddenly surrounded by fifty of them at once.  I overloaded my plasma gun, let out a giant fireball, hid behind a crate, and listened to the screams.  When I poked my head out, there were still plenty of them left, and they were trying to swarm me.  Later, I encountered a lone bad guy with a sniper rifle.  I died at his hands more times than I care to admit; I'm sure he felt it was just revenge for all his fallen comrades.  Finally, I came back with a couple of friends and finished him off.
There's more, but as with any art, the joy is not in the telling, but in the experience itself.  Here's how:

• Download the latest zipped version - this has everything you'll need to play the game in Windows
• Use subversion and always have the latest version on your desktop (here's a subversion client for Windows)
• Use a repository for Ubuntu (this is what I did)

I got to speak to some of the developers of the game, they are a friendly and helpful bunch.  An easier Windows package may be forthcoming; stay tuned.
J<