Help, please!
I have been looking all over the internet for some sort of instructions about how to download and install games, but maybe people assume everybody knows how to do it...
However, I am extremely new to Linux and I do not.
I have SuSE 10.0 and I can download the games just fine. When they show up on my desktop I also extract them. But I simply do not know how to get from downloaded to playable.
Can someone please give me a clear, specific guide about installing games??
Many, many thanks!!!

please explain this with an example. which file did you download? how did you extract it?

For example, I thought a game called Runtling I found at pygame.org would be an easy one to start with. So, I clicked on download and my computer automatically started to download it, with the final product ending up on my desktop as "runtling.zip" I right clicked on it, and under actions chose "extract." That left me with a folder called runtling that had a whole bunch of stuff in it. Some examples: event.pyd, runtling.mp3, mouse.pyd, SDL.lll.
Now I have absolutely no idea what to do to make the game open up and be playable.

it does seem to be games in python. search for config files in the extracted dir and make sure you have python installed on your computer.
python config.py or whatever the file name is.
there must be docu on the site or within the extracted files. read it.

How about other games? I wanted to try FreeCNC and also FreeCol; did exactly the same things with them and got stuck at exactly the same place. Is there a formula for installing games, in general?

Most games from source code typically uses the make feature. Look for the configure file in the game dir you downloaded and do this in console:

Note: you must be root to install games

bhert

That version of Runtling is a Windows version, not Linux. Python will run on any system if it's left in .py format, but he compiled it into a .exe. He was kind enough to post the sourcecode on the forums though, I'll see if I can make a version you can run and then post it here in a bit.

If you want to download and play Windows games, you're going to run into problems. Files that come as .exe are written for Windows, but it is possible with Wine. Not all games work with wine, and many work but have bugs. If you can, always try to find a native linux installer for any software you want. I posted about Runtling on the creator's forum, so hopefully he'll see it.

Wow dudeman, thanks for going to all that trouble!! I'm so glad the Linux community is so willing to help newbies, instead of making them feel stupid like so many other people do.

To bhert: I hadn't been able to get the ./configure command to work (it said "no such file or directory" but then again I had been doing it under my personal user. I will try under root and see what happens! Thanks to you too!

configure doesn't need root permissions... if there is no configure script it cannot be run

It's hard to be 100% specific as there are .run/.bin/.sh type installs, compiled from source installs, packaged binaries (like RPM) type installs, and probably other methods I can't remember. Lots of ways to do things in linux. It's a little overwhelming at first.

Anyway, here's some animated tutorials you might enjoy. Hope you have a highspeed connection.
http://www.itsyourpc.org/4436/51002.html