Domain: parsec.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to parsec.org.
Comments · 26
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Re:You've never heard of my ship?
Too bad nobody's been working on parsec since 1999.
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Re:there is no safe distance?
Does this bring http://parsec.org/ to mind for anyone else?
In terms of a grand promise of "commercial quality" without commercial backing, this one was a complete failure as well.
Folks just need to come to terms with it, there is just no such thing as a "commercial quality open source" when it comes to the bigger titles...
I'll admit, you have things like frozen bubble every once in a while, but nothing on the huge scale of today's console games. -
there is no safe distance?
Does this bring http://parsec.org/ to mind for anyone else?
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Re:Not as good as they would have you believe
You are right, of course. It is about personal preference. I decided to try EVE based on number of positive web reviews but obviously I have been disappointed. However, I am still looking for an excellent 3D, first person perspective, space related game. If you know of any, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Parsec, the one game that looked ideal now appears to be dead.
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Re:My views - see parsec.orgParsec (mirror) is a perfect example of what happens when you get a group of talented people coming up with a new game idea -- they started it out as closed source freeware because they didn't want the fizzle associated with OSS games; then when it fizzled anyway, they decided to opensource it.
Now, well, it's still in progress, and there are lots of other commercial games that have caught up with it and surpassed it. I guess one of the main issues is that OSS takes time to gain momentum, and Games that are Cutting Edge have a very short life. So, OS Games have to be either knockoffs, or out of date by the time they're released; the only exception I can see is when the game is a spinoff from some other game that meets one of the above criteria.
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fantasy flight simulators
Wow, well done.
Now what would happen if somebody took that concept and applied it to parsec or the wing commander style flight sims?
I know mech warrior had a nifty little cockpit sim for mall arcade action, but nothing ever had an emersive screen that made your eyes focus on the middle distance.
Throw in 3d glasses, a big subwoofer and hydraulics from an old massage bed while you're at it. -
Re:Whats with the measurements??Easy. A light year is like a leap year, except we set it on fire to light up the place a bit. A parsec is a fast-paced multiplayer cross-platform 3D Internet space combat game.
Or, it could be that a light year is the distance that a photon would travel on a standard solar year, in vacuum, while a parsec is the distance from which the radius of the earth's orbit would subtend an angle of one second of arc. One parsec is roughly 3.26168 light years.
Google is mother, Google is father. Worship Google.
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Re:What i want to know....
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Re:How do I play games on Linux?
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Why not pick an existing game project?I don't get it: Why not pick some existing project and get that off the ground? Why start from scratch when there are lots of Linux games that could use the help getting done (and probably getting wider notice by being "published" in a more formal sense)? I'd personally like to see Parsec get finished.
Having said that, this sounds like it might be a complete turn-off, purely because of the way they are going about it. LGP kinda sounds like they want to make money without making much effort. "You work for free, we'll make money" doesn't come across well, and is an easy forst thought.
I'm all for Linux games as much as the next guy (probably more so; I bought every title Loki put out), but I don't think turning people off to the OSS dev model is how to go about it.
-B
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Parsec - Space Combat Game
Parsec is a wonderful simulated space combat game that has been under development for about 6 years. Unfortunately, it is NOT an open-source project, but it is currently not even in its completed form. Who knows what the future holds?
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Re:Don't forget the games!
Next to the ones listed above, these are some of my favs:
- GLTron, 3D lightcycle game
- Parsec, 3D space shooter (no single player mode, though)
- Crack Attack!, based on SNES Tetris Attack.
Cheers,
Costyn.
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This one looks better!
Parsec is non-commercial and will be free (as beer)! Finally a state of the art online action game that for Linux (and MacOS X). CS is dead, long live Parsec! Unfortunately it's not finished yet.
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Re:Dont forget about parsec..
parsec runs on not 2, but 3 operating systems: GNU/Linux, Mac, and Win32. It's still under developement, but looks pretty sweet. Plus, it's free as in beer.
garc -
Re:Non-kernel stuff.
I've got the earlier GForce256. Although I downloaded the NVidia Linux (XFree 4) drivers I have yet to get them working.
However, after I installed Mandrake 7.2 it used the (S)VGA driver and still gave me 1024x768 at a decent colour depth, so I haven't bothered. Can't get Parsec's Lan demo working on it, but that isn't a problem...
My suggestion would be to go with Mandrake (or any other ditribution that manages this - I haven't tried many others, having switched after Redhat 6.2). KDE 2 (included) also has a 'control panel' and between that and DrakConf it provides a fairly easy way to configure a fair amount of stuff. I did have an issue creating a ReiserFS drive with DiskDrak (would not format - had to do it from a console), but unless you plan to try that you should be fine. -
Re:Non-kernel stuff.
I've got the earlier GForce256. Although I downloaded the NVidia Linux (XFree 4) drivers I have yet to get them working.
However, after I installed Mandrake 7.2 it used the (S)VGA driver and still gave me 1024x768 at a decent colour depth, so I haven't bothered. Can't get Parsec's Lan demo working on it, but that isn't a problem...
My suggestion would be to go with Mandrake (or any other ditribution that manages this - I haven't tried many others, having switched after Redhat 6.2). KDE 2 (included) also has a 'control panel' and between that and DrakConf it provides a fairly easy way to configure a fair amount of stuff. I did have an issue creating a ReiserFS drive with DiskDrak (would not format - had to do it from a console), but unless you plan to try that you should be fine. -
Parsec & Redhat 7.0
I've been dying to get RH7.0 for one reason: Parsec.
According to this page the european RH7.0 version will include a playable demo (lan party beta release as they call it) with 50 MB of mp3 music aswell. Now what I want to know is will parsec be included in the iso(s) that are free for download? If anybody with insight could give some input on this I'd love to hear it.
And yes, I *HAVE* checked parsec for downloads. And no, there are none.
Hope this isn't too offtopic, but I'm dying to try parsec. Also wouldn't mind trying RH7.0, but that is not the main reason for me to upgrade ;> -
Parsec & Redhat 7.0
I've been dying to get RH7.0 for one reason: Parsec.
According to this page the european RH7.0 version will include a playable demo (lan party beta release as they call it) with 50 MB of mp3 music aswell. Now what I want to know is will parsec be included in the iso(s) that are free for download? If anybody with insight could give some input on this I'd love to hear it.
And yes, I *HAVE* checked parsec for downloads. And no, there are none.
Hope this isn't too offtopic, but I'm dying to try parsec. Also wouldn't mind trying RH7.0, but that is not the main reason for me to upgrade ;> -
3D Space Combat?
Noone seems to like space combat except me. They might lump it with flight sims, but they're really different. Fly! isn't half as exciting as TIE Fighter. I still play that, even though I've gone throught the entire set of campaigns something like 10 times. I haven't seen many space combat games recently. Where have they gone? The only ones I see right now are Parsec(which is a free project yet to be finished) and Terminus(which is commercial). Are there others like me, or am I the only one who wants more space sims?
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Re:There...there....That's exactly the "militant linux" attitude that the article is warning against.
Hold the phone there, pal. I was saying that Windows was better than Linux at gaming, not that it couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't be used. Hell, I check out linuxgames.com every day, and I can't wait for Parsec to come out. But face facts: Windows is better at gaming than Linux. How that sentiment is "militant Linux attitude", I don't know. Seems more "militant Win32", if anything.
I was mainly just saying that the article was pointless. When I'm booted into Linux (on the one machine I have that is actually fast enough to even play games, and the only one with a Win32 partition), I don't think of Gamespy as being a particularly helpful resource. Their client won't work in Linux and they have little to say that can help me, this article included.
I'm well aware of issues like driver support, standards, etc. It didn't stop me from getting X 4.01 and V3 drivers running, and I didn't need Gamepsy to tell me anything about them. I was already in a position to be aware of the issues. Again, that isn't being militant about Linux. All I'm saying is that anyone bent on getting their Linux box into gaming shape doesn't need Gamespy articles which point out the obvious for them. Gamespy and Linux have about as much to do with each other as shellfish and pr0n.
And anything I post should never be construed as YOU MUST do this and you MUST do that. I'm too much of an idiot to bear that burden...
:-) And anything I post doesn't change the fact that Windows makes for better gaming that Linux. At least for now.
-B
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Re:linux isn't as bad as windowsAs per your points:
a) This is an MS Internet Explorer and Outlook Express problem. I use Netscape. Stuff doesn't get automatically executed, here.
b) This is a problem with users. I scan all
.exe files I download, be it from Microsoft, the excellent Parsec project, the 3dfx site.
This after YEARS of running without a virus scanner, after which I found win32.cih on my system after accidentally running one file which I didn't scan (deleted itself, and didn't even show me a nude Britney Spears, damnit)c) This is also a problem with users, though they *are* the problem of many other people, who work tech support (like me) or actually do the work.
It's fairly (sl)easy to change code on a page, then offer it as the original. That's why sites like Freshmeat and RPMfind.net are good. People trust that what they get there is the Real Deal, and not virus infested piece of garbage.
They are also the well-known sites, which means herding users into that direction will be that much easier. -- AC
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Why closed?From the faq:
30. Why are you offering it for free?
Basically, Parsec has always been planned to be a project for fun and educational purposes. So the decision to release it as freeware was actually quite an easy one. As soon as it became apparent that we didn't compare all that badly to commercial releases (at least in most respects, we certainly won't be able to compete with the breadth of the big releases, there being no missions and real story, for instance), we coined the term "commercial-quality freeware" to describe a freeware game that rivals commercial releases in quality. Since then, we're working on living up to this premise.
33. Will Parsec be open-source?
No. We're strong believers in a coordinated development effort for computer games which we don't think works with a large number of people involved. There are already plenty of really great open-source projects out there (have a look at Crystal Space and WorldForge for instance), so there isn't really anything missing. What we want to do is to create a game, for which art and music is also very important; we don't think you can create a consistent look-and-feel of a game in a hugely distributed approach. We are going to release some of the game source, though, to facilitate the creation of user extensions like mods, maybe even total conversions. We will decide on the license for this at a later time.
Sure, there's no need to opensource the artwork, but why keep the engine closed if it's all being done for educational reasons and for fun? Those two tend to be synonymous with open source. And the points about distributed development are both silly and inapplicable, since they don't actually have to accept any modifications that people would make. They could even release it under some silly "you get the source, but you can't distribute modified copies" sort of liscense that would encourage bugfixes but no forks. At least the second paragraph implies that this is all subject to change.
Let's just hope they don't screw up security-wise the way Quake 1 did. If they're writing the game from scratch, I hope they get it right instead of learning the hard way after the fact. -
Mirrors
Here's a list of mirrors, straight from the site since it looks like they're going to get slashdotted pretty soon.
Windows
File size: 18MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror list on www.3dfiles.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
MacOS
File size: 17.8MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror provided by www.insidemacgames.com
Mirror provided by www.macupdate.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Linux (x86)
File size: 16.9MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirrorprovided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.linuxgames.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirrorwww.newsbytez.com -
Mirrors
Here's a list of mirrors, straight from the site since it looks like they're going to get slashdotted pretty soon.
Windows
File size: 18MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror list on www.3dfiles.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
MacOS
File size: 17.8MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror provided by www.insidemacgames.com
Mirror provided by www.macupdate.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Linux (x86)
File size: 16.9MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirrorprovided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.linuxgames.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirrorwww.newsbytez.com -
Mirrors
Here's a list of mirrors, straight from the site since it looks like they're going to get slashdotted pretty soon.
Windows
File size: 18MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror list on www.3dfiles.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
MacOS
File size: 17.8MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror provided by www.insidemacgames.com
Mirror provided by www.macupdate.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Linux (x86)
File size: 16.9MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirrorprovided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.linuxgames.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirrorwww.newsbytez.com -
Double size modeQuake? Who needs Quake? Mandrake 6.1 came with xkobe, a neat little space shoot-em-up lacking only a double-size mode (a la X11amp) or an extended gameboard (you'd need a faint rectangle to show the fortress's range of sight). Even ten-thumbs me is up to Level 19 and a score of 10,000. (-:
Parsec should be a nice addition to my desktop, when it arrives.