Open-Source Cube FPS Game/Engine Updated

An anonymous reader writes "There's a new release of the open source multiplayer/singleplayer first person shooter Cube available on the official site. According to the site, this update, which has freely downloadable 'Win32/MacOSX/Linux/LinuxPPC clients and Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD servers' includes 'lots of new great SP [single player] and DM [deathmatch] maps, new textures, mapmodels, a completely new soundtrack yet again, and a variety of code improvements such as better animation.' - the history document has more info on the changes."

Comments

Re:ah

[vijaya_chandra]

The name of the game(/3d engine)'s Cube

funny

[Gigahertz]

technology wise it's very cool, and a great thing to be released... knowledge is all that will come from it tho.

Re:funny

[silverfuck]

Anybody see the need (well, want) for a real open source FPS engine? People could build their own maps for it to start out with, teams could build entire games based upon it...

Well, just an idea anyway...

Re:funny

[Kyouryuu]

Although it can't compete graphically with a modern FPS, it at least has the looks similar to the old Unreal Tournament. Although I think the player character moves a bit fast and the weapons lack "oomph," it actually has a lot of potential. The way the game editor works is also pretty intriguing.

I think you could conceivably make an interesting FPS based on this engine with some convinction and hard work.

download probs

[Anonymous Coward]

damn, most of the SF mirrors don't have the file yet.

Re:download probs

[vijaya_chandra]

http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/cube/cub e_2004_05_22.tar.gz

this works for me 8-|

Hardware reqs

[vijaya_chandra]

absolute minimum spec: p200 with tnt2/v3 (15-20 fps @640 depending on map)
reccommended spec: p500 with gf1/radeon or better (50-60 fps on most maps)
ideal spec: 1ghz and gf3/radeon8500 or better (fluent in all cases)
says the online ReadMe

it'd be good if those really are the real requirements

(Hope it's not like the 300MHz or more recommended by MS for XP)

Re:Hardware reqs

[Anonymous Coward]

On my 667 mhz pIII with Radeon 9000 in Fedora Core 1 at 800*600, I average about 50-70 FPS in medium/low detail areas. But most of the time during play in large areas with enemies, I get about 24 FPS, even with graphics set to lowest detail. Changing the resolution has reletively little effect. (Unless it's set to 320x240) The detail settings really only change the frame rate by one or two frames per second on my system. The biggest source of speed increase in Cube is to sete the field of vision to something like 60 degrees.

As a long time cube fan,

[I(rispee_I(reme]

I feel compelled to mention that the author has written other engines besides cube; those can be viewed here. Oh yeah, he worked on Far Cry, too!

This isn't a real 3D engine.

[Tim_F]

This thing is no more advanced than the engine used in Doom 1/2 (2.5D at best) and in Duke Nukem 3D. This engine cannot be used to make "rooms over rooms."

This open source 3D-engine is so far behind UT2K4, Doom 3, and HL 2 that it probably stands a next to zero chance of making the leap to real 3D in the near future.

Re:This isn't a real 3D engine.

[fredrikj]

You think Cube 2 would stand a chance, then?

Re:This isn't a real 3D engine.

[togofspookware]

Urgh. Well that's too bad.

It's still neat to play with, though. I just started playing with it, and the ability to make 'lumpy' terrain is much greater than what you have in ZDoom or Build. And real time lighting is always nice :) having 2-dimensional maps certainly makes map building easier, too.

But if they could extend this to a true 3D engine, that'd be ub3r c00l.

In the meantime, I'll put off learning C# for a while to play with this :)

Re:This isn't a real 3D engine.

[Drakker]

That is completly beyond the point. Cube's goal is to be FUN. Not to compete in the commercial games market.

It is real 3d, but to keep things simple, the rooms are limited to what you call 2.5D. That's why it playable even on old computers. If you want room over room, you can always make md2 models and insert them in your level, it works marvels and still looks good, if you are good with ligthning of course.

The working of the engine is actualy very clever, try editing for it, it's done in the game itself and it's very fast. I have contributed a couple of levels for this release and after having edited for Cube, I'd hardly go back to a "real 3d engine" because Cube is so much more FUN to edit for.

So, next time, before posting something like this, maybe you'd want to consider the actual goal of the project.

Re:This isn't a real 3D engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are mixing up quite a few issues, namely the difference between a 3d renderer and a 3d map format. Cube is decidedly 3d... take a look at the screenshot... does it look 2d to you? What do you think cube looks more like, a 2d sidescroller or quake?

The orginal doom had a 2.5d renderer and a 2d map format, OpenGL doom ports now have a 3d renderer still with a 2d map format.. they are 3d engines. Cube is a 3d engine with a "mostly" 2d mapformat, but that is just a limitation for convenience, and doesn't affect things like physics, e.g.:

http://www.cubeengine.com/images/screenshots2/sc re enshot_802899.jpg

see the bridge on that shot? players can be on top of and below it at the same time. No limitations.

As to doom3 et al... Cube is not even competing againt that. It has some pretty cool features of its own which doom3 will never have. But for your uninformed mind that is not going to matter, is it?

Re:This isn't a real 3D engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

The orginal doom had a 2.5d renderer and a 2d map format, OpenGL doom ports now have a 3d renderer still with a 2d map format.

That isn't quite accurate. Most (all?) OpenGL ports use the same two-dimensional binary space partitioning method as vanilla Doom does.

Re:This isn't a real 3D engine.

[JavaLord]

That is completly beyond the point. Cube's goal is to be FUN. Not to compete in the commercial games market.

But the only thing you really need in the commercial game market is to be Fun. Counter Strike uses the old half life engine and is still insanly popular despite it's outdated graphics.

Woo-hoo!

[Sunlighter]

I beat the Slashdotting! I found out about this on Doom World and I've been playing with it all day.

Couple of helpful hints for Windows users. First, run cube.bat in the root directory; the cube.exe in the bin directory mysteriously crashes if you run it directly. (Well, it did on my system.) Second, if you have a slower system, like I do, you might actually want to edit that cube.bat file and set the resolution to 640x480 instead of 1024x768!

Re:Woo-hoo!

[RogueProtoKol]

Well, on my system, I read the readme file which says "Install, and run the cube.bat.", which funnily enough worked first time.

Pretty awesome for an open source engine, just need to find a server with some players on =/

platforms

[dingd0ng]

How come this game that is open source, with what I have to think are fewer financial or programming resources than for-profit games, can manage to release a game for 4 platforms? For most games, you get a PC version, and maybe a Mac version or a Linux version significantly later. I know cross platform games exist, but I don't think I've ever heard of a release like this one.

Re:platforms

[illuminata]

Support's probably your biggest issue. With a small open source project the developers don't have to worry so much about having to offer great support. Not many people will ask how to get this or that working, reporting so many bugs, etc. As the project grows and better support for other platforms is wanted from the users, people with more of an expertise on those platforms can be of service. The open source world can sometimes use that "if you don't like it, fix it yourself" mentality in this case.

Because a for-profit game has to worry about more important things like pleasing the majority of their users who just so happen to run Windows, it generally helps to keep the supported platforms narrowed to a more managable size. Why mess with the other ones when almost all of your users would probably come from Windows anyways, right? They can't take it slow like an open source project can. There's a lot of money at stake here; something that an open source project isn't forced to deal with.

Also consider that it doesn't take that much to port code between the various *nix based systems because they're so similar. Don't be mislead, either; the announcement only mentioned OS X and not its predecessors.

Re:platforms

[magefile]

Lack of features (no major video or sound, no room-over-room, low-rez, yadda, yadda, yadda => no need to support Nvidia XYZ or similar)

Lack of code - it's very short

Lack of support (it's a hobby)

Manual config editing - the game doesn't have to screw around with figuring out what settings are mutually compatible - you do

If you want a game engine that can be used in a game that's actually enjoyable, try (these are just the ones I've personally tried) Aleph One (the renamed version of Marathon Infinity), Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D. Granted, nothing like as nice as UT3 or CryEngine (FarCry), but still better than Cube.

This isn't an insult by any means; on the contrary, doing what he's done, all by himself - yes, just one person - is amazing. But, as he says on his site, he's doing it to code, not to play. And when you try to play, well, it's fun to compile and then ooh and ah for a few minutes, then it sucks. Like the Wolfenstein 3D or Marathon Infinity, but without the graphics (or what graphics W3D and MI had).

I heard he was involved with Far Cry - you can definitely see Cube's influence on FC's WYSIWYG, edit-as-you-play Sandbox Editor.

Re:platforms

[WWWWolf]

well, they've picked the cross-platform compatibility as a goal right from the start - sticking to APIs that are not pain to port over.

Commercial game developers typically pick one or two platforms and then "optimize extensively" for those platforms. They want optimal, efficient and platform-aware programs, not academic-technical masterpieces. (Do a "grep -r goto *" in Quake source one day. Try to read the code without a noticeable eye bleeding. =)

Cube isn't developed with the goal of maximizing the profit from one or two platforms - it's made specifically with the other platforms and portability in mind. It apparently uses common cross-platform libraries like OpenGL and SDL, and many libraries that originate in *NIX but have been ported to other platforms (image libraries, Ogg Vorbis, etc). As an added bonus, being an open-source project, they can easily be open-source all the way and use whatever is already there.

unavailability

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the unavailability of the server for windows a (not so subtle) propaganda message?

Re:unavailability

[SnoBall]

There is a Windows server, just launch Server.bat, which is located in the cube root directory.

Mirror

[Kaladis Nefarian]

Does anyone have a working mirror? None of the sourceforge mirrors seems to be carrying it, or they're just plain slashdotted.

I'm impressed

[Nasarius]

It looks great and it runs very smoothly. But is there an option to invert the mouse Y-axis anywhere? :)

Re:I'm impressed

[Drakker]

Edit autoexec.cfg and change "invmouse 0" to "invmouse 1". It's in the Doc.

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

mod waaaaay up

This game rules!

[n1ywb]

It's small! It's FAST! It's free! It's FUN! What more could you ask for?

I played tonight for the first time. Multiplayer play reminds me a lot of Quake. The maps are all very pretty. The lighting effects are really quite good. It's true that it doesn't currently support true 3d maps (although there is a hack to get rooms over rooms using map models), and that gives the maps a sort of doom-ish feel, but WTF? Does that really impact the fun of deathmatch? I don't think so!

Screw you for releasing such a fun game that I had to waste two hours of my evening playing it! Bloody video game time pirates. :)

Re: Open-source FPS game engine

[some guy I know]

Anybody see the need (well, want) for a real open source FPS engine?

Well, the Q2 engine is now GPL, and many people are doing things with it.
Q2 is also true 3D, unlike Cube, which is (apparently, judging from the screenshots) 2.5D.
Cube does have some things that Q2 lacks, such as in-game editing of geometry, and probably better handling of outdoor areas.
Also, my guess is that the system requirements for running Q2 are somewhat higher than those for Cube.

The right game engine for the right game, I always say.
(Well, not always; sometimes I say other things, and sometimes I don't talk at all.
But when I do talk, one of the things that I may say is "The right game engine for the right game".
So I guess that it would be more accurate to say "The right game engine for the right game, I sometimes say.".)

Anyway, it's nice to see that people are working on these things.
Other open-source game engines exist, such as Crystal Space 3D and OGRE.
There used to be a comprehensive list of 3D engines (both free and commercial) here (which took over from here), but it's been a while since is was updated.
If anyone has a more recent version of this list, please post a link to it.

Cube modifications

[Nomihn0]

Cube is a really great game. The best part about it is its customizability. There are many people out there working to mod the game. One really great example of the Cube engine being modified is Death Illustrated. It is a very original game in which you play the hero of a black and white ink-sketched comic book. It has similar gameplay to the original Cube game but the ambiance is really something, especially considering the limited tech they're working with. Here's a link, they are definitely worth checking out: Death Illustrated

Okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this game/engine any better than something I could buy for my console for $20? Because I don't mind spending the $20.

I've just downloaded and player this online...

[Phil John]

...and I have one with to say, this game rocks. It's really accessible, I was playing online and getting frags within a few minutes and it's all free. For the sake of a 20 meg download get this game now :o)

Linux support!

[n1ywb]

I forgot to mention, SEAMLESS LINUX SUPPORT! That's huge for me, huge for a lot of Linux users. I just downloaded it, unziped it, and ran it! Okay well I had to emerge some SDL libraries but that was no big deal. Heh it even runs under wine, although the window is misplaced on the screen. probably easy to fix tho.

Floor over Floor

[Zmann2006]

Its not like the creator isn't addressing the "problem" of floor over floor. Check out this link:

http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/

Its made by the same guy. It's only in alpha version right now, but it's level editor is already almost complete! Check out the "real" 3D!

Open-Source engines DO Exist already

[abandonment]

We have been developing an open-source game engine (unfortunately only for windows pc at this point) for the past 5 years - http://www.realityfactory.ca

The engine is specifically tailored towards non-programmers, ie artists & designers looking to make games.

With this said, the biggest issue with open-source game development is that the gaming community as a whole simply can not see past the 'flashy graphics' and analyze the game or its technology for what it is, not what it isn't.

My company was at E3 this year promoting our engine and got some great feedback and responses from people - I'm confident that open-source in gaming will be THE next big thing, it's just a matter of having a flagship title to start the tidal wave started.

Most open-source games (like other open-source projects) are developed by hobbiest's without funding or massive resources, and the general response that these indie games get is '1997 called, they want your graphics back' and so on, without actually looking into what is involved in creating a modern AAA title like everyone is bombarded with on TV & Online (and at events like E3).

An Open-source engine is just ONE step of the way towards getting a game made - these days the art and quality requirements are so astronomically high that there's no way that an indie team will be able to compete on the AAA playing field, you still need millions of dollars in artist time to create even a basic game, even if your engine is open-source.

Of a typical game's budget, how much of it is technology licenses? Not much. Even if you are licensing an unreal/far cry engine, your tech budget is still maybe 1/10th or less of your total project budget.

So, open-source engines (like any open-source tech) is not a panacea, but simply a way for talented artists to get that one step closer to making their dreams a reality - you still need the business experience, talented artists and quite a bit of luck to succeed.

The game editor

[Trejkaz]

The game editor is absolutely amazing. I like how you can have multiple players in there, tweaking the level while they run around. I'm sure there are some serious productivity benefits to doing level design that way. I guess in theory you could have people running around as non-editors, playing the game and giving feedback like "this corridor feels too tight/too wide", and the editor could run in and move the wall in or out. It would be amazing. :-)

My review on this excellent game...

[SnoBall]

It runs fine on my PIII 500MHz with 192MB of RAM and WinME, but that's not the point. Some may think it is crappy at first, but at least rftm before you play. Also, this server can be run on a dialup connection (so says the docs). So yeah, it is pretty neat. The new version is far superior to the old version. Better animation, new soundtrack, and other improvments, among other things. If you are looking for a game to waste a few days (or weeks on. ;)) Get this game. :)