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

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: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: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.

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: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.