Free Software FPS Games Compared

An anonymous reader writes "Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction."

Comments

Lies

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

Wolfenstein, I still love you!

Re:Lies

[ShieldW0lf]

OpenArena games still seem limited to FFA and with about 70 servers, the community is rather small.

Not in my experience. There are a bunch of CTF maps that are usually full of people.

Re:Lies

[omeomi]

One thing I can say for OpenArena and Nexuiz is that they're both really fun. They might not have top-shelf graphics, but the games are fast-paced, usually pretty free from cheaters and other asshats, and just a lot of fun to play. I play Nexuiz pretty frequently. I'm not a huge fan of Sauerbraten, but that's mostly because there's only a few servers, and I get tired of instagib. I'm really excited to try the others on the list...

Re:Lies

[antdude]

What about DOOM? Better than Wolfenstein games to me. :)

Re:Lies

[aurb]

Yes, but it's not free software. Or is it?

Re:Lies

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

I've never paid for it and there are thousands of places to dl it, but I'm not sure of the licensing status. A quick look at Wikipedia shows Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory as free (never played it, nor seen screen shots) AND multiplayer, but none of the others are listed as freeware - or even abandonware.

Re:Lies

[Narishma]

If you are talking about Wolfenstein 3D it's not freeware, nor abandonware. The source code was released as GPL though, but not the data. And you can still buy it on steam. Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is a multiplayer objective based team game. It uses the Quake 3 engine and is freeware, but not free software.

Re:Lies

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

DOOM... it's sort of a love/hate relationship with me. Too easy to cheat, where as with the Wolf if you want to find that secret area you have to do the work of checking EVERY SINGLE WALL. DOOM would be my #1 if they took out those stupid cheats and made me work at winning.

Are you aware that even the great DOOM (well, doom 2) paid homage to Wolf with a secret level that had SS troopers?

Re:Lies

[antdude]

Then, don't cheat. I added an anti-cheat in my old DOOM mod (crashes the game). ;)

Yes, about the secrets. I even know the release date of shareware (12/10/1993). I know too much. :(

Re:Lies

[DesScorp]

"Not in my experience. There are a bunch of CTF maps that are usually full of bots."

There. Fixed it for you.

It's like the games of yesteryears...

[MindPrison]

...coming back to frag you once more! I do like World of Padman...funny story, funny graphics....aw heck...funny game. Community 3d games are actually a lot more fun when they try to be themselves (original, don't have to conform to much of the real deal), look at Bz-flag....crap graphics...still fun as h*** to play and there are still hundreds of servers with thousands of players playing it.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be good, but I can't get past their website - big splash screen, with nothing but a tiny little "flag" icon at the bottom to get to the main site.

OK, fine - I'm not British (in fact, I'm of German decent) but I'm guessing this is a language rather than ancestry quiz.

Then the rest of the site hits me, slapping my eyes like the fish slapping dance.

Red and yellow text on orange background at the top and down both sides - all but unreadable - I defy you to be able to read that "shout box" thing (not sure what purpose it even serves). A "Pic of the Week" that's basically solid black with an red smear at the bottom. Light blue text on dark blue background for everything else.

And then a whole bunch of little link buttons on the other side, including one for validating WC3 CSS compliance, which, if you try, shows that there are errors in the CSS.

Why is it that open source so often implies a total lack of care for details and usability?

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[ardor]

Why is it that open source so often implies a total lack of care for details and usability?

Lack of natural selection. If a commercial game's user interface sucks, few people will buy and play it, unless its overly hyped. Reviewers tear apart the game, word of mouth names it a real stinker, it doesn't sale, developer either goes bankrupt or learns from the mistake. Or doesn't - and goes bankrupt, eventually.

Open-source projects don't depend on sales. While this allows for experimental genres and fresh ideas, it also takes away some incentive to polish the product's user interface (bugs OTOH are more likely to be fixed).

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[Fred Ferrigno]

Lack of natural selection. ... Open-source projects don't depend on sales. But they do depend on volunteer developers. Natural selection is quite obviously in effect among OSS projects, only the criteria for success is the ability to attract developers rather than users. This can lead OSS in a different direction compared to closed source. In the long run though, the difference is not that great since most developers prefer to work on projects that people actually use.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[jonadab]

IMO, pretty much all first-person shooters are basically the games of yesteryear coming back in yet another iteration.

I mean, you get new maps, obviously, and the technical quality of the graphics (in terms of things like bit depth) is rather a lot better than twenty years ago, and the objects are more complex (in Doom I think everything but the actual building was just a flat sprite; Descent had polymodels for the baddies, and things have progressed from there), and the physics have improved (e.g., gravity is more realistic now), and occasionally there are even changes in the basic rules (e.g., how friendly fire works in multiplayer), but in terms of how the game is played, for the most part, the overwhelming majority of FPS games are pretty much just a newer, better version of Wolfenstein. And new FPS games aren't necessarily more fun to play than older ones.

There is an FPS I want to see made, though. I want to see Commander Keen done in 3D, with the cartooney style of the original, enemies that you can stun and they get a dazed look in their eyes and stars orbiting their heads, and the vertical platformer style of level design, and the pogo stick, and giant slugs that produce hazardous poo, and flying grasshoppers you can squish with the pogo stick, and all that, but in first-person 3D. I'd pay good money for that one. I might even install a Microsoft OS, if necessary, to play that one. Bonus points if it supports multiplayer mode.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely the fact that open source projects have to become popular *first* before they can attract a huge amount of contributors.

This work fine for most software, because improving it over time gradually is the usual way of doing things, but the expectation for games is somewhat different...modern games are made more like movies than like software; just look at the credits at the end of any recent game...

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[ardor]

Natural selection is quite obviously in effect among OSS projects, only the criteria for success is the ability to attract developers rather than users.

But the consequence of failure is very different. Nothing bad happens to the developer if no one is attracted to the project. In commercial games, one flop often means the company is shut down and you lose your job.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean like the GIMP?

*ducks*

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[KDR_11k]

I think Commander Keen would work better in third person with FPS controls, platforming is easier if you can see your character and stuff like the pogo or pulling up ledges might be confusing in first person view.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[cool_arrow]

Bz-flag is the coolest. Especially the leagues. Great game. Hard to master though.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[jonadab]

Yeah, I thought about that, but the appeal of riding a pogo stick in first person pulls me to want it that way. I suppose it would be good for the game to support both first-person and third-person view, though, and the player could toggle between them with a key.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[jacksonj04]

Mod DB has info and downloads without the WoP site. Give it a go, you'll probably like the gameplay.

http://www.moddb.com/games/350/world-of-padman

(Yes, I do admin there. Yes, I have turned off karma bonus).

Fun, but....

[The Orange Mage]

most of these shooters would be considered pretty good...in 1996.

Re:Fun, but....

[xRelisH]

most of these shooters would be considered pretty good...in 1996.

I think that's a little unfair to say when most retail games have multi-million dollar budgets and these games are made by volunteers.
I can't guess as to whether you went to college or not, but most colleges have a competitive formula SAE team. The team is made up entirely of volunteers, and some of the primary goals for being in such a project is to learn more about what goes into building a functional vehicle and for sheer fun -- it's hobbyist work. Notably, these cars aren't too technologically advanced, and Ferrari with their massive F1 budget could make a mockery out of these SAE cars with one of their F1 cars. But, we all know that comparing an Formula SAE racer to an F1 car would be unfair. But we also know that the Formula SAE teams are breeding grounds for some of the best automotive engineers for tomorrow, and most car companies know this and try to peg their interest by sponsoring these teams.

It's the same case with these open source shooters. They don't have the financial backing to hire skilled artists that are willing to work full days, however I would say that say that a lot of these projects are breeding grounds for tomorrow's John Carmack's and like the SAE teams, companies like id try to do their part in supporting the community.

Re:Fun, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but other free software is slated as comparable or better then closed source software so why not games? These games suck.

Re:Fun, but....

[Cyblob]

Maybe because a game is not just a piece of software and most decent games have hundreds of full time graphics programmers, mission designers, texture artists, concept artists, AI programmers, skybox artists, effects artists, animation engineers, networking programmers etc. These kind of resources just aren't available to open source games, at least not to the same level as commercial games.

Re:Fun, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on! Because lord knows top-notch games like Portal never get their start from small-budget hobbyists working in their spare time.

Oh, wait...

Re:Fun, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Quake was released in 1996. OpenArena uses the Quake III engine.

Saying OpenArena "would be considered pretty good...in 1996" is like saying the SR-71 Blackbird would be considered "pretty good" in 1935.

It's such a ridiculous understatement that the only possible explanation is that you're British.

Re:Fun, but....

[The Orange Mage]

Those listed are almost all graphics-related. I really don't care too much about the visuals, but some deep, engaging gameplay would be nice. Linux gaming today means playing free rip-offs of games that were cool in the mid-90s. (Civ2, Quake, SimCity, etc)

Re:Fun, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

...which is a good thing, considering that Quake (released in 1996) still stands as the best (deathmatch) fps ever. Warsow is $$$$$$ btw :)

Re:Fun, but....

[philwx]

I know what you mean. But if you think about it, a good part of open source software is filling a "need." There is a need for a java IDE that has x features. There is a need for a full featured text editor with extra utilities for editing code. There is a need for convenience installers for linux programs. There is a need for games. Wait, what kind of games? There is where it becomes very open ended and not well defined. The passion of wanting to develop an open source application to fulfill a need does not mesh with the artistic vision of commercial game developers. So they can implement bland imitations of popular games, or games that just don't have widespread appeal. It would help if when someone was inspired to make a ground breaking game, they would say "I'm making this for linux, screw making money." After this point I'm guessing, but it seems more likely that given significant inspiration for a game, someone will go to work for commercial companies. At that point making a linux version becomes laughable among bean counters who only see numbers of customers, and don't share a passion for free software. There's probably more to it, but that is my initial take on it.

Re:Fun, but....

[edwdig]

Unless you're really trying to push the limits of your target platform hard, programming is a drop in the bucket compared to the work done by the artists and level designers. The level designers probably have more to do with good gameplay than the programmers.

Level design is also a REALLY tedious process. Making a good level requires replaying the level over and over slightly tweaking things to get them just right. It gets old fast, and you get really sick of the level in the process. And of course you have to deal with the issues that come up from playing the level that many times. It's very easy to memorize the level you're working on, and end up making the level way too difficult because of that.

Re:Fun, but....

[edmicman]

Why not? Ultimately, it's just personnel resources, whether it's commercial or OSS. Are there not graphics programmers, mission designers, texture artists, concept artists, AI programmers, skybox artists, effects artists, animation engineers, networking programmers etc. available to the OSS community?

Re:Fun, but....

[StormReaver]

"most of these shooters would be considered pretty good...in 1996."

Unfortunately, the same can be said of most modern commercial games as well. They've all turned into insanely expensive incremental updates on the same game play. Game companies need one of three things (and possibly all three):

1) An innovative new gaming genre along the lines of the switch from 2D to 3D. I'm not holding my breath here. Nintendo has come closest to this with the Wii controller, but this was a glancing blow, and won't last forever.

2) Game players who were born after 1995, and therefore don't know any better. This is cheap and easy to come by, so this is probably where game companies are placing their bets.

3) People with more money than sense. Also fairly easy to come by, but not quite as easy as 2.

Re:Fun, but....

[rjames13]

Err no
I wish that wasn't true but it is. I'm a FOSS game developer, this month a saw a musician advertise himself on one FOSS gaming site and he was asked by at least three different projects to work for them. Programmers outnumber artist something like 10-1 or 100-1. Most of them are not Geeks or Nerds like us programmers who spend our life on the Internet. They seem to be in different communities and speak in different groups to us. Not to say we don't get along with them they are just not like us. Also they view some licensing issues different to us because they are artists of a different sort.

BTW in your list the people tasked with the jobs of graphics programmers, AI programmers, networking programmers are all available but because most FOSS projects are small in size it is hard to find specialist like these when you want them. Most programmers in FOSS game development have to wear multiple hats.

Re:Fun, but....

[KDR_11k]

We haven't exhausted the possibilities of the current interfaces, there's not really a need for a new one. The thing a new interface does is change the rules, most publishers got a list of "safe" game designs but if you change the interface that list becomes useless and they'll look for new game designs. It changes the mentalities more than it really changes the games.

However, it's hard to get a new concept off the ground if you're not a one man dev team. Even if it's not about money it's much easier to recruit other devs for "let's clone our favourite game!" than "I've got this new idea and hought we should try it". I'm pretty active on the opensource engine Spring but despite all efforts to get beyond the initial plan to "remake Total Annihilation in 3d!" most of the playing still happens in TA mods which haven't even bothered to update their 3d models from the old 1997 material and many people still think about changes to the engine in a TA context (there's a lot of whining how some feature would be unfit for TA mods despite the feature being completely optional and only meant for use by mods that are not TA).

Re:Fun, but....

[Workaphobia]

Oh absolutely, I didn't realize how essential level design was until Nexuiz's mappack was released. It was basically a rehash of a lot of older quake maps (that I personally would not have had the chance to come into contact with), and they were very noticeably more playable than anything I'd ever seen in that game. Which isn't to say that I didn't like the original Nexuiz maps, but these were much more natural to learn and frag in.

Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man? it seems the site got slashdotted in a few minutes! Anyone have a mirror of sorts

They Missed

[phoenixwade]

They missed AlephOne - the OS marathon development... Still very playable even on very lightweight equipment.

Re:They Missed

[DurendalMac]

I was thinking the same thing, but Aleph One is still very unpolished and bloated after years of development, not to mention that at the core, it's still an antiquated engine.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[Tibor the Hun]

Open source and free are not mutually exclusive as most of us know.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is free, but I don't think is open source. Maybe it is, it is based on either Q2 or Q3 engine, and Q2 engine is open sourced (or GPLed), maybe Q3 engine is as well.
But anyway, it seems as if the summary equates open source with free and free with open source.

Re:WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[Drasil]

The Enemy Territory source code has been released, had it been considered I'm sure it would have come in in the #1 or #2 spot. ET is based on the Q3 engine, which has also been open sourced. Generally I'm not a fan of shooters, but I've probably spent thousands of hours playing ET. It may be that games that were developed with a closed source model and then later the source was released were not considered, I dunno, it's slashdotted.

Re:WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[Ai Olor-Wile]

Free Software should be assumed to mean "free as in speech." Y'know, as in the Free Software Foundation. As in Richard Stallman's going to kick your ass. With a katana. (Now, where is that xkcd strip...)

Re:WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[88NoSoup4U88]

Afaik, only the source to mod the game has been released, but no GPL-ed open source release (as has happened with all the previous id software engined titles)... But I'm positive we'll eventually be able to have a peek at that too.

Back on topic, I've played most of these games (except Alien Arena), and I always found it a bit disappointing to see what people created with access to the source: In the end (with some exceptions, such as Tremulous), most of these mods/total conversions just turn out to be another deathmatch/capture the flag game, with different models, different weapons... but still basically the same game mechanics as the game it's based on.

Though I still very much appreciate their effort (who can complain when the game is free for them to download), I very much hope that there are some teams out there who want to do more than just that.

As for my own contribution to try to 'solve' this: The last two years I've been very busy refining an idea for a game; build on the Quake3 engine (more specifically, the cleaned up IOQuake3 source), where the gameplay will be totally different from what's been developed on the Q3 engine before...
Active development has just started, and it seems that we'll be able to crack out an Alpha release in three months time.

But in time, be sure to download this game once we're done! :)

Re:WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[Darkael]

While I agree that ET is a great game (though medics are overpowered IMO), only the source code for the game logic has been released so far. ET is still closed-source for the most part.

Re:WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[jonadab]

> It may be that games that were developed with a closed source model and then
> later the source was released were not considered, I dunno, it's slashdotted.

I assume they only considered games that are completely available freely.

A number of commercial games have had their source code released, so that the community can do things like port it to various operating systems and make UI improvements, but the open source license only covers the *program*, not the content (artwork, levels, whatnot), so you can't play the game with _just_ the open-source components; you still need a copy of the commercial item. Descent for instance is in this category. In some cases there is substitute content available so that you can play _a_ game without the commercial product, so there's a somewhat blurry line, but I'm guessing that they probably only considered games that are completely open, program _and_ content.

Re:Free FPS Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll!! (minicity link)

Urban Terror?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Urban Terror? http://www.urbanterror.net/ . Just released a new version. It's a pretty fun game.

Re:Urban Terror?

[tayferd]

Yes, Urban Terror has been around forever. It's a mod of Q3A, and now has a stand alone client.

Re:Urban Terror?

[zcat_NZ]

I'm a little puzzled

WoP qualifies as free, although the assets are released under a 'charge no money' restriction?

Urban Terror afaik is _more_ free.. why isn't it in this list? Why is yet another boring Q3Arena-clone considered the best? Apart from the graphics, can anyone tell me what is different about open arena, alien arena, warsow, or even padman? The gameplay is basically identical in all of them. Yawn!

IMHO WoP should have been 3rd on this list, Tremulous 2nd, and Urban Terror 1st...

Re:Urban Terror?

[zcat_NZ]

Oh yeah.. and nexuiz.. yet another q3a clone..

Re:Urban Terror?

[dethro]

I was wondering the same thing. Perhaps it was left out because it started out as a Quake III mod. Now it uses the open source version of Q3 (http://ioquake3.org/). World of Padman also uses ioquake3 so hmmmm. Anyway, Urban Terror is a great game.

Re:Urban Terror?

[imr]

I don't think it's a Free Software. Where is the licence and where is the code?

Re:Urban Terror?

[Timbo]

The common factor with all the games listed is that their code is GPL. UrT doesn't qualify as its game code is still closed source. Depending on your reading of the license, this may constitute a GPL violation.

Alternatively, it could just have been left off as it was written before UrT was released as a single (legally ambiguous, IMHO) package.

Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[Sepht]

While the site seems to be down, here is a draft copy of the article text, I cleaned up the grammer before the actual post but didn't save that version because I was stupid. Original had pictures to keep you distracted. About two weeks ago, Joe Barr posted a feature on Linux.com titled "New Alien Arena 6.10 blows away its FPS competition" yet gave no real comparisons with other similar games. This was done in the same style as Barr's previous feature, "Tremulous: The best free software game ever?" which described Tremulous but also lacked comparisons and relations to other games. This feature hopes to be a thorough comparison of the major free software shooters. There have been many free software first-person shooters (FPS) projects over the years, from modded Doom and Quake engines to enhance the existing games (ezQuake, EGL, ZDoom), to free art packs such as OpenQuartz or OpenArena. In 2002, along came Cube, a single and multiplayer FPS based on its own engine, including artwork, maps, models and an ingame map editor. In the freeware (and Linux compatible!) world a little-known game called Legends, a Tribes-inspired game, appeared yet remained closed-source. Filling the FPS gap in the open-source world has usually been left up to commercial companies who release their games with Linux support (i.e. Doom3, Unreal Tournament 2004, Loki Software's work) or freeware games produced by commercial studios(i.e. America's Army, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) or simply running Windows games run via wine. In the last few years a few built-from-scratch community-based FPS projects, most built on the GPLed Quake engines, have popped up, among them are Tremulous, Alien Arena, Nexuiz, and Warow. Some have kept their art assets under a closed license (Warow), while others have also released their art under an OSS license (Nexuiz), I consider both categories free software since well, software refers to programs, code and procedures, not artwork. For this comparison, we'll take a look at active, robust and community-developed free software shooters. Most released free software shooters are designed for multiplayer, a logical step for a game developed in an online community, however most also feature a bot-based single-player mode. While others have compared such games before, this feature seeks to be a little more thorough and go a step further, ranking the following seven games: Alien Arena, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous, Warow, and World of Padman. In ranking these games, gameplay, design, innovation and presentation (in that order) will be held as primary criteria. 7. Sauerbraten Sauerbraten is basically Cube 2, the sequel to one of the most influential free software shooters released to date. The engine is completely reworked with brand new graphics rendering features rivaling that of Quake4. Like Cube, Sauerbraten has a built-in map editor that allows player to edit maps from within the game, making this one of the friendliest games for content-creation. The latest version of Sauerbraten, 2007-09-04, is little more than a subversion snapshot packaged and stabilized for wider distribution; the game is still in heavy development. Sauerbraten gameplay drastically differ from anything Cube offered, with simple Quake-style weapons, game effects, and the same Quake3-like FFA action. It is worth noting that Cube (and Sauerbraten) give you a weapon when you pick up the appropriate ammobox; there is no separation between ammo and weapons.While it has some cool features, the game still feels like more of a concept demo than an actual game, and with only 20-30 servers, half running instagib, there isn't much of a community following. Single player is reminiscent of Quake1, with enemy monsters in a variety of maps. The menu is actually one of the coolest I've seen implemented in a game, it spawns as an object ingame and faces you, however the lack of a main menu upon load adds to the tech-demo feel. Despite the tech-demo nature of the game, Sauerbraten has a good soundtrack, lots of maps, good quality models, well-done artwork

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[Sepht]

and I'm an idiot once again, proper formatting this time!! Here is my draft copy

About two weeks ago, Joe Barr posted a feature on Linux.com titled "New Alien Arena 6.10 blows away its FPS competition" yet gave no real comparisons with other similar games. This was done in the same style as Barr's previous feature, "Tremulous: The best free software game ever?" which described Tremulous but also lacked comparisons and relations to other games. This feature hopes to be a thorough comparison of the major free software shooters.

There have been many free software first-person shooters (FPS) projects over the years, from modded Doom and Quake engines to enhance the existing games (ezQuake, EGL, ZDoom), to free art packs such as OpenQuartz or OpenArena. In 2002, along came Cube, a single and multiplayer FPS based on its own engine, including artwork, maps, models and an ingame map editor. In the freeware (and Linux compatible!) world a little-known game called Legends, a Tribes-inspired game, appeared yet remained closed-source. Filling the FPS gap in the open-source world has usually been left up to commercial companies who release their games with Linux support (i.e. Doom3, Unreal Tournament 2004, Loki Software's work) or freeware games produced by commercial studios(i.e. America's Army, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) or simply running Windows games run via wine. In the last few years a few built-from-scratch community-based FPS projects, most built on the GPLed Quake engines, have popped up, among them are Tremulous, Alien Arena, Nexuiz, and Warow. Some have kept their art assets under a closed license (Warow), while others have also released their art under an OSS license (Nexuiz), I consider both categories free software since well, software refers to programs, code and procedures, not artwork. For this comparison, we'll take a look at active, robust and community-developed free software shooters. Most released free software shooters are designed for multiplayer, a logical step for a game developed in an online community, however most also feature a bot-based single-player mode. While others have compared such games before, this feature seeks to be a little more thorough and go a step further, ranking the following seven games: Alien Arena, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous, Warow, and World of Padman. In ranking these games, gameplay, design, innovation and presentation (in that order) will be held as primary criteria.

7. Sauerbraten
Sauerbraten is basically Cube 2, the sequel to one of the most influential free software shooters released to date. The engine is completely reworked with brand new graphics rendering features rivaling that of Quake4. Like Cube, Sauerbraten has a built-in map editor that allows player to edit maps from within the game, making this one of the friendliest games for content-creation. The latest version of Sauerbraten, 2007-09-04, is little more than a subversion snapshot packaged and stabilized for wider distribution; the game is still in heavy development. Sauerbraten gameplay drastically differ from anything Cube offered, with simple Quake-style weapons, game effects, and the same Quake3-like FFA action. It is worth noting that Cube (and Sauerbraten) give you a weapon when you pick up the appropriate ammobox; there is no separation between ammo and weapons.While it has some cool features, the game still feels like more of a concept demo than an actual game, and with only 20-30 servers, half running instagib, there isn't much of a community following. Single player is reminiscent of Quake1, with enemy monsters in a variety of maps. The menu is actually one of the coolest I've seen implemented in a game, it spawns as an object ingame and faces you, however the lack of a main menu upon load adds to the tech-demo feel. Despite the tech-demo nature of the game, Sauerbraten has a good soundtrack, lots of maps, good quality models, well-done artwork and textures. The gameplay isn't anything astounding but with pretty decent maps and gameplay reminiscent

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[jandrese]

Ow! My Eyes! Crushed under the massive wall of text...

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[Sepht]

Yeah I know, oh my bad!! I just.. need to think a little bit, use preview button. Get some sleep :)

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[Sepht]

As an apology, I originally wrote this article with unicode (and published it on a site that uses unicode), so I used the Section sign U+00A7 to represent the 'S' in WarSow. I posted this comment in a jiffy from my saved draft and forgot to replace the unicode with an S. Also I would like to say that the above is a draft copy I had saved, I don't have access to my final copy at the moment.

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[stony777]

THE SITE IS BACK UP - just for your information :)

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[BenoitRen]

I cleaned up the grammer

Somehow, I don't think you did a good job...

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[Sepht]

Cleaned up the grammar before posting it on the site that got slashdotted, the version in the comments is a horribly written draft that I did at 3am off shorthand notes.

To be honest though, I can't say the final is much better in terms of structure, clarity or cohesiveness. I apologize. I know there is lots of passive, crap comma usage, etc. but I originally was going to do this with a second author to whom I was planning to send my notes. I ended up doing it myself so I quickly turned my notes into an article without much thought, I've learned my lesson, and I'm a bit ashamed of myself.

you gets what I mean?

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[BenoitRen]

I don't think you get what I mean. You wrote "grammer" when it's actually "grammar". :)

Re:Slashdotted - No Mirrors up

[Hal_Porter]

That's spelling though. Version 1 of his post had issues with spelling and grammar. Version 2 had the grammar fixed. Why are you complaining about the spelling in Version 2? Didn't you read the release notes? WAIT FOR VERSION 3! Bug reports concerning spelling for Version 2 WILL BE IGNORED.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

It's another myminicity link to the same "budgieton" account. Mod it as troll!

Another greate game

[Anonymous Coward]

Not completely 'Open Source' but is based on the Q3 engine.

Urban Terror

http://urbanterror.net/

Re:Another greate game

[zcat_NZ]

How is it not opensource?

Xinerama

[Jethro]

I have yet to see one game that works correctly on a Linux box with Xinerama. At least in full-screen more. Some of them won't even let you change resolution at all, let alone tell them to run in a window.

When they run in full-screen they tend to span the displays and have all the action right in the middle so the important stuff is split in two.

And quite a few games crash on the weird resolution.

I'm not saying I've seen Windows games work on dual-head or ever support two monitors, but at least they have the decency to just pick a screen and use that one.

Re:Xinerama

[arth1]

I'm not saying I've seen Windows games work on dual-head or ever support two monitors, but at least they have the decency to just pick a screen and use that one.

There are some titles for Windows that support multiple heads: Flight Simulator X, for example.
X2 supports two monitors, but with the inexplicable requirement that your secondary monitor has to be to the right of the primary, cause they've hardcoded the screen edges for the mouse.

Then there's titles that won't run at all unless you disable one monitor. Combat Flight Simulator 3, for example, which is rather odd, considering that the non-combat variety from the same company supports multiple monitors.

Re:Xinerama

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a Xinerama machine since years and never had any problems. Perhaps it's just your window manager sucks.

I always used windowed mode to jump to the other screen easily (for IRC) while gaming.

No problems whatsoever. Crashes? Why?

Q3 and some other games like bzFlag also were able to run in the full view of 2048x768. Big fun, but very sickening :D

Re:Xinerama

[Kent Recal]

Erm, sounds like you have no single-screen modes configured.
Read up on the MetaModes option in xorg.conf.

Mine looks like this:

Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024_60.00, 1920x1200; null, 1920x1200"

And I can play ET, AA, Tremulous, etc. just fine. The second screen simply goes off when a game requests fullscreen.

Re:Xinerama

[turing_m]

NO!!! You've destroyed my only way of keeping games off my work laptop! Must... avert... eyes.

Re:Free FPS Games

[The Orange Mage]

What the hell are you on about? There's not even a link in my first post.

Quake 3 Arena: GPL'd and Free (as in beer)

[tayferd]

They missed Q3A, surely the best free game out there. In 2005, id Software released the complete source code under the GNU GPL. The copyrighted textures have been duplicated by way of Open Arena. With Q3A/Open Arena, comes many amazing mods such as Challenge Pro-Mode (CPMA) and Urban Terror (UrT).

Re:Quake 3 Arena: GPL'd and Free (as in beer)

[Sepht]

Yes Quake 3 is free software, but Quake3 can't be called a packagable 'game' in the sense of 'free'. The game materials are still proprietary and not free. The engine is free software, and in fact, all the games on that list use GPL engine that were built on iD's released Quake1/2/3 engines. However they also can be considered packagable 'games' with free content. The article should have made that distinction though.

Re:Quake 3 Arena: GPL'd and Free (as in beer)

[IpalindromeI]

in fact, all the games on that list use GPL engine that were built on iD's released Quake1/2/3 engines.

Sauerbraten has a custom engine.

Re:Quake 3 Arena: GPL'd and Free (as in beer)

[Sepht]

yeah I misspoke, sauerbraten is zlib licenses which is still an approved-FSF license, fitting the definition of "free software".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The-Cheap-And-Bored-Dept

[Joe Snipe]

Wow, another list of free games? The last three articles weren't enough?

Re:The-Cheap-And-Bored-Dept

[witte]

The last three articles weren't enough?

Of course not.
It's stay-happy-news from the whaa-no-new-fps-in-my-xmas-stocking dept.

(...It can get awfully lonely in this basement with no new games to distract me.)

Free assets other than code?

[tepples]

The Enemy Territory source code has been released, had it been considered I'm sure it would have come in in the #1 or #2 spot. Even if the code of Enemy Territory is Free, are the models, textures, maps, sounds, and other non-code assets Free?

It may be that games that were developed with a closed source model and then later the source was released were not considered Free Doom engine plus proprietary WAD file = non-Free game. I seem to remember Mr. Stallman even approving of this business model in some article years ago; can anyone help dig that up?

Re:Free assets other than code?

[Sepht]

Yes ET's content is free. In terms of legal licensing (for both code and art), ET is the same as some games on that list. The difference comes in that all of these games were developed for free distribution and continue development with a free software engine.

ET was developed as a proprietary game, released as free later, and while the source code was released, it was also after-the-fact and there isn't active development of ET in the style of a free software project. I guess the article focused more on free software games that continue that style of development and made by development teams that continue the production of both free art and free software code.

New Sauerbraten available

[Lord Satri]

The latest version of Sauerbraten, 2007-09-04 TA is a little late. There's a new Sauerbraten available since a few days, and it is significantly improved over the previous available one. (don't ask me why this group doesn't use version numbers...)

Re:New Sauerbraten available

[LiquidCoooled]

Sauerbraten, 2007-09-04
That looks like a perfectly reasonable versioning scheme to me.

You know 100% if your version is older or newer than another version.

Re:New Sauerbraten available

[Sepht]

Yes I know, the top of the article mentions that it was written two months ago. The release of the new Sauerbraten was what promoted me to post this before it got too out-of-date.

Also the end of the article contains the following note, "Notes: Since the original writing, Sauerbraten has released a new version that has more RPG elements and seems to make progress in being a more full-fledged game. I actually haven't had time to update the article." Perhaps I should have put that under the Sauerbraten section. I'm very eager to try out the new release though.

Re:New Sauerbraten available

[bateleur]

You know 100% if your version is older or newer than another version.

Which you do with any versioning scheme unless you have branches. Date-based versioning doesn't describe branches at all! Also doesn't allow for major and minor versions or for alpha or beta designations, which makes it harder to decide what to install and when to upgrade.

Re:New Sauerbraten available

[Sparr0]

You realize that Ubuntu 7.10 is just the October 2007 release, right? the next version, 8.04, is the April 2008 release. Sauerbraten could make the version numbers more cryptic, but why? Sauerbraten doesn't HAVE minor revisions or alpha/beta versions. There is release, and there is svn, and that is all.

Re:Free FPS Games

[LiquidCoooled]

already posted bug report, its in hand.

me: D2 Reply to hidden parent appears joined to previous thread

pudge: Yes, this is known, and we know it's a problem. We have plans to deal with it.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1849018&group_id=4421&atid=104421

Tremulous

[Tom9729]

Tremulous is a very fun game.

The article is wrong though, there are a lot more than eight maps, and they didn't copy off Natural Selection. Both Natural Selection and Tremulous copied of Gloom.

Re:Tremulous

[Sepht]

Tremulous ships with 8 stock maps. That isn't a lie, there are custom maps, as with all the games, but there are only 8 stock maps. Article doesn't say Tremulous ripped off anyone, I'll quote "Tthe concept and style of the game is rather original. If anything, Tremulous can be related to the Half-Life mod Natural Selection, although without the RTS commander mode." Related doesn't mean one took from the other, it just means they are similar.

Re:Tremulous

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too great an article but it was nice introducing those games as most people probably don't know them. Just for the record I've played all of them. In my list Tremulous is the clear winner.

Go Tremulous!

Re:Tremulous

[Tom9729]

The article clearly states that "Tremulous only has 8 maps", that is a lie. If it said "ships with 8 maps", I would agree with you.

Nexuiz, Alien Arena 2007, WoP

[thePsychologist]

I've tried these three games. I'm a FPS fan and when I moved to Linux I wanted some free shooters, so I took a look at these three, in the order in the subject. Nexuiz: Good but gameplay doesn't seem solid. The sound effects were pretty bad on my system at least and the weapons are weaker that Q3 I think. After a while I had this problem where all the textures were replaced by weird looking patterns and I gave up trying to fix it. An ok game but nothing really special. Alien Arena: This is the first free game that I played that I actually like and would play seriously. The controls are solid and the weapons are well-balanced. Graphics are good although on my main system they sucked cause of graphics card drivers. I had to play on lowest res and lowest detail settings though. Great level design and pretty good bots. WoP: I hated this game. The weapons were unintuitive and the levels were too dark, and adjusting the gamma didn't help. The sound effects were annoying and most of the levels were of the open type where bot aim held superior. even on the easiest level I was wiped out. I also have a valid copy of Q3 which I tried a while ago and it ran the same as it did on Windows. Alien Arena is the only one I found worth it.

Re:Nexuiz, Alien Arena 2007, WoP

[Sigma 7]

Alien Arena: This is the first free game that I played that I actually like and would play seriously. The controls are solid and the weapons are well-balanced. The controls (I include the UI) are only as solid as Quake 2. I normally switch weapons through the mouse wheel since it's hard to memorize the number slots for the weapons across the massive number of FPS games. In Quake 2, you only see the current weapon selection - IIRC, there may have been an icon that showed you which weapon you were switching to.

The one time I tried Alien Arena was the same time I noticed this. After playing Quake 3 and UT, this isn't a feature I can play without. In fact, I couldn't play an unmodified version of Nexuiz because of a very similar problem - it only showed your weaponry when you were switching, and it doesn't display that until the server knows you are switching weapons (Nexuiz is based on NQ, where all actions were server-side.)

FYI, if you want to annoy players like me, pickup a weapon that has a long transition time when switching, and drop it so that I'd pick it up. While not a perfectly effective tactic, it is known to lock down players that use mouse wheels. It also works on players that still have weapon-switch on pickup enabled.

Re:Nexuiz, Alien Arena 2007, WoP

[SanityInAnarchy]

Gameplay in Nexuiz doesn't seem solid? Huh. I love that gameplay, particularly the ability to remote-detonate rockets.

Oh well, at least you didn't try Open Arena.

What about bzflag?

[rastoboy29]

bzflag is a good free game, which just goes to show that fancy graphics have nothing to do with how good a game is.

Re:What about bzflag?

[u235meltdown]

BZFlag is not a FPS game, it is a "First Person Tank Shooter" according to Wikipedia... hmm, I guess it counts as "FPS"
maybe they disagree with the 13,300 registered players that like it

Re:What about bzflag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling bzflag a good FPS is like calling IRC a good MMORPG.

Re:What about bzflag?

[Anonymous Coward]

bzflag is total crap.

Re:What about bzflag?

[bar-agent]

like calling IRC a good MMORPG

"IRC, where men are men, women are men, and 14-year-old girls are FBI agents."

Sounds like a MMORPG to me. :)

yeah, but

[Reality Master 201]

You mom had you as the result of working a donkey show in Guadalajara. So why would anyone listen to a jackass like you?

No need for comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Arena is the best! Holy carp!

Comparison

[Bahdom]

Nice comparison, thnx :D

Three cheers for John Carmack,

[shish]

seeing as 6 out of the 7 games are Quake-based :P

It strikes me that open source has a reputation for really good code and half-assed presentation, so I wonder why there aren't many free-from-day-1 game engines :-/

Re:Three cheers for John Carmack,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... and basically they were made from originally closed-source that was released into Open Source... which, in itself, is very telling.

Re:Three cheers for John Carmack,

[Dan Farina]

Consider Cube and Sauerbraten. These are not only amusing games but also quite pretty engines as well.

They also have some pretty interesting and ahead-of-their-time collaborative, live level editing support.

Re:Three cheers for John Carmack,

[Rogerborg]

Because every developer thinks that they can write a better engine, and every producer thinks that an engine is only worth what you pay for it. Both of these observations are from personal experience.

myminicity 'spam' - off-topic

[Animaether]

the problem with myminicity (and indeed most such sites before it) is that they do not consider it spamming. In fact, throwing that URL out as much as you can - on your blog, on forums, in your feeds, by IM and so forth and so on is the whole -point- of that site... as it is visits that cause the 'city' to grow.

Good luck finding rules on where a 'player' is allowed to post the URL(s). Even more luck to you finding a 'report abuse' page or contact address. Good luck getting any response whatsoever from contact@ ( if you do get something, by all means follow up here :\ )

Re:myminicity 'spam' - off-topic

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, I've counted 4 myminicity accounts spamming slashdot: blah blah blah And by comparison, I've given up counting the posts that discuss these links. This is worse than a mailing list letting slip through a spam message, and seeing countless folks take the opportunity to offer as many off-topic comments. Deleting a mailing list thread gone nuts is easy, but deleting Slashdot posts isn't an option. Put another way, it's easy to ignore AC posts, off-topic posts (they tend to get modded down fairly quickly), or posts that are disruptive by nature (they also tend to get modded down), but multiple meta posts that try to be helpful but end up repeating what others have already pointed out? If you're so inclined, write an email to the powers that be. Post an Ask Slashdot article. Hell, take the dog for a walk. Just don't make the problem worse than it is.

tremulous

[Anonymous Coward]

tremulous is the game that I wanted to play ten years ago when I was playing starcraft and quake and wished they could be merged. If only they would add protoss to their races as well as terrans and zerg...

The best "free" game...

[crhylove]

... is Urban Terror. But as others have pointed out, did you mean free as in beer or open source? Free by itself is pretty misleading. At any rate Urban Terror pwns those other ones damn hard. Especially the new version with all the great new maps.

Much Love,
rhY

dim3

[AHuxley]

Also see dim3, a free open source 3D game engine with tools. Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
http://www.klinksoftware.com/

Re:dim3

[deniable]

"Linux, Mac and Windows"

To quote from the site given:

Windows RunTime Binary (21.5MB) (Includes Engine and Sample Demo Project, used to run projects created in OS X)

Linux RunTime Binaries There are no linux binaries. You'll need to download the code and compile them yourself.

Minimum Requirements: OS 10.4 and XCode 2.2 Note: This code compiles on either Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.

Looks like a cool project, but how well does it compile / run on Linux / Windows?

Re:dim3

[AHuxley]

Ppl have posted about it working but I would ask or search in the dim3 forums http://www.idevgames.com/dim3/index.php for linux news.

Re:dim3

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't. Development is OS X only. Projects can be compiled for any of the three platforms.

Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

I played Tremulous briefly a while back... The game balance is absolutely terrible. The alien team is clearly far more powerful than the human team, especially at higher levels of evolution (the most powerful alien can do devastating hit-and-run attacks that kill even the most powerful humans and doesn't give a team of even coordinated humans enough time to kill it), and the evolution model itself suffers from a problem going back to what I consider the single worst piece of game design ever, Counter-Strike. Namely, the catch-22 that forms if one team dominates early in the game. The winning team manages to acquire powerful upgrades, and the losing team cannot build up enough resources to purchase upgrades themselves. If a member of the losing team somehow manages to acquire an upgrade, it is quickly lost because he dies at the hands of the vastly more powerful enemy team, which manages to hold onto their upgrades by virtue of being unkillable while in possession of their powerful upgrades.

Warsow has very good balance being a deathmatch game, and I love the fact that there are no clearly dominant weapons in the game (I consider one-hit kills to be the epitome of bad and lazy game design), but the resulting game requires so much skill to play and I don't have enough spare time to get good enough where playing it would be enjoyable.

Team Fortress 2 is the best multiplayer game I have ever played, despite balance problems introduced by sniper headshots and the spy backstab.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[The Orange Mage]

Cry more. :)

But seriously, those one-hit kills are pretty well balanced in TF2 by a few simple facts:

Sniper: Yeah he gets one-hit kills, but has to be scoped for a few seconds, can't see much else, and isn't useful in any other situations.

Spy: Useless when not cloaked/disguised, can be easily detected by shooting since there's no friendly fire, and Pyros are meant to check teammates for spies in the midst. Also, disguised spies still collide with enemies, so if you try to run near/by someone and you stick a little, let loose on them.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[arcade]

Play it again. A coordinated team of humans are great. It depends on one thing though. When Sudden Death occurs, the humans should still be able to build armouries, as the aliens are still able to evolve.

Great game. Just finished a round right now. Best game I've played in *years*

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

My problem with one-hits in general is that if you give someone any way at ALL to create a one-hit opportunity, certain players will spend all of their time figuring out how to abuse it. The spy's invisibility power gives him the ability to run behind a line of rushing players, uncloak and eliminate them all nearly instantly. There's no way to defend against this short of reducing the effectiveness of your rush by having everyone be constantly watching where they came from instead of concentrating on the enemy that they're trying to rush against. A good spy forces a team to be constantly preoccupied with watching their backs, reducing their effectiveness against conventional attacks. A single player simply shouldn't have this kind of power. Removing the spy's invisibility would fix this problem for me. I've never played a game where giving players complete invisibility didn't completely ruin class balance, and giving that player a one-hit kill as well is just blatantly bad game design. As for the sniper, there are plenty of places where a good sniper can completely shut down an offense without giving them any chance at retaliation. That's the most frustrating part, if it were *possible* to kill the sniper before he got you, I wouldn't have a problem. That's the problem with long-range, highly accurate one-hit kills, there's simply no way to defend against them, because there's no way to get close enough that your own weapons become effective. The most ridiculous example is that even a medic'd heavy with 450 HP gets taken out by a headshot. This shouldn't be possible, a medic is supposed to increase the survivability of the player he's healing, and no other weapon in the game comes even close to doing that kind of damage. My view is that sniper damage should be affected by distance like all of the other weapons in the game, and at most should do 150 when fully-charged, multiplied to 300 for a headshot at *close* range.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

I played many games over a several days. I almost never saw the humans win unless there was a huge skill stack on the human side. Far more often I saw the aliens win, and occasionally a sudden death which inevitably went to the aliens.

What was the most frustrating for me was not being able to buy upgrades or evolve because I hadn't killed enough people yet. Especially at later stages in the game where practically everybody had evos and upgrades, it was incredibly difficult and frustrating running around as the weakest player in the game trying to kill players far more powerful than me so that I could get the upgrades I needed to be able to take out these powerful players. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. It's the same problem I have with counter-strike, if you're on the losing team with no money, how are you supposed to take out people with body armor and AK-47s when all you have is a pistol? This kind of problem is frustrating and I consider it to be bad game design. I vastly prefer games that level the playing field by giving players equal abilities and not penalizing teams for losing.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[verySmartApe]

Ya, because why would anyone want to play a game where one side had an advantage? Like chess. No one plays that anymore. Who wants to play black?

Seriously, asymmetry is the point of trem. It's not just team play. It's team play with *really* different teams. I play trem a lot. I think aliens win about 2/3 of games. I don't care if it's not 50:50.

You make a good point. Once you get to sudden death, I think aliens win about 80% of games. But that's cool -- it just means hummies need to attack early. Hummies are usually stronger in the first two stages of the game.

As for your other point, most servers allow you to accumulate creds/evos by just not dying. So if you're poor, just play defense for awhile.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[Vermifax]

Having played Trem and Natural Selection (which is free, but not open). I vastly prefer Natural Selection.

But it still has the same issues that you don't like in Trem.

And fwiw, TF2 is brilliant.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[Lord of Hyphens]

With regards to spy invisibility, I've never had too much trouble seeing the ripple effect a spy gives when they're invisible. Then again, I play the engineer class the most and we get paranoid like that.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[Bryan Ischo]

Well that seals the deal for me. I won't even bother trying Tremulous because I tried Natural Selection and thought it was awful.

Mind you this was a few years back; I don't know how much has changed in that time. But NS to me took the concept of twitch reflexes to such an extreme that it was completely unenjoyable. I just read on the Tremulous forums about how their recommendation is that your mouse sensitivity should be set up so that you can do a full 240 degree spin with a single hand swipe. My god I do not want to play a game where it's important for me to be doing 240 degree spins. I really enjoyed Socom 2 on the PS/2 when I played with a group of friends, and also Jedi Academy on the PC. Both games require good aim and good evasion but neither required the ridiculous levels of twitch reflexes that NS did when I played it. I spectated as other players in NS and I couldn't even tell what the hell was going on. The dude was flying around so fast that everything was a blur. Then when I played, people were whizzing around me and killing me before I could even tell what was happening.

Sure, if I played the game for weeks and developed my twitch reflexes I suppose I could hold my own. But I don't really want to play a game for weeks just to start to have fun with it. And I don't want to become good at a game where good means just being able to spin around really fast and line up aim at the other dude before his ultra reflexes can do the same to you. I appreciate some degree of reflexes in games - which is why I don't play MMORPG's, their combat systems bore me to tears - but I think it's a fine balance and NS (and probably Tremulous) are just comical in how far they go overboard with twitch reflexes.

My favorite multiplayer game of all time was Jedi Academy in seige mode. It is so cool for each team to have multiple objectives each game, and it makes each game interesting because you're not just doing the same thing for 15 minutes straight. Also I think the balance of reflexes vs. strategy was good. The only thing that bugged me was losers who played dark jedi and used force choke. So boring to just sit there while you're being carried around and choked and there is no way to break out of it. If I ever saw someone getting choked on my team, I made it my priority #1 to shoot the dark jedi who had them to stop the choke. Also snipers sucked because they turned a fun game into a 'wtf just happened' experience.

I guess that sums it up for me. The more 'wtf just happened' moments a game has, the less interesting it is to me. And NS (and probably Tremulous) was just one long sequence of 'wtf' moments for me.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

If the sides are asymmetrical, you introduce a mechanic that forces both teams to play each side over the course of a match and whoever performs better over the course of playing both sides is declared the winner. This is basic game design here. If Team A wins as aliens in 8:47 and after switching sides Team B wins in 10:47, that doesn't mean "both teams have won," that means "Team A won faster so they win the match." This is a mechanic that needs to be introduced into the game itself to reinforce this concept.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

As engy it's pretty easy to keep your back to a wall and keep your eyes peeled. As most other classes you're moving around the map leaving territory behind you that a spy can use to get into your blind spot. The problem is that if you're constantly checking your blind spot, you become more vulnerable to enemies in front of you. It's a no-win situation.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

Don't get Warsow either. It left in all the movement quirks of the Quake engine that you saw NS players using and even adds a few more, so to be decent you have to spend all your spare time practicing movement skills. A lot of the game too is switching weapons depending on the situation, and because of all the movement the appropriate weapon for the situation can change every couple seconds. The upside is that you can take a lot of damage so there's no real WTF "moments" as much as WTF "spans of several seconds." It's a very well-designed game, but places too much emphasis on movement skill for it to be really fun for me.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[dcam]

It's the same problem I have with counter-strike, if you're on the losing team with no money, how are you supposed to take out people with body armor and AK-47s when all you have is a pistol?

This isn't as much of a problem as it might seem. You can always just save money for a round, that will give you enough money to buy pretty much anything.

A bigger problem with CS is that some maps are clearly stacked in favour of one team (eg dust is a major CT map).

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Force Choke? Try using Force Push to counter.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

Well, money's just one of the many, many, MANY problems I have with Counter-Strike, including the other one you brought up. Yes, you can do a pistol round to save up more money, but the very idea of a counter-terrorism organization sending an operative into a situation with just a pistol and no body armor is ridiculous to me. It wouldn't be as bad if the game had a less realistic tone to it (i.e. TF2), but as it is the bizarre mix of attempted realism (including incredibly annoying things like weapons that can't decide whether they're accurate or not) and blatantly unrealistic elements (such as jumping around a corner and headshotting someone standing halfway across the map) just ruins the game for me. Decide whether you want to be realistic or not and go completely in that direction.

And for the record I hate realism in games. When I play a game I want to have fun, and while dying to a single bullet may be realistic, it reduces firefights to a simple matter of whoever sees the other guy and pulls the trigger first, which really isn't all that fun at all. It's far more interesting to play a character that can take some damage without dying, making firefights last more than just a couple seconds and giving me the ability to turn a bad situation around through superior skill and tactics.

I'll put it this way... If throwing a touchdown pass in a football video game were as difficult as throwing a real touchdown pass against an NFL defense, nobody would want to play it. So why do people insist on realism in shooters?

Anyway, regarding the issue of asymmetrical balance, you would think that somewhere in game design 101 people would learn that when you make a game where the teams have asymmetrical roles, such as offense and defense, you should make sure that the game forces players to assume both roles at various points in the game and determine the winner by comparing how well the teams perform when they switch sides. Think like football, when Team A's offense scores a touchdown against Team B's defense, you don't declare A the winner, you put B on offense and see if they can score against A's defense.

All CS tournaments score matches this way, but in my opinion a mechanic needs to be built into the game itself that will switch the sides every once in a while to make sure pubs are balanced as well. Many many more people play CS in pubs than in tournaments, and I think a game should cater as much as possible to public server play even if it is sometimes played in tournament settings.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[Bryan Ischo]

That doesn't work if you're not playing a jedi character.

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[Spacezilla]

Well said, when you're winning, you feel better and then you do better. That should be the only advantage there is to winning, none of this: "Wow, good job killing everyone on the other team, here are some better weapons, to make sure there'll be absolutely no challenge for you in the next round!"

Re:Tremulous second best? Hate to see the rest

[sahonen]

Exacto-friggin-lutely. I've always liked the Mario Kart approach to game balance. Where Counter-Strike consciously emphasizes the difference in skill between the two teams, Mario Kart tries to minimize it by giving better powerups and more speed to the players in the back of the pack, creating a close and competitive race even between players of different skill levels. This keeps the game fun and exciting for all players instead of simply handing an easy victory to the better player. Lopsided games are *never* fun for anyone involved, you always have the most fun in a game that's so close you don't know who's going to come out the winner. It's a shame that more game designers don't understand this.

Suggest me one...

[Stormwatch]

All the mentioned games seem to be about network deathmatches. What would you suggest for someone who prefers story-driven single-player games?

(having an OSX version would help a lot too)

Re:Suggest me one...

[Pescar]

bad news: there are none. Somebody please prove me wrong...

Re:Suggest me one...

[MrCopilot]

What would you suggest for someone who prefers story-driven single-player games?

FreeQuake, is a singleplayer, story based? well sorry, pretty much shoot them first, but what, you needed a reason?

Re:Suggest me one...

[Cheapy]

Wesnoth isn't an FPS. But it does have a story. I think that most OSS games will be about networked matches, because getting people to write netcode is probably easier than getting people to write an amazing story.

Not ready for the mainstream

[obeythefist]

Until they have way too many WW2 FPS games. Amirite?

But seriously, in many ways I'm surprised at the lack of progress in the gaming areas.... the games do look quite mature, but nothing comes close to Crysis. One can argue that, yes, Crysis has huge dollars behind it. But open source games should never need to reinvent the wheel... doesn't that count for something? Shouldn't that mean the games evolve constantly from the same rich base?

Re:Not ready for the mainstream

[sulliwan]

You're kidding, right?

Re:Not ready for the mainstream

[totally bogus dude]

I don't think games lend themselves to evolution very well. Consider the amount of money and time the commercial studios spend building new game engines virtually from scratch. Game engines tend to be engineered around specifics of gameplay, and while you can modify an engine to suit your particular game, it becomes increasingly difficult to integrate updates to the core engine. And an engine that's even just two or three years old results in a game that looks and feels decidedly dated.

The real problem though is probably more one of leadership. It takes a lot of people working together for one goal to make a game like Crysis. Consider how long Crytek spent developing that, and Far Cry before it. This is a team of very talented people who know exactly what they're doing, but it still took them years of full-time work to create the game.

It's very difficult to get this to happen without paying people, because if you're doing it for free then you want to work on the game that you want, not what someone else wants. Using Crysis single-player as an example (I don't generally like multiplayer shooters): for me, the only really good bit of it was the first time you fight enemies with nano-armour, in the graveyard during extraction. Everything leading up to that was pretty much training for that fight, so I didn't mind it. The rest of the game was waiting for a similarly engaging situation, which never happened. After plodding through the rest of it, your reward is a freaking "boss fight". Double-plus lame-o.

If I'd been working on the game, I'd want to focus more on those particular types of fights. Others would want to focus on fights with the ordinary soldiers. Others might even want more boss fights. If everyone gets to add everything they want, it ends up as a complete mess; not to mention the fact that doing that would require infinite resources. If you tell people no, they'll go sulk and probably stop contributing.

This, combined with the tremendous amount of people-hours that need to be invested into a game before it even becomes playable, makes it very hard for the open source community to develop sophisticated games. Even when they can, they tend to be clones of existing games because that way everyone has an agreed-upon goal to work towards. If it's a new game, then it's likely to be a watered-down, consensus approach to a genre; again, so that people working on it have a common goal. The further you stray from the beaten track and into new territory, the harder it will be to find sufficient people who even understand your goal, much less who share it.

Put another way, how many times have you played a game and thought it was pretty good, but wished they'd focussed more on some particular aspect? Pretty much every game you've ever played, right? Now imagine that every single developer working on the game wanted to focus on their favourite aspect, and they were given leeway to do so. What would the result be like? Would the game ever actually reach a state where it could be released? Probably not.

Re:Not ready for the mainstream

[danlock4]

I don't think games lend themselves to evolution very well. We'll see if you have the same opinion after SPORE is released... ;-)

Re:Not ready for the mainstream

[imsabbel]

Which will be a) 3 months after Duke Nukem 4ever,
or alternatively accompanied by the HUGE disappointment about another overhyped game failing.
Just really look at the meat thats been shown about spore, and ignore the talk (which is all bullshit): A series of nearly unreleated minigames, where your great design of the species doesnt play any kind of role besides being cosmetic.

Re:FPS? Karmawhore wikilink plz

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems you have been fragged...

RTS

[dunezone]

What about the RTS genre? Nothing better then building a base, an army, and storming into an enemy base.

Re:RTS

[Ogi_UnixNut]

You might want to give Warzone 2100 a go.

Originally released in 1999, it was open sourced in 2001 (I think) and since then under the GPL. I was addicted to the demo that came out in 1998 and I'm looking forward to trying the GPL version once I get openGL working on my machine (The multiplayer is IMO the best part of that game, some of the missions are not so fun).

Re:RTS

[Sparr0]

First would have to be TA Spring, a fully 3d reimplementation of Total Annihilation and many mods and maps for it.

Then Warzone 2100 (Resurrection), a revival of a great commercial RTS game that was Freed a few years ago.

Bos Wars is by far the best and most polished of all the games based on the Stratagus(formerly FreeCraft) engine, but

Also, Globulation 2 is pretty fun, if a bit less deep than the others in terms of strategic options.

Finally, Glest is a fun from-scratch fantasy RTS game, not as polished as the others though.

Those are the ones I have installed. Of them, I play TA Spring the most, and Glest the least.

Interesting, but...

[turing_m]

your comment would be considered insightful... in 2005.

Urban Terror = no more bots

[Khyber]

Yea, except the new version of Urban Terror removed bots. Lame. I'll stick with 3.7, TYVM.

Re:Urban Terror = no more bots

[Anonymous Coward]

ugh. bots.

Re:Urban Terror = no more bots

[Jeremy Visser]

They haven't been removed. They're just disabled by default, and it's a little tricky to enable them.

Fire up Urban Terror. While in the menu, hit the console key (~), then do "bot_enable 1". Start a server with your favourite map (ut4_abbey of course), and do "bot_minplayers 8".

You can only do that immediately after starting the game. If you play a map, quit, then _afterwards_ do "bot_enable 1", it won't work.

Re:Urban Terror = no more bots

[Khyber]

I call that removing. If I can't access it in the GUI like I did with UT 3.7 it's a feature that has been removed.

Hell, the bots give more challenge than half the human opponents I play, and since I'm on a REALLY crappy connection since I moved out to California (Fuck you very much, Transedge!) I can't get other human players to join.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

why don't they make "adventures" out of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played all those games and enjoyed almost all of them, but when you spend half an hour playing a Windows FPS on a Windows machine, even the free+multiplatform factor fades easily: sadly, there's no way (now) to be on par with closed Windows-only games, and most of those games are likely to be ignored due to this reason.

But, what if developers added to free games something most commercial fps lack because it simply doesn't attract the intended audience (teenagers)? I mean, Sauerbraten's Cube engine is certainly behind anything developed in the last 5 years, but what if there were plots, characters and living worlds instead of maps filled with monsters? Wouldn't it become instantly more appealing?

Then my question is: why don't they redirect some efforts from other task to developing games where the 3D engine is just a device to interact with a much more complex world, rather than fragging monsters at N frames per second?

where is the innovation?

[DerWulf]

I certainly can't find it in this bunch of Q2/Q3 clones ...

Another list?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played every one of these games, can't say I agree with all of it, but some hit the mark. Warsow is very good, and I really enjoyed Alien Arena. I'm not sure that we need another "which game is better" list, to be honest.

Sauerbraten being last

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly to believe that Sauerbraten is last. Well, whatever the author likes. But in terms of graphics, the list is certainly reversed with SB (reflecting water is perhaps the most nice thing my olde NV11 can still display) at the front and Warsaw (looks like Lego sometimes) at the end.

OMG You guys are missing ZOGS NIGHTMARE!

[Anonymous Coward]

The most anti-terrorist shooting game ever!

http://www.zogsnightmare.c/#8203;om/zognightmare.html

http://www.zogsnightmare.c/#8203;om/zog2downloads.html

download today! Great Graphics! Politically correct!

Will someone mod parent up?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is The Fucking Article for god's sake...

Lack of story mode...

[charlieman]

While multiplayer is fun to play, at least for me, it get's old in a few days. Those games are lacking story modes.

W:ET is *not* open source.

[reality-bytes]

The in-game logic source code was released in 2004 to aid 'modders' but the game engine itself remains closed to this day (although it may eventually be released).

I know it sounds paradoxical but W:ET was never derived from GPL code (in the licensing sense) because id Tech 3 was under a closed license when it was licensed to SD (This may lead to issues with SD/Activision ever being able to relicense the source)

Warsow is pretty good

[Anonymous Coward]

Warsow im sure is definately the best out of those with i think Nexuis being the most disappointing because of the high expectations for it. Warsow is pretty good although the development team has made some bad gameplay decisions since .11 but despite all these versions being Alpha or whatever, its far better than most commercial games (*Cough* Quake 4 *Cough*).

I didnt rtfa but it didnt show Urban Terror on the list which is also a great game that is standalone now and doesnt get enough publicity. With that said, check out warsow! :)

So many free games!!

[listen_to_blogs]

Thanks for a compilation of these linux games. I hope I can find ubuntu packages for them!! listen_to_slashdot

Few days ago

[Frozen Void]

I was looking for free MMORPGs and found out this one. http://www.auteria.com/
Surprisingly it runs on Linux and FreeBSD
and only 100MB in size.

Google cache is your friend...

[AliasMarlowe]

Pictures included. http://mu-in-f104.google.com/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.linux-gamers.net/smartsection.item.81/comparison-of-free-software-shooters.html [There are other cache servers at google.com, try f100, f101, f102, or f103 if f104 is unresponsive]

Well

[yoyhed]

The funny thing about user-created content (and it really shows in every single one of these examples) is that the maps tend to look incredibly bland and undetailed - not to mention these in particular look like they're all based on the Quake 3 engine, circa 2001.

Auteria is nor Open Source ...

[zorak1103]

or FPS

Alien Arena.

[Alienkillerrace]

I'm not going to bother about some of the things I feel are erroneous in Sepht's assessment of Alien Arena - it's the man's opinion and he's entitled to it. I will however, leave you all with something to make your own minds up with - especially in regards to the graphics/engine of the game. These shots are taken with the game as it currently stands in SVN. Alien Arena 2008 is set to be released likely in late winter 2008, and you can see here from the shots what it will look like. http://cor.planetquake.gamespy.com/arena/aa2008/aa2k8_1.jpg http://cor.planetquake.gamespy.com/arena/aa2008/aa2k8_2.jpg http://cor.planetquake.gamespy.com/arena/aa2008/aa2k8_3.jpg http://red.planetarena.org/

Re:Alien Arena.

[imsabbel]

I am sorry, but what do you want to show us with that shots? How good or how bad the game looks?
The first one has a butt-ugly creature in front of Gray Plastic Tunnels (tM). The second one had the worlds edgeiest curve and gray in gray.
Looks like quake 1 in high-res...

Re:Alien Arena.

[Alienkillerrace]

I guess I should also point out, that Sepht did do a good job with this article, and while I am not totally happy with his views on Alien Arena, he does make some good points, and things that we are actually working on to improve for our next release.

Re:Alien Arena.

[Hsien-Ko]

Are you disappointed that the review isn't a praise-all guide to running AA written by Joe Barr? Seems like it.

Re:Alien Arena.

[Sparr0]

Oh Screenshot Analyzing Oracle, what think thee of these?

http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/newerer/screenshot_96727.jpg
http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/newerer/screenshot_1931460.jpg
http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/newer/screenshot_732727.jpg

Re:Alien Arena.

[kalirion]

I love Alien Arena for the fact that it runs great on my P3-800 ^_^.

My main wish is that the Galaxy game browser could sort servers based on the number of real players. It's annoying as hell selecting each game of 4+ "players" to see that all but one of them have 0 ping.

Mods on crack?

[sahonen]

How is it offtopic? I'm discussing the games linked in the article. Metamods had better catch this.

Re: half-assed presentation...

[Anonymous Coward]

...open source has a reputation for really good code and half-assed presentation... well it is open source not open art. btw would be nice to see a realtime, multi-user, (vertioning?) art program... maby a combo of vnc, gimp & svn???

its not to hard to find a programer to work for free with you on a small project but, if you want an amature artist to spend 30min doing a logo they can't help demanding over $100 for it :(

so all you get is 'programmer art' as the artists like to call it. a programmer who works hard can make good art. i've not personaly seen any programmers produce art that is great art from purely an artistic point of view. aka not useing high tech fx to make something good look 'great'. it wont look great in a few years time but good/great art will.

What

[Hsien-Ko]

OpenArena uses resources from Cube? That's news to me. Thanks for lying, TFA.

Re:What

[Sepht]

Right, lying. Okay, well if you look at the CREDITS file for openarena. You'll see Cube's main developer and project founder right at the top as a map credit. q3dm6ish and dm4ish in OA are from him. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed they were used in Cube as well, because that may not be accurate. Well then.. OpenQuartz, I believe the void maps are from that project. The point was simply that OA does a lot of borrowing from different art styles.

Re:What

[Hsien-Ko]

Q3dm6ish and DM4ish are his old maps he made for Quake and were donated under the GPL from him. They have nothing to do with Cube. Are you aware that Cube has a completely different, and incompatible mapping system that wouldn't have been compatible with those maps?

Re:What

[Sepht]

No, I'm retarded and there is no way you missed the point I was making.

Re:Fight fire with fire

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, I've counted 3 myminicity accounts spamming slashdot: One tip: Bookmark SlashdotCity, and visit it every time you get duped into visiting a spammer's city.
ObTopic: It's too bad there will probably never be a first-person exploration mode in MyMiniCity. You're not the solution, you're a part of the problem, and you're too stupid to see it. Either that or you're actually a troll.

The original poster was, in herself, not that big a deal. I'm still unsure as to his/her/its motives, but as either deliberate publicity for MyMiniCity or as a troll, they succeeded, because of the amount replies they generated- a far bigger problem than the original posts.

Biased much?

[Anonymous Coward]

So let me get this straight - the author of this article has like 800 posts on Warsow forums, and is listed as a "tester" of the game? OMG, I wonder which game he's going to like the most? What a joke. So the author didn't like Joe Barr's original article about liking Alien Arena, so he writes his own "review" comparing these games and we are supposed to take it seriously? What's next, somebody from Alien Trap reviewing Nexuiz?

Too many Quake sourceports

[Ant P.]

So I might as well give a mention for Odamex, which is more or less Doom 2 with proper netplay (actually ZDoom with all the non-GPLable bits ripped out). I like Sauer and Nexuiz and all that, but the more features they pile on the more unplayable the framerate gets. I know my 9250's old, but seriously...

And still no AI..

[renoX]

Apparently building a game with AI and Free Software are incompatible for the time being: I don't know any Free SW games which has an AI say equivalent to the quality of Half-Life (the first) for example.

Why make FOSS FPSes?

[4D6963]

It might sound like a troll, or my question might answer itself, but why bother with trying to create FOSS FPSes, considered how high the big game studios set the bar in the FPS domain? Sure, the effort behind Sauerbrauten is admirable, but what does it bring? What sets it apart from the Quake, Unreal, Call of Duty, Half-Life, Deux Ex, Soldier of Fortune series? Its price?

Here's my point : we have limited means, limited resources, there's only so much quality content we can create, FAR less than big game studios. What are our advantages? We have all the imagination possible, we can do whatever we want (within the realm of what's humanely possible, there's so much we have yet to create which would only take one coder, one vision and a few weeks), we're pretty much the only ones out there who can afford to create something completely new!

So why put so much efforts into projects which require none of our advantages, and try to compete on big studio's gaming field, knowing we can't do something better than them by merely following them? Why do we do that? Is it because we don't actually have that much imagination? Do we like to start coding without thinking for ourselves first? Do people go "Boy was Quake III cool! That'd be awesome if I could do something even a hundredth as good as that!"? Is video game making such a mature art that we have the feeling that there's only a few kind of games we can create, and that thus people choose to create what they like best among the limited number of choices? Do we look at the proverbial box we don't think out of and go "This spot is the best spot in the box"? Are we aware there are better spots outside this box that are yet to be explored? Will people in the distant future still be devoting most of their play time to multiplayer FPSes with the most realistic graphics/physics then possible?

Wow, I should totally have more hangovers, that makes me kind of deep I guess..

More free FPS if you're interested:

[jacksonj04]

There are more indie FPS games listed on Mod DB if anybody wants to give some different ones a whirl. There are also a few listed in the Mod of the Year Top 100 if you're looking for popular ones.

(Yes, I do admin there and this is a shameless plug which is why I've turned off my karma bonus for this post).

OSS and art

[erdraug]

Even if it's posted anonymously, i find that comment very insightful.

quake 2/3 cloens

[XO]

They are all just quake 2 or quake 3 clones with replaced graphics, as far as i can tell. Well, Nexuiz implemented some of the thinsg that don't suck about Unreal Tournament.. but still.. pretty much just a Q2 clone.

The engine has enough stuff in it that it can bring my 3Ghz Core 2 Duo to it's knees, though.. but the art pipeline isn't near good enough to make it look like it should be doing that.