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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."
Wolfenstein, I still love you!
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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 :-/
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
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).
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Read up on the MetaModes option in xorg.conf.
Mine looks like this:And I can play ET, AA, Tremulous, etc. just fine. The second screen simply goes off when a game requests fullscreen.
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.
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.