Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game

crush writes "The Linux Game Tome notes that the final team to produce a fully Open Source 3D game using the CrystalSpace engine and Blender has been chosen. The project (known as Apricot) aims to produce a cross-platform, 3D game with completely Free (CCA) graphics, music and code. An important side-effect of the project is to improve open source tools for the professional game development industry."
I look forward to more 3D games on my desktop, even if this one won't be the first. (And where is the open-source bus-driving counterpart to the under-rated FlightGear?)

Comments

Good games I have been playing on Linux

[Realistic_Dragon]

A couple of interesting games with Linux support I have only found recently:

- Warzone 2100. Not as shiny as Supreme Commander, but much more involved. Great fun.
- NWN 1. Thanks to the fact that NWN2 bombed there is still a large online community.

Re:Good games I have been playing on Linux

[krunchyfrog]

I play WZ2100 pretty much too. Lots of fun and a REALLY BIG tech tree.

Re:Good games I have been playing on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

NWN 1. Thanks to the fact that NWN2 bombed there is still a large online community.

Obsidian really dropped the ball on NWN2.

All the stuff that made NWN so great and helped foster the community really wasn't present in NWN 2.

If ever there was a game that only needed an engine upgrade to nicer graphics and perhaps an updated D&D ruleset while keeping everything else about the game exactly the same it was NWN. Obsidian managed to get the nicer graphics part and ruleset done but totally failed to deliver anything else. If they'd have reverse engineered the user interface of the NWN game client and GM client and made a totally slavish copy that worked 100% exactly like NWN did then they'd have produced a far better game than they managed to.

If you were to consider NWN to be a Swiss army knife then NWN2 would have to be considered as a bent, rusty butter knife.

Re:Good games I have been playing on Linux

[richlv]

well, regarding 3d games, a pretty nice one is UFO: Alien Invasion http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/.
based on quake 2 engine, but created for old xcom fans :)

non-3d, there are some other nice games - liquidwar and koules are two simplistic, but quite innovative and addictive games. too bad koules has not been updated in a while and its network support is very, very limited.
openttd is very great and replayable, though i never managed to fully understand semaphores ;)

there are also some commercial games, notably dominions (at 3rd version now). some other are tribal trouble and gish.

i probably forgot a bunch of other cool games, but hey, that's what other readers are for :)

Re:Good games I have been playing on Linux

[Creepy]

NWN2 has nicer graphics, yes, but performance is terrible for me on both of my machines and I believe it is CPU bound and probably single threaded (meaning dual core doesn't help). Neither of my machines technically meet the required CPU GHz speed, but in reality both are considered faster than a Pentium 4 those settings are based on (a 2.17GHz Athlon and a Core 2 Duo 2GHz). All other system settings exceed the recommended rating. On my fastest machine (the Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM and an 8600M GPU - a fairly high end laptop) I need to have everything crammed down to low to even play the game and not fall asleep as it lags. This same machine playing UT3, Crysis, Bioshock or the Witcher (using an updated NWN1 Aurora engine) runs everything at medium to high settings. If I run Vista on it (It triple boots to XP and Ubuntu now since it shipped with Vista and I had an extra copy of XP lying around), the baseline rating is 4.9 due to CPU, with disk next at 5.3 and graphics I believe was 5.9, which should be more than enough for NWN2.

I never bothered trying the multiplayer game - single player is unbearable unless I cram everything down to lowest, and then it looks crappy but is at least playable. Unfortunately, I wasn't too interested in the main plot story and I've always disliked all the forced alignment choices. My evil character may be saving the town, but he may have ulterior motivations the computer can't account for (I want to loot it for myself, then maybe burn it to the ground). A GM can account for those things, but a script can't handle it, so I'd rather just get the evil action every time or the good action on a good char.

Do we really need more FPS?

[CRCulver]

So the Free Software community is going to produce another FPS. Well, maybe that will make Free Software look like it's got it together, able to coordinate the efforts of many volunteers for a quality product. But it really does seem like the game scene is stagnated with all these FPS. Why can't the Free Software community innovate, putting out a new kind of game where you don't just go around from room to room and blow stuff up. Why is it that only non-Free developers are giving us new kinds of games like Spore?

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[jd]

Well, attempts by Open Source developers to borrow from BBC Elite to produce a comprehensive open-ended gaming environment have so far not achieved a whole lot. Partly through legal complications, but also through lack of developers. I can't remember the last time the TORC group actually produced a release. Development on Empire seems limited to non-existant. The Netrek genre seems to have died. XTank was interesting, but died through licensing complications. Very few MUD or MUSH servers are under any kind of development, and it's limited at best. LambdaMOO has faded into oblivion. Omega offered an interesting twist to the Rouge/Nethack family, but the entire family seems to have been vanquished by a dragon.

In other words, the projects exist. People have been interested. But for whatever reason - my bet is a mix of it being hard and developers making lousy publicists - the efforts have struggled to maintain sufficient interest and have eventually collapsed through brain drains and burnout taking out original developers with nobody to replace them.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[dvice_null]

> So the Free Software community is going to produce another FPS.

Where did you get the idea of FPS?

"But the real start will be the first week of February. Only then real decisions will be made on game concept, game design and other targets, although we do know it'll be derived from Project Peach, furry & crazy characters in a forest."
http://apricot.blender.org/

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

why do you assume it's an FPS? nowhere I can find on the website mentions that.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I'm honestly not trying to troll here, but it's probably a hell of a lot easier to do those "visionary" and innovative games in a non-free context.

To use your example, Spore has been in development for like seven years and has undoubtedly cost tens of millions of dollars, mostly in man-hours of work. Do you think a free-source project could get a solid core of designers, coders, and artists to donate their time and money regularly for over half a decade with NO product to show for it, on the hope that one day it might be released and... look good on their resumes?

We've all heard the horror stories about what EA puts its employees through to get games out the door. Do you think an entire project team would put themselves through that voluntarily for NO money, or for what little money a free project could get from ads, donations, and so on?

Now, an FPS, that's a known criteria. You can set clear goals for how every little thing should work, and any "controversial" parts, like level design, are conveniently lumped into chunks that can be handled individually. (If I want to make an oddball level or character model, I can handle it on my own.) Compare that to a more experimental game like Spore, where there aren't discrete levels and the creature models are intrinsic to the gameplay.

Basically, you can have innovative, high-production-value, or free: pick two. "Innovative and free" can be managed by small teams, and "high-budget and free" might theoretically be managed by initiatives like this one with clear and easily-established milestones along the way, but to get innovation AND high production values, you probably need a level of team discipline and management that can only be established with regular paychecks to incentivize everyone involved.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Jorrit]

The type of game hasn't been decided yet. So where did you get the idea that it will be an FPS?

Greetings,

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[rm999]

"Why is it that only non-Free developers are giving us new kinds of games like Spore?"

Because a game like spore takes decades of man-hours to do right, and most open source developers have full-time jobs. When you pay for software - especially games - you're usually paying for a lot of thought and time from the developers/artists.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[LetterRip]

So the Free Software community is going to produce another FPS. Well, maybe that will make Free Software look like it's got it together, able to coordinate the efforts of many volunteers for a quality product. Actually it is not planned to be a FPS according to Ton (leader of Blender and the projects) , "[W]e will re-use the peach project assets [] so it's not likely to be a FPS".

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12399

The official game style is yet to be announced; but I believe the team is leaning towards minigames.

LetterRip

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[ScrewMaster]

you probably need a level of team discipline and management that can only be established with regular paychecks to incentivize everyone involved.

Yeah well, and a few stock options wouldn't hurt either.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[westlake]

"But the real start will be the first week of February. Only then real decisions will be made on game concept, game design and other targets, although we do know it'll be derived from Project Peach, furry & crazy characters in a forest."

Let me see if I understand this correctly:

You assemble a full creative team for a game and only then decide what you want to do with it?

In animation, a studio like Pixar will spend years in developing a story. Only then will it begin assembling a production crew.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[TheRaven64]

Well, attempts by Open Source developers to borrow from BBC Elite to produce a comprehensive open-ended gaming environment have so far not achieved a whole lot Really? I think they've done very well indeed and has been about the only game I've played recently.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[fastest fascist]

Here's a couple of reasons:

Design by committee isn't very compatible with radical ideas

How many FOSS game developers are there, anyway? The vast majority of games coming out from the the "traditional" game industry are cookie-cutter dross. There's hundreds of non-free companies out there and a handful that make anything interesting. The innovation percentage just isn't that large, so with very few free developers out there in the first place, you can be sure a VERY small number of those will be coming up with anything new.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[fastest fascist]

Forgot one: motives. For a free software developer, the primary motivator is quite likely ideological: they primarily want to make FOSS software. Making a game, making a GOOD game, and finding people who are actually capable of that come, to some extent, second. Enthusiasm does not a game dev make.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spore new? It's a compilation of classical games, how does that make it new? The only new thing about it is the charecter development system being able to make dynamic 3d models, but thats not innovation, thats evolution.
Spore is pretty "up there" but theres basicly nothing new to it. The sims was new, in that it took a casual RTG to a completely non war environment, but even then that wasn't innovation as much as evolution.
The game scene has seen alot of innovation in resent years, now it's time for evolution, and developing high quality free development tools will allow hobbyists to deliver the next wave of innovation needed in a scene where you HAVE to secure a multimillion income for any idea to get developed.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you pay for software - especially games - you're usually paying for a lot of thought and time from the developers/artists.

But to listen to a lot of people here, the same isn't true for productivity or graphics apps (image editing in particular).

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Ash-Fox]

You assemble a full creative team for a game and only then decide what you want to do with it?

I am aware of this happening in the video game industry else where. Video game company starts, gets people together and they try to figure out what they are going to do exactly.

In animation, a studio like Pixar will spend years in developing a story. Only then will it begin assembling a production crew.

Not everyone is Pixar and can I get sources for that?

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Briggs_Bl]

Not sure where you got the idea from that it's going to be an FPS. As far as I know it has never been mentioned anywhere in connection to the project. Cheers, Briggs

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[4D6963]

For a free software developer, the primary motivator is quite likely ideological: they primarily want to make FOSS software.

As a FOSS dev and a member of a homebrew game making community (the GP32/GP2X/Pandora community) I can tell this is bullshit. I don't do any software/game by ideology, and I don't know a single person who does that either. All the devs I know do what they do because they're excited by creating a game, their game (although even in a community centered around homebrew most efforts go to ports and emulators) and often a contest helps motivate them.

Nobody who actually creates anything cares about the FOSS supremacy.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Bandman]

Not to mention that if Spore was open source, we'd all be playing beta versions of it right now.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Though he asked it in a profoundly stupid way, he did raise a good question.

Because a game like spore takes decades of man-hours to do right, and most open source developers have full-time jobs.

That's not a useful measure. It's like saying "Most English speakers aren't good writers". True, but useless! People don't go to the bookstore and buy a bound, printed copy of something an average English speaker wrote.

I believe (where was the article?) that most good open-source software that actually gets used is maintained by people for whom that's their job. Torvalds isn't exactly working at the Swiss patent office.

I'm having trouble thinking of a significant and good piece of open-source software that I use that wasn't either commercial-then-freed, or free-then-commercially-sponsored.

Anyway, your answer doesn't answer the question. For example, Sun and Google (among many others) have released a decent body of innovative yet open-source code -- but not for gaming. Why is it that only the field of games has developers waiting 5 years to open-source their work? It can't be as simple as "money", because game companies inevitably release the engine for free, but still not the content.

(It's especially puzzling that Google is avoiding this, because (a) they love building tools for content creation and publication so people can buy their ads [so a free MMORPG or FPS engine with support for AdWords seems like a no-brainer], and (b) they've got Sketchup [though it's really only for static views, and it's not open-source], so they know how to make 3D easy. Why isn't Google pushing a billion dollars into Croquet development, or building something better?)

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[WilliamSChips]

What's emacs?

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[ibbie]

Why isn't Google pushing a billion dollars into Croquet development, or building something better? They could be waiting for someone to build something better, so that they can buy it and / or hire the developers. Google has been known to do that, in the past.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[westlake]

In animation, a studio like Pixar will spend years in developing a story. Only then will it begin assembling a production crew.
Not everyone is Pixar and can I get sources for that?

Simply unlock the commentary tracks, extras and trailers on any Disney/Pixar DVD.

You have to solve the essential problems of the story before you go into production because mistakes are too expensive to fix.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Minwee]

We've all heard the horror stories about what EA puts its employees through to get games out the door. Do you think an entire project team would put themselves through that voluntarily for NO money, or for what little money a free project could get from ads, donations, and so on?

I'm curious. Where exactly did you get the idea that putting your entire team on a death march is somehow beneficial to the project?

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Daengbo]

Ultimately, I think it's because the Free sofware movement works best with an agile-type of development. Release early; release often. That doesn't work for games. So much time is spent below the ground floor that there's nothing to release for ages, and there's no buzz developed.

How can you solve this problem? The answer is revolutionary.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[m50d]

To use your example, Spore has been in development for like seven years and has undoubtedly cost tens of millions of dollars, mostly in man-hours of work. Do you think a free-source project could get a solid core of designers, coders, and artists to donate their time and money regularly for over half a decade with NO product to show for it, on the hope that one day it might be released and... look good on their resumes?

Yes. Because there are people growing up for whom OSS has always been around, and is something they really believe in, and they're willing to put the work in. People die for idealism all the time.

/it's 3:20AM here, I'm working on an open source game.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[mrchaotica]

it's 3:20AM here, I'm working on an open source game.

No you're not; you're posting on Slashdot!

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[westlake]

The type of game hasn't been decided yet. So where did you get the idea that it will be an FPS?

The short answer, I suspect, is that the FPS is the shortest path to completion and rather all too commonly the model for the tech demo disguised as a game.

"Furries in the forest" is high-concept. "The rat in the kitchen" is high-concept. "Robots" is high-concept.

"Ratatouille" is a movie.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

You assemble a full creative team for a game and only then decide what you want to do with it?

By "full creative team" you mean a "game studio"? Yes, that's usually how it works. No one says, I'd like to make an RPG, I should start a company to do that. The studio gets together to plan upcoming projects and says, "what are we good at?" and that's what they make.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[grumbel]

### I'm honestly not trying to troll here, but it's probably a hell of a lot easier to do those "visionary" and innovative games in a non-free context.

When you are Will Wright himself maybe, if you are anybody else you will likely never get a penny from a publisher. Getting anything remotely or visionary done these days is extremely hard, no matter how you approach it.

That said, doing it Open Source wouldn't be any easier, since especially with Open Source games it is near impossible to assemble when doing something original. When you do a clone of some old classic, you can always point at that and say "Hey, thats what we want to do, come join", if you want to do something original you can point nowhere and even if you have design document, finding people that share that vision gets very hard and troublesome, since nobody really knows where the game will end up and if it will even be fun.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Marcion]

Great post.

>I'm having trouble thinking of a significant and good piece of open-source software that I use that wasn't either commercial-then-freed, or free-then-commercially-sponsored.

Well you are right with all the big headline stuff. But one cool thing about Open Source is that there is a long tail, you will have small specialised applications, made by one person to get something done, then that is then used by a few dozen or a hundred people around the world.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The type of game hasn't been decided yet. So where did you get the idea that it will be an FPS?

Free Playing System ?

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[nschubach]

I think it partially has to do with the fact that games are largely disposable. They are written with a singular story or repetitive content that most people will not re-play. FPS games avoid this with multiplayer, but a good length RPG will likely only be fun the first time. Add that to the fact that there's a new engine every 5 years to utilize the greatest new feature in video cards and even projects like this will be aged by the time a project rolls around to release. I kind of wonder if Ray Tracing engines might alleviate this trend by focusing on a scalable engine that can look better as technology increases without the need of a programmer reworking engine code that much, if at all.

Also, office applications can be fairly modular and unchanging, but games are mostly planned from the ground up every time. Your likely to find a new inventory system being developed for every game put out. It may look like others, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was probably written from the ground up. All of them pretty much rely on containers to hold objects. The containers can be different sizes (many items for RPGs, 2-9 items for FPS, 1-3 for puzzle games, etc.) They all have display areas, content, organization (either auto or player set) and could be interchangeable for the most part, but it doesn't happen. Not only that, but character development. How many different implementations of a D&D type character system are there? You think these all use the same code? What about storyline/quest/objective components? People are worried about something that changes every 5 years instead of something that's remained pretty stale over the years, the graphics engine. But why not? This is the part everyone sees. This is how your game will be judged by many, not the way your inventory works...

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[orasio]

I'm having trouble thinking of a significant and good piece of open-source software that I use that wasn't either commercial-then-freed, or free-then-commercially-sponsored. I think this happens because you create a false free-commercial dichotomy. Free software does not cease to be free, because it is commercially sponsored.

Probably your issue is the metrics you use. Maybe the same software you consider "significant and good" is considered "significant and good" by the people who have money to invest in it. But it doesn't say anything about free software not being able to be significant and good. It just says that you probably think "significant and good" free software is the one that is commercially sponsored.

I use significant and good free software that is not commercially sponsored. Blender is sponsored by people. Freemind is sponsored by ... I don't know who. Well, when PHP became famous, and for a long time after that, Rasmus, the guy behind it, didn't have any corporate sponsorship, and made some money in conferences and stuff.

Of course, successful software will attract money, but it doesn't mean that commercial sponsorship is key to success, maybe it means the opposite.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[orasio]

To use your example, Spore has been in development for like seven years and has undoubtedly cost tens of millions of dollars, mostly in man-hours of work. Do you think a free-source project could get a solid core of designers, coders, and artists to donate their time and money regularly for over half a decade with NO product to show for it, on the hope that one day it might be released and... look good on their resumes? Apricot is a effort to improve free 3d tools. Some people invested money, and some developers will work and get paid, among other things because it _will_ look good in their resumes to have worked here, and probably because they want to, and like the idea.

Just because you might not have other goals that direct retribution it doesn't mean other people don't either.

We've all heard the horror stories about what EA puts its employees through to get games out the door. Do you think an entire project team would put themselves through that voluntarily for NO money, or for what little money a free project could get from ads, donations, and so on? From that, I see you are not a software developer or anything like that. EA does that, because they are incompetent at managing people. Non self-imposed 60 hour weeks produce the same as 40 hour weeks, when you are in front of a computer. In creative positions, even less.

A better work environment, a nice project, and people working for a common goal, could achieve what slave workers couldn't.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[RRRobotHouse]

I can see what you're saying. On the other hand it is incredibly complex to create an operating system and that's one of the landmarks of the FOSS movement.

I suppose that this is sheer fun for the people involved and that they are more than willing to donate their free time to the project. I think the quality might be higher since the participants self-select themselves into this. You're probably not going to put out junk if you're not 100% committed to this.

In the long-run this may make game development cheaper for everyone (developing countries?) and I think it would be cool if we saw many new innovative games as a result.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[Tetsujin]

"But the real start will be the first week of February. Only then real decisions will be made on game concept, game design and other targets, although we do know it'll be derived from Project Peach, furry & crazy characters in a forest."

Let me see if I understand this correctly:

You assemble a full creative team for a game and only then decide what you want to do with it?

In animation, a studio like Pixar will spend years in developing a story. Only then will it begin assembling a production crew.

Well, yeah, because the goal here is different from the goal of somebody like Pixar.

In this project one of the important goals is simply that of going through the process of writing a game using these tools. It's a shake-down. That's the whole point, so that comes first. Choose the technical challenge, arrange the team, and then figure out what shape the work will take.

Re:Do we really need more FPS?

[jd]

Oolite is good, but the chief maintainer quit and 1.65 is getting long in the tooth. I couldn't get the hang of Vega Strike. Nice background stills, but nothing of the feel that the Elite family of games gives. There's nothing quite like mashing up a tech 1 anarchy in a beat-up spaceship with a trusty military beam by your side. And front. And back.

Genre?

[calebt3]

What kind of game will this be?
MMORPG?
RTS?
Turn-based? (like Civilization)
FPS?

Re:Genre?

[Terrasque]

From the blog:

But the real start will be the first week of February. Only then real decisions will be made on game concept, game design and other targets, although we do know it'll be derived from Project Peach, furry & crazy characters in a forest. So it seems like the final type of game haven't been decided yet.

Re:Genre?

[EvanED]

Well of course. You always choose the technology you'll be using before you know what you're making.

Re:Genre?

[dvice_null]

"To save time and to benefit from cooperation with the artists working in the Blender Institute on the Peach project, we will re-use as much material from Peach as possible.
That means that the game will have funny & furry animals, and play in an outdoors environment.

This probably means an adventure/platform style of game, or maybe it's going to be like mini games or party games. The Apricot team will have - within above constraints - the full creative freedom in designing the game concept and game play."
http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/apricot-open-game/

Re:Genre?

[alxbtk]

Always? No. But when you want to further develop and at the same time promote a given set of tools, yes, you do.

Re:Genre?

[mfnickster]

Maybe it's more like "What cool thing can we make with this set of Tinkertoys?" (or Lego(TM) bricks, or Lincoln Logs, or Play-Doh, or breakfast cereals, or fruit bats...)

Re:Genre?

[aichpvee]

So you think a 3DS Max shop like Blizzard has to sit down and think if they're going to use 3DS Max for their next game or they just decide that they're going to do Starcraft 2 and that OF COURSE they're going to use the tools that they're comfortable with and already trained on?

How about any big 3D feature studio? Sure they might need to identify some supplemental tools (or some custom plugs/scripts) to work with Maya, but it's not like they're going to even think about throwing out all their existing tools for a new project.

And, as someone already said, OF COURSE you're going to use a specific tool if the whole point of doing your project is to promote a specific tool or tool chain. These guys are out to prove the viability of open source tools in fields that are dominated by closed source, proprietary tools and their 3D modeling and animation software of choice is Blender.

I finally sat down to really learn Blender this week and it's actually really, really nice. A little bit weird (coming from a background in Maya), but I absolutely LOVE it compared to something like 3DS. It's got a great range of tools (video editor, audio editor, etc) in addition to the core modeling and animation stuff and if you're looking to do any 3D work for cheap (or you just love open source) I see no reason for it not to figure prominently in your pipeline.

Re:Genre?

[KDR_11k]

So you think a 3DS Max shop like Blizzard has to sit down and think if they're going to use 3DS Max for their next game or they just decide that they're going to do Starcraft 2 and that OF COURSE they're going to use the tools that they're comfortable with and already trained on?

The tool pipeline is one thing but what about the engine? Is CrystalSpace appropriate for every type of game design or is it unfit for some of them?

Re:Genre?

[ultranova]

What kind of game will this be?

It will be an Open Source game. Didn't you read the title ?-)

Seriously, thought, I'm getting a bad feeling about this. There is a considerable risk that the game will simply be a glorified tech demo, like Elephant's Dream was. This didn't really matter for the film, since you can just switch back and admire the surreal world and effects; but it will matter for a game, where you'll have to interact and participate. A game must be more than just a bunch of random ideas thrown together.

Re:Genre?

[aichpvee]

It's probably as good as anything out there that's open source. Especially if they already have guys with experience working with it, which seems to be the case.

What's really the alternative? Irrlicht maybe?

Re:Genre?

[msh104]

well considering the fact that there mission statement is too have "at least one level" we might just as well call it tech demo already.. but he.. i still bought it :p

Re:Genre?

[Creepy]

Irrlicht is a toy - you can dump a scene down easily, but if you want to do much more than that, the structuring is very restrictive and many things are not possible. The lightfeather project, which started as an Irrlicht fork and then rewrote most of the engine is much more flexible, but not as easy to use and not as feature-rich (stuff like DirectX support were dumped and it is OpenGL only, however, it also supports many modern GPU features that are not supported in Irrlicht).

If I had to pick one, though, I'd probably say Ogre3d is the best game oriented engine out there at the moment. CS has been doing a lot of work to modernize, but the performance still has issues (which they noted) and when I worked with it before I found it one of the most cumbersome engines to work with (out of the 5 or so I tested, 3 of which are dead now).

Re:Genre?

[aichpvee]

Yeah, I've never seen much from Irrlicht to get excited about but was throwing it out there because it's the only other complete open source game engine (I think that's right, not even completely sure) that I could think of and they seemed to want an all-in-one solution rather than the graphics engine with plugins for the other stuff that OGRE provides. Or maybe they were just saying that because they know the CrystalSpace guys and that was the main reason (not necessarily an invalid one) that they picked it.

From what I've seen of it OGRE3D seems pretty awesome, and while I'm not much of a programmer, I'd rather they'd gone that way myself. Let's hope this CrystalSpace project turns out alright so that they do another one. I'd love to see some OGRE guys step in and get a piece of that action. It'd be great for Blender to show that it works great with multiple engines and great for OGRE3D to show that it's awesome. Perhaps even kick off a bit of an open source game engine arms race where we all win.

Re:Genre?

[Creepy]

actually, none of them are full game engines. Most interface with other freely available libraries such as ODE for physics. What you may be thinking of is the license - Ogre3D is GPL, so can't be used for commercial software, while Crystal Space, Irrlicht, and Lightfeather can.

Re:Genre?

[aichpvee]

No, I wasn't. There are a lot of projects that aim to make it easier to use external libraries for sound, input, etc with OGRE3D, but it does not include any of that stuff (by design) as part of the package. Those features are provided as optional modules that are part of CrystalSpace in that they (I believe they call it CEL from looking at their front page, and I'm assuming this is what the Blender guys were talking about) provide these as an official add-on. OGRE3D is a rendering engine only.

Also, OGRE3D is LGPL and has been for quite some time. There's no reason someone can't release a commercial game using it. By the way, this is the exact same license as CrystalSpace. The Irrlicht license is based on the zlib/libpng license, which is basically BSD with a different name. I've never heard of Lightfeather so I didn't even bother to look at the license there, but I'll assume it's either LGPL or some BSD-like, too.

Re:Genre?

[Creepy]

weird - I could swear I read GPL for OGRE3D just recently, but it does appear LGPL - good catch. Digging around the license page, I see OGRE also has a commercial license available. I may have been thinking of NeoEngine, which has a similar dual license (it is GPL/commercial). NeoEngine (#1) was terribly broken, and even the main developer admitted it, but I know nothing of his new project NeoEngine2 so I'll reserve judgment.

CS does have a number of non-graphical features, but is not considered a complete game engine (missing such features as physics and vegetation rendering, though they are available as plug-ins). CS also is organized a bit like SDL, where you have a core library and a bunch of optional libraries (in SDL, stuff like SDL_net and SDL_image). OGRE 3d does not have these optional libs, only 3rd party plugins for external libs, thus the distinction you're making (but even wikipedia doesn't consider it a complete game engine).

When I evaluated both CS and OGRE (3, maybe 4 years ago) I was really disappointed with the ease of use for both compared to engines I've written myself, and I found plenty of places in the code I wrote that I felt should have been abstracted. OGRE definitely had the edge in framerates in my tests (it was at least 8-10FPS faster with 200000ish polygons), but I confess it was a series of models I created in high end CAD (Unigraphics), exported to STEP (or possibly IGES, my memory on that is a bit foggy), opened in Blender and saved to other formats, not a real game scene (basically, OGRE was faster at model rendering and true scene rendering wasn't tested). I should also say the CS people were rewriting a lot of their engine at that time, so it's entirely possible some of the complexity and framerate issues were resolved since then.

Re:Genre?

[CuteAlien]

I wouldn't call Irrlicht a toy. It might not offer the same features as Ogre, but I'm working with it now nearly since 2 years, completed a professional independent game with it (which also runs on linux), work on a second game now and still like it. I often had to change stuff within the engine, but well, the code is well written and that's why I like using opensource engines :-)

It really depends on the project you plan to do. If you need stuff like material scripts you should use Ogre. If you need software rendering you might be better of with Irrlicht. Also the zlib license does suit some people just better. For example I'm still not sure if I could use lpgl for ports to arcade machines (I heard good arguments pro and contra if this is legal).

Advanced features really don't matter as much as most people think. Nearly no gamedevelopment ever fails because of missing engine features :-) The most important features for an engine are for me stability, documentation, ease of use and a nice community. And Irrlicht and Ogre are both rather nice in that regard (CS maybe also - I just don't know that so much).

Anytime

[sproketboy]

after duke nukem right?

Re:Anytime

[dvice_null]

"Start february 2008, until july 2008"
http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/apricot-open-game/

This project needs funding?

[calebt3]

If everything is going to be open source, why exactly does this project need funding? Are the developers going to be working on this full-time?

Re:This project needs funding?

[ricebowl]

If everything is going to be open source, why exactly does this project need funding? Are the developers going to be working on this full-time?

I don't know; it'd be easy to say that open source != free, but that'd be both glib, redundant and not answering the question I guess. Perhaps there's the wages/salary/remuneration for the developers or maybe there's some resources need paying for? Whether a CVS repository server or some licensing fees to access...something or other?

Re:This project needs funding?

[inigo_jones]

apricot will be a sort of companion to the peach open movie project. The genre will, im sure, not be FPS as it will be using furry little forest characters. i believe the developers will be working on it full-time - the peach project has all of the developers working together full time at the blender institute in amsterdam.

Re:This project needs funding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are. They won't be paid "normal" game dev salaries but it costs to have an office, provide housing for the developers etc, hence funding is needed.

Re:This project needs funding?

[Shade of Pyrrhus]

From the website:
"At the end of July 2008 the game will be launched. The team members will get a great studio facility and housing in Amsterdam, all travel costs reimbursed, and a fee sufficient to cover all expenses during the period."

Obviously, this requires funding. The funding's coming from sponsors (see web site) and profits from the DVD sales. The DVD, as noted in the forums/site, will include all sorts of great documentation and information about what went on and stuff.

And from the forum:
"The plan is to have 6 people for 6 months in Amsterdam working full time on a game."

Re:This project needs funding?

[LetterRip]

If everything is going to be open source, why exactly does this project need funding? Are the developers going to be working on this full-time? Full time artists and full time developers are going to be funded for both Blender and for CrystalSpace. These projects (Orange, Peach, Apricot) serve a few purposes - to prove the quality of these particular open source tools for professional usage (ie pulling together very high quality art work, game assets, game design and logic, and game environment in a very short period of time) and as a major side benefit provides excellent functionality for the current and future users of both projects (ie Blender has had huge leaps in functionality improvement during both Elephants Dream (Orange) and during Rabbits Revenge (Peach) as the artists wishlists were met by both the developers paid to work for the project and the rest of the Blender volunteer team).

LetterRip

Re:This project needs funding?

[KDR_11k]

The genre will, im sure, not be FPS as it will be using furry little forest characters.

All the more reason to make it an FPS that deserves an 18+ rating. Think of Happy Tree Friends here.

Re:This project needs funding?

[Sensible Clod]

I don't know; it'd be easy to say that open source != free, but that'd be both glib, redundant and not answering the question I guess.ething or other?

I count myself fortunate to have a rather large vocabulary, but I still had to read that 3 times before I realized you weren't talking about GNU libs.

Why crystal space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious as to the reasons the crystal space engine was selected (as opposed to, say, OGRE).

Re:Why crystal space?

[Dingobloo]

Because it wasn't a matter of selection, blender wasn't looking for a 3D engine to base a game on, the idea evolved through a working relationship and a mutual agreement was made in order to increase the profile of the involved parties.

Re:Why crystal space?

[Thalagyrt]

Honestly the Crystal Space engine screenshots make it look like the devs are still stuck in 1999. Using decals for shadows? In their news, they just recently implemented decals in the engine?

They really should have used Ogre.

Re:Why crystal space?

[GermanDZ]

There is a difference between OGRE and Crystal Space, OGRE is just the 3D engine meanwhile CS provides a basic framework for games. I choose MOGRE (Managed OGRE, the .NET version of OGRE) for our 3D Virtual World. The begining with OGRE is hard, but you have a lot of control afterward. My 5c.

Re:Why crystal space?

[LingNoi]

Crystal Space is also contributing funding towards the project.

It's written somewhere on the project page. Buried in a response to a comment.

Re:Why crystal space?

[Jorrit]

One of the goals of the Apricot project is to modernize the Crystal Space engine. This includes probably the following features that we will implement or improve:

• New render system with better support for render to texture (allowing things like HDR, Bloom) and shadowing techniques.
  
• New skeletal animation system with support for vertex weights.
  
• Support for tree generation and imposters to allow for big outdoor levels.
  
• Continue working on the Bullet physics plugin.
  

I'm of course biased as I'm the project manager but I believe that the strongest point of Crystal Space is it's modularity and extensibility. It is because of that that we will be able to move into the future and we will do so with the Apricot project.

Greetings,

Re:Why crystal space?

[GermanDZ]

Congrats! If you will be evolving Crystal Space you will obtain what you want, its really cool. Go ahead (may in some months for the next version, we could migrate our project to CS)

Re:Why crystal space?

[666999]

Thank you to you and your team for your hard work. Regardless of how it may sound on here, most of us fully support you and understand the 'big picture' of what you're accomplishing.

Re:Why crystal space?

[Malkin]

I really hate to say this, but I would feel negligent if I did not question the wisdom of using this project to drag Crystal Space into the 21st century, when there are more up-to-date, perfectly viable, modular, extensible open source 3D graphics engines available. Ogre3D, for example, is available under the exact same license as Crystal Space, and it supports all of the features you mention, and has already been used to make commercial games. Trust me, developing a pro-quality game is a steep enough hill to climb without burning extra time and money modernizing a somewhat dusty graphics engine. Why risk the mission on that? Is this just a bad case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, or do you really have a good practical reason to do this? I'm not saying that you should put Crystal Space out to pasture, per se, but I'm not convinced that you should be trying to do all of this at once. The single most frequent mistake made by new would-be indie game developers is biting off more than they can chew. Don't set yourself up for failure. Keep your eye on the ball.

Now that I've given you the obligatory dire warning, good luck. ;-)

The problem

[nawcom]

I think the problem with decent open source game development (assuming the developers aren't getting bi-weekly checks) is the amount of programmers and artists needed and the amount of time needed to spend on it. FPSs can be the exception if they use an existing 3d engine and layout similar to a game already out. but something like an open source spore or perhaps a 3d rendered RTS like warcraft 3.. slashcraft: penguins versus macboys. or maybe 4 races, penguins, daemons, macboys, and a microsoft borg-like race. You could manufacture air-support, and raid each other with giant mac "finders" or MSN butterflies..

well, enough imagination for now. if you want a good open source game, you need full time developers who can work full time on it. which means you need a financial backing. (Google?)

Re:The problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The game PlaneShift, which is built on the the Crystal Space Code is a 100% free to play MMORPG with heavy emphasis on role playing. Although the team does not see any money for their work it is in a playable state. It is not, nor should it be thought of as competition for pro games, but it does offer a free option for gamers.

The not for profit group Atomic Blue holds the copyright to the art and writing for the game, but the source code is available on sourceforge.

Re:The problem

[Eravnrekaree]

One interesting concept, if the game is 3D multi-user, allow users to perhaps contribute graphics or expand the terrain of game, by uploading new graphics and terrain to the server. The sort of project I find interesting would be something involving a persistant, dynamic always running 3D world running on a server, which can also change, for instance, trees might blow in simulated winds for instance. People could move their "avatar" or whatever you want to call it and perhaps even manipulate objects in the world with it. There are design challenges involved with this, since it could be one very large continuous 3D space, millions or more pixels large, a way would need to be found to only feed the data closest to a user down to the user at full resolution and uses less detail the farther away an object is, or it would use massive amounts of bandwidth. Having a horizon where simply anything beyond the horizon is not rendered probably would not be sufficient, since you may want items which are far, far away rendered, such as a distant mountain, but without the detail, such as individual trees, is not needed. If you moved closer, then those details would need to be fed to the user.

Re:The problem

[88NoSoup4U88]

if you want a good open source game, you need full time developers who can work full time on it.

Or good management, and a team consisting of members that are aware that he/she has to take full responsibility for their expertise.

This would mean that everyone has a perfect grasp of the goals for the game, and each member's individual input is used to slowly clean up and refine the initial idea(s).
This also means that each member does its own research (based on some rough layouts in the gamedesign document), does its own QA (the feedback is directly returned to the appropriate person), and everyone has its own small gamedesign document which clearly states the progress of the assets list assigned to that person.

As you mentioned, it really depends on what type of game is being created, but I still think your Slashcraft is a doable project with a team of about 6 to 7 members.

For myself, I've just completed a gamedesign document I've been working on for 1.5 years, and started active development on a game which will partly be sponsored by non-obtrusive in-game advertisements; and will be free for people to download and play. I'm currently working four days a week, so I have that extra day to put in both managing the whole project, as well as creating the different maps and character models.

To get all our heads pointing the right way, we're currently using a modified MediaWiki, which suits us perfect in streamlining the development and content: It's very easy to make corrections, add valuable information, or otherwise make suggestions. It can also be used to store individual files, and has great structure to list all the available/completed media assets in ways so the team has a clear oversight.
The simple creation of extra sections, or tagging of pages is a perfect tool for everyone to make their own sections that they can watch over: So it sort of the same as someone on Wikipedia 'protecting' his or her content by watching over it: But on top of the checking actual correctness of the data, each teammember also overlooks the progress that is made on his or her side of the development.

Btw, for the game we're using the cleaned up Quake 3 engine (IOQuake3), and instead of creating 'yet another FPS where you can either deathmatch or capture the flag', we're working on something where the nearest similarities come from a game like Mario Party; Just small mini-like games, playable with 1 to 4 players, where each map features completely different gametypes/environments/weapons/models etc.
Some of these gametype-concepts have already been proven; I created some mappacks for fortress-mods before, where the same concept of different gametypes on each map was the main objective: For some screenshots have a look at the maps-section of my site, and in particular the maps that start with Q3F_MG and ETF_MG.

Current estimate is to get an Alpha release out within three months (which we'll be pitching to various advertisers/in-game advertising companies), so once it's out, be sure to download this game! :)

Re:The problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The -real- problem is that as an owner of an independent game studio for the past thirteen years I can tell you this:

EVERY contract in the last two years bans us from using anything open source in our products.

Thank SCO and general corporate FUD, but if your publisher won't let you use it, you ain't going to use it.

Re:The problem

[ookabooka]

Seems to me you are just describing Second Life.

Re:The problem

[tirnacopu]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from your description it looks like the game will not be open source, so its development methods are not relevant for this discussion.

Re:The problem

[88NoSoup4U88]

The IOQuake3 source is based on the Quake 3 source (it's a cleaned up version of it): And thus, we still have the GPL-license to adhere to.

Can you specify why you think that wouldn't classify as open source?

Re:The problem

[Hatta]

Why do you need a publisher? It's the fucking internet for gods sake.

Great fan of FlightGear myself

[smchris]

I say we build up the airports ala Second Life and party in the lounges! And, yes, you would have to actually fly to each airport and deplane in my vision.

The airports could become hubs into the cities. FlightGear has great potential to become a parallel earth so why not start populating it?

Re:Great fan of FlightGear myself

[Ash-Fox]

I say we build up the airports ala Second Life and party in the lounges! And, yes, you would have to actually fly to each airport and deplane in my vision.

The airports could become hubs into the cities. FlightGear has great potential to become a parallel earth so why not start populating it?

My only problem with it is:

• Flight simulation sucks in SL
• Sim borders are hell

Re:Great fan of FlightGear myself

[Anonymous Coward]

because it sucks.

Re:Great fan of FlightGear myself

[Silver Gryphon]

I think that's a light bulb over my head...

Interoperability between games... Has this even been done yet?
Imagine a multi-game environment that combines:

Some flight simulator
Sim (Whatever) or Second Life
Halo
Scorched3D (my personal favorite)

You can fly in, watch three or four tanks bomb the hell out of someone's SL pad whilst another team of commandos storms the tanks. Meanwhile, in the SL pad they're partying like it's 1973 and don't know what hit them. Great fun.

Technically you'd need some API interface to send messages and each game would have to cooperate and render what the foreign game told it to. Flight sim says "Plane X entering airspace at coord Lat/Long, heading, bearing, etc" and SL would render that using its own low-res plane-forming API. Not one game with everything; 4 games running on their own infrastructures; they just talk to each other.

Like Alien vs. Predator ---> Halo vs. Second Life

Re:Great fan of FlightGear myself

[nschubach]

What if someone doesn't want to play a game where 13 year old kids constantly bomb their chess game with a B2 bomber?

Re:Great fan of FlightGear myself

[Max Littlemore]

Some flight simulator
Sim (Whatever) or Second Life
Halo
Scorched3D (my personal favorite)

You forgot Lemmings... and hunt the wumpus

When will the Watermelon team...

[Anonymous Coward]

...make a killing, looting, drug dealing game for Linux?

There are Open Source games out there, but...

[Zombie Ryushu]

Too much stuff from the past gets neglected.

The Pros:

There have been alot of innovative, beautiful games to come out of F/OSS:
Vega Strike
Pingus
FreeDroid RPG
TrackBalls
Nexuiz
Open Arena
Tremulous
Torcs
Scorched Earth 3D
AssaultCube
Lincity NG

Also, many DOS games have found new life as Linux games:

Quake 1, 2, and 3
Doom I, II, and Final
Descent I and II (D2X-XL)
Warcraft II *
Duke Nukem 3D

Problems:

Some games get neglected that really should not have been:
Heretic and Hexen - These are Doom Engine games, technically, there is one Engine that plays them, Vavoom, supposedly DoomsDay plays them, but in many cases their performance is really buggy.
Strife - Only Vavoom plays this.
I'd like to note that you can play Strife, Heretic, and Hexen under Wine with Randy Heit's ZDoom Engine for Windows. But thats not the same as a Native Linux Port. There used to be a Linux port of the massive multiplayer engine ZDaemon for Doom based games, but that guy announced that he hated Linux and closed off his source. He even put code in his program to prevent people using Wine to play the game, anmd said that Linux Users were responsible for DoS attacks against his servers.

Blood - This is a big one. Blood was one of the greatest games of all time. Yet there is no Engine replacement for it and it runs awful under DosEmu and DosBox. There exists a Total Remake of the Bloodbath levels called "Transfusion" but it is Quake based and is nothing like the original Blood.
Star Command: Revolution - A game So obscure I found it for 3.95 in a Wal-Mart Bargain bin
Mechwarrior 2: This game predates Direct 3D, You can't run this under Wine.

* Recently, Warcraft II support under Stratagus has suffered. Stratagus 2.1 was superior to Stratagus 2.2. Stratagus 2.1 had support for 16 players instead of the usual 8, and could do dual race computer forces. It had a level editor, and could read the native Warcraft II PUD Format.

There exists Linux Engines for:

Quake 4
Doom 3

I really think a great deal more effort should be pushed into making Windows and older Dos games accessible and updated under Linux, such as One Must Fall, and producing more original games, as it seems some Linux games that used to be full steam ahead are dying out. I'm shifting my focus in University towards programming just so I will have the technical programming knowledge to contribute to Open Source projects more than I am now. So many of the problems are things like bugs in network code, deprecated syntax, added support for additional games.

Games are where the Computer Industry goes. It was Doom that gave us the Windows Ecosystem, so it will have to be a killer Linux game that gives us the Linux ecosystem.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[andy314159pi]

Too much stuff from the past gets neglected. The Pros: There have been alot of innovative, beautiful games to come out of F/OSS: Vega Strike Pingus FreeDroid RPG TrackBalls Nexuiz Open Arena Tremulous Torcs Scorched Earth 3D AssaultCube Lincity NG

Don't forget BZFlag .

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[krunchyfrog]

What?! No Nethack??

#####
#.@.#
#####

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! - Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
-- Hey. I'm trying to be original here.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[TheRaven64]

I'd like to add Battle for Wesnoth to the good FOSS games list. It and Vega Strike are the only two games that I've been playing recently. The only non-Free game I've seen recently that I've wanted to play is Portal, but the fact that it's not available without DRM, nor on any platform I own has meant that I haven't bought it.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[AlXtreme]

It was Doom that gave us the Windows Ecosystem, so it will have to be a killer Linux game that gives us the Linux ecosystem.

You had me nodding all the way, and you have to end your post with such a misinformed line. Doom came out way before Win '95 and didn't do zit in creating any ecosystem; Microsoft's marketing was immensely more important than any DOS/Windows game. And why should people switch to Linux merely for a game that will probably be ported to Windows if it's successful by any rate?

Don't get me wrong: more open source games the better. Not because they might switch users over to a different OS (yeah right), not to demonstrate the capabilities of Linux, but simply to give users of any operating system some fun. What's wrong with keeping it at that?

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I'll also add Frets On Fire, an open-source Guitar Hero clone. I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it myself.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Strife - Only Vavoom plays this. It's also fully operational in Zdoom.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think wholesale copying counts as anything beyond borderline piracy. It's not hard to implement something when someone else did all the design work already.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful, yes. Innovative, no.

Most of those games are open-source knock-offs of closed-source games or closed-source games that were later opened.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[Hatta]

Speaking of older dos games, the GPL DOS emulator dosbox is just about perfect, even for protected mode games. Even Mechwarrior 2 will work, with some fudging. It even runs windows 3.11 and with it many pre-95 games.

Dosbox is fully free and cross-platform, which means that even without the source code, these games will continue to exist and be playable in perpetuity.

Re:There are Open Source games out there, but...

[pthisis]

Wesnoth provides a good template for FOSS game development, with their ongoing threads on tile design, art direction, music development, sound effects, etc that are the game-art geek equivalents to the more usual programmer's development boards.

See, for instance, http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17985 for a music thread or http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=18&sid=63c7d2dfdabda6e0fb7b78b91e80bcc2 for the art forum.

You get 20 page threads on redesigning the sand tile graphics or how to tweak a particular piece of music. That attention to detail for the art/design side of things on top of the graphics is really necessary for a modern game.

While we are on the 3D engine subject

[SeanTobin]

Anyone know of a rendering method for ungodly-large 3d meshes? I've got some terrain models that are on the order of 150+ million polys with UV maps (yes, they are polys and not DEM's... the meshes include features such as caves and bridges). Pretty much everything I've thrown at these models dies a horrible death (Autocad 2008, Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, ESRI products). In order to do any useful work, I have to downsample the models and work with small slices for high-resolution. If anyone knows of a sort of Google Earth for 3d models, please let me know.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[poopdeville]

You need a cluster of G5's (or Cell processors) and a lot of RAM. Use whatever software you're comfortable with -- the hardware is the biggest factor here.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[Eravnrekaree]

I was recently thinking about what it would take to create some sort of a system which contains a multi-user 3D world, which could become quite large, a continuous, persistant 3D world. I was looking for some possible ways to perhaps render objects more distant to the user with less detail, so the detail would decrease the farther an object is. With a very large world, one that might continue for millions of pixels, that would be rather necessary to keep resource usage down. Perhaps when the terrain is designed several different resolutions could be created, then the client could ask for a certain resolution depending on how far away the object is. As far as existing software, I am afraid I do not know of any off hand.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[Grard Menfin]

You could try POV-Ray on a 64-bit machine with lots of RAM. Christoph Hormann has done gigantic renders of earth views with it.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd probably hate to hear this, but maybe Bryce or Z-brush. Even then you're likely to be limited by RAM and whatever your OS can actually address.

And if the meshes work as one chunk in those cases, don't expect much in the way of speed. Slowness is to be expected when the vertex count gets into ridiculous territory.

I don't know if there's any free 3D-model browsers that work ala Google Earth, nice idea in concept though. (I'd be interested in finding such a thing.) On the other hand if it's free 3D models you're trying to find, you haven't looked hard enough.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[Josef Meixner]

I don't think you can render that directly so easily and if you want to work with that dataset it will cause even more trouble. I would try to change it to something simpler to work with. First create a height map which only covers the lowest parts of the model. Then extract all geometry that resides atop of it. That should result in a big height map and geometry which has a lot of disjoint parts. So next I would try to segment the geometry into disjunct objects so you can use level of detail on them, using it on one object is very hard to keep continuous. Without description of what you want to do with the model it is hard to say, if that would do or not.

There are renderers which can handle those datasets, but I don't know if they are available. Ingo Wald has done realtime raytracing of a Boing 777 with 350 million triangles.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[pjt33]

Since that's almost certainly a couple of orders of magnitude more polys than you have pixels in your display, there's no point not downsampling. What you need to do is use adaptive subdivision techniques. Essentially you store a tree whose root is a massively downsampled model, and whose faces have children at higher detail. The tricky bit is working out how to handle boundaries between areas at different resolution. The approach you take there will vary according to the particular properties of your model. I've only done it before with a height-mapped world, where the root was an octahedron and each level subdivided faces into 4.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[bob.appleyard]

You're on the right track. Lots of people have already put a lot of thought into achieving this. You could design models at different scales. You can do a trick where you make a model at different scales, and use a higher-detailed version to generate bump maps for a lower-detailed version. I think this is pretty common nowadays, but I don't know what the technique is called.

However, you don't need to do it manually. There are a number of general techniques that you can use for dynamically controlling how detailed your models render. Some are quick and dirty, like turning faraway models into sprites, others are fancy and complicated, like foveated 3d model simplification. Google "level of detail" and you're probably only a few clicks away from something you could use.

Re:While we are on the 3D engine subject

[jayrow]

This technique is called mipmapping and has been around for over two decades, though it wasn't in widespread use in games until much later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap

Open Source Bus Driving Simulator

[sopwith]

I know that last part of the story was meant as a joke, but... http://virtualbus.info/

(some English info at http://vbus.wikia.com/ , and the Subversion repository is at svn://prv.ilan.pl/virtualbus )

Re:Open Source Bus Driving Simulator

[timothy]

No, not a joke -- thanks for that link! I have never played the actual game, but from screenshots and descriptions, I know that I *want* to play TBG :) Awesome!

timothy

Re:Open Source Bus Driving Simulator

[boomfart]

not totally bus oriented but has several busses in it http://rigsofrods.blogspot.com/

Apricot, eh?

[VValdo]

Wait a second! Isn't the next Elephant's Dream-like open animated short (originally called "orange") going to be called "Peach"?

Orange? Peach? Apricot?

I call nepotism! ;)

W

Seriously tho-- is the game related to the short?

Re:Apricot, eh?

[Fireflymantis]

Apricot will be the open source companion game (built in blender) to the short movie that is also underway called Peach (also built in blender).

Re:Apricot, eh?

[Shade of Pyrrhus]

Afterwards, they're going to take all of the projects and throw them in the Blender - Open Source Smoothies for everyone! So that's what OSS really stands for...

Re:Apricot, eh?

[nuzak]

> I call nepotism! ;)

I think I'm detecting the pattern better than you. I call kumquat for the next one.

Push Linux gaming; use the LGPL (or similar)

[bmartin]

The one thing that needs to come of all of this is that the tools made have to be usable in a commercial setting. I'm all about free as in beer stuff, but freedom (for companies) is the more important factor here. For some reason (and I think it has to do w/ Microsoft's SDK), many companies have chosen to use Direct X, which is a huge hindrance to cross-platform gaming; those companies and their developers will likely continue to use Direct X. Convincing them to use OpenGL and SDL is a must.

A license like the LGPL would be nice; if the software isn't usable without companies having to open up their entire game (i.e., give everything away for free), where's the incentive to develop games for Linux? (I'm writing this while waiting for my turn in Battle for Wesnoth).

Re:Push Linux gaming; use the LGPL (or similar)

[LetterRip]

The one thing that needs to come of all of this is that the tools made have to be usable in a commercial setting. The game content and logic are planned to be released under Creative Commons Attribution I believe (as were the Elephants Dream assets) - improvements to Blender will be under GPL, and improvements to CrystalSpace will be under LGPL.

LetterRip

Re:Push Linux gaming; use the LGPL (or similar)

[Anonymous Coward]

>> For some reason (and I think it has to do w/ Microsoft's SDK), many companies have chosen to use Direct X, which is a huge hindrance to cross-platform gaming;

On the contrary, Direct X provides compatibility for both platforms; Windows and X-Box.

Re:Push Linux gaming; use the LGPL (or similar)

[physicsnick]

A license like the LGPL would be nice; if the software isn't usable without companies having to open up their entire game (i.e., give everything away for free) Even with a GPL engine, they don't have to give everything away; just the source code. They can still retain copyright on all the game's artwork and media. For example the engine to Quake 3 Arena is open source under the GPL, but that doesn't mean you can just go burn a copy of the game; it's still piracy, because you have to pay to use the content.

That said, I agree that the engine should be LGPL to encourage closed-source developers to use it and contribute to it. Anyway the discussion is moot because Crystal Space 3D is already LGPL.

This should be server based multi user

[Eravnrekaree]

I am glad to see that there is work underway to show what Linux, X/ OpenGL can do in the area of gaming. There are too few games avialable for Linux.

I do think it would be a good idea for the developers to make this is a server based multiple user game ( a virtual world), the sort where you can login and logoff but the world remains persistant. Perhaps that does not fit with the plot they have for the game, I dont know. But I do think that having more open source multi-user games is a fantastic idea can be quite a bit of fun, especially being able to interact with other users in a virtual 3D space.

I also see value in 3D chat environments based on rendered 3D landscapes and scenes, a visual 3D version of chat rooms. There was a similar system called WorldsAway on compuserve years ago, but was quite limited by the technology of the time. With todays hardware, the level of realness could be much more developed. An open source system could start an IRC-like community of visual environments.

Re:This should be server based multi user

[Ash-Fox]

I also see value in 3D chat environments based on rendered 3D landscapes and scenes, a visual 3D version of chat rooms. There was a similar system called WorldsAway on compuserve years ago, but was quite limited by the technology of the time. With todays hardware, the level of realness could be much more developed. An open source system could start an IRC-like community of visual environments.

Try Second life. The client is opensource.

Also post your wishes for Blender at Peach site

[LetterRip]

If you go to http://peach.blender.org/ one of the recent stories is a request for feedback of what you want added or changed about Blender to improve it for game content creation.

LetterRip

Re:Also post your wishes for Blender at Peach site

[LetterRip]

Doh! So used to typing peach that I typed the wrong project. I meant that if you go to http://apricot.blender.org/ [blender.org] one of the recent stories is a request for feedback of what you want added or changed about Blender to improve it for game content creation.

LetterRip

Oboy.

[stonecypher]

This is a game designed by committee. If there isn't a game designer at the lead of the team with a passion for their design, then this might as well be another cookie cutter grist mill EA waste of shelf space. (Except, of course, this also isn't likely to hit the shelves.) It's nice that open source is putting together the effort to show that they can do something like this, and that it can all be free, but games aren't like other engineering projects. They require passion, and I don't see that here.

No game of value here. Thank you, drive through.

Re:Oboy.

[Fireflymantis]

Have you seen the last project the blender foundation made that was 'designed by committee', "Elephants Dream", aka Project Orange? In my opinion it was absolutely brilliant, so I am still holding my breath and looking forward to whatever gets pushed out of their doors. I assure you, passion is something that they are _not_ lacking.

Re:Oboy.

[stonecypher]

I assure you, passion is something that they are _not_ lacking.

Yeah, well, I've actually looked at the work being done. You can assure all you want, but I'm a gaming industry professional, and my opinion doesn't change because some random person on SlashDot saw some other random thing that might maybe be somehow similar. This work doesn't have one drop of emotion in it.

Re:Oboy.

[Fireflymantis]

Well, first of all, it will be primarily the same team that worked on the last project, which, if you havn't seen it you really are missing out. You can download it here if you want. If even a little bit of the passion and brilliance that went into that can be carried over to Apricot and Peach, then I highly doubt we will be disapointed. Keep in mind that Elephant's Dream was a project which aim was to further the tools in Blender for larger scale movie production work with a focus on it's post-production toolset. I have high expectations for Apricot and Peach, and I think that they can pull it off.

Re:Oboy.

[Briggs_Bl]

It's stated pretty clearly on the Apricot web page who the lead game designer is, as well as the roles of everyone in the team. More information here: http://apricot.blender.org/?page_id=5 Where did you get the impression that this would be a game 'designed by comittee'? Cheers, Briggs

Re:Oboy.

[bperkins]

It seems to me that you (and just about all of slashdot) are missing the point.

I agree with you, the game is probably going to be crap. But even if they had a better than average chance of making a good game, it'd probably be crap, since most games are crap.

From what I see, the point of this game is to demonstrate that an OSS toolchain is a viable solution for game design. If they can create a game that works mostly and has reasonable gameplay, they will have accomplished the goal. If the game is lacking in the concept department, most people who make the decision to create a game will be able to see that although the game isn't vey good, the platform seems to work well enough to use as a foundation. If it ends up being a good game, it's a total home run, since they get free publicity.

I'm surprised that as a gaming professional, you don't see the possibilities here. I'm in the silicon design industry and if someone wanted to demonstrate chip design using OSS tools, I'd be mostly unconcerned about the final product.

    The reality is that vendor tools are a serious pain an the ass. They are usually broken and support is mostly useless. Our internal tools are not much better as far as bugs, but since we have the source, there's at least some chance of getting it working in a reasonable amount of time. If someone demonstrated the 90% of what we needed was OSS and it had some miles under it, we'd be all over it.

That said, I'm sure they still have an uphill battle to achieve even a modest success, but I don't think it's hopeless.

Re:Oboy.

[stonecypher]

It seems to me that you (and just about all of slashdot) are missing the point.

What a surprise, one random guy on slashdot who's never published a game thinks he sees something that nobody else, including the people who successfully do this for a living, sees. Why do people like you never know about Occam's Razor? Is it more likely that everyone on SlashDot, including people who do this for a living, are the people missing the point? Or is it more likely to be you?

From what I see, the point of this game is to demonstrate that an OSS toolchain is a viable solution for game design.

That was demonstrated two decades ago, something you'd probably know if you were half as familiar with gaming as you thought you are. Indeed, it can be argued that the very first game to sell a million copies - Toy and Wichman's Rogue, once published and ported by Epyx - was an open source game, built in the 60s and released in the 70s. Before you waste time saying that you meant first person shooter, or 3d, neither of which you meant, try doing a little research. There are quite a few first person shooters with commercial success that started open source. This isn't anything new, and there isn't anything here to prove.

although the game isn't vey good, the platform seems to work well enough to use as a foundation.

Can you name even one case of any game which has been built from the released source of a bad game, and nailed success? Just one will do.

If they can create a game that works mostly and has reasonable gameplay, they will have accomplished the goal.

You forgot the time machine. Or do I get to prove that heavier than air flying machines are possible too? Please stop preaching until you're at least familiar with work already done. It's offensive.

I'm surprised that as a gaming professional, you don't see the possibilities here.

What possibilities? They're going to do a bad job of reinventing engines which are already released to open source by commercial concerns? They're going to demonstrate the viability of an open source 3d game, something that was done back when we were still getting our games off of diskmags?

I'm surprised that as an amateur, you think you get to see "the possibilities here" to someone who makes money on this stuff, and then not actually name them.

The reality is that vendor tools are a serious pain an the ass. They are usually broken and support is mostly useless.

You don't know what you're talking about. Come back when you've had to write a video game for an operating system that doesn't provide device drivers, or a game for the bare metal. Come back, in fact, when you've worked with anything other than the spectacularly nebulous "vendor tools." Microsoft ships three DVDs full of help with the current 360 kit. The current Wii kit comes with more than a thousand pages of printed documentation, and access to a developer board which gets you the chance to talk directly to the kit developers. If that's mostly useless support, then I'd love to know who you thought was doing it right.

The reason you think vendor tools aren't supported is that the vendors don't recognize you. Don't pretend to yourself that the kit you found on usenet is anything like what real developers get. It isn't, and you've got no idea what real vendor tools are like. Of course, you'll probably pretend you meant chip design vendor tools:

I'm in the silicon design industry

I don't believe you.

and if someone wanted to demonstrate chip design using OSS tools

And this would be why. Y'see, if you really did lay lines for a living, you'd know that there are a broad plethora of such tools in circulation, and that there are dozens of chip designs, including successful commercial designs, which have been released to the public.

Re:Oboy.

[Jorrit]

What engines are we going to reinvent? Crystal Space (which will be used by Apricot) is more then 10 years old. I think we predate most of the still existing Open Source *and* commercial engines that are still in use these days. The nice thing about Crystal Space is that it can stand its ground even after this time. This is caused by a) we are not afraid to refactor and change and b) Crystal Space is very extensible and modular.

Greetings,

Re:Oboy.

[bperkins]

> Can you name even one case of any game which has been built from the released source of a bad game, and nailed success? Just one will do.

Fair enough, I can't. It's not clear to me that that's 100% relevant. The gaming industry is becoming more and more of an industry and will likely need more outside, pre-written, pre-tested software. I'd defer to you on where things are going, but it seems likely to me.

> I'm in the silicon design industry

> >I don't believe you.

Shrug. Can't prove it can I?

>> and if someone wanted to demonstrate chip design using OSS tools

> And this would be why. Y'see, if you really did lay lines for a living, you'd know that there are a broad plethora of such > tools in circulation, and that there are dozens of chip designs, including successful commercial designs, which have been > released to the public.

  There are OSS tools, but they're total outdated junk. Give me a timing verification system, an DRC/LVS solution and maybe a GUI layout/schematic editor that doesn't remind me of vi. Oh yeah, and an rc extractor, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist even a little bit. You'll probably also need some sort of contemporary spice simulator, though BSIM may work for some situations (we don't even try, not sure why, I don't evaluate those tools.).

Anyone can layout a 1990's era chip with Magic. For large modern ASICs or cpus you need real, high capacity tools that just don't exist outside vendor land.

> There are many such tools for verilog, atom, hvl and so forth. It's a little like someone saying they
> write webservers for a living, then speculating what would happen if a major open source webserver ever
> happened. Jesus, dude, don't pretend to be one until you know about the basic product set.

Those only scratch the surface of modern silicon design. Only the very largest firms (maybe top 2 or 3) can afford to roll their own everything.

Which is, more or less the point. These guys (and I don't claim that they're not misguided, I just claim they're not irrevocably stupid) just want to create a game platform that works, is accessible to more developers and creates a consulting business around it.

[...]
> Since there are a pile of free graphics and audio resources out there, this game isn't breaking any ground there, either.

You're right, but if they can provide a coherent platform that any joe schmo can download and create a decent game out of, that's kind of a nice thing isn't it? Clearly they're not breaking any new ground, but perhaps in the creation of this game they'll be able to identify and fix limitations and holes in the current set of tools and allow games to be made on the cheap.

But hey, if you think they're lame and they're solving solved problems, that's fine, you obviously know much more about game design than I do. I just wanted to point out that the primary goal of the game wasn't to create a kickass game, but to create a decent tool set that could be borrowed and built upon. Not very exciting, but not doomed to failure either.

From my perspective, as game design grows and external tools get used more and more (which I see as inevitable), you guys would benefit a lot from having some modern OSS tools available, because vendors suck and salesmen lie. If you think that the situation is such that you have enough good tools (modelers, engines, etc.), that are high enough quality and have access to source for a reasonable price, then I'm totally wrong. Again, I was pointing out that most of the slashdot nay-sayers were missing the point about the project.

Re:Oboy.

[stonecypher]

What engines are we going to reinvent?

Maybe you should have read the post. I named several.

I think we predate most of the still existing Open Source *and* commercial engines that are still in use these days.

That's right, these things have been around for so long that several have fallen out of use already. You seem to be missing my point: none of this is proving anything. It's old ground. It doesn't matter how old the engine is, or what your new one does, or whether you want to work on upgrading the technology; none of that has anything to do with what I was saying. What I was saying was that the huff and puff that grandparent put together about how people would be proving that OSS could do stuff is nonsense, since it's all already been done. I see nothing wrong with reusing Crystal Space; I just want the grandparent poster to quit going on about how groundbreaking this stuff is, when it's several decades behind proving anything about what OSS can do.

Incidentally, your sig is broken.

Re:Oboy.

[stonecypher]

Can you name even one case of any game which has been built from the released source of a bad game, and nailed success? Just one will do.

Fair enough, I can't. It's not clear to me that that's 100% relevant.

Oh, of course not. Why, if you're talking down to professionals about proving what is possible, why would it be relevant that your basis for believing that is going to arise from this project is a path which has never, ever been taken? Surely, despite the literally hundreds of opportunities for such, that it's never ever happened couldn't possibly be a sign.

I'm in the silicon design industry

I don't believe you.

Shrug. Can't prove it can I?

You can't. Someone actually in that industry could quite easily. It'd take about thirty seconds for me to prove my affiliation in the game industry. Why isn't it surprising that you can't imagine how someone would do that?

Oh yeah, and an rc extractor, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist even a little bit.

Yes, and as far as you can tell, no open source game engine has ever been created, either. I reiterate: do your damn research.

high capacity tools that just don't exist outside vendor land.

Repeating the mistake doesn't make it less incorrect. It's time for you to stop saying something doesn't exist, because you're now zero for four.

Only the very largest firms (maybe top 2 or 3) can afford to roll their own everything. // Which is, more or less the point.

Hi. Open source? This is pretend ASIC designer. Pretend ASIC designer? This is open source. I can tell you haven't been introduced, because you're mistaking open source for commercial applications, where the cost of rolling such a suite is a germane issue.

These guys (and I don't claim that they're not misguided, I just claim they're not irrevocably stupid) just want to create a game platform that works, is accessible to more developers and creates a consulting business around it.

That's funny, you seem to have changed your tune. Last time, it was because they wanted to prove how open source can achieve goals in gaming. This time, it's about creating a platform and making money off of it. This is funny, of course, because Torque failed, and Torque had a bunch of money and a huge pre-installed developerbase.

Which, again, you'd know if you had the faintest clue anything about the history of gaming tools, which is what you seem to not understand that you're not in a position to talk about. There are in fact dozens of these kits, commercial and open source, and they all share one thing in common: nobody pays money for any of them. All you can make with a kit is more cookie cutter crap, and given that they're starting from an uninspired engine and gameplay that people would have considered trite in 1996, I don't know why the hell you think anyone would even want to build a game on their engine.

Look, dude, Quake2's engine is free for commercial use now. Why the hell would anyone use this instead? Do you really believe that this engine will compete with Quake2? And, if you do, would you be interested in buying a bridge?

You're right, but if they can provide a coherent platform that any joe schmo can download and create a decent game out of, that's kind of a nice thing isn't it?

Not really: many such tools already exist, and nobody uses them. Seriously, how many clones do you want to play? Why do you think facilitating bad games does anyone any good? How many versions of Tux Racer do you need? If there was another Doom 2, but with shittier graphics, lower quality gameplay, no network prediction, no support, and by the way, you don't know anyone else who plays it, nobody runs a server and

Re:Oboy.

[bperkins]

Casually misremembering what you actually said is a disappointing and ugly behavior.

Whoa whoa whoa.

I responded to a post where you said:
This work doesn't have one drop of emotion in it.

and I said they want to prove:
"an OSS toolchain is a viable solution for game design." and went on to say that I though you were missing the point of the project. Apparently you said some things in other posts (which I didn't see) that were critical of the whole idea in general, which I have plenty of respect for.

Perhaps I should have said "_their_ OSS toolchain." I'm not some drooling OSS fanatic. I don't believe that the being OSS is a key to some sort of gaming engine nirvana. I just meant they wanted to create an OSS toolchain and prove that it could create a passable game. I thought that game designers would be interested. Apparently one is not, and I'm guessing more feel the same way. And that's OK. :)

From my perspective in silicon design, being OSS would be useful. But really, I don't know what I'm talking about with respect to game design. I'm guessing that you do. I'm interested ins seeing what comes out of the project, but you've made good strong points on why this won't really come to anything.

It sounds like your dealings with outside software have been very positive. That's great and somewhat surprising to me. For us $500,000 buys a crap tool with crap support and lying salesmen. I consider myself educated.

BTW, I really am in the silicon design industry. I'm not really interested in having my slashdot id associated with a particular company, which you have certainly heard of. We don't do ASICs, though.

The game is already lost

[Aellus]

I think 95% of the video games that have been developed since the late 90's has shown that when a game is developed for a purpose other than to simply produce an awesome game (i.e. to make a profit, etc), the quality of the game suffers. It doesn't matter that the cause may be a good one for this project, the game is still being developed for a reason other than to make a game. I doubt the game will come out very well.

Apricots and Crystals in Space

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the idea but... ...Will It Blend?

Also needed - better video card driver support

[transporter_ii]

Read through Ubuntuforums.org and see all the people having trouble with cards that are supposed to do 3D but aren't for some reason. There are a large amount of posts.

My 1-month old new system has a VIA Chrome 9 HC IGP card. I've spent the last 2 days trying to get it to work on Ubuntu with something other than a generic VESA driver. I finally noticed VIA actually released a new driver on Dec 2007. I downloaded it and installed it. Still no 3D. After the second day of this, I said screw it and ordered an older card off of eBay that I know works because I have one in another system, but I still see people on the forums having trouble with even that card...so I'm thinking it is a crapshoot and hope I didn't waste more money.

There might be more interest in games if there was better support for video cards. Personally, I don't really mind spending two days to install a driver, because I usually learn a lot doing it. But how many people would rather spend those two days just playing the game they wanted to play?

Transporter_ii

Re:Also needed - better video card driver support

[Ash-Fox]

But how many people would rather spend those two days just playing the game they wanted to play?

If people were buying Linux systems, I don't think there would be a problem.

Re:Also needed - better video card driver support

[transporter_ii]

> If people were buying Linux systems, I don't think there would be a problem.

Actually, I purchased an Everex gc3502, which is basically identical to the 199.00 Linux computer they are selling at Wal-Mart, only mine had a gig of RAM and Windows Vista on it, instead of 512MB and gOS (Linux), otherwise it is identical. And I specifically purchased it because I wanted the extra RAM, to make a dual-boot system out of it (for the experience), and because I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find drivers for a system being sold with a Linux distro already on it. Ok, two out three ain't bad, I guess.

Transporter_ii

Re:Also needed - better video card driver support

[treak007]

Blame graphic card vendors, they are the reason why there is a lack of hardware support for graphics cards.

If you want a safe bet, go with nVidia, their cards possibly have the best linux support.

Re:Also needed - better video card driver support

[RobDude]

Shhhh! No badmouthing Linux here. Linux HAS more support for hardware than Windows! I don't care what anyone says, it *DOES*, it IS BETTER because I say so. Anyone who has problems are just n0obs who didn't RTFM, besides, it's not LINUX's fault that the MANUFACTURES don't support Linux. Can't blame Linux for that, so don't you DARE speak of it, because it will sound as though you are speaking ill of Linux.

Besides, your hardware is crap - you should go and buy brand new hardware that supports Linux. What? You want a comprehensive list of what items you can buy, off the shelf, at a local store? Well, sorry, no such list exists; you'll get different milage with different distros - but if you weren't such a n0ob you'd just already have hardware that was supported anyway. Why not just buy a whole new PC from some online vendor who will give you a pre-installed Linux system? HuH? Why be such a MS fan-boy - just trash your system and get a new one! Duh!

Re:Also needed - better video card driver support

[Jaysyn]

Yeah, and heaven forbid someone actually does a little research before dropping 2.5+ bills on hardware.

A Crysis in Open Source Games.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Too much stuff from the past gets neglected."

And too much of the future passes you by. Let me know when I can start living in the present.

We know it will be cool, but...

[cyofee]

Will it blend?

MMO's for Linux

[Teisei]

I've noticed that role playing games attract gamers very largely, so getting especially MMORPG's on Linux would be awesome. There are already many good FPS games on Linux, but what is needed is variety ! ... And I also hope that Duke Nukem Forever, when/if it's released, comes with Linux client :)

Re:MMO's for Linux

[LiquidFire_HK]

Well, there is at least one open source MMORPG, PlaneShift, though it's supposedly not complete, and when I last tried it wasn't all that great (however, that was an year or two ago, and things may have changed considerably). Apart from that, there are some commercial ones that run on Linux. For instance, EVE Online and Regnum Online run natively, while World of Warcraft runs perfectly with WINE.

Design by Committee Equals Bad Game

[GaryPatterson]

The project site makes it pretty clear there's no design document for the game, no central vision of what it will be. They're going to design it once they've got the people together, so it's going to be one of those designed-by-committee games.

That way lies adequacy and weak gameplay.

Still, I wish them well and since they're off to a bad start it can only improve from here.

Re:Design by Committee Equals Bad Game

[LetterRip]

The project site makes it pretty clear there's no design document for the game, no central vision of what it will be. They're going to design it once they've got the people together, so it's going to be one of those designed-by-committee games. The team has been in discussion for a month or two and have another month they can use for discussion before they come together in Amsterdam. Project Peach isn't 'design by committee' so I sse no reason why Apricot would be. Also both the artwork, and the snippets of story that have come thus far from Peach have been excellent, so I don't have any fears that it will be low quality. Also since Apricot is going to be based on the Peach assets it will have a built in characters and back story which will constrain some choices and make other game design choices 'obvious'.

LetterRip

Bus Driver?

[Tavor]

The comment about the Bus Driver game? Why not just download ...
Desert Bus!

Technology Demo

[Jekler]

I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo. The same way Elephants Dream was just masturbation material for artists. There wasn't anything in the way of real story being told, unless you really reach for some meaning in it. It's 11 minutes of "That's neat", but I'm never going to watch it again like Lord of the Rings or X-Men. I foresee roughly the same thing here, a bunch of people get together to show how deeply functional each of their subsystems is. Most of the "game" won't even have a purpose other than to show you how great Programmer X did collision detection, particle physics, etc. You'll be able to spend 5 minutes shooting cannon balls at a stack of barrels and watching them smash but otherwise there won't be much to do. Maybe it's pessimistic of me, but that's been my opinion of most games over the last decade. Everyone seems to be more proud of the intricacy of their work and doesn't understand why you think the game sucks, they think you just don't "get it". It's like they spend 3 years hand-crafting a #2 pencil and when I write a sentence then throw it away they're like "Hey, that thing was a work of art! I spent 13 months renting equipment at NASA to insert the lead using a bleeding-edge particle injector!" and I'm like "Yeah, but it still had one of those hard erasers that just smears what you're trying to erase so it's no good." I really subscribe to the idea that you need a single visionary to design a game. Otherwise it just becomes a pile of interesting components but it has no gestalt form.

Re:Technology Demo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 11 minutes of "That's neat", but I'm never going to watch it again like Lord of the Rings or X-Men.

I didn't like those movies and I am never going to watch them again.

Re:Technology Demo

[GMFTatsujin]

The guys who made Half Life 2 and its subsequent games got so many things right. Each episode highlighted a "deeply functional subsystem," yet down at the core was an engrossing game with great play.

They constructed the arenas to highlight each system, but usually it was for cinematic or atmospheric effect. The play, as the saying goes, is the thing. Still, a really good level designer can make you happy to drool over a new feature for a minute or two in between reloads.

Re:Technology Demo

[westlake]

I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo.

This is why everyone quotes from The Incredibles and Rararouille and no one remembers Robots five minutes after they've left the theater. You need a director with a strong creative vision, a story worth telling, someone who knows exactly where he wants to go and how to use the tech to get there.

Re:Technology Demo

[Jorrit]

Six months is a short time to make a full game. However since everything is Open Source we are counting on the community to continue on this game after the project has finished. Once the six months are over and the team is back home there is no reason why we have to stop there.

Also one of the other important goals of this project is to improve the game pipeline for Blender and Crystal Space and to serve as a tutorial for game developers who want to use that pipeline.

Greetings,

Re:Technology Demo

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way Elephants Dream was just masturbation material for artists. There wasn't anything in the way of real story being told, unless you really reach for some meaning in it. It's 11 minutes of "That's neat", but I'm never going to watch it again like Lord of the Rings or X-Men. You'll be happy to know that since whiny asshats like you STILL haven't stopped bitching about the fact that they didn't get Elephant's Dream, the Peach movie will center around cute fuzzy animals doing funny stuff.
  Elephant's Dream was an arthouse kind of short. Yeah. Big whoop. It went over rather well in the independent film theaters where it was shown -- that was its target audience. It was written by a professional writer with a good deal of experience, and there certainly was a story being told, maybe even with sugar in its porridge. If that kind of story's not your thing, fine. Go watch X-Men again.

Re:Technology Demo

[grumbel]

### I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo.

That might very well be, but that really isn't a problem. The goal here isn't to make the best game ever, but to make a game, to demonstrate that the toolchain is usable and to improve it where needed, so that you or somebody else can use it to maybe one day make the best game ever with it.

Blender got a lot of improvements over the course of Elephants Dream and I bet it will be the same with this game.

Re:Technology Demo

[Jekler]

The game pipeline isn't the weak link in the chain. Blender, Crystal Space, Irrlicht, Ogre3D, et al. They're all mature products that can produce content at least as good as 95% of the triple A titles that hit shelves every year. Compared to their commercial counterparts (Unreal, Quake, Lithtech, etc.), they stack up very well. The technology works.

Honestly, I don't even know at what point OSS has failed to attract game developers. Maybe it's that the available learning resources aren't well maintained, but wherever the gap is, it's certainly not a problem with the tools.

Re:Technology Demo

[Jorrit]

That's not 100% true. At this moment we still don't have very good ways to edit particles (from within blender) or to edit terrain. So tools do need some work.

Greetings,

Re:Technology Demo

[ultranova]

Elephant's Dream was an arthouse kind of short. Yeah. Big whoop. It went over rather well in the independent film theaters where it was shown -- that was its target audience. It was written by a professional writer with a good deal of experience, and there certainly was a story being told, maybe even with sugar in its porridge. If that kind of story's not your thing, fine. Go watch X-Men again.

Elephant's Dream was a mixture of various unrelated scenes thrown together to demonstrate the capabilities of Blender and the animators (which, admittedly, are great). The story and scenes have no relation to each other whatsoever; the characters just run through random scenes until the final conflict.

"It isn't safe ! But jumping from plate to plate over a looming abyss is."

"I can't take it ! Hanging gardens of Babylon ! Colosus of Rhodos !"

*WHACK*

That said, it is an entertaining piece, colorful and imaginative. But it doesn't tell a coherent story. It is simply someone's dream, no more, no less.

That said, if I were to ever produce a fantasy movie, I know who I'd hire to make the special effects. The ending is how you make a battle scene between gods, with reality itself getting torn into itty bitty pieces, rather than the wussy death rays like in Xena or Hercules.

Re:Technology Demo

[IdeaMan]

Cheating perhaps?
The commercial games all make significant efforts to exclude cheating. The fact that you have a chance to lose $ when cheating is a deterrent.

The path to the solution is to recognize cheating as not being a technical but a socialogical problem, and fighting it as such.

The big fat paychecks a bunch of the early commercial game designers were making is another reason.

Quake

[ShakaUVM]

Uh, Quake has been fully open source for quite a while, and still has quite a few people playing it too. Pick your flavor (1,Quakeworld,2,3...) and you can probably find one of the new clients that has shaders, bloom, environmental effects, etc. for it. Plus, Quakeworld (with CustomTF, but I'm biased) is a lot of fun.

Re:Quake

[Sigma 7]

Uh, Quake has been fully open source for quite a while, Quake is a dated engine. Before it was open source, you had a limit of 600 entities (including triggers, doors and projectiles) at one time, and going over it would crash the game.

At least it was the first game that allowed modders to create deathmatch bots, which worked perfectly in normal quake. However, you generally needed to do plenty of workarounds if you wanted to create your bot to work with Teamfortress as the engine has no concept of AI players and will crash if certain functions treat those bots as humans. (Plus, bots had a completely different set of physics.)

Also, Quake 3 is bound by the GPL. Depending on what game you want to write and your target audience, forced GPL may be a bad thing for newly released games.

Best wishes to Apricot!

[LucaP]

The PlaneShift team would like to wish the makers of Apricot well in their ambition and wish them a Happy New Year. PlaneShift is contributing to raise awareness about Apricot and will help out the project in whatever ways we can.

Re:Best wishes to Apricot!

[WinchesterPC.Com]

Considering the history of the PlaneShift team's policy on art licensing and attitude towards those who wish to contribute free art to PlaneShift, I have to say I am hesitant to believe you. I and several others were disappointed in the past, but I still hold out hope for the PlaneShift team embracing software freedom (including art). If what you say is true, then I'm very pleased.

The problem: US!

[Anonymous Coward]

"well, enough imagination for now. if you want a good open source game, you need full time developers who can work full time on it. which means you need a financial backing. (Google?)"

Wasn't "doing it for the love" suppose to take care of issues like *cough*money*cough*? I think I liked it better when we could pretend that virtual things like game art, music, sound, and levels were valueless and therefore worthy of being put on piratebay.

Anyway what's in it (oh God there's that thinking of ourselves thing again) for Google. Besides why does Google keep having to buy everyone's respect by giving away free stuff?

Awful summary

[4D6963]

The team has been chosen? By who? What for? When you read the summary only, you get the feeling that some team is going to make some game, and that a mysterious group of unmentioned persons (let's call them "they") chose them to do it, (as we can suppose) from a bunch of other competing teams who probably wanted to make that game too, but weren't good enough. And that the newsworthy part of it is that it's all going to be free and open source.

From what I read I can only suppose..

Do we really need more Blowups??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why can't the Free Software community innovate, putting out a new kind of game where you don't just go around from room to room and blow stuff up."

A new genre is born. The First Person Monica Lewinsky.

Crystal Space ROCKS!

[CrazyJim1]

Not only is the library good, but the support team is excellent. I would have never got as far as I did in my game without them. It is almost a shame that I gave up on my game. CS is just awesome.

0ho8o

[Anonymous Coward]

Clean 70r the next

Gameplay?

[Nim82]

A big problem with nearly every open game project I've followed is that their designed as open source projects, not games. Gameplay seems to take a back seat in the design process, getting tacked on at the end. Gameplay really should be the nucleus around which the project is designed and built, even the guys/girls you get involved should (ideally) be chosen based on their compatibility and commitment to the vision of the game, not just their commitment to "open source".

From the Apricot website it's rather apparent that once again gameplay is taking a back seat. 95% of the blurb is promoting it's openness - I frankly don't give a shit. I want to know what's going to set it apart from a billion and one other games? What innovative gameplay elements will feature? These are what I want to know. From their brief description, all they know is it will have furry critters, that's it. Rest to be decided later.

Open source is the perfect vehicle to play with innovative ideas, free of the chains of publishers/marketing.. yet it seems to constantly get squandered on half baked 'we can do it too!' projects. Indie (closed source) games, like Aquarius and Armageddon Empires, have shown what can be done by small teams (and one man bands) who have a passion for gaming and a clear design vision. It's about time the open scene caught on and stopped turning out half assed clones of popular games that are outclassed by ancient abandonware.

I hope something good comes of this, but won't hold my breath...

Re:Gameplay?

[DaveCBio]

Design by committee is usually a recipe for disaster. So many people think more brains (a la OSS) are always better, but that's not always the case. You often need one central person driving a unified vision like Miyamoto or Wright.

Command and Conquer/Dune and SimCity

[caluml]

I'd really like a good Command and Conquer/Dune, and also a SimCity type game for Linux.
I've played Battle for Wesnoth, and Xlincity - Wesnoth, it's OK, but Xlincity just isn't quite there :)

Anyone suggest me any?

Re:Command and Conquer/Dune and SimCity

[Foole]

For a CnC/Dune style game: http://www.boswars.org/

Re:Command and Conquer/Dune and SimCity

[caluml]

Thanks :) I'll try that out later this week.
It's little nuggets of info like this that make it worth wading through the trolls/flame fests, etc

Jesus, another one?

[Rogerborg]

I contribute to the Irrlicht open source 3d engine, and the "Project Announcements" forum (along with Sourceforge in general) is littered with the corpses of abandoned projects. All of them start with a burst of enthusiasm and high aspirations, then within 6 months they're either dead or fragmented into 4 new projects, all equally doomed.

To cut a long rant short, completing a commercial-quality game today (i.e. one that people might actually play) takes 100 man years of work, and a minimum of 2.5 elapsed years. Of course, nobody actually believes that, or else community projects would never get started.

To identify the doomed projects (which is all of them), simply ask to see the design documentation. If the answer is "We'll do that later" (which it always is) then don't even waste your time getting involved. If they don't know what they're developing, then how will they know when they're done?

Re:Jesus, another one?

[LetterRip]

long rant short, completing a commercial-quality game today (i.e. one that people might actually play) takes 100 man years of work, and a minimum of 2.5 elapsed years. Of course, nobody actually believes that, or else community projects would never get started. Your typical 'open source game' is an all volunteer effort with rarely anyone having project management skills, nor has anyone on the team typically completed a previous large scale endeavor. Also they tend to not have anyone who is able to contribute full time.

Apricot has Ton and Jorrit who are the leads of Blender and Crystal Space respectively, both (and especially Ton) have a great deal of experience with accomplishing major projects. Elephants Dream, and now Peach, already show Tons leadership skill in accomplishing artistic creative endeavors on a tight schedule that have high demands on the technical side. Each of the members selected for the team have histories of completing their own artistically demanding projects.

Also this is 5 people being funded for the team, plus the individuals who were already funded by the Blender Institute. Additionally if needed there is a huge pool of programming talent and artistic talent available via the Blender community.

Also this game will start with finished assets developed for Rabbits Revenge (the Peach project), so six months worth of art and concepts will be created in advance.

These are resources beyond the dreams of they typical open source game, and indeed in some respects beyond the resources available to many 1st Tier commercial games.

Of course the Apricot Teams game is not going to have the scope or depth of typical commercial game, but it should be fully expected that it will have high production values, and give an enjoyable and polished result.

LetterRip

Re:Jesus, another one?

[Rogerborg]

Which will just make it even funnier when it falls apart in bitterness and acrimony. Let's talk again in a year and see who's right.

Who needs more games for linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have Tux Racer. Most true gamers would agree anything more is just gratuitous.

Tag

[CodyRazor]

I suggest the tag fruit smoothie

don't forget Sauerbraten (aka Cube 2) ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we are listing inovative opensource games anyway: Sauerbraten (aka Cube 2) has all kinds of eye candy, simple gameplay (admittedly, but I like it online), is working on an RPG (not an MMORPG! don't even ask on the forums ;)) and an inbuilt level editor (even allowing cooperative editing over the internet). It has its rough edges still, but it is a really interesting (and fun to play with) project.

Everyone wins

[LingNoi]

The game scene has seen alot of innovation in resent years, now it's time for evolution, and developing high quality free development tools will allow hobbyists to deliver the next wave of innovation needed in a scene where you HAVE to secure a multimillion income for any idea to get developed.

This would benefit commerical game developers greatly as well as hobbyists.

Imagine if Havok, SpeedTree, etc were open source. I would guess that the development budget for Oblivion could have saved a few million dollars on licensing fees alone. Game developers need to realise this and start contributing in ways that programmers in other industries do with open source.

They'd see big savings, since most these companies are re-inventing the wheel. I would say that artwork is more important in games now anyway and these programs are getting more and more complex as more features are demanded by the public.

If you buy cheap hardware

[Rix]

You don't get to bitch when it doesn't work very well. You get what you pay for. Those $200 ultra cheap systems aren't intended for gaming, regardless of OS.

Re:If you buy cheap hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just another excuse, and it doesn't help the fact that, even if the system isn't intended for gaming, you'd still be able to run many basic 3d games (not saying HL2) and applications in Windows with much better video performance than what you'd get running Linux. It may be the fault of the manufacturer that doesn't offer good quality open-source drivers, but it is indeed a problem and there's no need to get defensive about it.

Re:If you buy cheap hardware

[transporter_ii]

It wasn't a 200.00 computer, if you actually read what I said, it was 273.00, and the video card on it does have 3D support. Do I expect it to be the world's greatest gaming system? Hell no. Would I expect 3D to work on it? Yes, I freaking do.

I hope this will be better

[crossmr]

than elephant's dream.. or pretentious circle jerk or whatever it was called. In all seriousness, I can only hope that there are some truly good writers and designers on the team. You can make it so bright it outshines the sun, but if any of the story of the game reads like it was written by a child, and you're not making a children's game, it is going to suffer for it.

Gah! Why oh why Blender?

[Pvt_Waldo]

Blender absolutely sucks. If you aren't familiar with how to use it, it is confusing as hell. I do a ton of work in 3DS Max and Maya and have tried Blender several times, and it's just plain weird. Instead of trying to do it "better" or "different", why not make a 3DS Max or Maya clone the way Open Office just cloned Microsoft Office? The truth is, 3DS Max and Maya for all their quirks are really quite good, and it's what the majority of professionals use.

Re:Gah! Why oh why Blender?

[Arnonymous Coward]

2 years ago I was in the same boat as you - very proficient with 3DSMax and Maya, doing high quality work for mods, and hating blender for the UI. Then as a result of my work on mods I got hired by a small game company to create models for their game. The agreement was that I bring my own tools as an independent contractor, but what I didn't tell them was that I don't own professional licenses for Max or Maya (I was just pumped about even getting the job). To avoid legal trouble, I gave Blender another shot.

At that point I said "what the hell", and then spent about 4 days times 12 hours per day just memorizing hotkeys and practicing using the interface for various standard tasks until everything was in my mind and the hotkeys were all at my fingertips. (repitition of simple tasks, analogous to the basketball player practicing free throws) It got to the point where if I even had the slightest inlking to perform an operation, magically the appropriate tool and mode was already right there on the screen, my left hand had typed the commands without even consiously thinking about it.

Now that I put in the time and did the memorization, I am actually far more proficient in Blender than any other 3d program for low to mid poly range. The Blender interface just gets the hell out of the way and lets you connect directly to what you are modeling. The right hand on the mouse is reserved for spatial tasks, while the left hand on the keyboard is controlling the tools and modifiers that are used - the mouse is never used for scrolling through menus or clicking on icons.

So, the conclusion I draw is that Blender's UI is excellent for the expert and horrible for the newbie. It's not the sort of program you would want to _learn_ 3D on, and even if you already know 3D, it will take approx 48 hours of hard work before the advantages really shine.

companies work for YOU

[CarpetShark]

Companies are SUPPOSED to work for the people. Their freedom is NEVER the more important factor.

Re:Gah! Why oh why Blender?

[Pvt_Waldo]

Ah interesting response - thanks for a thoughtful reply.

A game!? _A_ game?!

[PrayingWolf]

- [fta] Finally it starts! [/fta]
- What?
- The development of [fta] a smashing game [/fta]
- What's it going to be about?
- Huh?
- Like, what kind of game is it going to be?
- I dunno... It'll be a game, you know, a "game"
- Right, and how about a genre, content, idea...
- Idea? No no no, its going to be an open source game, for Linux
- Oh I see...
- Yeah, its going to have great graphics... a [fta] professional quality [/fta] (tm) game!
- Um-hum

Blender? Eww, god, no please..

[Anonymous Coward]

Having used a great deal many 3d modeling applications, I have to say blender is the most retarded confusing backwards unintuitive interface ever devised by man. And possibly the worst ever devised in the entire universe.

I'd go so far as to say Blender's the entire reason 3d development on Linux is stilted. If XSI or Maya were cheaper, or if Blender didn't require a labotomy before using, this sort of thing would actually be fun and easy for everyone. But instead your choices are:

a) pay through the nose for something you'll probably only use a few times in any serious capacity
or
b) suffer lasting brain damage and recurring migraines until your twilight years.

Seriously, this project's FIRST AND FOREMOST goal should be making Blender usable by people who actually have spacial awareness and perception.

Apples and oranges

[Cinnaman]

Commercial programmers can work on them as their full-time paid job while open-source people are students learning as they go or people working in their spare time. This is the problem with most open-source software, you (unfortunately) can't really expect it to be able to compete with commercial software.

bass ackwards

[chrish]

So, which existing closed-source game are they going to duplicate in painstaking detail?

Games should start with a design document, not a list of technologies they plan to use.

Re:Gah! Why oh why Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

*yawn*

Thankfully the people in charge of Blender have the good sense to stick to doing what their users want and have come to appreciate, rather than try to copy the unintuitive, buggy, bloated pieces of trash that by virtue of having been first are now considered "industry standard" by self-proclaimed 3D professionals, who for all their artistic talent apparently are stopped dead in their tracks by the prospect of having to learn a new user interface.

Seriously, stop this. It won't happen, and for good reason.

Bassackwards mission design

[goodmanj]

Imagine if Kennedy, in his 1961 State of the Union address, said he was going to invest billions in forming a massive group of scientists and engineers, and get them to do "I dunno, something cool." You think it would have resulted in a moon landing?

Imagine if an entrepreneur went to an investor asking for startup funding, with a beautiful Powerpoint showing innovative new organizational charts, an efficient supply chain, and a great advertising theme. "What are you going to make?" "I dunno, something cool."

If you want to make a great free-software game, come up with a great game idea first, and then gather some free-software resources to make it happen. Planning the administrative and legal issues before coming up with a product concept is the fast-track to mission failure.

Re:Bassackwards mission design

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if an entrepreneur went to an investor asking for startup funding, with a beautiful Powerpoint showing innovative new organizational charts, an efficient supply chain, and a great advertising theme. "What are you going to make?" "I dunno, something cool."

This worked quite well in the late '90's.......

Re:Bassackwards mission design

[revengebomber]

It's actually the fast-track to Duke Nukem Forever. In 12 years, I'm sure this will be a great game.

Re:Gah! Why oh why Blender?

[Abcd1234]

So, what you're saying is it's the Vi of 3D modellers. :)

Committees can design good things

[marcosdumay]

Even more when there is no authority (and pre-fixed deadline), the committee is small and composed of passionate people. On those circunstances, a committee can design even better things than a lone individual, and through a much funnier process.

Let me know when it's done

[DaveCBio]

Unlike applications, but like game mods open source game projects are a dime a dozen. Also, like mods very few of them get to a point where they can be released and even fewer are actually fun to play. Call me when it's actually done.

k3d

[CarpetShark]

Check out k-3d sometime :)

Stone age, please.

[gottabeme]

Hm. And what OS do you run? On what CPU, with what chipset, on what motherboard? And what car do you drive to work? And what kind of power source does it have? Geez, what do you turn to open your door when you leave your house?

You know what, you're right: let's just not let anyone make anything that is similar to anything that anyone else ever made. All you have to do is build the first time machine and then send us back to the stone age, where we'll stay until the end of time.

Dude, where's my card?

[Anonymous Coward]

Convince developers and graphics card makers to stop developing for DirectX and abandon a closed model (like DirectX) and you're on the road to success.

Are you high?

[Rix]

You should expect to pay around that just for a video card to play games on. *All* PC's sold these days have "3D support", but that doesn't mean they're powerful enough for anything more than web browsing.

Re:Are you high?

[transporter_ii]

Dude, I should have made myself clear, but I expect some intelligence around Slashdot. I AM NOT A HARDCORE GAMER. I am not going to spend 273.00 for a video card, not because I'm high, but because I'm not high.

But it seems quite the contradiction I have run into, now. Linux runs great on older, slower computers, but a brand new 1.5 Ghz with a Gig of RAM is a completely worthless piece of shit, even with Linux on it???

It just so happens my kids are playing on an older computer right, with Linux loaded, and a video card that both supports 3D and has Linux drivers that actually work (And you can get these cards off of Ebay right now for 35.00, shipping included).

I guess my kids are high, or maybe smoking crack, but they have been having a blast playing X-moto, Billiard-GL, and a lot of other Linux games that require a card that can do 3D...and all of which should run just fine on my el-cheapo computer, if someone would just give me a driver for my video card that would support the 3D.

And if my el-cheapo computer, which seems to handle Vista fairly well, can't play some SIMPLE Linux games that happen to use 3D, then I think that would about sum up the state of Linux and why everyone hasn't switched to it.

Transporter_ii

That's used hardware

[Rix]

$200-$300 will buy you a mid range current generation video card. It won't buy you anything approaching a "hardcore" card. Your $35 ebay card cost a lot more when it was new, and current. You can get decent older generation cards if you look, but you have to remember their driver development was subsidized by their release pricing.

Yes, any system you pay $273 for new is shit. The manufacturer isn't going to bother writing any more than the absolute bare minimum drivers it has to to sell it (don't count on any updates), and certainly no one is going to go out of their way to write free drivers for them.

Again, you get what you pay for.