New Open Source FPS Blood Frontier Shows Promise

Softhaus writes "The guys at Blood Frontier have been busy for the last two years working on a new FPS called (surprise) Blood Frontier . This game is an enhanced Cube 2 engine with original artwork and new gameplay (including a kid-mode, which optionally turns off the blood — a nice option for a change). Add the new paintball mode and you have a real 'game community' here. The code is all there (complete for you to play with), the team listens to feedback from the community, and the game is great! It's nice to see these talented guys showing a true free software attitude. They've mentioned that the first actual release is scheduled for next Friday. Does anyone know of other great open source games that are truly 'open?'"

Comments

Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[MRe_nl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games
That was easy...

Re:Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[gambino21]

I see the list has a screenshot for Battle for Wesnoth. I started playing it a couple months ago when it was mentioned here on Slashdot, and it's really fun. It's a turn based strategy which is maybe not as intense as a RTS or FPS. But it's perfect for me because I have young kids and frequently get interrupted, so I need a game that I walk away from without messing up the game.

Re:Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[ShieldW0lf]

Check out the High Seas add on. It's like Sid Meyer's Pirates! meets Wesnoth.

Re:Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[bky1701]

TOME is a very good game as well, if you can handle totally keyboard interfaces. It is similar to nethack, but has more of the things you'd expect from a typical modern RPG. It has a (very dated) graphics mode or text. Only problem is probably the difficulty, you'll die a lot first starting out. Enable the cheat death option until you get the hang of it; it'll make the game much more fun.

Re:Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[vindimy]

I have been playing an AWESOME open-source FPS called OpenArena. It is based on the ioquake3 engine that id3 released under GPL license.

OpenArena is a violent, sexy, multiplayer first person shooter based on the ioquake3 fork of the id tech 3 engine. It has many game types beyond deathmatch and a lot of characters. Due to violent and racy content, it may not be suitable for children under 17.

The game is absolutely free and all development is done by the community, including maps, media, and running the game servers. IMHO, it's the only game worth playing that gives me exactly what I need - less BS effects, more fast-paced action and great flexibility at customization (settings, mods, etc). Also, it has a somewhat small but very unique community of players, server admins, and of course clans + n00bs.

Direct download link for release 0.8.1: here.

Download, unzip, customize your settings, and you'll be fraggin' away!

Re:The (surprise) first post frontier

[kandela]

If you turn off the blood, is it still called Blood Frontier?

Re:The (surprise) first post frontier

[Anonymous Coward]

The author of the game is the submitter, so yes, you're correct.

Slashdotted

[Yuioup]

Slashdotted already. Should give an indication of how desperate /. ers are for a new FOSS FPS.

Re:Slashdotted

[moteyalpha]

Slashdotted already. Should give an indication of how desperate /. ers are for a new FOSS FPS.

http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=198419 Get it at sourceforge

Re:Slashdotted

[furby076]

Or that FOSS lacks the funds to have a server which can handle the load.

It's great they are doing this - but in the end the project needs funding to get huge - otherwise it is a hobby for the technical folk (with rare exception).

With luck these guys will use this on their resume', get great jobs, and help make some great products. I know someone will flame me, and 5 others will mod me down - but think about it. WoW costs money (all three expansions = about 75-100 probably), then it's 14.95 a month. Not free at all - but look at the game. It's been out since what 2002 and still the most played game with the largest base of paid accounts. None of that could not happen if the resources were not in place, and resources are limited which means they cost money.

Re:Slashdotted

[agrounds]

WoW actually dates from November of 2004 for active release.

Your point still stands though.

Re:The (surprise) first post frontier

[seeker_1us]

If you turn off the blood, is it still called Blood Frontier?

Maybe it should be called "Blood-Lite?"

Duke Nukem Forever....

[John3]

because the release date is open-ended?

cool

[ocularDeathRay]

not only is there an option to turn off blood, but you can turn off the web server too!

And?

[Rik Sweeney]

So what makes this online FPS stand out from all the other ones?

There's Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous, Urban Terror... I had my fill of first person shooters years ago and yet for some reason they're still being developed and offer little to nothing different over the last one.

Re:And?

[diqmay]

There's Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous, Urban Terror... I had my fill of first person shooters years ago and yet for some reason they're still being developed

Hey everybody! Rik has had his fill of FPSs! You can stop developing them now.

Thanks for letting us know, otherwise I'm sure game developers would have kept on making them without realizing that you didn't want them to.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to google images,

Image Links to their game,

More poor use of light/bump/normal mapping. I, however, can't rail on them too much. I know good artists and artwork can be a challenge to find on an open source project.

Re:And?

[_Sprocket_]

Thanks for letting us know, otherwise I'm sure game developers would have kept on making them without realizing that you didn't want them to.

Uwe Boll, however, will continue creating movies based on them.

Re:And?

[wild_quinine]

So what makes this online FPS stand out from all the other ones? There's Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous, Urban Terror... I had my fill of first person shooters years ago and yet for some reason they're still being developed and offer little to nothing different over the last one.

I don't know why this guy got modded Troll. Wanting to know what's different about a title is a perfectly valid question. Especially in a -recently- unadventurous genre, such as the FPS. As is being bored of a genre a perfectly valid statement, when taken in that context. Sure, if he's just shown up to announce that he didn't care about FPS games, that wouldn't have added much. But 'What's different?' is really the question 'Why should I care?' and that's a perfectly fair question to ask.

The main site's been slashdotted, all we've got is the summary, and the only real selling point mentioned there is that it's open source. If that's enough for you, sure, fine, ok. But for me open source is a BONUS, not a panacea.

Interesting side note: I know one of the main designers of Tremulous through an old friend. Nice guy, drives an utterly crazy car.

Re:And?

[Lumpy]

Wait what??? Rik has had his fill? DAMMIT! why did he not tell everyone earlier. We have been working on this new one for 2 years now.

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT... I hate it when Rik slacks off and does not announce hs is full on public television.

WE know he is tired of Hot-dogs, Loves Obama, and Is starting to grow tire of the word "albanian" but that asshat did not mention ONCE in his last press conference he had his fill of FPS games.

What a hoser. Let me guess, He's had his fill of racing games as well, I better warn the guys down the hall.

Damn Rik.

Re:And?

[CyberKnet]

Damn. Out of mod points.

-1 Troll - that'll have to do.

Although... if there was a "-1 Really, REALLY Boring" then I think I'd be tempted use that one first :)

Re:The (surprise) first post frontier

[Hordeking]

If you turn off the blood, is it still called Blood Frontier?

No, then it's just called Frontier, and it becomes about a family traveling from Independence, Mo to Oregon.

"Add the new paintball mode ..."

[qoncept]

"Add the new paintball mode ..."

I mean, seriously. Why? Why take a game where you pretend to shoot people and modify it so you are pretending to pretend to shoot people?

Re:"Add the new paintball mode ..."

[whisper_jeff]

Because imaginary violence is bad for young and impressionable minds but imaginary imaginary violence is ok for children.

Ok, I admit, that answer wasn't helpful at all... I did my best though... :)

Re:"Add the new paintball mode ..."

[Thanshin]

Why take a game where you pretend to shoot people and modify it so you are pretending to pretend to shoot people?

To teach recursion?

Re:"Add the new paintball mode ..."

[_Sprocket_]

When we played in the German winters, we'd keep our paint in coolers (no ice) to maintain temperature. We would also trade out paint we had left in our hoppers for paint from the cooler every one or two games. It still only did so much.

One game got cold enough to decrease the pressure of the CO2 we were using (yeah - back in the old days when CO2 in 7oz bottles was still pretty advanced, siphon tubes belonged on gimmic guns using .62 cal, and dinosaurs roamed the earth). Our effective range began to drop. Paintballs that managed to lob far enough to hit someone just kind of bounced around a bit. Both teams decided to end the game and charge. I found myself pitted up against my wife who laughed at my attempts to shoot her. That is, until one hit squarely in her chest.

I saw the bruise. Once. It was a particularly cold few weeks that winter.

Re:The (surprise) first post frontier

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you die from dysentery. Then it's only from Independence, MO to Kansas City.

AssaultCube FPS

[adrian.henke]

Another FOSS FPS? Check out AssaultCube, description from the website:

AssaultCube, formerly ActionCube, is a free first-person-shooter based on the game Cube. Set in a realistic looking environment, as far as that's possible with this engine, while gameplay stays fast and arcade. This game is all about team oriented multiplayer fun.

World of World of Warcraft

[billlava]

This reminds me of an Onion video that showed a sequel to WoW called World of World of Warcraft that let your characters buy and play WoW themselves. I got a kick out of it, but then again, I'm not a WoW player...

Kid mode?

[nine-times]

including a kid-mode, which optionally turns off the blood â" a nice option for a change

Why is it that people think turning off blood makes things "kid friendly"? Are you still running around killing people?

I'm not the sort of person who's a big believe in sheltering children, but if you are that sort of person, does simply censoring blood make the game OK to play? I think if I were the sort of parent that didn't want my kids to play violent games, then censoring a little gore wouldn't really make them acceptable.

On the other hand, some parents are a little crazy, so whatever. I just think it's weird to censor blood out of a FPS called "Blood Frontier", and then call it "kid mode".

Re:Kid mode?

[MrMista_B]

Um, maybe because you're *not actually* running around 'killing people'.

It's a videogame. No people are being killed. The 'pretend people' that you're 'shooting at' (pressing a butting to make a graphic appear), are not actually real people, and they are not actually being injuired, maimed, or killed.

So, to begin with, how is it violent?

Re:Kid mode?

[Tom]

Oh yes, absolutely. Just think of the chiiiildren. Remove from sight what offends you and everything will be fine. You can't change human nature, but you can push it underground, into repression, where you can then capitalise on it. That's been modus operandi of the catholic church and every other conservative power group for at least a thousand years, probably a lot more.

See, removing child porn from the Internet is so much more important than actually finding and locking up the people who produce it. And filtering out the blood from a shooter is a lot better, and also easier, than stopping to think that you're, you know, like shooting people, blood or no blood.

In fact, there's some research out there (not undisputed I should say, to be totally honest) that indicates that displays of "clean violence" is more likely to result in actions of violence than splatter, blood and gore, because the consequences of violence are hidden and thus don't enter consideration as much.

Re:Kid mode?

[CorporateSuit]

Why is it that people think turning off blood makes things "kid friendly"? Are you still running around killing people?

I'm not the sort of person who's a big believe in sheltering children, but if you are that sort of person, does simply censoring blood make the game OK to play? I think if I were the sort of parent that didn't want my kids to play violent games, then censoring a little gore wouldn't really make them acceptable.

Let me ask you this: In the Disney movie "Snow White", would it be as accepted as a kid's movie if it showed the hunter tearing the pumping heart out of a pig, or showed the jagged rocks tearing apart the flailing, twitching body of the evil witch? Such things happen during the course of the movie, but are not shown. The violence is implicit, not explicit, and therefore it runs above the line of childhood trauma.

I could go on for hours on this subject, but the best way for you to understand is to raise a 5-10 year old child. You'll recognize the difference, quickly, between what causes nightmares and what does not. Philosophize all you want, but you're talking theory to a world of practice. Kids freak out much more over the sight of a shootout where the walls are being splashed with blood, and one where people just fall over.

Re:Blood optional

[moderatorrater]

I appreciate those options for myself. I remember with TA: Kingdoms turning off the blood because my archers would shoot a guy so many times that blood would be spurting out nonstop, which I found gross at the time. Same with the gore in the original UT. I can see parents appreciating that in addition to people who just don't like gore.

Also, if you do paintball mode it turns it from a game where you're killing people to a game where it's just some guys playing paintball. Does it change the gameplay? Of course not, but it does change the entire frame of reference for the violence in the game. I can see that being desirable for parents and I think it's a great idea. My friend and I were talking about how they should do something along the lines of Unreal Tournament: Nerf Edition, where all the guns are nerf guns.

Just because you don't care doesn't mean that parents don't care.

Re:Blood optional

[hitnrunrambler]

I don't know what the purpose is, but I have to say I like the option personally. Does blood spatter enhance the game for you? Then go for it, but for my taste many gore effects just help to juvenilize most games; it's like endless penis jokes in an Adam Sandler movie, if I had the option to turn off "13 year old mode" I'd actually be able to enjoy the experience.

But..,

[Hurricane78]

... is the server still that horribly unsafe bare-bones packet-switch, that it is in Cube 2?

For those that don't know the details: The "server" of Cube 2 (Sauerbraten) is really basically just sending update packages around. No rules/physics validation, server simulation, or cheat checking of any kind. This, and the fact that it is open source, made it possible for every noob with a bit of C/C++-knowledge, to change some rules, and cheat like crazy.
I played it for some months, and saw people flying around, beaming themselves to where they liked it, completely defeating game physics, and making every shot a perfekt hit.

If this is not fixed, there is no reason to play that game, because you can't determine a winner anyway. (Or is it going to become a contest of the greatest hackers? ;)

Re:But..,

[Chris_Jefferson]

It's easy to do those kind of hacks in closed-source projects too, that's why almost every commercial game has moved to not trusting the client as much as possible, only sending it what the client can see and only accepting input it trusts as valid.

FPS fun is a delicate balance

[stokessd]

I've played a lot of FPS' up to Unreal2004, and some are clearly better than others. There's the obvious map features, like size vs. player number, overall layout, wall design with hiding places, etc. And that's not even counting the artistic side of texture mapping and making it look interesting.

But the player dynamics, and weapon characteristics combine to subtly change the intensity/speed of the game. For example the archaic Marathon was very slow due to show shot speed comparatively weak weapons. Quake III has much stronger weapons making distances seem shorter due to the killing power.

Unreal has a great balance, of player speed, map size and weapon strength/diversity that makes it consistently fun to play. It also has reasonably good AI for the bots. This balance seems to be elusive in FPS, as there are so few who really get it right, and you can see that in the communities they spawn.

I hope these OSS projects can match the balance of a great FPS even if they don't have the deep pockets or manpower to spend on visually stunning maps.

Sheldon

Re:The (surprise) first post frontier

[jggimi]

Maybe it should be called "Blood-Lite?"

I can just see the ad campaign comparing Blood-Lite to Killer-Lite.

"Tases Great!"

"Less Spilling!"

OpenBVE, for train sim buffs

[jkxx]

While train simming is not exactly a hot genre it has been entering the mainstream as of late. The proprietary contenders currently include Kuju's Rail Simulator and Auran's Trainz series. Both are closed-source but use plain XML for all their data files which makes developing easy for these sims. Microsoft decided to re-enter the race with a new "Microsoft Train Simulator 2" bragging that they have endless resources and will beat any competitor. A few days ago, however, they canned the project along with everyone at ACES who had been working on it. Anyway, where it gets interesting is a freebie (fully open-source) sim called openBVE which can be found at http://openbve.uuuq.com/en/index.html. While its predecessor BVE was not fully open, openBVE is and it's making rapid progress, especially as of late. A video showing off its capabilities is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtITwxTWLyM&fmt=18. So as far as train sims go, yes there is at least one that's starting to turn heads and it's good to see something that's not an FPS for a change.

Neowin is Working on One

[ToAllPointsWest]

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=707404 Not sure how far they've gotten though

Sounds like fun

[Anonymous Coward]

"XEvil is a 2D side scroller with an excessive amount of violence."

What a recommendation.

"Mirror"

[Anonymous Coward]

The website/masterserver for the game are slightly hosed at the moment, but here is some information on the game for people looking:

Windows download link
Linux download link

From included readme.txt:
Dear User,

Welcome to Blood Frontier, and thanks for your interest! Please note that Blood Frontier is in early alpha stages, and as such, is not yet fully finished, polished, or even playable. It is intended as a multiplayer only demo of what is to come in future versions, meaning that singleplayer and enemies are not implemented yet. You are however invited to try out the features that have been added that will lead up to these things, such as; bots, online triggers, and much more :)

If you are interested in development, or require technical support please visit the #bloodfrontier IRC channel on freenode at irc://irc.freenode.net/bloodfrontier or you can visit our website, which offers more details at http://bloodfrontier.com/

The source code, license, and related documentation can be found in the 'src' subdirectory of this archive. Enjoy messing around with our little project, and be sure to have fun!

Regards,
Acord, Quin, and the Blood Frontier Team

= BLOOD FRONTIER =

Humanity has spread throughout the solar system, to Mars and beyond. A vast communications network bridges from colony to colony, human to machine, and machine to human. This seemingly benign keystone of inter-planetary society, however, appears to be the carrier of a mysterious biological plague. Any persons so-connected seem to fall ill and die, only to return as ravenous, sub-human cannibals. You, a machine intelligence, an android, remain unafflicted by this phenomenon. You have been tasked with destroying the growing hordes of the infected, and, hopefully, locating and stopping the source of this epidemic.

Blood Frontier is a single-player and multi-player first-person shooter game, built as a total conversion of Cube Engine 2 (Sauerbraten). The project tries to work closely with the gaming and open source communities to provide a better overall experience, with a primary goal of creating a adventure based game environment that is flexible, fun, easy to use, and pleasing to the eye; it is a project with a true "by the people for the people" nature.

During its life, the goals of the project have shifted dramatically from its original concept, lending itself toward a more balanced gameplay, completely at the control of map makers, while maintaining a general theme of tactics and low gravity. Building upon a main philosophy of making a game everyone likes, Quin attempts to make the development process more open, with ideas coming in from every direction, from your average player to your seasoned developer.

The main adventure component of Blood Frontier will always be Free and Open Source Software, the only restriction is that currently you are free to distribute but not copy or reuse the artwork without permission. This project will eventually release its assests under an as-yet undetermined open source license, once it reaches full version. For a full list of people who have contributed see the Credits. For licensing information, please see the License.

These are people who have helped shape Blood Frontier into what you see. Your name could be here too if you Donate or Collaborate.

Developers
Anthony "Acord" Cord Original Blood Frontier concept, most art assets and content
Quinton "Quin" Reeves Gameplay and AI code/design, community and website management
Lee "Eihrul" Salzman Backports from Cube Engine 2, support, encouragement, code advice and speed improvements
"Hirato Kirata

WinBolo (2D Tank Strategy)

[men0s]

For those who have ever spent an entire Typing Class period in middle school on a Mac playing Bolo will find WinBolo very familiar.

While WinBolo has been around for a decade or so, the source was released about a month ago. And by source, that means a few things: the logviewer, the server (Windows and Linux), the client (Windows), a Java port, as well as the backend for the winbolo.net domain.

Want new FPS mechanics? Here's your chance!

[Acord]

We're not looking for tried and true - double jumping, in-air directional impulses, moving bullets that make sniping hard and aimbots less than useful, a redirection from collecting crap on a map(ammo, armor, health etc.... THERE IS NONE!) We want to make something cool and different. If you've got ideas, let's hear 'em!