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Open Source Shooter Nexuiz 2.5 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the let's-blow-something-up dept.

Michael writes "A new version of Nexuiz, a GPL-licensed, first-person shooter, has been released. There are over 3,000 changes in Nexuiz 2.5, including new maps, new game-modes, enhanced graphics, new audio, and other major changes. Phoronix has posted a preview of this Nexuiz 2.5 release, with screenshots showing the impressive graphics and how it has raised the bar for open-source gaming. Details about the Nexuiz project are available at SourceForge."

15 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Bizzaro-UT by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Are all of the maps UT maps or just all the the ones in the trailer?

  2. OMFG Based off of Quake 1 engine by ZeroNullVoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This should run on crappy systems and good ones based off the system specs and engine.

    1. Re:OMFG Based off of Quake 1 engine by yelvington · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Unfortunately, it doesn't.

      Nexuiz is in the Ubuntu 9.04 repository, so I gave it a try. On a 3-gigahertz Pentium 4 with 1.5 gigs of RAM and an ATI Radeon 7000 video card, the game is unusable.

      I'm not talking about dropped frames; even the configuration screens are unusable due to lag between the mouse and the pointer.

      The original Quake I and II engines ran fine on a Pentium with one-tenth the speed of this one, so the guys recoding the engine must be having an awful lot of fun at great CPU expense.

  3. Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always wondered, how do open source games (Especially FPS ones) deal with cheating. Server side checks and such can of course be implemented, but what prevents someone from just turning all the enemies bright red?

    With the source, one could even make a rather effective aimbot (Or just write a bot that plays completely by itself) and it would be nearly undetectable since any countermeasures are also open source.

    I understand that even a closed source game will have its fair share of cheats, but open source is almost begging for them.

    1. Re:Cheating? by struppi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, but how do you notice someone is cheating? Because he is good? In counter strike, any time someone enters a server who is much better than all the others, people start shouting "cheater". That doesn't necessarily mean they are cheating.

    2. Re:Cheating? by windsurfer619 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I actually find it a complement when I'm kicked for "cheating" when I'm actually not :)

    3. Re:Cheating? by ion.simon.c · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ...how do open source games (Especially FPS ones) deal with cheating.

      I saw a social solution to this problem. Back in the day of Descent and Descent ][, (Both of which were closed source apps at the time.) folks would host matches explicitly for folks who wanted to cheat. If you ran into a cheater in normal play, you either ignored him, or generated another game. (IIRC, there was no kick/ban feature.) D1 and D2 were P2P games, not server/client, so it was trivially easy to cheat. Very few people did.

    4. Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What one of the developers had to say about cheating: http://www.nexuizninjaz.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=428&pid=3267#pid3267

      To add some technical stuff to this emotional matter:

      Basicly only a few cheats are possible: auto-aiming (which aims for you and SHOULD be able to hit perfectly), wallhacks (which allows you to see through walls) and speedhacks (which allow you to run faster). Stuff like health, armor, weapons you posses are TOTALY in control of the server and can't be changed by any client. So if you suspect people to be unkillable this usually just means they collect lots of health/armor and as you can collect them almost without limit it can be hard to kill someone really stacked. Being able to change health/armor/weapons would require a custom setup (recompiled) server, so if you play on the 'well-known' servers you should be fine. In theory it might be possible to hack a server but thats totally unheard off. So, nothing to cheat here..

      Speedhacks usually point to some bugs in Nexuiz and while there were such bugs in the past they should all be fixed now, which should make speedhacking impossible. If there are still bugs in Nexuiz the developers should be told about! For the fun of it, due to network changes a certain Nexuiz version acted as speedhack on certain older nexuiz servers, but again, thats all fixed now and also helped to get server admins to update :-) So, nothing to cheat here..

      Wallhacks are also impossible with the default settings because Nexuiz uses a clever anti-wallhack. Basicly most games tell the client the position of all other players and items and when using a hack to make walls transparent you can see those players and items in the whole map. Nexuiz in turn only sends info about players and item only if you could possibly see them. So even if someone WOULD use a wallhack and make walls transparent there would be nothing to see. This means wallhacks are USELESS in Nexuiz, nothing to cheat here... (Unless someone changes the default settings to save SERVER cpu power). One can also usually notice a wallhack when spectating as the user of such hacks tends to aim at players behind walls. However notice that good players tend to do 'prediction shots' aka shoot were they think someone might be or go to. Their experience is good enough to make this tactic work very well.

      Which leaves us with aimhacks or autoshoot hacks. First the bad news, in theory there is nothing to REALLY stop them. Some games, companies TRY to run programs to find KNOWN aimhacks but thats a arms race and can only be lost. Programs like punkbuster will only hog your system while searching for known hacks, they can not find UNKNOWN hacks and a few month ago there was a big uproar as someone found a way to get MANY (iirc tenthousends) people banned via punkbuster though they did not cheat at all :-).
      Now the good news, aimhacks can usually be spotted very easily if you spectate. Also, as i said they should be able to hit perfectly but they do not. Most of the hitscan (point-and-frag) guns in Nexuiz have spread. For example the shotgun and mg. Also while playing online there is ping which changes slightly and thus some shots are missed. Other weapons are projectile based which can be evated. Thats an area were good players with lots of experiance can even be better then aimhacks because they are better at anticipation and can 'feel' were that guy will move to :-). Also players that use aimbots usually do so because they are not as good as they would like to be so you will notice a big difference in movement and aiming. As for autoshoots, thats a hack which 'fires' if you move the crosshair over an player. That thing can be harder to find in an demo or spectating but it will ONLY work with hitscan weapons and is also not perfect. If its a bad autoshooter you will notice it fires rockets or similar guns when the crosshair meets the other play

  4. Awesome, lets hope it works now! by Seriousity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've tried to run Nexuiz on my ubuntu desktop and each time it's crashed the X server, hopefully I can share in the glories this time around! :D

    --
    This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
  5. Not Very Impressing by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sorry, I know that some people think you shouldn't criticize any free open source software, but this is really not impressing. It's kind of weird that with all the freedom they had the developers of this game only came up with a generic Quake Arena clone. If that's typical for open source games, then No, thanks.

    1. Re:Not Very Impressing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Not really true though...

      While many not open source, there is a lot of high quality mods for other games out there, which means that it is possible for a group volunteers to create high quality game content, working together over the internet.

      Take a look at the Black Mesa mod for HL2, for example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGlhgVz5r6E

      I don't see why this level of artwork wouldn't be able to go into an open source game. But it haven't happened yet I guess.

  6. Nexuiz can't compete with Quake Live and Tremulous by PNP_Transistor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't see how a game like this can compete with something like Quake Live. Quake Live (still in beta) is free and has comparable graphics and gameplay. Yet it already has a much larger community, more polish, and runs more smoothly.

    I understand that it is difficult for an open source game to have the same playerbase and polish as a professionally developed, ad-supported game. But at the very least Nexuiz should run more smoothly and should differentiate itself from other games that have already been released.

    I'd say that a better open-source game might be Tremulous. Runs much more smoothly on my computer, and I often want to play it because its gameplay is different from other games I already have. Perhaps that's why there have always been more Tremulous players than Nexuiz players in my area.

  7. Elo rating by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In counter strike, any time someone enters a server who is much better than all the others, people start shouting "cheater".

    Tetris DS solved this by giving players Elo-style ratings centered on 5000 and then only matching players with similar Elo ratings. It also shows the other player's screen: if the other player is obviously getting only I pieces and not getting garbage, then he's using the "always Starman" cheat.

  8. Noob player but addicted by bucketoftruth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I get violently motion sick when I play FPS games, but I can't stop playing this one. It's screaming fast and really fun. I think what makes it desirable to play is that it lacks the polish of the commercial titles but plays incredibly fast on my dated hardware. What it really comes down to is well designed maps and textures (for me).

  9. Re:First PS by Phasma+Felis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ken's labyrinth, Catacombs 3D for sure.. then Wolf-3D.

    Nope. Ken's Labyrinth was just another Wolf3D knockoff; it came out a year later. Catacomb 3D wasn't even id's first FPS (that would be Hovertank 3D).