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Advanced Open Source Engine Based On Quake 3

Posted by Soulskill on from the something-on-rails dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix is running a news story about the XreaL project, which its lead developer claims is the most advanced open-source game engine. XreaL is based upon the vintage Quake 3 engine, but it has been rewritten over the course of many months such that it no longer resembles the original id Software engine. The XreaL engine has its renderer written entirely in GLSL with compliance toward the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification in mind, but it supports the new OpenGL 3.0/3.1 specification and is able to take advantage of its new features. XreaL has also added an HDR pipeline to its engine and on modern hardware is actually GPU — not CPU — bottlenecked. XreaL can also load game content from Unreal Tournament 3. This engine, which is described to be as powerful as what can be found in Doom 3 or Call of Duty 4, is written entirely with free software. The XreaL project has created plug-ins for Maya to broaden their game development capabilities."

137 comments

  1. Awesome! by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 1

    YAFPS

  2. 'bout time by tannsi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The pure potential is awesome. If, however they are uptight about letting people develop non-open-source games for this it will fail, hard.

    1. Re:'bout time by vertinox · · Score: 1

      The pure potential is awesome. If, however they are uptight about letting people develop non-open-source games for this it will fail, hard.

      The original owner of this code is id who released it GPL so you can't use it for closed source for free.

      You can buy that engine from id software for a nominal fee like everyone else ;)

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    2. Re:'bout time by mr_mischief · · Score: 1

      The game and the engine are two separate properties. You can have a closed-license game thta runs on an open-licensed engine. You can't close up their GPLed engine as if it was BSD-licensed, but you can certainly release a game with proprietary models, textures, music, maps, and scripting. None of those things are object code linked to the engine. They're all just data as far as the engine is concerned.

    3. Re:'bout time by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

      It should also be noted that iD does just that: The Quake 3 engine is free, Quake 3 is not. If you want the data and such you have to buy the game. Only the engine is open source.

  3. great by Turiko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    hopefully this will lead to more modern-looking open-source games. That's the reason the regular gamer won't play open-source. Unless there's somethign else i nthe game you can't find anywhere else :P.

    1. Re:great by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Now you just need good free-as-in-beer artists...oh wait...

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hopefully this will lead to more modern-looking open-source games.

      There is actually plenty of engines capable of good visuals already. That's the problem. Everyone is writing engines, not games!

      And really, engines are over rated. I'd rather see someone bang up a doom level engine in a week and then go one to make an actual game, than more of this kind of stuff.

    3. Re:great by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What's funny is that it's all there. You have a ton of people who love to be creative, draw and model. Various pages dedicated to displaying your art are proof enough. You have equally many people who enjoy coding. Linux alone works as a proof for that, together with the lot of FOSS that's readily available and of high quality.

      Yet for some odd reason they don't "find" each other. FOSS games are usually mediocre. And I wonder why. FOSS software does not have to hide behind commercial software. Hell, some is better than its commercial counterparts! "Free" art (from music to animations and even movies) is by no means worse than commercial art. Especially true when it comes to music IMO.

      Why does the combination not work out?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:great by bit01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why does the combination not work out?

      C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures. Each needs to make overtures to the other.

    5. Re:great by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      More specific to gaming, the overwhelming majority of game mods, some including nontrivial art assets, are done by volunteers for essentially zero money. They often are freeware rather than free software; but I suspect that a fair percentage of modders would, under the right circumstances, do Free stuff for FOSS games with the same enthusiasm that they do freeware stuff for proprietary ones.

      The trouble, I suspect, is that most FOSS games don't build up the very large followings from which modders often emerge.

    6. Re:great by ardor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know some artists who tried this out, only to find themselves in a failing project.

      The way to go is to create some prototype with placeholders as game art. Something that can be demonstrated to artists. This attracts a lot more people than a paper with fancy ideas. However, guess what - most of the time, the paper with fancy ideas is presented. No wonder the experienced artists stay away (unless they get paid).

      Also, most projects don't have something resembling a lead designer; instead, one of the programmers is the lead. This is a bad idea, since the designer is the one who cares most about the "big picture", the overall design. The lead designer is the one who takes care of keeping things together and coherent. This is a full-time job, and often underestimated, especially by open-source game projects.

      --
      This sig does not contain any SCO code.
    7. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The trouble, I suspect, is that most FOSS games don't build up the very large followings from which modders often emerge.

      We have a culture based around marketing and hype. There is no interest in contributing unless the contribution will immediately have a large established audience, will lead to bragging rights, will be played by all your friends, etc.

    8. Re:great by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 4, Informative

      The reason is that doing a complete set of artwork for a game is hard, and extremely time consuming. Most people, if they have the time, skills, and interest, will join a mod project, rather than develop something completely new from the ground up. Most of those mod projects subsequently amount to nothing due to poor interpersonal communications, inability to meet deadlines, real life getting in the way, etc.

      So for a FOSS game artist, you're asking that a person be talented, dedicated, able to meet deadlines, not interested in the mod scene, technically adept (probably), good at working with others, and willing to work for free.

      Then you have to find the same thing in a half dozen other people, some on sound, some on levels, environment, character models, etc.

      Making a video game is a tremendous undertaking these days. Anyone capable of making a good game for free probably shouldn't sell themselves for that little.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    9. Re:great by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Artists I know LOVE to show off their work, but are very possessive.

      "giving away the rights to my work scares me" was a quote from someone who looked into selling to a card company.

      I get this impression from artists that they feel they own what they create forever, and others best recognize.

      Look at CC for example. Almost all CC I come across is with the NC clause. Artists just don't appear ready to truly give to the community, showing off not withstanding.

      This may be because it is harder to make a living as an artist than a coder, or it could have something to do with artists' egos, but I find that somewhat doubtful, because tech is a minefield of ridiculous ego.

      Perhaps it is just time. CC was founded in 2001, Open source software was already a top-notch server platform, and a compelling desktop.

      It is easy to see the benefits of Open Source at this point (and has been for well over a decade), a few CC art projects that show what can be done when people share instead of grab could turn the art world around too.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    10. Re:great by Haeleth · · Score: 2, Interesting

      hopefully this will lead to more modern-looking open-source games. That's the reason the regular gamer won't play open-source.

      No, that would be because open-source games tend to have poor artwork, horrible animation, tediously derivative gameplay and level design, and no plot.

      For some reason, people with talent in these areas and an interest in giving their work away for free tend to concentrate on making mods for commercial games. Perhaps it's because they want their work to be free-as-in-beer rather than free-as-in-copyleft.

    11. Re:great by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Actually, I suspect it depends on the modders.

      Some modders will release their stuff entirely free, forever, either because they buy the open source (or just free-as-in-beer) philosophy, or because they hope to impress a game company (and get hired).

      Other modders will keep their code proprietary, either because they've never heard of FOSS, or in an effort to prevent cheating, or because the SDK forces them to -- but more likely, I think, it's because they hope their mod is eventually successful enough that they can sell it. The classic example is Counter-Strike; a more recent example is Gary's Mod.

      Only occasionally do they cross over -- for instance, Tremulous, World of Padman, and various other Quake 3 mods have taken advantage of the Quake 3 engine going open source to provide their game stand-alone -- that is, without requiring any of the Quake 3 data. This means people don't have to own (or pirate) Quake 3 to download the mod, and it means they can dig deeper and tweak things a typical mod couldn't, but it also means (thanks to the GPL) that pretty much the entire mod has to be open source.

      In order for this to work, you'd have to convince the majority of these modders at least of the philosophy that "Valve is going to see how much this kicks ass, and they're going to hire you." Except that the philosophy they're being sold on is, "Don't give away any source code, and you can sell it over Steam when it gets popular."

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    12. Re:great by drinkypoo · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      No, that would be because open-source games tend to have poor artwork, horrible animation, tediously derivative gameplay and level design, and no plot.

      It worked for Halo.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:great by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The simple truth is that trying to build a FoSS game based on a commercial model is stupid, unnecessary, and in any case bound to fail anyway. The great thing about an Open game is that it can be worked on for fucking ages and still come out to be positive. A good game is always good whether it is the latest and greatest or not.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    14. Re:great by Peganthyrus · · Score: 2

      Artists also act like this because of the way so many people shamelessly swipe their images against their wishes - there are a lot of people who ruin everything they post online with huge ugly watermarks because they'd rather that than find it reposted to some kid's Deviantart account as "theirs".

      Also, the culture of artists has been handed down through eons of scarcity: we have been trained to see our art as a scarce resource, and to require money for its creation and/or reproduction. The culture of programmers comes from a world of plenty, where getting the respect of your peers pretty much MEANS sharing everything needed to recreate your final product - in part because it's so damn easy. Sharing a painting is hard, it's made of atoms. And we still have artist culture based on everything we make being atoms - hell, I still see people whinging about how only traditional media can be "real art" because of some mystical connection between the artist's soul and the blobs of paint they laid down on the canvas.

      --
      egypt urnash minimal art.
    15. Re:great by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Maybe we, as a community, should start putting more emphasis on the developers and their names. I mean, everyone knows CS, but how many of those avid CS players know its maker?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    16. Re:great by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Hey, my code IS art! Even arcane, according to some people who had to debug and maintain it! :)

      Funny comments aside, but I guess the mindset comes from the fact that, as a programmer, you're used to standing on someone else's shoulders. You need an operating system, an API (probably more than one), an SDK, a compiler and various other tidbits before you even start to write a line of code. Aside from brushes and paint, an artist needs nothing (beside experience, if he wants to be good). But these are tools, akin to our keyboard or monitor. He doesn't need some painting to start developing his own.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    17. Re:great by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Not really.
      Yes the engine is FOSS but that doesn't mean that the game data has to be.
      I remember that RMS even suggested this as model for game development a few years ago.
      It would have to be DRM free but you could make and sell a game based on this. All you would have to do is provide a link to the source to the game engine.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    18. Re:great by neumayr · · Score: 1

      It's not just how open source games look. It's their whole production value, the impression that every part of the game is designed to fit some kind of vision.
      Most open source games feel like they're build around some code that was produced without any kind of vision, with someone else entirely picking it up and extending it.

      --
      Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
    19. Re:great by onefriedrice · · Score: 1

      Meh. Tuxracer is good enough for me.

      --
      This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
    20. Re:great by psbrogna · · Score: 1

      Why not? There are many other talented people contributing to open source projects in other roles that are just as talented as high caliber artists/muscians and commanding respectable salaries for their regular jobs.

    21. Re:great by Peganthyrus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I won't disagree on the code-is-art front; I've done enough programming to know there is a near-infinity of ways to solve a problem, and an art to picking which one to use!

      Visual artists stand on the shoulders of other artists too; we constantly steal from each other (or are influenced by each other - same thing, really *grin*). We need each other's critique, we need each others' lessons. We don't rely on each others' work quite as directly as a programmer - I can as easily sit in a cafe and draw in a sketchbook as I can do it here at home with a ton of reference and inspiration in reach. But I wouldn't draw the way I do without having had them in the past.

      Young artists also tend to be insanely paranoid about ART THEFT. We tend to see our art as this super-precious excretion of our SOUL and there is no WAY we'd let just ANYONE play with THAT. And again - this is the culture surrounding the core skills. This is what we're taught as we decide to become artists. A scarcity culture.

      People will download huge torrents of comics while being worried someone will steal their precious, precious (derivative) creation. One foot in the post-scarcity world where stuff is infinitely duplicatable once it's digital, one foot in the scarcity world where every item is as valuable as the time you spent, because you can only sell it once... but programmers have a culture that came out of the science world, which is all about sharing information, and was shaped by the incredible ease of sharing bits.

      --
      egypt urnash minimal art.
    22. Re:great by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Well, we do, in a few cases -- see Shigeru Myamoto, John Carmack, John Romero, Gabe Newell...

      On the other hand, we also emphasize the actual studios responsible -- see Valve, Id, Ubisoft, Bungie, even *hiss* EA...

      I can't really say whether either one is a good thing. For instance, Gabe Newell did pay a lot out of pocket to finance Half-Life 2, but to call it "his" game is to trivialize all the hard work put in by pretty much everyone at Valve. There's also a certain amount of accountability when we think of creators as studios and corporations -- for instance, the whole SecuROM debacle, and all that lashing out at EA, were directed at actual corporations, who were eventually held responsible and forced to do things our way.

      Contrast that to other entertainment industries -- we focus on individual actors (Ben Affleck, Matt Daemon, etc etc), or individual TV shows (CSI, Battlestar Galactica, etc etc). We pay much less attention to the networks, until they do something stupid (fucking Syfy, remind me never to watch that again), and even less attention to the corporations responsible.

      I'm not sure it matters, anyway. Everyone who plays CS knows it's by Valve, and it's not difficult to research those individual developers if they want to claim CS on their resume, for instance. If we're just talking about fame, I don't really care much -- and again, it's probably more fair to focus on the entire studio as a collective, rather than any one rockstar developer.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    23. Re:great by grumbel · · Score: 1

      With coding you can come in, submit a patch and leave again. It doesn't really matter who wrote the code, as long as its functional. With art on the other side you can't do that, if you just accept each and every random contribution you will easily end up with an ugly inconsistent mess, no matter how talented the individual artists are. And thats exactly the problem, a commercial game just needs way to much art to be doable by a single person and the chances to find enough people that stay with the project for a long time and are talented enough to produce a consistent art style are very very slim.

    24. Re:great by MarkvW · · Score: 1

      It seems to be the same case with board-style computer wargames. If a community of game designers could get together with programmers who play wargames, a really sophisticated (and fun) platform could be developed to build and play wargames. I am surprised that this has not happened yet.

    25. Re:great by Quikah · · Score: 1

      I am sure a 10 year old engine is going to lead to more modern looking games.

      --
      Q.
    26. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But when coding you don't just pop along, spend an hour writing a patch, submit it and leave. On any reasonable sized project you have to read the code and understand at least a decent section of it for any non trivial patch. Also you should check what coding standards the game uses and then when you submit the patch it will likely be reviewed by another person in the project because you won't have the permissions to just commit it directly. So overall the process is non trivial and takes a substantial amount of time

      If you look at a project then you will find most of the code is done by just a few coders. This is because it is easier once you know the code base and so most people will stick to just one project or not very many if they want to contribute to open source things.

      You might find greater consistency problems with artwork but it should not be that big a problem as long as the artists actually make an effort to fit in with the other art for the game

    27. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the programmer is supposed to attract artists by presenting them with a finished game that simply lacks art.

      However, the programmers should not actually design the game, but leave that up to an artist, meaning they have to attract talent through pen & paper ideas.

      Being a full-time lead designer doesn't mean you're not doing something else as the design should be finished up front. Significant design changes through the development process indicate a poor design or lack of focus (which is when the lead steps in to make decisions).

      You'll rarely see a lead designer who's not doing something else as that's an extremely big waste of time.

    28. Re:great by grumbel · · Score: 1

      You might find greater consistency problems with artwork

      The thing is that you have close to zero consistency problems in software on the code side. Look at Inkscape for example, large parts of the code are old Sodipodi pieces written in C, while other stuff is written in C++, its quite a mess. Does it matter much? Nope, because no user will ever sees a piece of any of that. Same with coding standards in general, it just doesn't matter if its SetFoobar or set_foobar or if you indent with tabs instead of spaces, just implementation details no user will ever see.

      Artwork on the other side is exactly what the user sees, if its not 100% it will look weird, if its off a little more it will be ugly and distracting. Yeah, some top-notch artists can fix that, but those aren't exactly easy to come buy, most of the time you are stuck with an average artists, which is good enough to do graphics in his style, but mostly lost when he should match up work with another artists. You just don't have that problem with coding.

      All that aside, another huge issue is that the tools just suck. Sure you might find a few half descent open source game engines, but how many of those have a fully working art pipeline going for them? Most of the time you are stuck with broken export scripts and other mess, that makes it impossible to actually do serious work with it.

    29. Re:great by Drinking+Bleach · · Score: 1

      but it also means (thanks to the GPL) that pretty much the entire mod has to be open source.

      This is actually not true. The only thing open source that the standalone "mod" (now a game on its own accord, but heh) must do is keep the engine itself open. The game data, including models, art, even QVM code, is perfectly fine being proprietary. In your own examples, World of Padman is precisely developed like this; the game itself is proprietary while the engine is free. Although there are many, like Tremulous, where the entire game is free, it is not a requirement.

      Even RMS agrees that this is perfectly acceptable; his view is all about software being free, but he sees no pressing reason that art must be free as well.

    30. Re:great by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      There are assuredly many talented people working on many different OSS projects. Most of the heavy lifting in OSS is done by paid developers, though.

      Also, for games, the goalposts move very quickly. To be reasonably current, you need to either do what major studios do, which is to throw lots of money and man-hours at a deadline several years in advance, (that is, build next year's technology yourself) or you need to have a very short development period.

      I think a reasonable analogy might be trying to do Inkscape as a Summer of Code project. And then people will apparently bitch at you for not duplicating the graphics level of big-budget game X, if this thread is any indication. Small wonder the mod scene outstrips the OSS gaming scene.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    31. Re:great by anonymousNR · · Score: 1

      that happens in many non-game projects too.

      --
      -- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
    32. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then you do it.

      It takes more artist than programmers to make a good game and ship it in a reasonable amount of time. And no one respects the amount of time and training it takes to get good at being an artist.

      Great programmers are a good part of the equation that OSS has, but they have day jobs (most of them) that pay them to keep food on their table.

      Good art ALWAYS takes a lot of time, whether it's training or execution, and isn't something you can always just sit at a keyboard and bang out. It takes inspiration, energy, and motivation. These things are hard to come buy when you are worried about how you will pay your rent. Artists who work for free, outside of High School, I think are going to get a lot harder to come by with this economy.

      Artists are a different breed from programmers for the most part. Their heads are wired a little differently. It's fascinating to watch a lot of artists gather in one location. The conversations are lively and energetic and when the morale is good, it feeds their creativity in a way that is hard to describe.

      As an artist being able to walk a little further down the hallway and get live feed back from other artists you respect goes a long way toward maintaining a good productivity level. I haven't seen an OSS environment like this yet.

    33. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is that different from any other job? I don't think you're seriously suggesting that all other work done for open-source projects is easy and takes no time.

      If I'm capable of debugging a Linux device driver, are you saying I "shouldn't sell [myself] for that little"? Whether you believe that or not, many many people do just that every day.

      My bet is the problem is purely cultural. To a programmer, open-source is cool. To an artist, open-source isn't really even on the radar, yet.

      But it could be. You think artists don't want more avenues to get their work out there? You think digital artists won't put their work on the internet for free? I can find about a gazillion examples of just that.

    34. Re:great by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

      A few reasons why you tend to see that:

      1) Commercial games have better tools. Many OSS engines seem to have NO tools for people who develop anything but the code. Often commercial games have some really solid ones. Unreal Tournament 3 would be an excellent example. Its tools are top notch. This is of interest to people who are making mods. If you want to do level design, you'd much rather do it with an excellent level editor than in a text file with only some vague descriptions of what does what.

      2) It gets you a larger market. If you make a level for a popular game, many people are likely to see and play it. If you make a level for an OSS game that nobody plays... Well then nobody is going to play your level.

      3) Better existing assets. Commercial games (good ones at least) come with good art, level, sound and other assets. You can use these when building your own. You don't have to do everything. If you have an OSS game with poor assets, you have to create the whole deal, even if that isn't your area.

      4) The engine license isn't relevant to their work. You can create game art for a commercial game, and release the art as Creative Commons. Likewise, you can have art that is licensed under a restrictive license for an OSS game. The license of the code doesn't affect how you license your assets. So an artist that wants his stuff free to the world ot use and modify can release it for a game that isn't and it isn't a problem.

    35. Re:great by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Writing a set of code that wraps that artwork into a game is about as hard and time consuming. Your point being?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    36. Re:great by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      The engine-and-mod approach works I think (at least we've got some decent looking material in Spring). I dont think you can get a single team for the engine and game though, that'll net you too many people who want to decide where to take the project while a separate engine/mod approach lets the engine coders focus on making their engine a good tool for game development while the game devs can focus on getting their gameplay and assets in.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    37. Re:great by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      When we asked the FSF they were pretty specific on interpreted code (our specific case was Lua) being infected by the engine's GPL so QVM code would have to be GPL.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    38. Re:great by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      I think a harder part for a designer in an FOSS game is to keep the other devs in line. They'll always have their own ideas and sometimes be pretty vocal about them, in a worst case you risk a fork with your talented devs running off to pursue their own ideas. Game designs can rarely be designed by commitee, especially when most of the commitee has no game design ability (because that's not an inability you'll notice without seeing your projects fail repeatedly, everyone fancies himself a designer).

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    39. Re:great by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      The game designer and the graphics/sound artists are different people (and without a designer you don't even get a pen & paper design). The game designer is pretty much the first member you need on the team, he can have multiple roles but he must have game design skill, you can't just tell one of your coders to go and design a game, just as you can't tell a coder to make pretty art.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    40. Re:great by Miaomiao · · Score: 1

      I've seen several great open source projects out there fail. No matter how great your programmers are, you still need direction.

      A distinction needs to be drawn , there are programmers out there who make good project leads, and there are programmers out there who have a good aesthetic sense. More often than not, some poor schmo who's godly at code but horrible at project management gets stuck with the job.

      The commercial model is out there because it works. You can adapt it for things that don't necessarily turn a profit, but are maintainable over a long period of time. Any project without guidance will fail, open source, closed source, commercial or just for fun. There always has to be someone leading the direction of it.

  4. open source gaming will finally conquer the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    tux racer will never be the same

  5. Anyone having screenshot issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you are having issues with the screenshots, you need to be more patient. At first, I thought the site was broken. When you click on a link, the webpage turns gray. If you wait long enough, the image will load.

  6. Humility would be a virtue by kripkenstein · · Score: 3, Insightful

    YAFPS

    Not only YAFPS, but also the screenshots are poorer than other FOSS FPSes. For example, they lack basics such as dynamic shadows.

    It seems the article authors got excited from the claim that the engine is written in GLSL and is OpenGL 3.0-focused. That, and the engine developer is not exactly humble, with claims like "definitely the most advanced open-source game engine".

    Instead of dissing other engines - which offer greatly superior visuals, to boot, just look at screenshots - he should let his achievements speak for themselves. They don't, thus far.

    1. Re:Humility would be a virtue by ardor · · Score: 1

      I have seen impressive screenshots of the XreaL shadow-mapping capabilities. However, other engine projects seem to have more/better artists. It is not easy to show off all the latest tech using modified Q3A maps.

      In fact, I am uncertain if using the Q3A code as a base for something like XreaL is wise. It might be better to start the graphics part from scratch, since the Q3A graphics stuff is from another era.

      --
      This sig does not contain any SCO code.
    2. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "basics such as dynamic shadows"

      That's basics? Wow, times change fast these days, even I can remember the time when "dynamic shadows" weren't basics but rather bleeding edge, something you'd need a killer machine for to pull off at all. Maybe 'cause it ain't been a year ago or so.

      You know what "basics" too many games lack these days? An interesting concept, some originality, replay value and generally something that makes me want to play them. If you can put that in a game, you can keep your eye candy. Eye candy is like new car smell. Yeah, it's nice, but it wears off too quickly and after it's gone, you only get to see that you have, essentially, the same crappy game that you didn't want to play a year earlier already.

      If this means we have now a good FOSS engine at our hands that allows the development of games without first forking over six digit sums and thus being pressured to deliver something "mainstream digestable" (read: uninspired copy of something that sold well), we might get to see a few daring new ideas.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Humility would be a virtue by zwei2stein · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bad art direction makes good engine look unimpressive.

      And good art will make feature lacking engines look awesome.

      --
      -- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
    4. Re:Humility would be a virtue by ardor · · Score: 4, Informative

      The topic is the XreaL engine. Not games.

      --
      This sig does not contain any SCO code.
    5. Re:Humility would be a virtue by kripkenstein · · Score: 1

      I agree 100% with what you say in this comment - you're exactly right. In fact, you are so right that I've been working on a FOSS project with exactly this motivation in mind: Ease of development over eye candy, while still maintaining decent 3D visuals.

      (It isn't released yet, so I can't link you to it, and anyhow I don't want to toot my own horn in a discussion about another project. But, I felt I'd mention this just to show how much I agree with what you wrote.)

    6. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Haeleth · · Score: 1

      I can remember the time when "dynamic shadows" weren't basics but rather bleeding edge, something you'd need a killer machine for to pull off at all. Maybe 'cause it ain't been a year ago or so.

      What? Dynamic shadows were bleeding-edge about 5 years ago. Doom 3 has run fine on run-of-the-mill hardware since about 2006.

    7. Re:Humility would be a virtue by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      It's true.

      Look at anything Blizzard has done.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    8. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YAFPS

      Not only YAFPS, but also the screenshots are poorer than other FOSS FPSes. For example, they lack basics such as dynamic shadows.

      btw. just because the screenshoots dont show dynamic shadows it doesn't mean that the engine cant do them... the engine has dynamic shadows and has a great performance

    9. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh boy, here's one of the most cliched types of slashdot posts imaginable.

    10. Re:Humility would be a virtue by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This will probably be modded down, but it's worth highlighting. Diablo II looked great for its era, and was basically a 2D engine. Duke Nukem 3D was really 2.5D, but unless the monsters got really close it often looked much better than Quake (for one thing, duke3D could happily run at 800x600 on machines that struggled to do more than 400x300 with Quake).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    11. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You don't really understand what a game engine is... do you? Have you ever used one? Any engine with good scripting capabilities can be used to make good gameplay. It's the developers using the engine's fault, not the engine's fault, if the gameplay sucks.
      However, although games are 90% art, you can not claim your engine to be "definitely the most advanced open-source game engine" if it doesn't even have dynamic shadows.

      I'm currently using a free, open source 3d engine, that has dynamic lighting/shadows and alot more, and I've seen many like it.

    12. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The screenshots on the Phornix page are all of modified Quake 3 levels, which still use static lightmaps. So yeah, of course it still looks like Quake 3 - it's using Quake 3 levels, and full-blown dynamic lighting is mostly incompatible with lightmaps.

      Have a look at the screenshots from the Xreal website:

      http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/ScreenShots

      The top screenshots are from a Quake 4 level. Quake 4 levels don't have lightmaps - all of the lighting in that level is being done in real time. It's using more modern techniques than the actual Quake 4 engine, so it actually looks quite a bit better than Quake 4.

      Also, pretty much every feature in Xreal can be turned on and off. You can run without any kind of dynamic lighting, with static lighting but dynamic shadows, with full dynamic lighting, and in any case with self shadowing turned on or off, and half a dozen different techniques for actually drawing the shadows.

    13. Re:Humility would be a virtue by kripkenstein · · Score: 1

      Those are indeed much better. A shame that Phoronix didn't use those...

    14. Re:Humility would be a virtue by mcrbids · · Score: 1

      Just wait until you see Duke Nukem Forever.

      The graphics are amazing - it's like an entire, real world, with cars, airplanes, and chicks, and ice cream! You can taste, smell, have sex, the whole thing! The resolution is incredible! Game play is s a hard left from the original game, which was mostly about killing people - most of the new game seems to be centered around making money and buying food, impressing chicks, paying bills, stuff like that.

      It's the most realistic video game... EVER.

      Of course, you can get the same effect by leaving your mother's basement, but....

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    15. Re:Humility would be a virtue by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Duke3d could also do impossible levels (large insides to sheds for example), which makes it super fun.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    16. Re:Humility would be a virtue by blahplusplus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Quake always had horrible art direction, bland palletized textures, etc. Doom 2 had more artistic merit then Quake 1 and 2 ever had in terms of range of art and style.

      I love quake 3 in terms of gameplay but even the art in quake 3 feels weird, random, and artificial . IMHO iD software has always had a problem finding good artists for quake. Quake 4 (single player) was a total joke, it was basically doom 3 redux except not anywhere near as good.

    17. Re:Humility would be a virtue by node+3 · · Score: 1

      Did you read the captions of the screen shots? These aren't shots of their own maps.

      Their engine is far more advanced than any of the other Open Source engines. What they don't have yet is a complete game.

    18. Re:Humility would be a virtue by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      I think the point of the article is, it scales well. The GPU code isn't heavily CPU dependant, so with a powerful GPU, you can really ramp up the graphics quality and amount of stuff onscreen.

      ES 2.0 support is interesting. It means it might work on devices like the Pandora or iPhone, with some modifications.

    19. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      uh huh.. quake 4 wasn't even ID you fucking dbag

    20. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I understand that as a ex top dog, id bashing is great sport, but their fall from grace was almost 10 years ago. It's getting a bit stale.

      id didn't even make Quake 4.

    21. Re:Humility would be a virtue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It does have stencil shadows, they're just very expensive. Its not about dissing them, its about comparing them to Xreal.

    22. Re:Humility would be a virtue by kripkenstein · · Score: 1

      I don't know about "far more advanced than other FOSS engines".

      How about the OGRE rendering engine, used by e.g. OpenFrag? OGRE is highly advanced and even used by commercial games. Aside from being written in GLSL and targeting OpenGL 3.0, what does XreaL have that OGRE doesn't? (Note that OGRE has addons for a lot of stuff, like HDR, realistic water, etc. etc. - so take those into account in your comparison).

  7. Not so great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I've messed around with this thing over the past few years since I have a lot of interest in any new developments in the Q3 engine. My feeling is that it's klunky and not very optimised. Running on the same system that I am able to play such games as Timeshift or Bioshock completely fluidly, XreaL offers pretty poor performance. The last build I tried a few months ago also didn't look all that great, especially for shadows.

    XreaL gets a lot of appreciation for what they are trying to do, but it's more of a tech demo. It isn't nearly at the point of being ready for use in games.

  8. Nice by SharpFang · · Score: 1

    now if there were games that use it...

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  9. Cool but... by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

    ... the major cost and time sink in game development is content generation.

    The question is, is the engine good enough to be used by commercial industry and would they want to given the fact that companies are a bunch of copyright nazi's?

    It's cool to have an open source engine but it's highly unlikely any open source developer will be able to develop a compelling game on it given the enormous time and resources it now takes to create a modern game and live up to today's expectations.

    I'd really like to see open source art asset generation tools, IMHO the future is automating the creation of things like art, etc, which at the present is woefully tedious and time consuming.

    1. Re:Cool but... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      If Web 2.0 (or the internet gaming community) told us anything, then that people love making content if you give them the tools to do it. Yes, you'll get 99.999% crap and garbage. Which isn't such a problem with thousands of people doing it, one or two of them will generate some worthwhile content.

      It's likely that the time is long over when one person could create all the necessary goodies to make a great game. I somehow trust the internet, though, to bring people together to make different modules for a game, as long as there is some focusing point, something that exists and gives them a reason to make content for it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Cool but... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      I suspect that this is unlikely; but it would be quite interesting if some games("casual" games and games from the studios who licence engines, rather than build them, would be the most likely candidates) were to move toward the Player + Data model of movies and music, rather than the current monolithic one.

      Under any common FOSS licence, your art, sound, story, etc. aren't any less copyrighted or proprietary (if you want them to be) just because they are distributed with a FOSS game engine. You, the game designer, would be selling that bundle, not the engine it comes with. In principle, you could have the modern equivalent of ScummVM, where the engine is distinct from the game.

    3. Re:Cool but... by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The question is, is the engine good enough to be used by commercial industry and would they want to given the fact that companies are a bunch of copyright nazi's?

      If you look at the FAQ, you will find that they use the GPL. Not the LGPL. Which means the commercial game companies would have to hand out the source code for the entire game. Not gonna happen.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    4. Re:Cool but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with art in the open source community is the culture of "ownership". Open source software development works because everybody is free to share the software with anybody. With the artwork, we often find people willing to author some artwork and publish online only to tell the community that they aren't allowed to share and improve the artwork.

    5. Re:Cool but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're overlooking the real downside here.

      The Duke Nukem Forever team has to start all over again.

    6. Re:Cool but... by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's sad and true. But there's actually two kinds of artists, or rather, two different reasons.

      First, the "it's MINE and you're not allowed to touch it kind". They basically operate under something like a CSS mindset. Look at it at their page, but don't you dare copying it.

      And then there's the "my art is PERFECT, don't you dare to RUIN it" kind. They don't mind if you take their art and spread it, but they view it as a personal insult if you "improve" it. In their mind, it's perfect as it is and you should worship them for being awesome.

      Neither group is well suited for open development. The first because they don't want to. The second because it leads to the invariable headache when you try to tell them that the polycount of their model is simply out of whack.

      You need the artist that like to create art and that likes to see his art "come alive", when others take it and develop on it. It's a different mindset. And yes, those artists do exist.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:Cool but... by i_ate_god · · Score: 1

      Well, considering that art is almost always about sharing an idea in "your own words" so to speak, if someone else improved or modified the art, then the message becomes skewed and the original artist might be misinterpreted as a result.

      So yeah, the culture of ownership exists because I as a musician, express myself this way, and if someone like you came around and did a remix, then my ability to communicate becomes skewed, and I can no longer express myself properly.

      The other thing you talk about, sharing, that's a bit complicated. On the one hand, you want an audience. You might even be willing to give away the music for free, but sharing the context you're talking about, that's USING the music for something other than enjoyment. That's using music to convey a completely different message. What if a political party whose ideologies offend me used one of my songs in one of their TV ads? I'd be furious. I don't like that political party and what they believe in, but now I'm associated with them!?

      I think the culture of ownership is justified.

      The problem is with the culture of greed and excess. No artist needs to be a millionaire. If it happens it happens and good for you, but don't get there by squeezing the balls of your audience. Should the audience HAVE to pay for your music? Well, that's personal choice I guess, but when you do charge the audience, don't insult them at the same time. I for one plan to sell CDs and give it away for free at the same time. The CDs then will be limited and if people actually like my music, some of them will buy the CDs. Most of my friends know how to download movies and they do so as well, doesn't stop them from spending hundreds of dollars on building a DVD library though.

      Anyways, culture of ownership I believe in. Culture of excess, I don't. And I'd really wish people would stop confusing the two...

      --
      I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
    8. Re:Cool but... by neomunk · · Score: 1

      That's what I was thinking. Why not sell your game on disc and include the source on the disk. Maybe even throw in an open source compiler specific to the target platform, with adequate "tech support does not support compiling issues" warnings of course.

      You're not selling the engine, you're selling the game data, and giving the engine away, like you should be. Putting the source on the disk itself (as opposed to the required link to source) might even serve to bring a few smart gamers into the programming fold, as they would likely learn a bit about the language while looking for cheats or strategy advantages. That last bit is probably wishful thinking, but I believe the rest is accurate and legal.

    9. Re:Cool but... by tepples · · Score: 1

      Under any common FOSS licence, your art, sound, story, etc. aren't any less copyrighted or proprietary (if you want them to be) just because they are distributed with a FOSS game engine.

      That depends on how many game rules are part of the game engine and how many are in interpreted scripts.

    10. Re:Cool but... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I think the link to source makes sense too. Link on the web site, that is. If you make any modifications at all to the source code of the engine - even if it's not related to the functionality of the engine itself (fixing error message typos and so on), you'd be charging for the source code if you required the purchase of a CD to get at it.

    11. Re:Cool but... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Has this issue been taken to court yet? I think it's a real stretch. Including different game data doesn't count as "dynamic linking." That's like including a JPEG file on a disc with Gimp.

      If the engine is written so that this is required, then make the necessary changes to the game engine and release those changes for free.

    12. Re:Cool but... by RegularFry · · Score: 1

      If you tied, say, the Lua engine into XreaL, and wrote all your game logic in Lua, then you'd be fine keeping that source closed. The artwork would be similarly protected.

      --
      Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
  10. ioquake3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually it's based on ioquake3, which itself brings lots of improvements to id software's Quake 3 engine.
    Have a look at http://ioquake3.org/improvements/

    1. Re:ioquake3 by Steauengeglase · · Score: 1

      Anyone have any idea of when they fully broke with the old codebase? I thought the new voip stuff was pretty nice, mumble.

  11. Do they need non-open-source games? by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

    I don't think so. Projects like Nexuiz and Tremulous exist without non-commercial variants. This may be different for office applications, where managers want a vendor they can hold responsible. For instance Sun which still sells the commercial Star Office that is not much different from Open Office.

    This said, a big thanks to Id software for open sourcing their older stuff.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
    1. Re:Do they need non-open-source games? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Projects like Nexuiz and Tremulous exist without non-commercial variants.

      And they also require expensive hardware: usually a separate PC and monitor per player, as opposed to four USB gamepads or Bluetooth pointing devices connected to one PC. Nexuiz doesn't support split screen. This is because most store-bought PCs are compatible only with high-definition monitors, and most HD monitors are 19" diagonal or smaller, too small for four people to fit around. Moreover, PC owners don't seem to feel like buying the $50 scan converter to turn VGA signals into composite or S-Video signals suitable for the 27" or bigger SDTV in the living room. So until HDTVs replace more SDTVs in the living room, games designed for in-person party settings have to be developed for consoles, which have SDTV output but ban all copylefted software.

    2. Re:Do they need non-open-source games? by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      So what?

      A lot of gamers have a PC anyway, especially those who are into programming and digital art. The latter are most likely to contribute to an Open Source project anyway. So the lack of a console version may limit the number of consumers who play these games, but it won't threaten the viability of Open Source games.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    3. Re:Do they need non-open-source games? by tepples · · Score: 1

      A lot of gamers have a PC anyway

      Owning one gaming PC != owning four gaming PCs. I'd need four for myself, the two cousins I'm babysitting, and the friend they have over.

    4. Re:Do they need non-open-source games? by Randle_Revar · · Score: 1

      Why on earth would you want split screen in a FPS? Split screen is for Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers, you know, party games. FPS are for single player, playing online, or LAN parties, in which case everyone typically does bring their own computer.

      --
      Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
    5. Re:Do they need non-open-source games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >gamepads

      Stupid console kiddies these days think it is a good idea to play FPSs on a console and with a controller... GET OFF MY LAWN!

    6. Re:Do they need non-open-source games? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Why on earth would you want split screen in a FPS?

      Ask the developers of Goldeneye 007.

      Split screen is for Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers, you know, party games.

      But for which open source games is split screen? Wii system software 4.0 isn't cracked for use with free software.

      FPS are for single player, playing online, or LAN parties, in which case everyone typically does bring their own computer.

      The other three people I mentioned use PCs with years-old GPUs, and they are too young to convince their parents to let them remove the PCs from the house.

  12. Ray Tracing by should_be_linear · · Score: 1

    I am looking forward to Intel's ray-tracing solution, that will make creating of any game *much* easier. Just place your objects to scene and there you go, no need for object simplifying algorithms and computing of all sorts of stuff related to lighting. If they bind it to Java in some smart and powerful way, everybody and my cat will be able to create great-looking games. Finally, playability part will become major factor instead of stupid shadows and FPS.

    --
    839*929
    1. Re:Ray Tracing by Sun.Jedi · · Score: 1

      I'll take playability over eye-candy any day of the week. Playability is why it's common to turn off many of the graphics features, even with a decent rig.

    2. Re:Ray Tracing by mdm-adph · · Score: 1

      Ray-Tracing in Java... sorry, my mind just assploded.

      --
      It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
    3. Re:Ray Tracing by retroStick · · Score: 1

      If they do raytracing in Java, FPS will become the *only* major factor people worry about.

      There are already numerous easy-to-use game development environments (such as DarkBASIC), but have these resulted in any games that are great-looking or innovative? Generally, lowering the entry requirements for making games just results in people who lack the required skills, knowledge and experience trying to make games - the results are not usually anything to write home about.

    4. Re:Ray Tracing by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      It shouldn't. The ray tracing will be handled by the hardware/library. And Java's JIT compiler is getting pretty dang good.
      Try Eclipse.org sometime. While not a game it will show you just how good a java application can be.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    5. Re:Ray Tracing by mdm-adph · · Score: 1

      Completely unprovoked hostility FTW! USA! USA!

      --
      It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
    6. Re:Ray Tracing by grumbel · · Score: 1

      Raytracing isn't a solution, its just another way to tackle the problem. You still have to fix all the same visual inaccuracies that you get in normal rasterization. Raytracing doesn't give you soft shadows, it doesn't give you dynamic scenes, it doesn't give you ambient occlusion, it doesn't give you global illumination and many many more things. You can write a raytracing in a few dozens lines of code, but that will be one that renders shiny spheres, not something that can keep up with a commercial game engine. If you want to have all the advanced lighting in raytracing you have to do lots of research and coding just as you have to do with rasterization and of course you have to wait 10 years before everybody has decent enough hardware to make that even practical.

    7. Re:Ray Tracing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I agree with your general sentiment, I think that using Eclipse to showcase Java's performance is a poor strategy.

    8. Re:Ray Tracing by Quantumstate · · Score: 1

      I have actually tried eclipse and I found that because my hardware is somewhat old (7 years) it runs too sluggishly to be nice to use. Apart from games there is not much other software which I have come across which I have had any problems with. Thus I would be forced to conclude that the Java performance is not actually good enough for my needs with this.

    9. Re:Ray Tracing by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      You must be very short of ram then. I run it all the time and don't have any issues even on older slow machines.
      Do not get the version with all the plug ins. Some of those are real pigs.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    10. Re:Ray Tracing by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Honestly, any seriously huge application (read: IDE) will run slowly on your equipment.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    11. Re:Ray Tracing by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Check out Sunflow, a very nice and fast raytracer:

      http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/

      Seriously, it's a fantastic renderer and its quite speedy! :)

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  13. A proposal for an agreement with game companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The biggest problem in the OSS gaming world is content, that is, graphics and sound; for every programmer we need 5 artists at least.
    Game companies usually employ a lot of skilled artists, but their content is closed as hell and is soon forgotten once the game becomes obsolete.
    What if we could allow those companies to use this engine without publishing the source and modifications, which normally would be a violation of the GPL license, but arranged in a way they give in return the use of their art only in OSS games?

  14. That's not saying much... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The screenshots are pretty weak, honestly. I know it represents a lot of hard work, but they should avoid hyping it until they have something more substantive to show. What they have is barely at the level of games for the Wii, much less modern PC games.

    1. Re:That's not saying much... by JSBiff · · Score: 1

      Well, sometimes the game engine tech people are not the right people to create impressive artwork and levels to show off the capabilities. By 'hyping' what they've done, mmaybe they'll attract the interest of artists and level designers who will create something more impressive with it, so that they can *further* hype it. At some point, you just put it out there and see what other people do with it. It sounds like they are at that point.

  15. It's not up to them. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    Quake3 was released under the GPL. That means no non-open-source games with it, ever, unless id changes their minds -- and even then, they'd have to get a release from every participant.

    Not that it necessarily matters. As Loneowolf666 points out, Nexuiz is very playable (and fun) without needing a commercial game.

    On the other hand, not all commercial games would be ruined by an open client -- for example, Second Life already has an open client, and their client arguably sucks performance-wise; something like this could help them quite a lot, if their license is compatible. (If not, their specs are open, so it's possible an XreaL-based client could be developed without the use of the original SL code.)

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    1. Re:It's not up to them. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. At least according to how the FSF interpret the GPL, you can still release games where the artwork and story is closed but the game engine is open. This actually makes a lot of sense for game companies; most of their added value comes from the story and artwork, and they typically pay a company like Id for the engine. They could release a boxed game with their own artwork, and as long as they included the source code and a copy of the GPL along with the game then they'd be complying with the terms. Their added content could still be under a restrictive license.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:It's not up to them. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      I stand corrected.

      I don't know how effective that would be, as it hasn't been tried beyond old games like Quake 3.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    3. Re:It's not up to them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And to be a bit more thorough: id Software itself keeps the engine closed for a bit (typically a period of about 5 years) so that they may more successfully exploit licensing the engine off to 3rd party developers. It would be hard for them to be as successful in the engine-licensing business if the 3rd parties could just use a free engine from the start and not bother paying id a few thousand dollars for the engine. Once the engine is no longer commercially viable (or at least, few companies approach them for licenses), they decide it's time to release the source code under the GPL so that those who really love the game can continue maintaining it, improve it, etc.

    4. Re:It's not up to them. by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Well, it's going to be tried again soon, we've got one fool who's trying to make his Spring mod commercial (I think he has about a snowball's chance in hell if he ever goes through with it).

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  16. Game Modding by i_ate_god · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the things these people have to do is take a page from Valve and Epic and look closely how the two created modding tools for their engine.

    Well, Unreal Editor doesn't really allow you to make an entirely new game out of the Unreal engine, but it's an incredible mapping tool, much better than Hammer for the Source Engine.

    But, Valve has other tools as well, such as Faceposer to help in lip syncing your models. As well, the event based choreography of NPCs and physics seems to me to be unparalleled. NPC see's enemy, fire an event, which triggers the NPC to freeze, since the enemy was MEDUSA ALL ALONG! It's very intuitive programming.

    So this engine needs to have an infrastructure in place to make modding as intuitive, as well as tools that make use of that infrastructure.

    --
    I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
    1. Re:Game Modding by ToasterMonkey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uh, hello, give a little credit to ID and their modding support. Don't forget Team Fortress and how Robin Walker got hired at Valve.

  17. Yay! I uake 3! yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    uh, qyuake 3? Assumo man, like I really really liked quake 3, FIVE YEARS AGO !!

    1. Re:Yay! I uake 3! yay! by AlamedaStone · · Score: 1

      Dude... Q3A came out more than 10 years ago.

      --
      "All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
  18. Architectural Applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We are interested in using this to implement an architectural walk-through for new buildings that are being proposed and others that are being considered for renovation. We have heard that the Quake engine has been used for this purpose, but have not found any way to vault the learning curve.

    Are there any good examples that would facilitate entering this type of development, or is their any concrete information on implementing this type of usage?

  19. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well not stricly a game engine but Ogre is the leading open-source 3d engine at the moment with a well established position and dozens of completed projects[including commercial ones]. And it's years now on the market.

  20. WOW AWESOME GRAPHICS!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It might even give the original Half-Life, a 10-year-old game, a run for its money!

  21. Sombody wants to show this guy OverDose... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Because last time I checked, xReal looked like a badly made mod for Q3, and OverDose looked like a legit retail quality game. Not trying to start a "who is better than who" war here but OverDose has probably the best tech out there, plus its based on Q2 code, not Q3. xReal will only ever be as good as the art it takes from mods and maps, thats the biggest gripe I have with it. Its just another "Open Arena" clone, it does nothing new. http://www.teamblurgames.com/overdose/

    1. Re:Sombody wants to show this guy OverDose... by petrus4 · · Score: 1

      Not trying to start a "who is better than who" war here but OverDose has probably the best tech out there, plus its based on Q2 code, not Q3.

      Quake 2 was (IMHO anyway) the weakest product id have released. That's not to say that it was bad necessarily, by any means, but there really wasn't a lot about it that I was able to like, in comparison with id's other games.

      I thought XreaL looked good, and the single main reason why, was because of what the blog had about being able to render a scene at 145 FPS, when another modified Q3 engine could only do so at 22 FPS.

      The reason why I find that interesting is because there's a particular collaborative 3D project out there which you might have heard of, called Open Croquet. Croquet is a great project with a lot of potential, but one thing they don't really have right now is map editing software with the ability to produce zones that really look good.

      Because of that, I've wanted to see Croquet possibly incorporate something at least reasonably close to Radiant or a version of UnrealED, but at the same time there are problems with that, not only with BSP stuff being a little too static for what Croquet wants, but also because of terrible FPS inefficiency at times. If Croquet could get a renderer for BSP/Radiant maps with truly good FPS, and the ability to port from one map to another without prohibitive load times, it would probably go a long way towards making that project a lot more popular.

  22. xreal! i can see it now. by nimbius · · Score: 1

    teabagging and bunny-hopping to the X degree.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  23. Re:Reality would be a virtue by UncleRage · · Score: 1
    Which reminds me, I've got a story...

    There's this hotel... well, no. A LAUNDROMAT! And this guy is hired as a caretaker over... uhm... SPRING BREAK! So he and his family move into the apartment upstairs and instead of focusing on finishing his blog, he winds up in wacky adventures with ghosts from a tragic accident on a GGW video, four kids and a dog.

    The whole thing ends up with a guy in a coyboy hat fighting off a giant sewer spider while a couple of old insomniacs are making out in a parking lot.

    My agent tells me it's a winner. I'm personally leaning towards selling the concept straight to Syfy as a miniseries instead of dealing with the whole blah...blah...blah... writing thing.

    --
    #SickNotWeak
  24. Re:Reality would be a virtue by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    The Q3A wasn't copied here, Id released it under the GPL. This project has then extended it, with a lot of features not found in the original. Take a look at something like the Nexuiz engine for comparison. This is based on the Quake 1 engine, but now has very little code from that era left and supports a number of things that were not in the Quake 2 engine and a few not even in the Quake 3 engine. The fact that something is based on a project that was originally developed and released as a proprietary product does not diminish it.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  25. Some thoughts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    1. Not all FOSS games are crap. Certainly, some are, but I just played Urban Terror last night, and I've found it to be a lot of fun. I'm hoping this engine will produce something at lesat as good.
    2. Artists and programmers??? In the same room??? Are you crazy??? The universe will explode!!! Seriously, I've found some good artwork in Urban Terror, and I'm sure if the gameplay is good that someone will do the same for this platform/engine/thingy. Great idea to support Unreal Tournament art/mods/whatever because that gives you a pretty rich base to start.
    3. For me, it's MUCH more about the gameplay than how it looks. Different I'm sure for your average 16-yr-old who is happy to button mash just so it's sexy. Looks matter some, but if the physics are bad or the game is buggy, forget it.

  26. The Duke Nukem State of Mind by westlake · · Score: 1

    The great thing about an Open game is that it can be worked on for fucking ages and still come out to be positive.

    You can't sit around for fucking ages waiting for everything to come together.

    You have to make it happen now.

    Projects need leadership. Projects need discipline. Projects need goals.

    The FOSS developer can't expect an unlimited commitment from outside talent that sees significant opportunities opening up elsewhere.

  27. ...Depends. by The_Odd_Guy_II · · Score: 1

    The reason is that doing a complete set of artwork for a game is hard, and extremely time consuming. Most people, if they have the time, skills, and interest, will join a mod project, rather than develop something completely new from the ground up. Most of those mod projects subsequently amount to nothing due to poor interpersonal communications, inability to meet deadlines, real life getting in the way, etc.

    So for a FOSS game artist, you're asking that a person be talented, dedicated, able to meet deadlines, not interested in the mod scene, technically adept (probably), good at working with others, and willing to work for free.

    Then you have to find the same thing in a half dozen other people, some on sound, some on levels, environment, character models, etc.

    Making a video game is a tremendous undertaking these days. Anyone capable of making a good game for free probably shouldn't sell themselves for that little.

    Well, if it's based on Quake, it might be wotrh playing, if this ancient machine of mine will run it. the biggest game i've run is the online Instantaction.com games.

  28. We'll leave your lawn as soon as... by tepples · · Score: 1
    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    >gamepads

    Stupid console kiddies these days think it is a good idea to play FPSs on a console and with a controller... GET OFF MY LAWN!

    Give us an operating system that can reliably address four keyboards and four mice, and we'll get off your lawn.

  29. AI by danieltdp · · Score: 1

    It is a little of topic. But what I see as lacking on many open source FPSs is nice AI. Besides playing online, it happens that I like to play in single player mode, and some nice SMART Ai would come in handy for that.

    --
    -- dnl
  30. Looks Pretty Dated to Me by popo · · Score: 1

    I'm not seeing anything that looks 21st century here. This is circa 1999 all the way...

    --
    ------ The best brain training is now totally free : )