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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."

10 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. '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.

  2. 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 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.'"
  3. 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 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.
    2. 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
    3. 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.

    4. 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.

  4. 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.
  5. 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.