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Open Source FPS Game Alien Arena 2009 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-bells-new-whistles dept.

Alienkillerrace writes "The open sourced, freeware FPS game Alien Arena 2009 has been released (Windows and Linux). The improvements to the game engine are very significant, and have surely raised the bar for free games of this genre. All surfaces in the game are now rendered using GLSL, not only improving the visual quality, but the performance as well. Interesting new effects like post-process distortions using GLSL have been implemented, as well as light volumes, better per-pixel lighting (reminiscent of UT3), and shaded water. Equally notable is that the sound system has been completely rewritten using OpenAL, allowing for effects such as Doppler, and adding Ogg Vorbis support. The game is free to play and available for download on its official website. It has a stats system and a built-in IRC client in its front-end game browser."

7 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Nexuiz clone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It looks, plays and feels just like Nexuiz!

  2. Wow, it has technical specs. by Chelloveck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But is it fun?

    --
    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
    1. Re:Wow, it has technical specs. by nomadic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Since it's open source, the answer is: probably not.

    2. Re:Wow, it has technical specs. by ZosX · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perceived value. The value of something increases in peoples' minds with the cost. It all has to do with how informed the consumer is. A lesser informed consumer would see something that is free as worthless, otherwise, why would it be free?

      --
      zosxavius photography
    3. Re:Wow, it has technical specs. by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously. I hear that argument with OSS games every time - "yeah, it might be fun", but it looks like crap". Now we have a relatively good looking game, and we get this. It's a fairly classic multiplayer FPS - if you liked Quake 3 or the UT series, you'll be enjoying it.

      I find it funny no one seems to apply this argument to most commercial games lately. Most of them look glorious but are shit to play.

  3. Re:Windows installer totally broken by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Would it kill me? No.

    Do I feel any compulsion to help them fix bugs in a game that I'll never play, or even look at, again? No.

    Do I have any confidence that they give even the slightest shit about fixing bugs, since I saw approximately 50 of them in the first 5 minutes of running (or failing to run) the game? No.

    Look, the "Galaxy" dialog beeps every time you click on anything. Copy and paste doesn't work. The text is an unreadable color-combination. The actual game presents you with a mysterious prompt (using a different unreadable color-combination) with absolutely no instructions how to play. For God's sake, it tries to install spyware. Obviously the people making this game don't give a shit. So neither do I.

    --
    Comment of the year
  4. Re:GLSL is .... ? by sopssa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is interesting is that how have they implemented a system to prevent cheaters and hackers? As Open Source game makes it possible to get the full game code and just make your cheats into it and build your own client, rather than going the harder route of debugging asm language. Have they implemented something to prevent cheating, or have they just totally ignored it?