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Open Source FPS Blood Frontier Releases Beta 2

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-with-bloodier-frontiers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The open source FPS Blood Frontier has now made their beta2 release. From the article: 'After many months of development, and massive amounts of input from the public, we are proud to present you with the new release of Blood Frontier, v0.85 (Beta 2). This new version totally redefines and improves the game in many ways, creating a whole new style that makes it almost nothing like its predecessor.'"

113 comments

  1. It's "bloody" fun! by WaroDaBeast · · Score: 0

    Hope there won't be too many "buggers" taking advantage of exploits in this one game — since it's open source after all, they can fix the bugs pretty quickly, right?

    --
    "The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
    1. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Ziekheid · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Not having a proper anticheat system deployed will be a bigger problem, like on warsow.

    2. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Sparr0 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "proper anticheat system" = server admin who bans cheaters. problem solved.

    3. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by sznupi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Any sufficiently advanced cheating is indistinguishable from skill.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    4. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Toonol · · Score: 0

      Which renders cheating mostly irrelevant, as far as the other players are concerned.

    5. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by sopssa · · Score: 3, Informative

      It still ruins it kinda. Sure you get off the idiots who run around at 100x speed aimbotting and killing everyone, but discreet use of esp hack that shows you where enemies are or if someone is coming behind you will still give major advantage to the cheater. It will not ruin the game completely, but it still makes it kind of stupid.

      Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games. You don't even need to debug assembly and create a hack for it, you just need to edit the source code and build your own client. Open source anti-cheating system has the same problems too, and in addition open source community would probably yell against locking down the client with such system. Sure, server admins can still ban the obvious cheaters, but this is one of the things commercial games (and commercial anti-cheating software) will always have advantage over open source games, at least until we can actually just render the player screen on server and transmit it over the internet.

    6. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games. You don't even need to debug assembly and create a hack for it, you just need to edit the source code and build your own client.

      Not always.

      It can be solved by not sending to your client any information you shouldn't know as player or character.

      It's fricking hard, but not impossible.

    7. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by sznupi · · Score: 1

      Isn't that on similar level of "hard" (perhaps even on greater...) to simply streaming the image to client with sufficiently low latency?

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    8. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by erikina · · Score: 1

      Not even close. As long as computers are better at tasks than humans, the issue remains.

      i.e. Think about an aim-bot. A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data. And even if you do the whole streaming-game thing, bot likely will still exist, that process the stream and emulate user actions far quicker than a human could

    9. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data.

      If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.

      Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition. And their massive cluster still sometimes has to make you wait a few seconds while they try to figure out what the hell you said.

      So, getting back to what you said:

      Think about an aim-bot.

      There are generally going to be two things happening here:

      Either you've discovered a surefire way to distinguish real targets from noise, in which case, the army probably wants to talk to you... ...or your aimbot is going to both be too perfect at headshotting people, and it'll make stupid mistakes that only a bot would. This is where it becomes painfully obvious to a good admin and/or good server-side passive anti-cheat what's going on.

      I'd also suggest you look into the Robo-Olympics, and various programming competitions, and the general failure of AI in single-player games. Again, it is in general either not possible to do better than a human, or it's so obviously better than a human that you get banned.

      --
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    10. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by dmbasso · · Score: 1

      Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games.

      Actually, for some genres, an authentication scheme based on PGP's web of trust could be used to restrict who is able to participate on a match. Anybody that is obviously too good to be true could be collectively banned. Those who can't be subjectively detected, don't hinder the gameplay.

      If I had the time, I would implement something like that for Frozen Bubble... (oh, but I *hate* Perl)

      --
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    11. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by sopssa · · Score: 1

      It's not really hard to make aimbot work so that it's not so obvious, it's only bad cheats that just jump to point to enemys head and shoot. It's obvious of course. But it's trivial to add smoothness and human-like errors to the movement. The data is there. Client knows where enemy is (because it has to be drawn). It's a matter of few cpu cycles to calculate the new direction to aim at and make command to shoot. No human can possible, ever, work that fast.

      Another problem is ESP, warnings and other such cheats that do not directly interface gameplay, but give cheater a huge advantage because he gets a lot more info than other players. Then it's just up to him to act in a way that isn't so obvious.

      Only the stupid cheaters are caught by server admins. And the actual non-cheating, but good players get kicked by trigger happy admins. There IS need for anti-cheating software.

    12. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm that web of trust gave me an idea.

      What if you could rank player skill, say 1-3 + G, where 1=less skilled than me, 2= as skilled as me, 3= more skilled than me and G= Griefer

      Then using some sort of smart algoritm and web of trust check what grade other players gave this player, if everyone thinks someone is dominating then perhaps he doesn't fit on your server, but should play with others that are dominatingmost players, on the other hand if he gets rank 3 even with other great players, then perhaps he is cheating. This also gives a ranking (like a chess ranking, or a Go ranking) and a consistency point*.

      *= a player that have been ranked by many long time accounts gets a higher consistency grade, so if you start a new account to grief players you will have low consistency untill enough players have rated you, if those players are newly created they will give you low consistency , while if they themselves have high consistency they will contribute more. If you have too many G rating you will of course not be allowed on most servers. And some servers will require that you have a certain consistency to be allowed to play. Add in slashdot meta-moderation for more fun :-)

    13. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 1

      Is there no such thing as sanity checking for this kind of thing? "Player has shot the last five enemies in the face at exactly the same level below the (team coloured?) helmet. He's probably got an aimbot running." or "Player was in this room, he's now in the courtyard, why the hell wasn't he in the corridor before that? Wallhax."

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    14. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ESP? things like wallhacks? i think nexuiz has a method to prevent such cheats.

      It's true, a good cheat can use "hacks" and get away with it, but how does anti-cheating software detect and deal with cheats?

      One game which suffers hugely from cheats is Urban terror, most servers have precious few admins, no voting enabled, and a playerbase too stupid to simply leave when they're being mown down by a blatant aimbotter, and it's not even open source. Compare that with tremulous, where popular servers are generally well policed and voting is virtually never disabled, an active community and server operators who care can actually work quite effectively against cheats. Trem has the kind of people playing who will not only spec and demo something suspicious, but record a video of said demo with showtris to catch people out and shame them. I guess commercial games have much less to gain from a community.

    15. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data.

      If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.

      Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition. And their massive cluster still sometimes has to make you wait a few seconds while they try to figure out what the hell you said.

      I would think that there's a slight difference between determining the vector from one known object (the local player) to another known object (an enemy in the local player's viewport) and doing voice recognition.

    16. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In fps games you cannot do that. For performance reasons, you will need to at least send the geometry data to the client. An aimbot say will be able to detect from that geometry data where opponents are on screen. And since this particular genre of fast fps is pretty stupid (in the sense of brainless, not in the sense of not fun), computers will always be better at it than we. At least people assisted by a bot will always outperform people not assisted by a bot. Some people take it this means it says something about the genre, others say you can solve this problem by simply playing with people you know and trust. And after all, chess didn't die after Deep Blue.

    17. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think Half-Life used to do this. The wall hacks would only work for people near corners and what not. Any further away and you couldn't see them. I guess it used some fairly basic, but fast occlusion detection for players and only sent locations of players that were nearly in sight anyways.

    18. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      it's trivial to add smoothness and human-like errors to the movement.

      At which point, it just becomes an arms race. Add a human-like delay, and a human can win. Add "human-like" misses, and chances are, they'll show a predictable pattern.

      Client knows where enemy is (because it has to be drawn).

      There are several ways to fool this kind of cheat, however. One possibility (making it up as I go) is to send false information about an enemy position, such that it likely won't be drawn (behind/in a wall, or with an invisible model) and watch for clients that immediately snap towards that target.

      Another problem is ESP, warnings and other such cheats that do not directly interface gameplay, but give cheater a huge advantage because he gets a lot more info than other players.

      To a certain extent, you can't really do anything about this. For example, if your game is something like Doom 3, so you've got a lot of darkness, or maybe you've got a nice sniper spot that's hidden by HDR bloom, you might have a player who is just very observant, or you might have a player with worse hardware so they have to turn effects off, or you might have a player who deliberately turns those effects off (and maybe loads bright orange models for the other players) in order to see.

      On the other hand, aside from the misdirection I've mentioned, one thing that helps a lot is to not send information the player doesn't need. For example, Counter-Strike traditionally sends positional information to all players, all the time. One of the many admin mods only sends updates for players you'd be able to see/hear.

      --
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    19. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by arQon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Since there's no "-50: Hopelessly Wrong", I'll sacrifice modding parent as Overrated to post a reply that will hopefully re-clue anyone who reads and believes it.

      Even with access only to the data you "should know", it's still TRIVIAL to mod a client in ways that provide significant advantages. No offense, but parent has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, and obviously no actual experience in this area.

      Rather than listing 20 or 30 trivial cases that disprove your claim, I'll just take the most obvious one.
      An enemy is clearly visible a hundred yards away. I think we can all agree that that's "information you should have as a player", right? My client knows where he is, because it has to draw him. So, with some trivial math, my client is capable of instantly targeting him and shooting for me.

      You say it's not impossible to stop cheating, just "hard". Start with that one, then we'll move on to the more complex cases...

      (And no, even just streaming the game doesn't in any way resolve this, even if it wasn't impractical. Trivial image analysis will pick out the enemy player by motion, color, etc)

    20. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To get technical, it's a security trade off. For example, if player A sends extraneous information that B uses to cheat and see through walls, you could seek to minimise the information and [almost] stop cheating.

      But this is actually an inversion of opportunity to cheat. Now player B could cheat by sending even less information, say, than is essential for accurate gameplay. Perhaps appearing to travel quicker than usual, or just difficult to shoot by not travelling consistently.

    21. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by erikina · · Score: 1

      If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.

      You're joking, right? The theory behind an aimbot is pretty much as simple as it gets. And it's not like you have to kill every person on the map, you could easily use the aimbot to achieve "snapping" to the target or what not.

      Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition.

      While I'm sure you've proved something, it has nothing to do with this. If the task isn't suitable for a bot, don't do it with a bot. You'll notice I also qualified it with a statement "as long as a computer is better at the task" part. Things like social element and group work is going to be too difficult.

      your aimbot is going to both be too perfect at headshotting people, and it'll make stupid mistakes that only a bot would

      It's a silly point, as it's all down to implementation of the bot. The bot doesn't need to do more than just assist you to be a huge advantage.

      One such bot that comes to mind is: tibiabot It only uses data accessible to a person, and only does actions a person could do. And it primarily sits on the background until needed. An example of its use is to automatically hit someone when they're on low health (before they have time to heal) or to automatically heal (with an optional rand(x,y)) delay on low health. Or you can use "combo" features where multiple people playing will all target the same person automatically etc. And even to automatically heal a friend, something that would normally go missed because a player is too focused on something else. It can make a beginner player far more effective player than an advanced player in battles. And is all done without extra data.

    22. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Strangely we see all kinds of abuse in Spring but noone seems to bother altering the engine itself to make a map hack.

      --
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    23. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      An aimbot that works from only an image would not be that easy, true but an aimbot that interfaces with the game state and simply reads player positions from there is trivial since AI agents already do that (of course usually with some artificial inaccuracy and delay to prevent them from simply wiping players out).

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    24. Re:It's "bloody" fun! by ssssch · · Score: 1

      This won't help too much. There will always be ways to cheat. Especially if you know exactly how the server is checking the validity of the client.

      The only solution is for the server to check if the client uses an unmodified version of the game. Exactly that is, what "trusted computing" is promising to deliver.

      I still don't believe trusted computing is possible if the client has total control over his machine (is root) but at least in theory that's the only answer I can think of to solve the cheating problem.

  2. Is it fun? by nacturation · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Judging this book by its cover, this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago with Quake 3: Team Arena. I watched the video, looked at the website, but all of the improvements listed there boil down to either move better, or kill more stuff. Anything actually original about the gameplay that makes it Killzone 2 kind of fun?

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    1. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fucking spoil sport.

    2. Re:Is it fun? by bob5972 · · Score: 1

      If it's open source I'm sure some crazy person somewhere will invent new and weird gameplay mods you can try out. Eventually one of them has to be awesome...

    3. Re:Is it fun? by Ziekheid · · Score: 2, Informative

      Despite looking great, Killzone 2 isn't THAT much fun. It's the killer graphics that made it a hit. I agree with you that it looks a lot like the oldskool games I played back in the day, like most opensource games. This isn't really suprising since most of them run on a heavily modified Quake2 or Quake3 engine (this game isn't though). There should've been some actual gameplay in the trailer to get a better impression.

    4. Re:Is it fun? by hitmark · · Score: 1

      nah, looks like another FPS tuned for a 13-old with a caffeine and sugar high...

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    5. Re:Is it fun? by Eraesr · · Score: 1

      Well, Quake 3 was fun in the day and it still is fun today (see Quake Live).
      If this open source game mimics the gameplay of Quake 3, it's something I could enjoy.

      What I'm wondering about though is what this game offers beyond what Quake 3 (Quake Live) offers. Graphically it looks pretty much on par with Quake 3, but then we're talking about a 10 year old game here. Since the sourcecode for the Quake 3 engine is released under GPL, I don't see what the point of this project is, as they could simply build their game on top of the Quake 3 engine.

    6. Re:Is it fun? by sznupi · · Score: 1

      I'd say it's noticeably worse than Q3 graphically. Remember it's not only about the engine, also art assets.

      --
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    7. Re:Is it fun? by sopssa · · Score: 1

      You're totally correct about crazy and weird at least.

    8. Re:Is it fun? by nacturation · · Score: 1

      Despite looking great, Killzone 2 isn't THAT much fun. It's the killer graphics that made it a hit.

      It's more than just the graphics. Engineers who can repair items, plant sentry turrets, or the ability to launch flying sentries. Medics who can heal/revive teammates or drain energy from the enemy. The ability to plant spawn points can really make a difference in the game balance too. Saboteurs and cloaked snipers, while not that unique, rounds out the player balance. There's also how it seamlessly switches between the different game types (Assassination, Search & Retrieve, Search & Destroy, Bodycount, and Capture & Hold) where most other games reset the entire level.

      All in all, Killzone 2 does look great but I find it to have a fair bit of gameplay innovation as well.

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    9. Re:Is it fun? by DreamsAreOkToo · · Score: 1

      I didn't play Killzone 2. What made it so good?

    10. Re:Is it fun? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      So how come nobody make a killer open source single player game? every time I see an article on open source gaming all I see are a bunch of Quake 3 Arena clones. Why not something with a story to it? Nobody is expecting a free bunch to come up with something Bioshock quality, but there is plenty of players who want to do more than run around like a chicken with its head cut off blowing rockets up everyone's butts you know.

      Hell make a game with humor, like NOLF, or see how totally insane you can make the enemies, like Serious Sam. It would give the open source guys a chance to cook up some killer AI, and possibly even move the genre forward. I know I personally wouldn't give a crap if the graphics were 2004 era if you cooked up some killer AI that would give a good fight without the stupid "rubberband" AI like certain companies make (I'm looking at you EA).

      So how come there isn't any badass single player FOSS shooters? Surely there are plenty of players that would enjoy a good single player, and there has to be developers that want to do more than copy Q3 Arena,yes?

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    11. Re:Is it fun? by nacturation · · Score: 1

      I didn't play Killzone 2. What made it so good?

      See my other post. You should play it. It just feels right. Everything's fluid and natural.

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    12. Re:Is it fun? by fuzzix · · Score: 1

      It's more than just the graphics. Engineers who can repair items, plant sentry turrets, or the ability to launch flying sentries. Medics who can heal/revive teammates or drain energy from the enemy. The ability to plant spawn points can really make a difference in the game balance too. Saboteurs and cloaked snipers, while not that unique, rounds out the player balance...

      Yeah, Enemy Territory is great.

      Huh? What the fuck is "Kill Zone"?

    13. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The content required is probably exponentially higher, and good content is hard to get for free.

    14. Re:Is it fun? by Rogerborg · · Score: 1

      But since they'll all be off playing Team Fortard 7 or Modern Wankfare 9, I expect that Blood Frontier, like all Open Source games, is played only by the developers and three guys in Lithuania.

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    15. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Graphics aren't all that important, as long as the gameplay is good, the thing with Cube2 engine based games(and cube engine ones too) is the physics feel crap, movement just sucks, when compared to id tech based games.

    16. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But since they'll all be off playing Team Fortard 7 or Modern Wankfare 9, I expect that Blood Frontier, like all Open Source games, is played only by the developers and three guys in Lithuania.

      awwww. Did the spy sap your sentry a few too many times?

    17. Re:Is it fun? by Nathrael · · Score: 1

      AI

      You've already answered your own question. Writing a proper AI is damn hard.

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    18. Re:Is it fun? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      If you RTFA'd you'd see that a single player campaign, with co-op support, is in the works.

      Looks like it will make a great Quake 3 Arena replacement as-is, can't wait for single player and co-op. I especially like the nice graphics, very different from the sub-par to downright shitty graphics that are common on FOSS games.

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    19. Re:Is it fun? by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      And Quake's art isn't under a free licence, so if we're comparing the art, it's no longer true to argue "there's no point because there's already something just as good under GPL".

    20. Re:Is it fun? by RenHoek · · Score: 1

      this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago

      This! I mean it's wonderful that many talented coders donate their efforts into games like this. But what we need is some open source designers, graphic artists and such.

      The game may be fun, but when I look at the screenshots, all I see is the same blocky maps and ugly textures that I've seen 10 years ago.Due to this, I myself and probably a lot of others are not even going to download it and give it a try. It might be the most _fun_ game on the planet, but it does need a visual 'hook' to lure people in to try the game.

      Same with Spring (TA clone). It's great that people put time and effort into something that could be really fun, but installation troubles, bad graphics and stupid UI design turned me off so badly that I didn't want to go further.

      Take something like 'Plants vs. Zombies'. The technical aspects of the game are extremely simple. Images: some stretching, fading and 4 frame animations, not even 3D. But the _game_ is wonderful and everybody I know has played it. Not because it's fun, because you don't know if it is until you're at least halfway through the game, but because the game _looks_ fun and they paid a lot of attention to details like the user interface and such.

    21. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, Team Fortress is great.

      Huh? What the fuck is "Enemy Territory"? And while we're at it what's your point? If a multiplayer mode existed before is it worthless when another game implements something similar?

    22. Re:Is it fun? by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      Has a terrible UI, too. I had a debate with one of the game programmers last time this got posted to Slashdot. (Why!???! Is it really that slow of a news day?)

      Shoved it in a blog post if anybody cares: http://blakeyrat.com/2009/02/stupid-slashdot-exchange/

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    23. Re:Is it fun? by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      So it's Tribes circa 1998?

      the ability to launch flying sentries.

      Oh, excuse me, Tribes with the Shifter v1 mod.

      (That actually also describes Battlefield 2142 and probably a dozen other games.)

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    24. Re:Is it fun? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      I actually DID RTFA (I know, but I got bored) but EVERY ONE of these type of games say "single player coming soon" and you know what? Either nothing ever comes of it or you get a totally lame ass "single player" like you have for Q3 (which this is obviously a ripoff of) with lame "bots" that are nothing but oversized target dummies.

      So lets be clear: A single player game is NOT bots, or the same CTF and deathmatch maps with target dummies. It has a story, it has characters, it has missions, and goals, and things to do other than "blow the fuck out of x number of people".

      A game like this will NEVER have a decent single player, not if you spent the next decade on it. Because Quake 3 was NEVER MEANT to be anything but MMO, and anything tacked on top of it will be just that, tacked on top of it. Even the shittiest $10 bargain basement single player game will run circles around it, which is just sad IMHO. All you ever seem to get for Linux "gaming" is the same old tired ass Quake 3 crap with have seen over AND over AND over again and again and again. At this point Slashdot might as well just put as TFA "And here is yet another Quake 3 ripoff, what a surprise". Because if anybody actually wanted to play Quake 3 they could just play Quake Live and be done with it. What a waste.

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    25. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri had that feature in 96 also.

      Kids these days...

    26. Re:Is it fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago with Quake 3: Team Arena

      And Quake 3 was awesome, and no deathmatch-style FPS since has had the same gameplay.

      And all the new games will be poor abandonware with their centralised game servers. Arrrrrr!

    27. Re:Is it fun? by nacturation · · Score: 1

      So it's Tribes circa 1998?

      the ability to launch flying sentries.

      Oh, excuse me, Tribes with the Shifter v1 mod.

      (That actually also describes Battlefield 2142 and probably a dozen other games.)

      Must be, because obviously Killzone 2 is simply a clone of Tribes with no unique gameplay or features.

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    28. Re:Is it fun? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      That would actually be a major selling point around here.

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    29. Re:Is it fun? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      They have to be like that. I play Section 8 and many people whine about combat being too slow in that game because you don't get one shot twitch kills and whatnot (especially how they can't be the hero and wipe out a whole squad just with their 1337 skills when the obvious solution to that problem is to bring your own squad). I've seen a video of MW2 being played with dual shotguns, it never seemed to take more than one shot to kill a player. It wasn't so much a firefight as a game of hide 'n seek where the first person to see the other won. It's what I hated about Counter Strike.

      --
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    30. Re:Is it fun? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      It's almost impossible to get people to work on a single vision without paying them. Everybody has ideas and wants to contribute but for a proper original work you need something consistent. The reason so many FOSS games are clones of popular games is because the vision of "let's make an opensource clone of game X" is easily understood and everyone knows the result.

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    31. Re:Is it fun? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      The bad graphics in Spring are mostly caused by not being a clone of TA but a rip-off. The common mods like BA are straight up ripped material from an ancient commercial release.

      What do you mean with installation troubles though? At least in Windows it's just doubleclicking the installer and hitting next a few times.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  3. "almost nothing like its predecessor" by CountBrass · · Score: 1

    So not really a beta then if it's been changed so much that it's nothing like the 1st beta release.

    More like an alpha release and they're still sorting out the requirements.

    --
    Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
    1. Re:"almost nothing like its predecessor" by Deltaspectre · · Score: 1

      No, really, it's betta

      (Say it out loud)

      --
      My UID is prime... is yours?
  4. Subject by Ihmhi · · Score: 1

    It looks interesting from the video, but I'm tired of playing Quakelikes after all these years. And I only played Quake for the first time about five years ago.

    Clones and similar games are inevitable, of course. I just wish someone would start cloning other hallmark FPS games, like Serious Sam, Doom, Perfect Dark, etc. I'd really like to see some sort of espionage-based FPS out there in open source; something like Splinter Cell, Perfect Dark, or Rainbow Six. Fun things like cloaking devices, remote cameras, etc.

    But since Christmahanukwanzaa is coming up, I'd like to ask Santa for a true-to-the-spirit-of-the-original TRIBES remake. I still play that game nowadays but it isn't as much fun without new blood - and the game makes it very difficult to get new players to come in (thanks to the multiple barriers to entry such as a ridiculous number of mods, custom patches, unofficial master server (because the original was shut down), etc.

    --
    Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
    1. Re:Subject by sznupi · · Score: 1

      Don't count on clones of "other hallmark FPS games" that you mention (at least not on any bearable level of quality)

      Quakelikes are easy to make not only thanks to engines for the taking but also relatively easy game asset creation (it helps that there are lots of map makers, itself thanks to higher relative ease of making deathmatch map than interesting single player level)

      Well, perhaps Serious Sam at some point, that can be made more or less procedurally.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    2. Re:Subject by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 1

      Tribes2's been reactivated thanks to tribesnext, but it's basically on life support again thanks to one particularly sociopathic "competitive" player.

      Serious Sam HD is out and supposedly has a reworked netcode so it'll work better now. It's basically a 1:1 with new graphics and a new engine as far as I know but tbh when it comes to Serious Sam I'm fine with that. Some singeplayer is worth replaying.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    3. Re:Subject by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perfect Dark was a rubbish Golden Eye sequel. Console FPS' *suck*

    4. Re:Subject by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Some people compare Section 8 to Tribes. I have no idea how accurate that is since I've never really played Tribes so take it with a grain of salt.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    5. Re:Subject by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      Tribes2's been reactivated thanks to tribesnext, but it's basically on life support again thanks to one particularly sociopathic "competitive" player.

      Details, please. How does one player manage to kill off a game?

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    6. Re:Subject by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 1

      http://www.themellin.com/t2history.php

      Point of note:

      "You think you're being sportsman-like and friendly when in reality you are being uncompetitive and childish."

      The man's entire worldview revolves around how he is the one true savior of the one true Tribes gametype and everyone else who doesn't just agree with him but actively assist him in harassing the rest until they also join is a part of some vast conspiracy led by a guy named Qing to ensure that Tribes dies and nobody plas it.

      He's basically singlehandedly trolled everyone except a small handful of "competitive" players so hard that they gave up even trying to play.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  5. They already made this game by assemblerex · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's called quake 3

    1. Re:They already made this game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's called Quake Live

  6. Ugh by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 1

    Another unoriginal arena shooter. Sure it looks very pretty but it doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done a million times before.

    Please stop making these now.

    --
    Summation 2
  7. Looks dull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The level design still looks uninspired, which is a problem shared by almost every free game (World of Padman is an exception). How does mapping for Cube 2 engine compare to Unreal and id Tech engines? If it's similar enough, perhaps I'll do something for the project.

    1. Re:Looks dull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      press E from inside the game, that's how the mapping differs from traditional engines. there are actually some really impressive maps for saeurbraten which i'm sure they could adapt for bf

  8. What about warsow?! by arosas · · Score: 2, Informative

    Feel free to mod this post as flamebait, but I feel it's time to rant about the Open Source gaming community. It seems to me whenever there's a new Open Source FPS that comes out, it's just another pathetic Quake clone. Sure the trailer videos *look* cool, and sure the screenshots are rendered at high resolution, with all the bells and whistles enabled. All is good until it comes to the actual gameplay. It's disappointing when all the freetards (excuse my french) drool over another cheezy clone (merely because it's Open Source, but not of it's merits alone) that's no different from the previous hundred clones that came before it. Boring and unoriginal.

    Which brings me to my point: WHAT ABOUT WARSOW?! This game has been out for years, it's free, the source code is GPL'd, runs on windows/linux/mac, and above all the gameplay takes the Quake shooters to a whole new level. In all of my 15+ years of gaming, warsow is by far the most complex and elegant FPS to date. Imagine playing quake2/quake3, now imagine that on crack. That is warsow. It's not another lame re-skinned quake clone like it's predecessors. A quick search on slashdot shows only one post referencing it... ONE POST!!

    The community is small and has been diminishing over the past couple of years. Which is quite surprising for a game with such immense potential. My only guess is this: the game is too hard. Yes I will admit that the learning curve is steep, but that's half the fun right there! You would think a community of opensource folks (who love to tinker with their own systems, to learn and read and gain a better knowledge of the inner-workings of their respective systems) would be chomping at the bit to take on a game that requires some sort of learning. If you're willing to spend 5+ hours trying to decipher an archaic perl regex, you shouldn't break a sweat trying to learn how to rocket jump over the period of a half an hour or so.

    You would think a community that looks down on proprietary cookie-cutter products would embrace originality and innovation in their games, but it's starting to look like the Open Source gamers are painfully similar to their proprietary counter-parts. Same cookie-cutter crap as before, only difference being the price of their engine. </rant>

    1. Re:What about warsow?! by Rogerborg · · Score: 1

      Then quit whining and submit it as a story. Do it every day until some bored editard finally runs it. Then you'll get to whine about all the noobtards that are ruining your game. Everybody wins.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    2. Re:What about warsow?! by Joehonkie · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I was really curious how this compares to Warsow. Warsow is a really solid project and doesn't have the crazy balance issues stuff like Nexuiz seems to have. It also takes the Q3 formula and tweaks it just enough to give you something new, which impresses me.

    3. Re:What about warsow?! by Ihmhi · · Score: 1

      Warsow is, as I see it, a Quake clone that adds walljumps & some extra movement skills. Every weapon is a weapon that's in Quake, with the exception of the Gauntlet/Machinegun hybrid.

      --
      Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
    4. Re:What about warsow?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aside from wall jumping, which was done much better in both Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, Warsow is the same as any generic deathmatch style FPS.

    5. Re:What about warsow?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You complain about pathetic Quake clones and then promote Warsow. ROFL.

    6. Re:What about warsow?! by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yes I will admit that the learning curve is steep, but that's half the fun right there!

      Uh, wrong.

      --
      Comment of the year
    7. Re:What about warsow?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's disappointing when all the freetards (excuse my french) drool over another cheezy clone (merely because it's Open Source, but not of it's merits alone) that's no different from the previous hundred clones that came before it.

      Thank you so very, very much. As a game designer who specialises in aFPS design and works in the Quake community, I cannot begin to express how frustrating it is to see FOSS nerds get the vapors over trash like Nexuiz and OpenArena just because of licensing.

      The community is small and has been diminishing over the past couple of years. ... My only guess is this: the game is too hard. Yes I will admit that the learning curve is steep, ...

      You are absolutely correct. You would be *amazed* to see how much of the playerbase in the combined FPS market (both aFPS and tFPS) will avoid *anything* remotely challenging like the plague. This is why almost every new multiplayer FPS keeps lowering the skill ceiling - the average player doesn't WANT to learn. They'll look at a game as nothing more than an way to kill time or some means to socialise, it's a coincidence if the game is actually any good.

      So in order to bring in and keep this large section of the playerbase, we have to 'dumb down' the game so as to to prevent the decent players from driving away the idiots who 1) don't want to put in the effort to learn and 2) will therefore flee anything that won't hold their hand when they go up against players who will actually expend effort to improve. This is why you'll see things like randomisation in general, attempts to eliminate the ability to establish map control, spawn shields, UT-style overly granular 'balanced' weaponsets and movement systems systems that are hell bent on keeping anyone from moving faster than a newbie.. And that's just a small slice of the worthless crap that crops up in aFPS games, I'm not even touching 'tactical' FPS games like the CoD series. :|

      You know what the saddest thing is, though? We _have_ to do this in order to survive. The market gets more and more saturated as time goes by and everyone wants a slice of the growing playerbase. Put another way, if you don't cater to people who don't want to learn, you won't have a playerbase. Compare QWTF's playerbase to TF2's, compare how many play CPM vs QL, even how many play Tribes vs the Battlefield games, I dare you. I will admit that most designers won't be aware of exactly what they're accomplishing when they arbitrarily lower the skill ceiling in a game, but it is something that I will deny that they _need_ to do in order to ensure the popularity of a project.

      ... but that's half the fun right there! You would think a community of opensource folks ... would be chomping at the bit to take on a game that requires some sort of learning.

      You're forgetting that FOSS nerds (that same group that would be willing to 'spend 5+ hours trying to decipher an archaic perl regex') generally suck at FPS games *and* are obnoxiously petty. This becomes a problem when you have such an individual handling the ruleset and game design of a project, usually due to the project being started or maintained by a single programmer. I'll admit that I have seen the attitude crop up in projects led by mappers, though, so pettiness isn't restricted to technical types. :) So what happens is that this incompetent lead will watch for anything they can't do, understand or could give an experienced player an advantage over them and call it a cheat, an exploit or just plain declare that it 'looks stupid'. I swear, I'll never forget the time I caught a maintainer declaring timing items a cheat..

      - I actually give a shit about my chosen discipline, I'm in gamedev and I so very badly want to get out of it

    8. Re:What about warsow?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but it is something that I will deny that they _need_ to do in order to ensure the popularity of a project.

      Oh, that should be 'that I will not deny', sorry. So much for a coherent rant. :P

    9. Re:What about warsow?! by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      A person starts a game to be entertained by it. Encountering massive skill differences right away and being required to put a lot of work into the game before it becomes fun tells them to go elsewhere and play something fun instead. You can make your extremely skill-based games but they must be fun from the moment the player starts the game up or he will not stay. No arcade game bludgeoned you with its super-hard parts right at the start, they knew people wouldn't throw another coin in there if they get the first impression that the game is more than they can handle. The first level of Contra games is easy, you can usually beat it without running out of lives on your first run (except in 4 and Hard Corps) so you feel like the game is designed for you and the hurdles it places in front of you are surmountable.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    10. Re:What about warsow?! by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      Okay, there are a lot of FOSS FPSes out there... But what many posters here have noticed, they seem to be mostly Q3A clones. What about people who aren't competitive-level Quake players? Is there anything else out there? I mean, Warsow, Nexuiz and Cube may be great games but I'd like something different. Perhaps something with a decent singleplayer mode.

      The only thing I can think of is Aleph One/M1A1 and while Bungie certainly knew how to make a good game I think it's kind of sad that in the FOSS FPS domain the choice seems to boil down to a Doom contemporary and a number of Quake 3 derivatives.


      I could really go for a decent System Shock 2 clone right now, if only because the original is almost impossible to play properly these days.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    11. Re:What about warsow?! by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      Thing is, the closest you can get to make an online FPS game attractive for beginners is a good skill matching system. Quake Live does this part wonderfully, and i bet it's one of the reasons it's so popular, besides the carrying Quake trademark.

  9. Maybe, but tagged !quake3 by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

    From the wiki:

    The game is a single-player and multi-player first-person shooter, built as a total conversion of Cube Engine 2

    That alone adds a dimension that simply won't be there in Quake 3: real-time, multiplayer map editing, on the server, while others are still shooting each other.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  10. Q3A remake? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

    Looks like a low-quality Q3A remake.

    I don’t think it can beat Q3A CPMA (and Defrag) though. Especially not with the XreaL engine and High Quality Quake models and textures.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  11. Arika presents invisible Tetris by tepples · · Score: 1

    Anybody that is obviously too good to be true could be collectively banned. [...] If I had the time, I would implement something like that for Frozen Bubble

    So you like puzzle games, and you want to ban players who appear too good to be true. Would you end up banning Jin8 from playing Tetris? He's actually that good. (Fast forward to 5:00 and watch for 20 seconds and be amazed.)

    1. Re:Arika presents invisible Tetris by dmbasso · · Score: 1

      As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective. If the guy is notorious for being good, he would not be banned, even if I do vote for banning him. And for what I am familiar with, you follow other's gaming abilities develop, from sucking to good. So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.

      As our anonymous friend replied above, this scheme can help identifying players grades [I also thought about the kyu's and dan's of Go! :-) ]. I am pretty sure Jin8 would find boring playing with me, as I find boring playing with some newby folks in Frozen Bubble.

      --
      `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
    2. Re:Arika presents invisible Tetris by tepples · · Score: 1

      As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective.

      And it's not me that lacks the distinctive singular and plural for "you"; it is post-1650 English.

      So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.

      Unless the game is a sequel or clone, as the game of the article appears to be of the Quake series. Of course a player who was an expert at Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, and Quake 4 will instantly start playing Quake 5 awesomely. Jin8 was an expert at Tetris the Grand Master and Tetris the Absolute: The Grand Master 2 before he started playing this game. Likewise, a Go player in a dan skill level will instantly start playing awesomely on a new Go server.

    3. Re:Arika presents invisible Tetris by dmbasso · · Score: 1

      As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective.

      And it's not me that lacks the distinctive singular and plural for "you"; it is post-1650 English.

      Would you care to elaborate? English is not my primary language.

      So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.

      Likewise, a Go player in a dan skill level will instantly start playing awesomely on a new Go server.

      The problem at hand is 'new user with good skills', in which existing users with similar skills would be pleased and willing to play with. Nevertheless, inferior players would still be able to restrict him from playing with them.

      --
      `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
    4. Re:Arika presents invisible Tetris by tepples · · Score: 1

      Would you care to elaborate [about English's lack of distinctive number in second-person pronouns]? English is not my primary language.

      Some languages have multiple words for you that distinguish singular from plural. For instance, Spanish has tu/te singular, usted/lo/la polite singular, and ustedes/las plural. German has du/dich singular, ihr/euch plural, and Sie polite. After a look through your recent Slashdot posting history, I see you appear to be familiar with places that speak Portuguese, so I'll look that up on Wikipedia: tu/te singular, você polite singular, vós/vos plural, vocês polite plural. English, on the other hand, has only you. It used to have thou/thee singular until the 17th century when it began to pass out of use.

      The problem at hand is 'new user with good skills', in which existing users with similar skills would be pleased and willing to play with. Nevertheless, inferior players would still be able to restrict him from playing with them.

      And my point is that a lot of casual players wouldn't be able to tell an expert from a griefer in this case. Look at all the YouTube comments accusing NOV's TGM2 video, Jin8's TGM3 video, and others like them of being fake.

  12. Spurious G ratings for experienced players by tepples · · Score: 1

    If you have too many G rating you will of course not be allowed on most servers.

    But if an experienced player of previous games in the same genre ends up randomly matched with less skilled players due to too few games played to establish an Elo ranking, expect a significant number of spurious Gs due to the vast skill differentials. Let's say Jin8, one of the half-dozen players worldwide who have achieved the "Grand Master" grade on Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror-Instinct, has just signed up on your puzzle game server. He could play falling block games almost with his eyes closed, as shown in the famous video starting at 5:10. Blink, one of the respected members of Hard Drop Forum, isn't quite as skilled as Jin8, but he can still clear 40 lines in a hardcore Tetris clone in under 30 seconds (compare my 60 second time and casual players' 120 second times), and even videos of him "sucking" at a casual Tetris game are probably far better than you could do. Would they be a 3 or a G?

    And some servers will require that you have a certain consistency to be allowed to play.

    Then how does a new player earn consistency if very few servers allow players who haven't already earned consistency to play?

  13. What's the difference? by tepples · · Score: 1
    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    good content is hard to get for free.

    This isn't the case for computer programs, as shown by the free software movement over the past two decades. So why is it the case for meshes, textures, maps, audio, and scripts?

    1. Re:What's the difference? by Tekfactory · · Score: 1

      Because Creative/Artist types want to get paid, good reliable artists are hard to find.

      I lost one of my best 2D artists to a Flash Game developer.

      Maps might be easier to get if Textures were already available, and scripts you might be able to get if the scripting tools were easy enough to attract writing types.

      I don't know enough to say much about the lack of audio out there.

      There are good royalty free meshes and textures available on the web for a fee, anyone good at modelling usually finds a way to make a buck off of it.

    2. Re:What's the difference? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are places like ShareCG where there's tons of free content. (Also look around the other 3D artist's sites, stuff that's just made for people to play with in their scenes or animations is likely to work ok in games if the poly count isn't to high.) And some of it is even released under public licence terms that would be open source game friendly like GPL or Creative Commons. In cases where it's not as clear, it shouldn't be too difficult to contact the artist that created the 3D model. Some of the artists would be more than happy to see their creations on display or being used in one form or another if giving credit where credit's due. There's lots of good stuff if you bother to take the time to look.

      I've found the real problem for game content creation isn't necessarily the various parts, but rather the pipeline or process that is necessary to get that content to actually work seamlessly in the game. I've found this out with prior experience involving open source simulators, and I'd suspect it's not much different with games. If someones good at artwork and character design, it doesn't mean they can do the modeling or scripting. And Just because I'm good at modeling doesn't make me a competent or capable scripter. If there's no easy to use plug n' chug style construction set that I can upload and rig my meshes in, the only way I'd be able to really see my models in the game would be to hand the job off to somebody who knows what the hell they're doing. Even prior to the rigging and scripting stages, the models themselves may be broken down into separate creative processes: mesh creation, UV mapping, texturing, and rigging. Add requirements for different purposed model types, and the workload goes up more. A player or vehicle model is going to have different requirements than a level or scenery model, etc. And then there may even be various LOD versions of the same model if the game engine supports that.

      Provided that I'm interested in a project, I know I have no problems making 3d content just short of the rigging and scripting stage if given some reasonable specs for each model type's LOD and its respective polycount and texture tile sizes. I actually wouldn't mind helping out on occasion if I got credited for my part and knew there was somebody to hand it off to in order to make it work. And that effort is only worthwhile if it actually ends up in the game. But if you want me to do it all, it's not going to happen unless somebody pays real money for it.

      If there's an open source FPS that's weighed more towards vehicles (some requiring multiple operators to be fully effective), bases and arty, and less of the hyper twitchy spaztic run n' gun gameplay (although not completely without, but add a modest fatigue factor to limit it and make other tactics more viable), point rewards for rescues or repairs and not just kills (imagine getting an MVP for a round by keeping your teammates alive), and yet with enough balance to still require a modicum of skill. (Think mechanics similar to BF1942 DC mod, but without the stinger insta-death on helos.) Feel free to put out the word if models are needed.

  14. !opensource by hweimer · · Score: 1

    This is not an open source project. From data/textures/readme.txt:

    (C) 2007-2009 Blood Frontier Team, all rights reserved.

    The "textures" package included in Blood Frontier may only be distributed
    with the Blood Frontier package. Redistribution or repacking outside
    this context without the author's consent is strictly prohibited.

    If you want a real open-source shooter that rocks, try Nexuiz.

    --
    OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
  15. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    last I checked You couldn't run on walls in quake 3 ?
    You all really should give it a try its quite fun
    as for graphics well if you want graphics go play crysis
    the player models ad hud guns WILL Be replaced

    ~Homicidal blood Frontier Channel Troll and sometimes helper

  16. Free software has paid contributors by tepples · · Score: 1

    Because Creative/Artist types want to get paid, good reliable artists are hard to find.

    Programmers also want to get paid, yet many work on free software for free in their spare time, and some even get paid by big companies to develop free software like Linux, Qt, Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. I'm still not seeing the cause of the difference between the executable and nonexecutable portions of a game here.

    1. Re:Free software has paid contributors by Tekfactory · · Score: 1

      But are any of those paid OSS contributors working on games?

      I'd seriously like to see a set of Free as in Speech/Beer 3D Elements developed (Soldier, City Block, Assault Rifle, Gunshot Audio and Run/Jump/Walk animations for the Soldier) that any developer could plug into their game as a basic level and see if their engine works correctly. The level should have stairs, portals (doors/windows), and things to jump on. This should allow you to test opening/closing doors, occlusion, indoor and outdoor lighting and effects.

      I kind of imagine them as a Hello World or Teakettle (3D modelers Hello World) for game programmers.

      Unfortunately I haven't been sucessful enough in finding 3D modellers for my own project to be able to gift art resources to the community.

    2. Re:Free software has paid contributors by tepples · · Score: 1

      But are any of those paid OSS contributors working on games?

      Not that I can think of, but that's why I'm asking what's the core difference between free games and other kinds of free software that makes free games less conducive to paid contributions. Is it because you can't build a business model around selling support to medium and large businesses? In that case, free game developers would need to start marketing their products to arcades and Internet cafes.

    3. Re:Free software has paid contributors by Tekfactory · · Score: 1

      I don't know, I think you're going to find more support in the Netbook and Phone market. Sure they might not pay much, if anything for the OS, but they're still selling a product and the end user might want to play games on the bus, train, plane, or waiting at the airport as much as the next guy.

      When I bought my Droid it didn't come with 1 game! It comes with the market that lets me buy games and apps, but am I expected to believe that Verizon couldn't pony up for one Tetris/Chess/Checkers clone on a $299 phone?

      I think your Internet cafes are mostly going to cater to the websurfing, email, facebook crowd. Those kinds of users might play Flash Games in the browser, but necessarily expect there to be any games on the machine.

  17. As an FPS gamer by joocemann · · Score: 1

    ... I'm always curious why the open source FPS games look like they are about 7 or 8 years behind the closed-source industry.

    Its like they're not even trying to compete. Go to the Game Developers Conference, guys... Take some notes... See what the top devs are doing in the future and start doing that NOW. Then you'll catch the wave at the right point.

    open source FPS always catch my attention long enough to notice this consistent failure to get with the times.

    1. Re:As an FPS gamer by DEmmons · · Score: 1

      i think the most obvious reason would be that id software traditionally releases their older game engines to open source when they roll out one that is two generations newer. you can't say that isn't nice of them. on the other hand, it leads to open source gaming being full of projects that start with, say, an older quake engine, and try to add modern features to it (some of them do look good, but so far none have really challenged the current mainstream leaders). you would think this approach would lead to games that had familiar graphics but new and innovative gameplay, but that doesn't actually seem to happen much. i'm not sure if the open source FPS scene just needs more contributors, or is waiting for inspiration, or it's something else, but as with any free and open source software, i'm still thankful for the efforts and contributions that are being made and shared. there's a ton of potential in it and i'm sure we'll see more than space dungeons and deathmatches in the future.

    2. Re:As an FPS gamer by DEmmons · · Score: 1

      someone's going to point this out to me anyway if i don't mention it, but Blood Frontier itself isn't based on Quake. (i didn't know that until a couple of minutes ago). naturally that makes half of my post irrelevant to TFA. Since i like Sauerbraten, and this game appears to actually have a story, i think i'm gonna have to look into it. i do think work on a new engine is necessary to make open source gaming all it can be, and the cube 2 engine is pretty neat, especially when editing on-the-fly. it's not designed to compete with Unigine, obviously, but i do think it's a step in a good direction. and now i'm done with this lame replying to self stuff.

    3. Re:As an FPS gamer by arQon · · Score: 1

      The problem is assets, not code. A single competent developer can easily turn even something as old as the original *QW* engine into something that is technically on par with anything currently available, even massively-overhyped "awesome" engines like crysis.

      A single competent developer can't make 400MB of high-quality textures though, or model and animate 30 monsters, or create the 500 sounds a game needs not counting the voices of humanoid creatures, and so on.

      Even if you have several artists/modelers/etc capable of producing the sheer VOLUME of content you need, the chances of even one of them being in same class as a "pro" are very slim; and the chances of them being able to put in the same 10 hours a day for multiple months (or even years) that a dev house can are zero.

    4. Re:As an FPS gamer by joocemann · · Score: 1

      dude... big entertainment (yes, these GREAT big games, like GTA, Gears of War, Modern Warfare, Uncharted, etc.... They take millions of dollars to develop. GTA 4 cost TONS and was worth every penny.

      They gotta be driven by profits, and people gladly pay for good games. Its not something that really *needs* to be done for free. People love games like they love everything else they do a lot of in life. You like to skate, you buy skateboard and wheels n stuff. YOu like to rock climb, you get into it, you buy the gear and spend money going places that are nice for it. You get into some solid new games and, well, why not pay for it!

      I'm not saying its not a great option to have or for people to do. I'm just saying that we all pay gladly, and aside from early buyers being kinda treated like beta testers on many games, we're pretty happy! Games are REALLY good now. They are a little too easy, but still VERY good. I'm in movies now man. That's what its like. I'm in a van damme movie. I'm all hero.

      Its nuts. Games are worth every penny. Artists earn it hardcore. The coders make stuff happen thats never been done in software before. They make visual fx that are amazing.. the whole industry drives shader standards and gfx processor development needs... even when many are pirating some games, it doesn't matter really. The great companies that invest a lot end up taking the cake so long as its not wasted on jets and CEO bonus. I don't even know if that kinda stuff happens in the game industry. I'd guess the good companies are just playing smart.

      All hail iD, Epic, EA (yeah, i hate ot say it), Infinity Ward, Nintendo, capcom, acclaim, sony, naughty dog. etc etc etc. Thank you!

    5. Re:As an FPS gamer by joocemann · · Score: 1

      A single competent developer can easily turn even something as old as the original *QW* engine into something that is technically on par with anything currently available....

      If this were true, I would think most developers would do so with the freely available older engines. That isnt' the case. Companies like Epic sell their Unreal Engine to many companies. If it were so simple, people wouldn't need to buy.

      Or maybe my facts aren't perfect in that assumption. I'm just a speculating gamer. Tell me something about this biz. :)

    6. Re:As an FPS gamer by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      I don't think the Unreal Engine is so popular because of its core engine but because of the toolset it comes with. That toolset is extremely powerful and thus cost efficient for creating a game.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    7. Re:As an FPS gamer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're on crack. Almost every single game that has been released in the past 10 years is all graphics and no substance.

      Oh and Tetris cost way less than a million dollars to make and is infinitely more popular than any of those games you listed.

    8. Re:As an FPS gamer by joocemann · · Score: 1

      I'm not on crack. I gave the games a try instead of sitting back and prejudging everything for 10 years and assuming they're all junk.

      It's too bad you've let your prejucides keep you away from fun. Your own fault, I guess.

      If you think tetris can even hold a fart to flame in comparison to Uncharted 2, you've either got a tetris tattoo or you've got one extra chromosome.

      Either way, you're an anonymous coward. Good luck with that.

    9. Re:As an FPS gamer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're a graphics whore. That's actually quite common among the children of today.

      Uncharted 2? Please. Come back in 10 or 20 years and see if people are playing your derivative little shooter or if they are still playing Tetris.

      You should try playing a larger selection of games from more genres and more time periods before you make such laughable statements.

    10. Re:As an FPS gamer by joocemann · · Score: 1

      I'm just having a good time watching you eat sour lemons all day for sheer lack of appreciation.

      Life sucks huh?! Its so horrible!

      Like I said, your prejudice is ridiculous, and thats why you're such a clown. The game mechanics in U2 are amazing. You'd never know, though.. You're still waiting for them to make it 2d and require the pressing of one button and down to keep it slow enough for you.

      I'm 28. Kid, no. Been gaming over 20 years. I've tried it all and, unlike you, i've found a way to appreciate great things. Should I start judging you based on your lack of appreciation? Should I start assuming you've got a trust fund and have never worked for anything?

      Bye coward. Your life sucks because your eyes make it that way.

  18. Where is the game in FPS? by Botched · · Score: 1

    Ok, I hope not to be modded troll for this, but probably will be.

    I have played a lot of FP shooters. The innovation from one generation to the next in terms of graphics and stability has been wonderful, brilliant, and lacking in magic.

    What is missing, and what could make the next big FPS is gameplay. Anyone who wants to do it right needs to sit down, play with 3-5 friends some Renier Knizia board games
    http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2/reiner-knizia
    as an education is what gameplay could be, compared to what it is. Don't call me a crank if you have not played Modern Art, Tigris and Euphrates, and Through the Desert.