Xonotic - Nexuiz the Free

The first piece of news is that console Nexuiz will be re-written from scratch, because some coders decided against giving permission for a proprietary port (Slashdot , interview). This means no code contributions to Nexuiz.

Secondly, Nexuiz has been forked under the name Xonotic. Because philosophy, because management, because change.

I can't complain! Git repository instead of Subversion, no more tikiwiki (I hope) finally a feed for news (has been added to our Planet)! Open management and content enhancements are on the list of plans and promises, perhaps a little too much even, which led to the creation of a critical thread on our forums.

I have had the pleasure to test the warpzone/visible-portal feature (which is available in Nexuiz' SVN as well):


youtube-dl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb4zk-31sVU

Currently, instructions to get Xonotic (using git) are here. Compilation is easy and right now the game starts using "./all run -nexuiz".

If you want to get involved, get on their forums and/or get on their IRC! The website is still in development, a public wiki is in the works.

So what do you think about the fork? I understand the "divided we are weaker" point, but console Nexuiz has caused much confusion and a new project (Xonotic) seems like a clear cut and new hope™. Also.. "Xonotic" sounds slightly better than "Nexuiz" in my most humble ears. :)

How Nexuiz did not become proprietary or: "Silly names in Games"

Some company will use LordHavoc's DarkPlaces engine (DPE) to publish a game on some game console(s). The development team includes "a number of Nexuiz developers, and previous Quake1 community developers". Nexuiz is a (or rather "the") FOSS FPS that uses DPE.

As far as I can tell, no assets of Nexuiz will be used. On the other hand, the soundtrack playing on the console-DPE-game homepage sounds like a remix of a Nexuiz track. I will just assume that the composer agreed to this and that the same might happen to other high-quality Nexuiz content and that it will all be legal. Lee Vermeulen (Nexuiz' lead developer) is no license-n00b after all. Also, the console game will be using Nexuiz' gameplay, which I assume means "game modes", "movement/physics" and "weapon functions/balancing".

There is one problem though: this console game has the name "Nexuiz" (please call it "console Nexuiz") and its homepage is nexuiz.com.

Why did the developers have to pass the name? Heck I don't know. Perhaps they thought every Nexuix player with a console would want to buy console Nexuiz if they gave it that name. Perhaps they wanted to use the resulting confusion to make the name known. Perhaps they just couldn't come up with a good name (very common problem you know). I can very well imagine that it will only be a development name and that the release version will be called something like Nexuiz: Frag of the Unknown. or maybe there won't be any "Nexuiz" in the final version of console Nexuiz.

Here is Vermeulen's news post about console Nexuiz (did you know that every news page that has no atom/rss feed sucks?). The essence of the post is this:

1. Nexuiz development will continue
2. Console Nexuiz' assets will not be open source
3. Console Nexuiz' code improvements will be open source
4. Nexuiz' developers ("Alientrap") will receive royalties if console Nexuiz creates profit. It is not yet clear who will get what percentage but Alientrap intends to be transparent about it.

Here is the announcement by the company behind the console Nexuiz and a long discussion. (The company's name is illfonic, but that hardly matters.)
Here is a blog post that provides much more information about console Nexuiz.

No more console Nexuiz talk below this line.

I noticed a nice feature of the Nexuiz 2.5.2 release announcement:

Some of the biggest changes are:

• New gamemode: CTS (get from A to B). With map "CyberParcour01" by sev, and a nexrun map "Piece o' cake" by FruitieX
• Aggressor and stormkeep retextured by FruitieX
• Tutorial map by FruitieX
• TraK4-mit and TraK5 texturepacks by TraK
• New HUD by FruitieX and -z-
• New Scoreboard style by terencehill
• Weapon accuracy statistics by Dib (ALT key by default)
• Rocket guidance by holding down the primary fire button (seeker removed)
• Level Of Detail on all playermodels
• Video settings only show the allowed resolutions reported by your OS
• (not availible in AGL)
• Motion blur and damage blur by Samual

Did you notice it? I'm talking about the names behind each feature item. It makes new versions so much more personal. Well, a little bit. What I really would like to have as attribution/credits features is having a game mode where author name, license name and optional short description flow above each asset in a map while playing it.. I know, crazy talk.. Or something like Half-Life 2's developer's commentary?... ah, a man can dream..

Ok, back to Nexuiz. "Tutorial map"? Well! This can only be disappointing, right? :D *watches video*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESt4rqG-BUQ

Well, that wasn't too bad! Even a bit entertaining! I was expecting some text-only hour-long explanation how to press the arrow keys for movement. Yay for voice acting! Yay for expecting player to know the basics! Yay Nexuiz tutorial!

One could enhance the tutorial by making audio tracks skip, when the player has succeeded in reaching the goal described in the current audio track. Also I'm curious what kind of sarcastic comments will result from death/suicide/failure (if at all possible).

idTech engine game news

Tremfusion is a fork of Tremulous, that wants to be more open in development. There's more to read on its organization and philosophy (too many words for my taste). One of the most noticeable changes is the use of the Xreal as the game engine. Thanks to Julius for letting us know.

An audio interview with Quake2World's lead coder reveales details about improvements in his graphics and physics engine. (I don't like podcasts usually but this one is pretty interesting.)

An audio interview of Lee Vermeulen, founder of the Nexuiz project, was published on the new site Open Gaming Now. The audio unfortunately is of a not-so-good telephone line quality and the added music makes it even a little bit harder to listen. Lee tells about the early history of the project, but other than that it's mainly a introduction to Nexuiz.

The rest & snippets

Voxelstein

Andrewj, one of the best Let's Play artists, has recently recorded a playthrough of Voxelstein, the Wolfenstein3D-inspired shooter with voxels (you can destroy everything) which unfortunately is win-only. Here's the video.

Palomino flight simulator release 20090511 adds shaders to the game.

Boomwar Nitro 0.1b1 has been released [win32 binary] (after 2.5 years of no releases, but some svn activity). It appears to be using the non-free Newton Game Dynamics lib, so I refrained from compiling it.

Last time I mentioned PopCap Framework. Now I found out about PyCap, a python wrapper for the PopCap framework. Thanks to GBGames for passively helping me find this. :)

Slick is a LWJGL-based Java game lib, which even supports SVG (not completely though). Some of these games make use of slick and two of them are supposedly free software. (I haven't searched for the source much though).

There's a first screenshot of Nethack_3D.

Hey, what do Glest, Freeciv, FreeCol, FreedroidRPG, FlightGear, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, SuperTux, SuperTuxKart, Warsow and Yo Frankie have in common? - All of them are being STOLEN by reckless PIRATES. ARR!

Sauerbraten Trooper Edition, first playable Mark IV network Demo

Sauerbraten [more screens]

Cube 2: Sauerbraten Trooper Edition has been released [download]: new logo, new maps, new weapon looks, bots! (from BloodFrontier), movie recording function (I have to check this out ASAP), rag dolls, new music, and so much more.

Sauerbraten characters

The bots are rather dumb as of now and don not know what a powerup is yet but they're definitely better than no bots at all. What I found most amazing about this release is the characterization of the player models. Each of the three has a little back story. I felt that Sauerbraten had no soul before this release. Now it has a little soul. :)

Mark IV

The tank simulation engine Mark IV [project, web page, blog] v0.80 Alpha-1 is out and first-time playable over network. It however uses FMOD (which can be avoided, see this) and RakNet. Windows users will be able to use the pre-compiled binary.

A little arcade

Atomic Worm has recently been open sourced. It appears to be a Pacman-Snake mix plus different grid types plus the visual style of Transcend. Source available here. It uses the PopCap Framework, which appears to be free software.

Atomic Worm at YouTube

Do you like cruel, hard moon lander games? If yes, OldSkoolGravityGame was made with you in mind! It may look harmless, even retro-pretty on video... but I have felt the pain...
O_O

Portable game packages

DSN

The Damn Small Nexuiz (DSN) project provides a slim version of Nexuiz with the aim to make it playable on netbooks. Deja Vu?

Speaking of reduced weight: Spring RTS Engine Portable is a win32 Spring (RTS engine) package that doesn't touch the registry.

Nexuiz 2.5 (taking my time)

Nexuiz 2.5 has been released 6 11 15 days ago. (I *am* taking my time! O_o) You might have spotted the announcement on Phoronix.

Here is the 666 MB heavy download. In case you care about traffic more than graphics and sounds or have a weak system: An Arch Linux user created a ~60MB version for 32-bit Linux systems.

So what are the big selling points of 2.5 from the player side of view? According to the changelog: New HUD, new weapons, new racing game mode, improved look & sound, better bots. Nex is also supposed to be faster regarding processor and network utilization, I did not try to test this though.

Head-up display

Nexuiz 2.5 - more screenshots

I did not notice any revolutionary changes in the user interface - besides the better score board and noob-friendlier map voting system. Unfortunately the game menu part of the GUI is still slightly weird with its microscopic quit button.

Racing mode

Futuristic "Racetrack"

"Race" is a game mode, in which the player has to move as fast as possible using weapons and jumping techniques. As I understand it, this old concept developed from Quake elitists having too much fun with the game's movement 'physics'. It's an important mode in Warsow gameplay and I don't like it. However, I do appreciate that Nexuiz makes itself interesting for a wider audience of course.

I was very annoyed by the racetrack being in the new single-player campaign and wanted to record a video showing how I struggle with it but when I recorded the demo, I surprisingly won! I still think it should be kept out of the campaign or at least it should be possible to skip it - many Nexuiz players will want to finish the campaign but not even know about the advanced movement techniques it requires.

New weapons

I can't help but being overly subjective here (again): Nexuiz has more than enough weapons! Then again, the new weapons are optional (at least I think so) and that makes them okay. The grappling hook was already in the last version (just not as a weapon) and I don't like it, but I know a lot of people do. The portal gun is fun, but not interesting for long if you ever played Portal.

The rifle, however, makes my eyes twitch. It needs to be reloaded! Reloading weapons in a Quake/UT-like game. This is so stupid. No further comments.

Take a look at the weapon models: Grappling Hook, Port-O-Launch, T.A.G. Seeker, Heavy Laser Assault Cannon, Rifle.

Improved look and sound

Sharp new flag model

My favorite part of this review! This is where the 2.5 release shines. The new map desert factory [video] looks great! Even though it seems too large, it plays well and is a nice alternative to the mostly narrow Nexuiz in-door maps.

The new organic-style weapon models fit unexpectedly well. Especially the good look of the shotgun is important, as it's the default weapon.

Smoke

One issue though: the rocket explosion smoke is so dark, I can't see through it. This means that each explosion animation serves as a visual shield for the enemy. It's so sad and funny when one has to disable effects to be able to play better for other reasons but processing speed...

I wrote a poem about how the rocket explosion smoke annoys me:

Rocket smoke

So dark I can not see!

Why do you torture me?

Ain't I grand? Next up: voices. I love the new voices! Not only there are more different tracks but now teammates verbally protesting against friendly fire. Yay for audio improvements! (Oh, speaking of audio.. pdsounds.org is dead [backup])

As mentioned above, there is a new single-player campaign, which introduces new weapons, maps and game modes. It is rather chaotic though. Two capture the flag rounds in it are meant as 'tutorials' (endlessly boring plus bots suck). I hope in the future the Unreal Tournament approach will be chosen: campaigns should be separated by genre and tutorials should be optional.

Portals: still ugly

I have few complaints about the visual quality: portals and player models need better textures also the machine gun looks weak compared to the other weapons. This will hopefully be improved in the future. (If you're a 3d artist, you know what to do ;) .)

Better bots

I red the changelog only after I tested Nexuiz 2.5 for a while. I was confused by the "bots are better" claim. They stand around, walk against walls and fail to capture flags/domination points next to them. Increasing their difficulty seems to only make their aim annoyingly good, but they are not getting any smarter.

Conclusion

All is well, nothing is perfect. Since a lot new things were added, 2.5 might even be fun to those that did not like previous versions. Nexuiz players that don't care for new stuff will enjoy the updated graphics and voices. Single-player mode players will like the new campaign, even though it does have its faults. Now it's time for you to enjoy the video(s) below!

Nexuiz 2.5 wannabe-promo - OGV download

Note: If the HD YouTube version slows down your computer, I recommend downloading the OGV video and watching it with VLC.

I created above video using Nexuiz' awesome video recording tools, Cinelerra and this helpful thread. On the game's homepage you will see a video that concentrates on the new features more.

Happy Gnu Year

Well, it's belated, but better late than never. :-)

The Warzone 2100 team released version 2.1 of their continuation of the formerly-commercial RTS. The news link is broken for some reason. EDIT: And here is the fixed one. Well, the big 'hole' in WZ2100 has been the FMV that was in the original game, that comes in 2.2 I am told, but 2.1 is more stable and playable than ever (although I'm don't know the specific improvements over 2.0).

AssaultCube got a new website and a new release, version 1.0.2 which fixes a few glitches and brings some extra polish to the 1.0.x series of AC. Apparently Cube 2 (aka Sauerbraten) dev Eihrul has been backporting enhancements to AC, so looks much better than Cube 1, but I can't say for sure.

Speaking of Free FPS games, I thought this SuperTuxKart track, Sub-sea, being ported to Nexuiz was quite intriguing:

Speaking of SuperTuxKart, I can't remember if I mentioned or saw the 0.6rc1 release anywhere. By all accounts it's a massive improvement over 0.5 and the game is starting to realise a bit of it's potential. Version 0.7 will bring an overhaul of the graphics engine (port to Irrlicht from PLIB) and that plus all the new track development that is occuring, 2009 should be the year that STK becomes a showcase Free Software game. Still, the competition is getting tougher, but I hope that serves as motivation. :-)

Here's two questions for you, the readers, answers in comments please!

What was your favourite new project from 2008?

Mine was JCRPG - just from Word War Vi.

Which project do you look forward to new releases from this year?

For me, definitely Scourge (0.22 brings support for new model formats, which I think will make people pay more attention to it), with Vega Strike and UFO:AI releases also something I look forward to checking out.

OpenArena 0.7.6

OpenArena likes furries

OpenArena 0.7.6 is out. (direct link to Win+Lin+Mac zip archive) More maps, more models/skins, more game modes and a new tagline!

OpenArena is a violent, sexy, multiplayer first person shooter

For 0.8.0 also planned: more music! (There isn't any right now.)

If you're hosting an OA server, you might want to upgrade. And if you know someone who hosts a server, tell them to upgrade, will ya? The general tendency seems to not know about the new release. O_o

Robot-looking stuffs are cool

The site has a new look (you might want to keep your eyes closed though.) Also, there seem to be some troubles with the new version. I didn't experience any problems, except for the low amount of up-to-date servers.

Nexuiz on the other hand, behaved badly, when I tried the then-fresh 2.4 release for the first time. Fortunately an emergency hotfix thread was opened and patched versions posted. If you encountered problems with the game and didn't bother to try to find a cure, simply download the most recent patch.

Turrets. Yepp.

Tremulous 1.2 will never be released. Or maybe it will. Whatever. Does it read like I don't bother too much? Yes. Why? Because I recently discovered that some servers had configurations, which allow a very different gameplay. For example: PornServ. The teams get many many building points, build buildings faster and more frequently, which allows for totally new strategies. For example: The tower rush, a tactic usually known from Real time strategy games.

Alien Arena 2008 and Planeshift 0.400

Hot on the heels of the rather amazing Nexuiz 2.4 release is this years main release of Alien Arena. Alien Arena 2008, or Alien Arena 7.0, or Alien Arena 2008 7.0, however you term it, brings a lot of improvements and new features to a game quickly gaining popularity.

Alien Arena 2008 also offers a change to it's overall theme, moving towards a slightler darker, more serious tone, while still retaining a good bit of it's retro style, creating an interesting marriage between classic and modern sci-fi. This resulted in completely new player models, many new weapon models and textures, and seventeen, yes, seventeen new levels! The transformation is nothing short of remarkable.

There are major improvements in weapon effects, per-pixel lighting, texture resolution, and resource usage, as well as the addition of a cross platform server browser, FUSE. Weapons have been tweaked for better balance, and movement has been enhanced with the addition of dodging abilities. Alien Arena 2008 will run on Windows and Linux, and the OSX/Mac port will be released in one week.

The changes are significant enough that it's considered a different game to Alien Arena 2007. The goal is to "create the perfect marriage between Quake and Unreal Tournament, between retro sci-fi and futuristic tech, and between casual gamer and advanced expert, and wrap it up in a package with quality that could rival that of commercial games". Whilst I haven't played it, from the screenshots and general feedback, it looks like they are well on their way to fulfilling that goal.

Looks spiffy although the trailer doesn't really compare to the Nexuiz trailer - any comments on the differences in gameplay between the two would be welcome.

Hrm, what else.

Planeshift 0.400 "Steel Blue" is out (changelog). Lots of new features, nice semi open source but really freeware project. If you like fantasy RPG / MMO and don't care so much about total software Freedom, check it out. Here's a fanmade trailer for it.

Nexuiz 2.4 has been released

Lee Vermeulen's brainchild Nexuiz is a fast-paced first-person shooter, better comparable to Unreal Tournament than to Quake, though based on latter's engine. Release 2.4 has been available for some hours now. Time to grab a copy and freaking play it. But first, let me bore you some. (Not recommended, skip following paragraphs, you could be fragging already! Time is money! Go shoot stuff!)

Nexuiz is not just a remake of a UT or Q shooter, it contains many advanced and even some innovative features! Rockets can be destroyed by Bullets and if the timing is right, they will explode right into their shooter's face. The laser gun is the main method of movement, allowing alternative "rocket"-jumps without too much pain. Also you have the ability to make your rockets explode mid-air, which on one hand means that you don't have to aim for the ground and on the other hand allows you a combination of laser- and rocket-jumps - provided you have enough health and armor. The last two features make "capture the flag" a very fast-paced game mode.

I would tell you about the glowing balls which you can shoot and then make explode chain-reaction-wise but I think the video documents this better...

The gui of nex has been referred to as "some ugly version of Unreal Tournament" before. But this fact has apparently changed. To tell the truth I don't know yet, because for some reason I decided to first spread the happy news, before playing. Stupid. Check out the video, and check out the new homepage. Oh and by the way, the download link is here, in case you missed it.

See you on a server soon I hope... 15 minutes left to download...

Bedtime

Tired today. Sorry for lack of details.

Daimonin (2D MMORPG) got a new website. Spiffy.

Warsow 0.42. It's a fast multiplayer FPS.

Ace video on Nexuiz, looks fancy FPS.

There's an RC out for VDrift release 2008-02-23, the "next gen" car game. (I don't quite get the notion of an RC for dated releases.

Vega Strike needs nvidia users to test before release due to an unknown number of cards affected by a buggy driver (boo for closed source).

I'm... Zzzzzz...

Nexuiz 2.3

Nexuiz

I guses the major event for today is, er, yesterday's release of Nexuiz 2.3 by Alientrap. Massive performance improvements due to an overhaul of the game engine, new maps, tweaked maps, tweaked weapons, sharper graphical effects, it sounds like a fairly extensive and very cool update to what must be one of the best deathmatch games around these days - and it's all Free Software. :-)

A russian list of open source games points out that Enemy Engaged: The Comanche Hokum is available under a GPL license, however it's just the engine and not the data which means you still have to buy the game to play it. It's a helicopter combat simulation and would be a really cool addition to open source combat simulations if they extended that coverage to the rest of the game (or at least made the data freeware). Otherwise I can't see the open sourcing of the game engine really making any kind of difference - it's not like it has massive exposure and a huge mod scene like the various games which iD choses to GPL the engines.

There are very few efforts to create single player FPS open source games. In fact, beyond Crystal Core, I'm not sure I can recall any noteworthy games.

Alientrap are working on a game, Zymotic, but I'm not sure it's going to be open source like Nexiuz although it will use the Nexuiz engine. There's some nice info on the storyline on that site but little else - other than a link to the curious 3D Element which seems to be a collection of game design tutorials. Note to self: investigate further.

Industri looked really promising a while back when Tenebrae (then Tenebrae 2) also looked promising, but both seemed to stall quite badly. There was an update yesterday to the Inudstri webiste though, and now it is being built on the Doom 3 engine but the screenshots seem to use a lot of Doom 3 models and Industri looks a lot less free than it used to - advertising for closed beta testers. I'm not sure it was ever open source though.

It requires a lot of effort to create the media (levels, characters, AI etc) to create a quality single player FPS game. I remember spending days, no, weeks designing single player levels for Duke Nukem 3D and requirements in terms of detail have escalated massively since then (and back then I was a kid with nothing to do except school and fun). The proximity of players to 3D models in FPS games means the detail has to be much higher than in other types of games; this genre does not lend itself well to the open source development model. I hope Crystal Core progress continues.

I got a request to reduce through-put on FG as apparently some readers can't keep up. And to think that I feet bad when I miss a day! Amusing. :-D

Nexuiz 2.1, Savage

Nexuiz 2.1 is out (changelog). Not much to say other than this builds upon the success of Nexuiz 2.0 and continues to establish Nexuiz as a first class open source game.

I forgot to mention (sorry!) that Savage: The Battle for Newerth is now officially freeware. I read this a while ago but at the time I couldn't find links to where to actually download it. These days it's listed as a free download on the official website - at the time I came across this it seemed more conjecture than reality that it was freeware.

Savage is one of these hybrid RTS/FPS games that seem to be cropping up more regularly these days e.g. Tremulous. It's got great graphics and is free (I would attach a screenshot but I broke Firefox!) so, well, why not!? Still, I wish they would make games open source rather than just abandoning them as freeware so at least the community can fix any problems. I guess S2Games are probably a little scared of competition for the upcoming Savage 2.

Speaking of formerly commercial games being open sourced, Battle Chess is apparently now open source freeware! It would be an interest project to port it to modern operating systems. Thanks go to benjamin for pointing this out in a comment on a previous post. However I'm wondering whether sadly it is a mistake though because although the page says it is GPL there is no link to any source - there's none in the linked zip file.

Edit - thanks nelipa for point out Battle Chess is only freeware; liberated games is telling a fib.