XreaL: The Most Advanced Open-Source Game Engine?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: XreaL: The Most Advanced Open-Source Game Engine?

Last week Nexuiz 2.5 was released and we said it raised the bar for open-source gaming as it already offered impressive graphics and this new release was greeted by various engine improvements, new models, and over 3,000 other changes. Well, Nexuiz is not the only open-source first person shooter striving for perfection even without the backing of a major game studio. A relatively unheard of game engine is XreaL, which has not had a stable release yet but its lead developer claims that it is definitely the most advanced open-source game engine.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13687

[d2kx]

That sounds pretty interesting, although the Sauerbraten engine and the Darkplaces Engine (minus the performance) are really good, too. Will definitly keep an eye on this project!

[tulcod]

I have to say that it looks like it has some neat graphical features, but the heavy GLSL dependency worries me about code clarity. Taking a quick look in the SVN repos, this fear seems to be partially justified. Worse, they've put binaries in the svn repo, which is generally seen as bad practice. I'm afraid this project will fade away like many others.

[[Knuckles]]

I have to say that it looks like it has some neat graphical features, but the heavy GLSL dependency worries me about code clarity. Taking a quick look in the SVN repos, this fear seems to be partially justified. Worse, they've put binaries in the svn repo, which is generally seen as bad practice. I'm afraid this project will fade away like many others.

I don't really know how you get from glsl and binaries in svn to "this project will fade away".
It's pretty normal for smaller projects for you to keep some binary stuff around that you haven't gotten around to integrate fully in the build system and that rarely changes.

Also the glsl code seems to be organized and nicely commented, might even be a good place for a newbie to get a feel for GLSL.

Anyway, good luck to the XreaL developers, I hope we can see a playable release soon :)

[Dragonlord]

GLSL + Binary = Fail. The idea behind GLSL is that you _don't_ need a compiler like CGC to get things done. The only thing that makes sense is to use a shader tree to generate the GLSL code but this is another problem. That said what's so advanced on this? I don't want to down-call on this project but looking at the screenshots I ask myself what is exactly so next-gen on it? ( because I ought to claim that this is not the most advanced engine... but I guess this depends on what part of the engine you look at ;) )

[rotarychainsaw]

Get urban terror running on this engine and I will be happy.

[Vadi]

Looks interesting, thanks for the heads up. Glad to see an engine targetting the newer 3.x opengl spec.

[Pfanne]

optimized for opengl es 2.0?
hope someones going to use it for the pandora ;)

[russell_h]

Someone should try loading some content from America's Army (Unreal Engine 2 based), I wonder how it would handle a large outdoor environment like that?

[Svartalf]

GLSL + Binary = Fail. The idea behind GLSL is that you _don't_ need a compiler like CGC to get things done. The only thing that makes sense is to use a shader tree to generate the GLSL code but this is another problem. That said what's so advanced on this? I don't want to down-call on this project but looking at the screenshots I ask myself what is exactly so next-gen on it? ( because I ought to claim that this is not the most advanced engine... but I guess this depends on what part of the engine you look at ;) )

Heh... You beat me to the same sort of remarks. I'm intrigued by the HDR support and a few other things, but the GLSL + Binary issue has me thinking similar thoughst to yours, Dragonlord.

[GreatWalrus]

The graphics on that engine look really good, I can only imagine if they had a good artist how it would look.

[Dragonlord]

I donno. The screens don't blow off my socks to be honest and this has nothing to do with the artwork. But maybe this is indeed a bit an unfortunate map to showcase who knows.

[curaga]

Michael, you picked some places where the default "texture not found" texture shows for screenshots ;)

GL 3.1 and glsl? What good is an open-source game having those when the open-source drivers can't then run the game at all?

The features look nice though. I wish good luck to the project.

[tulcod]

;69748']I don't really know how you get from glsl and binaries in svn to "this project will fade away".
It's pretty normal for smaller projects for you to keep some binary stuff around that you haven't gotten around to integrate fully in the build system and that rarely changes.

Also the glsl code seems to be organized and nicely commented, might even be a good place for a newbie to get a feel for GLSL.

Anyway, good luck to the XreaL developers, I hope we can see a playable release soon :)

(no prior judgement intended) well, it is clear that the codebase is a mess, and raw GLSL code is scattered all over the place, resulting in badly maintainable code.

And with only a bit of copy-paste-and-fill-in knowledge, it takes only 5 minutes to get a build system working for any project. The hard part is what comes next: automating unit tests, package installation, etc.

[Dragonlord]

Michael, you picked some places where the default "texture not found" texture shows for screenshots ;)

GL 3.1 and glsl? What good is an open-source game having those when the open-source drivers can't then run the game at all?

The features look nice though. I wish good luck to the project.
This is anyways bull. OpenGL doesn't know this version crap like DirectX does. I can use geometry shaders ( part of gpu4 stuff ) on my development box without a problem. As long as the extensions are exported everything is fine. So yes, you can run GL 3.x related stuff with GLSL anytime just look for the extensions to be there :P

[curaga]

My radeon drivers here say they support openGL 1.3. Which extensions provide GLSL again?

[Svartalf]

My radeon drivers here say they support openGL 1.3. Which extensions provide GLSL again?

If you've got only 1.3 support, you don't have GLSL- moreover, you're going to have a bit of a difficult time running things other than something like Quake3/ioquake derived titles or something like Caster on that card with the current drivers. You definitely can't run Doom3/Quake4 or any other shader based engine if there's not a non-GLSL option in the render path on it.

Keep in mind, though, as long as they're not using GL 3.X specific functionalities, you should be able to run it soon enough with your FOSS drivers so long as you have an R300 or better- and maybe an R200 if the LLVM vertex backend does well enough on the vertex path stuff.

[curaga]

That was my point. There's no better in open stable drivers available, with Intel maybe an exception, but you can't play using those cards anyway.

[Svartalf]

That was my point. There's no better in open stable drivers available, with Intel maybe an exception, but you can't play using those cards anyway.

Heh... Contribute help with the drivers then or wait about 6 or so months for the proper support to gel there. Not everything will run on the stuff you have right at the moment- that's a fact of life and you know it. Complaining about not being able to do it and diminishing it on that basis is a bit...sour grapes...if you ask me... ;)

[curaga]

I wasn't really complaining, merely stating the fact, and asking why an OSS game would use features you can't use on OSS drivers.
To me that defeats the point of being an OSS game.

[Raedwulf]

(no prior judgement intended) well, it is clear that the codebase is a mess, and raw GLSL code is scattered all over the place, resulting in badly maintainable code.


Take a look at the originally released quake3 source code, hey this is loads better.


And with only a bit of copy-paste-and-fill-in knowledge, it takes only 5 minutes to get a build system working for any project. The hard part is what comes next: automating unit tests, package installation, etc.

Unit tests would be a nice thing, but I've not seen them used in many other game engines either.


That was my point. There's no better in open stable drivers available, with Intel maybe an exception, but you can't play using those cards anyway.


Theoretically Intel cards could work, but they suffer from some bugs which cause the xorg server to crash when running XreaL.

With Mesa 7.2, it was possible to run the menu from XreaL, and hang when going in game.

With Mesa 7.4, the menu hangs.

As far as we (#xreal dwellers) know the software render path of Mesa works, but Intel drivers have bugs still.


I donno. The screens don't blow off my socks to be honest and this has nothing to do with the artwork. But maybe this is indeed a bit an unfortunate map to showcase who knows.


Artwork is definitely the problem - details in terms of higher-poly models, better diffuse/normal/specular maps all contribute to the scene. People gape when they see massively reflective scenes, and think its cool - xreal supports that, but having a map do that looks pretty silly :P.

The engine is in development still, but is nearing feature-completion. However, its main problem is that the XreaL project currently has no artists. It has been an almost solo effort - so this is quite an achievement.

P.S. Hint, If you are an artist, and need something to do, head over to #xreal, and Tr3B will have his mile-long scroll art TODO list.

EDIT: Noticed the article missed that XreaL supports skeletal animation, something that none of the popular opensource FPS games implement (there's MD4 support in ioquake3, but I do not believe its been utilised much). This would be crucial if one wanted to implement ragdoll physics. However, realistic physics hasn't been a goal of the engine, as XreaL has a tendency towards Quake3 style gameplay. However, I'm sure modders would be welcome to add support for it.

EDIT2: Binaries are included in the SVN only for Windows. Linux binaries are not included and the chief development environment is on Linux. The sole reason is that there are a lot of windows gamers/modders/mappers who want to get started quickly, and setting up a build environment on Windows is darn difficult for non-programmers (and can be quite annoying for programmers too!). On linux is pretty much runnning scons builds the project, so its no problem.

EDIT3:

I wasn't really complaining, merely stating the fact, and asking why an OSS game would use features you can't use on OSS drivers.
To me that defeats the point of being an OSS game.

That is a very strange question. First of all, XreaL is meant to use the latest capabilities of graphics cards. Some open-source drivers do not support the latest features, and in your case, features that were present 3-4 years ago. XreaL is OpenGL 3.x compatible, which means it is NOT OpenGL 2.x, 1.x backwards compatible. I repeat XreaL is designed for new architectures. Its bit like saying, "Why can't I install Ubuntu x86-64 on my 386 computer?" Granted, these are drivers, but the drivers have features pertaining to an older generation of graphics card.

You can't fault an opensource game that faithfully implements the newest OpenGL spec because opensource drivers do not support the spec fully, or only provide partial support. In fact, you should be encouraged that an opensource game has managed it and before commercial games!

[superppl]

I think we're missing something important here. These efforts are fine and dandy, but... Another shooter? Can't we have something else?
I mean I know at this point it's just an engine, but it seems to me that that's where it's going.

[russofris]

I wasn't really complaining, merely stating the fact, and asking why an OSS game would use features you can't use on OSS drivers.
To me that defeats the point of being an OSS game.

You are correct, you cannot play a game that does not exist with a driver that does not exist. However, teams tend to work on these things in parallel, so that when the driver is finished, games will be available to take advantage of them. It's not like there is one single team writing all OSS software in a serial fashion.

F

[Raedwulf]

I think we're missing something important here. These efforts are fine and dandy, but... Another shooter? Can't we have something else?
I mean I know at this point it's just an engine, but it seems to me that that's where it's going.
The game was only the partial focus of the project. If you want RTS, try Glest. If you want a generic engine, there's Irrlicht,Crystalspace,Ogre,Horde3D.
XreaL is based off ioQuake3, which is very FPS oriented, so its hard to make it do something else.

[Dragonlord]

What I talked about are technical things not artwork things. A HDR renderer works also with mediocre normal maps and specularity maps. It's about lighting and material system. Neither does look here too convincing to be honest.

[Eragon]

The game was only the partial focus of the project. If you want RTS, try Glest. If you want a generic engine, there's Irrlicht,Crystalspace,Ogre,Horde3D.
XreaL is based off ioQuake3, which is very FPS oriented, so its hard to make it do something else.

Ufo: Alien Invasion is a turn based strategy game and is based off ioQuake3 as well, right?

[hax0r]

eh still looks like crap, I prefer my sega dreamcast.

[elanthis]

I think we're missing something important here. These efforts are fine and dandy, but... Another shooter? Can't we have something else?
I mean I know at this point it's just an engine, but it seems to me that that's where it's going.

That's been my thoughts for the last few Open Source games announced.

I don't mind the game involving shooting. I'm just bored to freakin' tears of every Open Source quake-based game being a Quake 3 Arena "shoot the other players and/or bots and see who gets the most kills" (or one of the popular variations, e.g. CTF).

I love games. I'm a game design major. Games aren't (just) about getting pretty graphics.

Games are the ultimate form of art. They include and use traditional 2D art (in a great many forms, depending on the specific scenes, settings, and artistic design the game offers), cinemagraphic art, literary art, music, voice acting, and not least the arts of immersion and puzzle craft. Every other artform created by mankind is encompassed by games in a way that no other medium can possibly hope to achieve.

And all Open Source gives us is a ton of Quake 3 upgrades.

Where is the original story telling? The original art (not just Yet Another Fucking Space Marine In a Suite, but something new, something beautiful, something that truly impacts the viewer)? Original music scores besides just Techno Remix #4558632? Puzzles? Innovative gameplay that makes the player think in new ways?

All the truly creative gameplay that hobbyist produce end up being tiny puzzle games. These ARE truly great things, and I appreciate them. But Open Source has never produced anything on a magnificient scale. Open Source has never (and I'm starting to believe never will) produce an entirely original work on the scale of Fallout 3, even using old technology (the original Resident Evil looks like crap compared to XreaL, yet it is 1000x more important and meaningful to the art of gamecraft than XreaL could conceivably ever be).

OK, so maybe Open Source hackers are just the kind of people who really like shooters. Why is every freaking shooter they make just a ripoff of the Quake gameplay, though? Why is it that with all the creative juices the Open Source community has, all of the actual gameplay and gamecraft innovation in the shooter genre still comes from the commercial world? Why is Open Source still upgrading Quake instead of making the next of Gears of War, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Resistance, or Metroid Prime?

It's not just shooters, although those are the most popular Open Source games by far. Tux Cart is just a Mario Kart clone. Glest is not meaningfully different than Myth 2, Warcraft 3, or Age of Empires. I can name of dozens of clones for other games, or engine reimplementations, or so on... there are certainly Open Source projects that offer new artwork, but they aren't new expressions; they're just remakes of the same kind of art and the same kind of gameplay that the commercial guys have been putting out for years and years.

Look at a game like Zelda: Wind Waker. The technology needed for an engine like that is nothing compared to what XreaL can do. What made that game impressive was not the technical power of its engine, but the creative vision that produced it. It's not just "cartoony art," it's art with a very specific and unique stylization that sets it apart from any other game made before it. It has a narrative. It has original elements to its gameplay (though not as original as its predecessor, Ocarina of Time, of coures). It has unique puzzles, powerful music, immersing game play. It didn't feel like a clone in the least, because it wasn't one. Open Source hasn't produced a game on that level in 30 years.

Is it because Open Source is only appealing on a large scale to the purely technical types -- the people who are more interested in code and optimizations and graphics pipelines than they are in artistry and immersion -- leaving these projects lacking a creative direction or a focused art production team? Does Open Source just not attract the kind of people who can create such a work?

I don't believe that's true. I know highly creative people who are devoted to Open Source. I know a great many Open Source projects that have fantastic artists working as part of their team. I've seen Open Source novels. I've seen Open Source music.

What, then, is lacking? What is the community missing to make it possible for Open Source to deliver the next Game of the Year? I honestly want to know, because both games and Open Source are important to me. I just cannot figure out what the missing puzzle piece is here.

[superppl]

The bottom line is not graphics. It's content. And content takes hard work, time, specific skill, direction and lots of people (and with that comes management). I think it would be an accurate statement that we lack all of them.
You see a lot of puzzles because they only need one person with those specific skills to get done.
But something at the Fallout scale will need probably a dozen people to get it done. Those people would have to work hard, long, and fast to get it out in a reasonable time frame.

Now I think are a few problems here, I kinda stated one: managment. We need a visionary, someone who says this is what I want, and this is how we are going to get it done.
I think a lot of projects lack this, but even there is another problem: motivation. One would think that there is a difference if one is getting paid for hard work with cash or comments.

[deanjo]

That's been my thoughts for the last few Open Source games announced.

I don't mind the game involving shooting. I'm just bored to freakin' tears of every Open Source quake-based game being a Quake 3 Arena "shoot the other players and/or bots and see who gets the most kills" (or one of the popular variations, e.g. CTF).

I love games. I'm a game design major. Games aren't (just) about getting pretty graphics.

Games are the ultimate form of art. They include and use traditional 2D art (in a great many forms, depending on the specific scenes, settings, and artistic design the game offers), cinemagraphic art, literary art, music, voice acting, and not least the arts of immersion and puzzle craft. Every other artform created by mankind is encompassed by games in a way that no other medium can possibly hope to achieve.

And all Open Source gives us is a ton of Quake 3 upgrades.

Where is the original story telling? The original art (not just Yet Another Fucking Space Marine In a Suite, but something new, something beautiful, something that truly impacts the viewer)? Original music scores besides just Techno Remix #4558632? Puzzles? Innovative gameplay that makes the player think in new ways?

All the truly creative gameplay that hobbyist produce end up being tiny puzzle games. These ARE truly great things, and I appreciate them. But Open Source has never produced anything on a magnificient scale. Open Source has never (and I'm starting to believe never will) produce an entirely original work on the scale of Fallout 3, even using old technology (the original Resident Evil looks like crap compared to XreaL, yet it is 1000x more important and meaningful to the art of gamecraft than XreaL could conceivably ever be).

OK, so maybe Open Source hackers are just the kind of people who really like shooters. Why is every freaking shooter they make just a ripoff of the Quake gameplay, though? Why is it that with all the creative juices the Open Source community has, all of the actual gameplay and gamecraft innovation in the shooter genre still comes from the commercial world? Why is Open Source still upgrading Quake instead of making the next of Gears of War, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Resistance, or Metroid Prime?

It's not just shooters, although those are the most popular Open Source games by far. Tux Cart is just a Mario Kart clone. Glest is not meaningfully different than Myth 2, Warcraft 3, or Age of Empires. I can name of dozens of clones for other games, or engine reimplementations, or so on... there are certainly Open Source projects that offer new artwork, but they aren't new expressions; they're just remakes of the same kind of art and the same kind of gameplay that the commercial guys have been putting out for years and years.

Look at a game like Zelda: Wind Waker. The technology needed for an engine like that is nothing compared to what XreaL can do. What made that game impressive was not the technical power of its engine, but the creative vision that produced it. It's not just "cartoony art," it's art with a very specific and unique stylization that sets it apart from any other game made before it. It has a narrative. It has original elements to its gameplay (though not as original as its predecessor, Ocarina of Time, of coures). It has unique puzzles, powerful music, immersing game play. It didn't feel like a clone in the least, because it wasn't one. Open Source hasn't produced a game on that level in 30 years.

Is it because Open Source is only appealing on a large scale to the purely technical types -- the people who are more interested in code and optimizations and graphics pipelines than they are in artistry and immersion -- leaving these projects lacking a creative direction or a focused art production team? Does Open Source just not attract the kind of people who can create such a work?

I don't believe that's true. I know highly creative people who are devoted to Open Source. I know a great many Open Source projects that have fantastic artists working as part of their team. I've seen Open Source novels. I've seen Open Source music.

What, then, is lacking? What is the community missing to make it possible for Open Source to deliver the next Game of the Year? I honestly want to know, because both games and Open Source are important to me. I just cannot figure out what the missing puzzle piece is here.

I think one thing that is missing in a lot of these projects is a good level editor and the likes. I say that from the amazing mods that are found out there in the commercial domain made by the contributing community. The talent is most definitely out there. Beyong the Red Line is a good example of how refined something can look and feel when you have a talented set of core contributors. Unfortunately is also exemplifies one of the biggest weaknesses of a development model. People disagree and then split ways and attempt to redo the same basic project with slight differences and you wind up getting 2 projects that progress so far and then are forgotten about.

[LordHavoc]

Ufo: Alien Invasion is a turn based strategy game and is based off ioQuake3 as well, right?

No, it's based off of Quake2 not Quake3, I've contributed to it a bit.

Raedwulf - several open source engines and games use skeletal animation, it's nothing new, I've had support for a skeletal model format in DarkPlaces Quake engine (which powers Nexuiz) since 2002, Nexuiz has been using exclusively skeletal animation from the beginning.

To be honest xreal has no good reason to require OpenGL3.x drivers - there were extensions for the functionality that OpenGL3.x made strictly required, for example GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object.

But xreal has always been focused on the bleeding edge of technology, I've never really understood why, but I work on game engines, not tech demos, so I haven't had the opportunity to require the latest OpenGL API (DarkPlaces for example still supports Voodoo cards, while also making good use of a GF9 or RadeonHD).

[Raedwulf]

Raedwulf - several open source engines and games use skeletal animation, it's nothing new, I've had support for a skeletal model format in DarkPlaces Quake engine (which powers Nexuiz) since 2002, Nexuiz has been using exclusively skeletal animation from the beginning.


Thanks for correcting me, I did not know that Nexuiz/DarkPlaces did ;).


To be honest xreal has no good reason to require OpenGL3.x drivers - there were extensions for the functionality that OpenGL3.x made strictly required, for example GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object.


It doesn't require OpenGL 3.x, it requires OpenGL ES 2.x . I.e. It is also compatible with opengl 2.x.
To clear it up, Geforce 6xxx series and above are required (I can't remember the equivalent ATI card is though).

[Duo Maxwell]

Are there any plans as of yet to you know, make something more advanced then an FPS title?

All we ever see in open source is plotless fps clones. Are there no public domain or creative commons stories out there to be hammered into a decent platform, mystery, adventure or RPG game?

I'm sure many of the projects would love to get the attention garnered by there being an extremely popular and innovative title made by amateur game makers.

[LordHavoc]

All we ever see in open source is plotless fps clones. Are there no public domain or creative commons stories out there to be hammered into a decent platform, mystery, adventure or RPG game?

The main problem is that most artists "don't get" opensource, and in particular they especially "don't get" working for free, their idea of success centers on getting a paying job at a studio, so they only look at free projects as a possible stepping stone to a studio job, and tend to ignore them even for that.

Not all artists are that way, but the vast majority are.

So other than MMOs (where the product is really the service and the content could be free software) I don't think we'll see that happen on any big scale - and I wouldn't hold my breath for any MMOs doing that.

[Raedwulf]

All we ever see in open source is plotless fps clones. Are there no public domain or creative commons stories out there to be hammered into a decent platform, mystery, adventure or RPG game?


I'm not much of an RPG player, but have you seen Planeshift?
That looks like a pretty good open source MMORPG project.

[MaestroMaus]

What, then, is lacking? What is the community missing to make it possible for Open Source to deliver the next Game of the Year? I honestly want to know, because both games and Open Source are important to me. I just cannot figure out what the missing puzzle piece is here.

Maybe I am living in a simple world, but the answer is quite obvious to me:
1. Very few people know about Open Source Software (OSS). I even found a lot of the Firefox users not knowing that Firefox was OSS, or what OSS actually was. A lot of people just don't care enough to know about it right now.

2. OSS + games haven't been a good combo for years on end (still isn't really). Artists will get noticed earlier by making a mod for a popular game instead of making a totally new game. It is also more secure since part of the work is already completed.

[TheK]

Writing a full featured OpenSource game will a story and a up-to-date 3D-engine is a MASSIVE work, being more complex then creating a full operating system (except that you don't need to fight with missing specifications), so that's why there are so few big OpenSource games.

[yesterday]

That's been my thoughts for the last few Open Source games announced.

I don't mind the game involving shooting. I'm just bored to freakin' tears of every Open Source quake-based game being a Quake 3 Arena "shoot the other players and/or bots and see who gets the most kills" (or one of the popular variations, e.g. CTF).

I love games. I'm a game design major. Games aren't (just) about getting pretty graphics.

Games are the ultimate form of art. They include and use traditional 2D art (in a great many forms, depending on the specific scenes, settings, and artistic design the game offers), cinemagraphic art, literary art, music, voice acting, and not least the arts of immersion and puzzle craft. Every other artform created by mankind is encompassed by games in a way that no other medium can possibly hope to achieve.

And all Open Source gives us is a ton of Quake 3 upgrades.

Where is the original story telling? The original art (not just Yet Another Fucking Space Marine In a Suite, but something new, something beautiful, something that truly impacts the viewer)? Original music scores besides just Techno Remix #4558632? Puzzles? Innovative gameplay that makes the player think in new ways?

All the truly creative gameplay that hobbyist produce end up being tiny puzzle games. These ARE truly great things, and I appreciate them. But Open Source has never produced anything on a magnificient scale. Open Source has never (and I'm starting to believe never will) produce an entirely original work on the scale of Fallout 3, even using old technology (the original Resident Evil looks like crap compared to XreaL, yet it is 1000x more important and meaningful to the art of gamecraft than XreaL could conceivably ever be).

OK, so maybe Open Source hackers are just the kind of people who really like shooters. Why is every freaking shooter they make just a ripoff of the Quake gameplay, though? Why is it that with all the creative juices the Open Source community has, all of the actual gameplay and gamecraft innovation in the shooter genre still comes from the commercial world? Why is Open Source still upgrading Quake instead of making the next of Gears of War, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Resistance, or Metroid Prime?

It's not just shooters, although those are the most popular Open Source games by far. Tux Cart is just a Mario Kart clone. Glest is not meaningfully different than Myth 2, Warcraft 3, or Age of Empires. I can name of dozens of clones for other games, or engine reimplementations, or so on... there are certainly Open Source projects that offer new artwork, but they aren't new expressions; they're just remakes of the same kind of art and the same kind of gameplay that the commercial guys have been putting out for years and years.

Look at a game like Zelda: Wind Waker. The technology needed for an engine like that is nothing compared to what XreaL can do. What made that game impressive was not the technical power of its engine, but the creative vision that produced it. It's not just "cartoony art," it's art with a very specific and unique stylization that sets it apart from any other game made before it. It has a narrative. It has original elements to its gameplay (though not as original as its predecessor, Ocarina of Time, of coures). It has unique puzzles, powerful music, immersing game play. It didn't feel like a clone in the least, because it wasn't one. Open Source hasn't produced a game on that level in 30 years.

Is it because Open Source is only appealing on a large scale to the purely technical types -- the people who are more interested in code and optimizations and graphics pipelines than they are in artistry and immersion -- leaving these projects lacking a creative direction or a focused art production team? Does Open Source just not attract the kind of people who can create such a work?

I don't believe that's true. I know highly creative people who are devoted to Open Source. I know a great many Open Source projects that have fantastic artists working as part of their team. I've seen Open Source novels. I've seen Open Source music.

What, then, is lacking? What is the community missing to make it possible for Open Source to deliver the next Game of the Year? I honestly want to know, because both games and Open Source are important to me. I just cannot figure out what the missing puzzle piece is here.

So why don't you get a group of such people together, and build something using this engine?

Non-professional writing quality will probably be rather poor, but something like Portal or Left 4 Dead (any co-op) that has a focus on gameplay mechanics could be doable.

The only thing stopping it is a lack of people willing to pickup an engine and run with it.

[Mantis1964]

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

OverDose also has its own set of tools built from scratch, even a level editor. So its making life easier for the artists working on it. Well artist, its just one guy doing the ingame art and one coder. Check out some of the pics on the site, its sexy:

http://www.teamblurgames.com/overdose/

[Mantis1964]

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

OverDose also has its own set of tools built from scratch, even a level editor. So its making life easier for the artists working on it. Well artist, its just one guy doing the ingame art and one coder. Check out some of the pics on the site, its sexy:

http://www.teamblurgames.com/overdose/

Sorry if this is a double post, the forums dont seem to be showing my posts...?

[Dragonlord]

Answer is simple: This engine is locked to a game type and then it's nothing else but trying to mod Quake3. This is not the solution to the OSS Game problem. The design is outdated not the technique.

And yes there are projects out there which have their own direction, which are not FPS games, which have not a space marine in a suite, which have a different game mechanics and which have an original story with an entire original world around it. The problem is just that these projects don't get the people since they are attracted but boring FPS stuff... like this one here :/

[Michael]

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

OverDose also has its own set of tools built from scratch, even a level editor. So its making life easier for the artists working on it. Well artist, its just one guy doing the ingame art and one coder. Check out some of the pics on the site, its sexy:

http://www.teamblurgames.com/overdose/

Isn't OverDose only for Windows?

[deanjo]

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

OverDose also has its own set of tools built from scratch, even a level editor. So its making life easier for the artists working on it. Well artist, its just one guy doing the ingame art and one coder. Check out some of the pics on the site, its sexy:

http://www.teamblurgames.com/overdose/

Sorry if this is a double post, the forums dont seem to be showing my posts...?

Ya and there is no plans at all to port it. Windows exlusive, baaaaa. :mad:


No, OverDose does not use SDL.

As stated on our wiki, there are currently no ports in the works or even planned, but the code is designed with portability in mind, so it may be possible for some programmers to contribute ports to other platforms in the future. Both Linux and MacOSX ports would be nice, and I'm sure they would be quite easy to do (way easier than porting to a console).

Moving to the programming forum BTW...
__________________
Nicolas Flekenstein
Lead Programmer, Team Blur
www.teamblurgames.com (http://www.teamblurgames.com/)

[yogi_berra]

The main problem is that most artists "don't get" opensource, and in particular they especially "don't get" working for free, their idea of success centers on getting a paying job at a studio, so they only look at free projects as a possible stepping stone to a studio job, and tend to ignore them even for that.

The problem is not that artists don't get open source (the sheer amount of content available under the CC licenses attests to the contrary), but the atmosphere that exists within many projects tends to drive away artists.

Granted, it is easier to blame artists than to actually look at how the social dynamic within projects tends to drive them off, but if you aren't willing to examine your own actions (Open source developers in general, not you personally) you will always have the same results as very few people are willing to put up with the pure crap that some people dish out.

[maleadt]

The main problem is that most artists "don't get" opensource, and in particular they especially "don't get" working for free, their idea of success centers on getting a paying job at a studio, so they only look at free projects as a possible stepping stone to a studio job, and tend to ignore them even for that.

But does a project really need "true artists" in order to create content?
I think it'd suffice having a game with some base content, and a very accessible toolset (imagine having a "nexuiz-tools" package in ubuntu, containing preconfigured GtkRadiant and some other stuff) to get some quality content over time.

Also, many of those games are still unknown to the new Linux user. I'm using Linux for some years now, but only heard about Nexuiz when 2.5 got released (thanks Phoronix). Why not have a Windows-style "welcome center" or "feature presentation" while installing an OS, advertising quality software available? It might kill the frequently-heard "there aren't any good games for Linux" complaint.

[Dragonlord]

I don't want to burst your bubble but do you consider those generic-FPS-run-of-the-mill-quake-clone-using-ioquake-or-whatever "good"? I don't and that's not what helps Linux gaming. In contrary it kills it off since people perceive Linux then just as a copy-cat but with poor quality compared to serious titles.

[deanjo]

I don't want to burst your bubble but do you consider those generic-FPS-run-of-the-mill-quake-clone-using-ioquake-or-whatever "good"? I don't and that's not what helps Linux gaming. In contrary it kills it off since people perceive Linux then just as a copy-cat but with poor quality compared to serious titles.


I agree "Yet Another FPS" doesn't peek a lot of interest for me. I would rather see a good engine and toolset for a RPG, especially when complete documentation such as the DnD ruleset are available under a Open Game License.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

Now that would truly be kick ass and probably gather a good following if it was made cross-platform judging by the sheer number of peeps still playing NWN.

[Julius]

Raedwulf - several open source engines and games use skeletal animation, it's nothing new, I've had support for a skeletal model format in DarkPlaces Quake engine (which powers Nexuiz) since 2002, Nexuiz has been using exclusively skeletal animation from the beginning.

Just to add to this: Sauerbraten has complete MD5 support and also ragdoll physics since a few months (check svn for the latter).

Otherwise I think Xreal is a great effort... it simply has the problem that most open-source, indi etc gamers do precisely *not* have a cutting edge system. Thus interest is quite low in the traditional peergroup.

But it might have the bells and whistles to attract some professional artists.
I would suggest that once you have the Unreal pipeline running properly (!) to head over to Polycount and make a nice showcase and recruitment post.

[xav1r]

GLSL + Binary = Fail. The idea behind GLSL is that you _don't_ need a compiler like CGC to get things done. The only thing that makes sense is to use a shader tree to generate the GLSL code but this is another problem. That said what's so advanced on this? I don't want to down-call on this project but looking at the screenshots I ask myself what is exactly so next-gen on it? ( because I ought to claim that this is not the most advanced engine... but I guess this depends on what part of the engine you look at ;) )

Well, I've talked with tr3b, the main developer (the only one too) of Xreal, and from what he told me, Xreal has native support for md5 model format, has superior graphical quality than doom3 had, and has much less overhead than quake4-doom3 had, among its features. One of their biggest problems with showing off Xreal's features is precisely because they need good quality art assets to be able to display their engine's awesomeness. :)

[xav1r]

The main problem is that most artists "don't get" opensource, and in particular they especially "don't get" working for free, their idea of success centers on getting a paying job at a studio, so they only look at free projects as a possible stepping stone to a studio job, and tend to ignore them even for that.

Not all artists are that way, but the vast majority are.

So other than MMOs (where the product is really the service and the content could be free software) I don't think we'll see that happen on any big scale - and I wouldn't hold my breath for any MMOs doing that.

Yeah, isnt it ironic that most artists, who should be the "out-of-the-box" thinkers, side most of the time with the old, trite, closed-source, look but dont touch, business model from the old music/movies industry pioneered in 1966? And OTOH, most programmers, more techincally oriented, tend to prefer a freer model.

[deanjo]

Yeah, isnt it ironic that most artists, who should be the "out-of-the-box" thinkers, side most of the time with the old, trite, closed-source, look but dont touch, business model from the old music/movies industry pioneered in 1966? And OTOH, most programmers, more techincally oriented, tend to prefer a freer model.


I don't think it's ironic at all. Many of those artists went to school and need income to pay for their tools and to make a living. Gotta put food on the table after all. It's not like there are a great number of employers that say "we want to to create creative content and put it out for the masses and we will pay you to do it."

[xav1r]

I don't think it's ironic at all. Many of those artists went to school and need income to pay for their tools and to make a living. Gotta put food on the table after all. It's not like there are a great number of employers that say "we want to to create creative content and put it out for the masses and we will pay you to do it."

Dont the open source developers need income to pay for their tools, make a living, and put food on the table after all? I dont think theyre all living off charity. Why cant free-software / open source business model apply to the creative content making workers? Something like the Creative Commons. Dont all artists know the internet, and webbrowsing? In the CC site, there are examples of musicians that put their songs there, and give freedom to anyone to remix their songs and put them under a similar CC license. Why can't most game asset artists do that too?

[Dragonlord]

Well, I've talked with tr3b, the main developer (the only one too) of Xreal, and from what he told me, Xreal has native support for md5 model format, has superior graphical quality than doom3 had, and has much less overhead than quake4-doom3 had, among its features. One of their biggest problems with showing off Xreal's features is precisely because they need good quality art assets to be able to display their engine's awesomeness. :)
So your "awesomeness" and "l33t-er than all others" is only in the graphics department? Great to see another engine focusing only on graphics and forgetting anything else. Glad I'm not one of those and am interested in "real" next generation development which try to push things forward instead of stagnating on graphics only.

Funny though how that graphics ( and I mean the renderer _not_ the artwork ) isn't that awesome after all. I've seen much better and more advanced ( BGE for example ) than that. Somebody needs to look around a bit it looks like ;)

[xav1r]

So your "awesomeness" and "l33t-er than all others" is only in the graphics department? Great to see another engine focusing only on graphics and forgetting anything else. Glad I'm not one of those and am interested in "real" next generation development which try to push things forward instead of stagnating on graphics only.

Funny though how that graphics ( and I mean the renderer _not_ the artwork ) isn't that awesome after all. I've seen much better and more advanced ( BGE for example ) than that. Somebody needs to look around a bit it looks like ;)

WEll, tr3b is mostly a technical guy, and he's about the only person working on Xreal, so I suppose its focused mostly on graphical l33t-ness. I dont think he would be against it if someone would step in and work on the creative side of it, nonetheless.

[deanjo]

Dont the open source developers need income to pay for their tools, make a living, and put food on the table after all? I dont think theyre all living off charity. Why cant free-software / open source business model apply to the creative content making workers? Something like the Creative Commons. Dont all artists know the internet, and webbrowsing? In the CC site, there are examples of musicians that put their songs there, and give freedom to anyone to remix their songs and put them under a similar CC license. Why can't most game asset artists do that too?


Sure they do, but I bet for every 1000 opensource developer employers there is 1 creative works employer, if that. While code can be used in various forms across various projects, creative assets can usually be only used once in a profitable form. Like it or not, profitable opensource development is usually powered by corporations. Starving artists went out with the 60's and early 70's, along with flower power, free love and Nixon.

[Duo Maxwell]

The main problem is that most artists "don't get" opensource, and in particular they especially "don't get" working for free, their idea of success centers on getting a paying job at a studio, so they only look at free projects as a possible stepping stone to a studio job, and tend to ignore them even for that.

Not all artists are that way, but the vast majority are.

So other than MMOs (where the product is really the service and the content could be free software) I don't think we'll see that happen on any big scale - and I wouldn't hold my breath for any MMOs doing that.

I didn't say anything about mmos, we can't even get something like a final fantasy, breath of fire, chrono trigger, star ocean, style single player rpg.

How about a game engine based on Never Winter Nights where we can have an easy to use model maker to make our own small games and upload them to a central site. This would of corse have t e made simple enough for anyone to be able to pick up and use since the most artistic people may not have the highest level of technical skill.

I'm not much of an RPG player, but have you seen Planeshift?
That looks like a pretty good open source MMORPG project.

Planeshift is an unplayable turd, or at least it was the last 3 times I tried to play it. The few other players are never any help in getting any clue as to where and what you're supposed to be doing.

What I don't get is why an open source group can't pull off a game while a small team of 8 are able to pull together a free to play mmo for windows and linux thats in multiple languages. I'm talking about Regnum Online. Sure the story is spotty and the english is a bit brken, but it there and the game is quite playable, if a little boring due to the amount of grinding you have to do in order to hold your own in PvP combat.

There is a way to make money off of open source games, source the engine code but hold the art and charge for that much at least. I.E. get a decent mmorpg story writen and charge $5 a month for it to pay for servers and full time devs and artists, invite the players to donate bits of content under creative commons if you mut to further extend the game.

[deanjo]

There is a way to make money off of open source games, source the engine code but hold the art and charge for that much at least.


I've been saying that for years, engine is free, creative content is on a pay basis.

[Duo Maxwell]

I've been saying that for years, engine is free, creative content is on a pay basis.

I'm wondering if the fsf is planning on trying to buy another game ala Ryzom, maybe they'll get lucky this time around instead of getting outbid.

But really, we need an engine and tools system for a way for the community to build it's own games. make an updated version of Neverwinter nights, an updated version of the 2d fighter maker maker Mugen, a 3d version of the same would also be nice. Write it all to be completely portable and release it all to much fanfare on all platforms on all the gaming sites and /. type news sites you can find to get as many people playing as possible.

It's really not that hard people, just have a little imagination. Go play Metal Gear Solid 3 or 4, tom clancy's rainbow 6 vegas and stalker shadow of Chernobyl if you want to make an fps game, see that you don't have to just rush around in an arena trying to get frags.


here take a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyMEjwz_qT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNRqwZU918Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P18CLNaJ3Q

Open source games don't need to be of that quality and detail, at last not any time soon, but the devs should really be playing these types of games to learn about what the current game mechanics are headed towards. the old I can run and jump like a gazelle while carrying 3 tons of gun ad ammo while taking more hits to kill then a naval destroyer isn't all that fun anymore, especially since that type of game has literally been done to death.

It' still the same old run and shoot it was 15 years ago, just with better graphics. These days gamers want to be more stealthy and put in immersive worlds that can scare the shit to of you.

[xav1r]

Starving artists went out with the 60's and early 70's, along with flower power, free love and Nixon.

:D:D:D That sentence made my day. :)

While all evidence seems to point to that view, I don't believe that the only way for creative works artists can only follow a stricly closed, old-style music/movie industry format. The biggest example i can think of is the Creative Commons, true, most of whats there isnt really known beyond the online world, but, you know, maybe there IS a market that's more vibrant, dynamic and wanting to spend $$$ from the likes of Digg, del.i.cio.us, msn spaces, and the blogs of the planet. Does every work of art have to be on late night news, and on the supermarket magazine ad space?

[dmj726]

I have been observing and considering the state of native games on linux for some time. Here are a few observations I've made along with a list of ideas I have that might be helpful.
Observations

There are few native commercial or commercial equivalent games for Linux.
Most of the open source games for linux *look* old. They might be good, fun games, but the archaic graphics give a bad first impression.
Most of the quality games for Linux are also available for Windows and other platforms. Most platforms concentrate a great deal on "exclusive titles." When Loki went out of business, they said that porting was the worng strategy: Loki's Draeker: If I had to do it over, I'd create Linux native games (http://www.linux.com/feature/20723)
Some Linux games manage to get a good community going, but there are many evolutionary dead ends in open source gaming. This is no different from the proprietary world, but the proprietary world has managed to compensate for it through various techniques for managing risk and maximizing profit on the successful titles.
Most titles are very niche specific and often attempt to create an equivalent of an existing proprietary game on another platform
A lot of games have less than AAA quality artwork, which often looks like an afterthought.

Thoughts and a possible solution
Open source excels in creating quality software that fulfills a general purpose. Linux is not an operating system for a specific computer or purpose. It is a general operating system that is more or less easily tailored to a given environment or purpose. It also evolves over time rather than being replaced with the "next generation" OS. Open source is about not needing to reinvent the wheel (even though we do that a lot). Game engines are like Linux if they can become many different things and can evolve over time. We already have the source to engines that are specific to FPS games, which also happen to be popular amongst gamers at large, so open source developers make Quake clones.
What open source needs is a general engine with good level editing/scripting tools. This would serve as the basis for open source games in different genres. By using a common engine, the basic rendering infrastructure and so forth wouldn't need to be reinvented for every project.
There would need to be one or two games that act as flagship projects using this image, much in the same way linux did in the early days of "Open Source" (ala 1998). The projects themselves would need to be of high quality but carefully designed to be small enough in scope and make maximum use of the code and assets created for them. They would also need to offer something new, not a gimmick, or some little gameplay element, but something that hasn't been done before and that plays to the strengths of the open source process.
In addition, these projects should accumulate a number of art assets and gameplay funtionality that future projects can use with the engine.
Basically, OSS needs to jump start a network effect. Network effects and the lack therof have been limiting linux gaming for years. Hopefully we can use open source its advantages to jump start the process.
I have some more specific thoughts on how one would accomplish this if anyone is interested.

[Dragonlord]

But really, we need an engine and tools system for a way for the community to build it's own games.
It's worked on, since over three years, and it's _not_ XreaL ( as it's fully written from scratch for exactly this purpose ).

[Svartalf]

There are few native commercial or commercial equivalent games for Linux.


It's not simple or easy to make "commercial equivalent" games- and the dearth of commercial games stems more from a perception that there's no market in it for the players in question. This perception stems from many differing things, including several bad decisions on the community's part (Q3:A...everyone couldn't wait 3 or so weeks and bought the Windows version and "patched" it...).


Most of the open source games for linux *look* old. They might be good, fun games, but the archaic graphics give a bad first impression.


That's because many of them ARE old. They were open sourced a while back. Keep in mind something, though... Retro's something of a new movement in gaming and it's getting very popular- because the games of old were a hell of a lot more fun to play than many of the "cool" games that "look modern".


Most of the quality games for Linux are also available for Windows and other platforms. Most platforms concentrate a great deal on "exclusive titles." When Loki went out of business, they said that porting was the worng strategy: Loki's Draeker: If I had to do it over, I'd create Linux native games (http://www.linux.com/feature/20723)


Heh... Loki did many things wrong- only ONE of them was not working at fostering native games for Linux that originated from the platform. :D

Having said this, LGP has at one time, attempted the same thing (Google for "Angry Pixels", which was to be the first studio fostered this way...) and it didn't get far. Mainly because it's not easy getting games going. :D


Some Linux games manage to get a good community going, but there are many evolutionary dead ends in open source gaming. This is no different from the proprietary world, but the proprietary world has managed to compensate for it through various techniques for managing risk and maximizing profit on the successful titles.


If you ask me, they've not managed any better. It's just there's more people mining that space than in the FOSS world so it looks like they've managed it better. If you look at all the lurching horrors that get to the store shelves (Heh...including such stinkers as Daikatana...) they're not doing any better...they've just got more financial resources to keep people doing it in spite of it being atrocious.


Most titles are very niche specific and often attempt to create an equivalent of an existing proprietary game on another platform


This is more because someone wants to play that proprietary game on Linux and can't because there's not a native version of the game in question- so they make reimplementations.


A lot of games have less than AAA quality artwork, which often looks like an afterthought.


This is one of the actual problem areas out of the list of things you give. It's going to be a difficult one. How do you attract quality work of that nature for free? You'll have an uphill battle on that front, unfortunately, because Artists want to get paid at some point (Just like coders...) and they're all still mainly in the proprietary mindset in the world they operate from- they don't get the payment in kind thing like the devs do. :D

[dmj726]

Thank you for commenting, Svartalf, I am not attempting to place blame or say that the tremendous efforts made so far aren't valuable. I just made some observations about what might be holding Linux gaming back from its full potential. A large part of the limitation is "market share." There's a real chicken and the egg issue here, which is why Linux gaming will need to find some advantage to bootstrap itself.
It's not simple or easy to make "commercial equivalent" games- and the dearth of commercial games stems more from a perception that there's no market in it for the players in question. This perception stems from many differing things, including several bad decisions on the community's part (Q3:A...everyone couldn't wait 3 or so weeks and bought the Windows version and "patched" it...).

That's because many of them ARE old. They were open sourced a while back. Keep in mind something, though... Retro's something of a new movement in gaming and it's getting very popular- because the games of old were a hell of a lot more fun to play than many of the "cool" games that "look modern".

I completely agree; new games aren't necessarily better, and modern graphics do not a good game make. I still enjoy a good game of Starcraft, which has artwork that still holds up despite its 2D pixelated nature.

Heh... Loki did many things wrong- only ONE of them was not working at fostering native games for Linux that originated from the platform. :D

I wasn't even aware of Linux when Loki was still around, so I only know what I've dug up on the internet. It still seems that *just* porting can't be the solution for the same reason that WINE will never be the full solution.

Having said this, LGP has at one time, attempted the same thing (Google for "Angry Pixels", which was to be the first studio fostered this way...) and it didn't get far. Mainly because it's not easy getting games going. :D

Yes, It's not an easy task making a quality game from scratch. (By the way, the angry-pixels site no longer exists.) In fact, most games, even commercial ones die without getting far because it's such a monumental task to even get something that looks like a game at all.

If you ask me, they've not managed any better. It's just there's more people mining that space than in the FOSS world so it looks like they've managed it better. If you look at all the lurching horrors that get to the store shelves (Heh...including such stinkers as Daikatana...) they're not doing any better...they've just got more financial resources to keep people doing it in spite of it being atrocious.

By managed better, I meant had deeper pockets and combined into huge corporations that could afford to release a some duds. Indy developers and FOSS games don't have that option, so the problems appear in a more pronounced form. Marketing also gets people to pre-order it so they don't get a chance to know if it's good before sinking dozens of dollars.

This is more because someone wants to play that proprietary game on Linux and can't because there's not a native version of the game in question- so they make reimplementations.

Nothing wrong with reimplementations for this purpose. Linux itself began as a reimplementation. You might argue that a lot of commercial games are proprietary reimplementations of other commecial games...with new graphics and a single added gameplay element.

This is one of the actual problem areas out of the list of things you give. It's going to be a difficult one. How do you attract quality work of that nature for free? You'll have an uphill battle on that front, unfortunately, because Artists want to get paid at some point (Just like coders...) and they're all still mainly in the proprietary mindset in the world they operate from- they don't get the payment in kind thing like the devs do. :D

There is good artistry available for free. Look at all the mods available for commercial games like Warcraft III or particularly Black Mesa Source. (http://www.blackmesasource.com/) There's even a free community-made art pack that makes Half-Life 2 look graphically impressive. However, the majority of artists do not necessarily get the open source mindset yet. Of course, you might be able to begin attracting enough artists if you can show an artistic equivalent of "plausible promise". That is, the tools need to be good enough for artists to just plug the art in, and it needs to seem like there's a good audience for the artist. It may never be practical to get all artwork for free, but many artists would be willing to "freelance" for set royalty-free amounts if payment was needed--not really much different from working at a big game studio really.
In practice, getting the artwork will be a huge challenge. That's why I suggested that the games share a good amount of their artwork to reduce the impact of the lack of artist involvement. That way the art can evolve over time like the Linux kernel.

[grantek]

(Q3:A...everyone couldn't wait 3 or so weeks and bought the Windows version and "patched" it...).
Wait, what? I'm sure I've dragged this argument out for later id games, but didn't Q3:A have a phone-home cd-key check? Automatic update management? Everything you need to identify who's playing it on Linux.

[Aradreth]

Wait, what? I'm sure I've dragged this argument out for later id games, but didn't Q3:A have a phone-home cd-key check? Automatic update management? Everything you need to identify who's playing it on Linux.
But Loki didn't get any money from people using the patched version contributing to their fall (which scared off a fair few publishers I'm sure) as they ended up with lots of "useless" stock as everyone had bought a windows version and weren't buying the Linux version, that's a lot of money (if they made 5000 copies that's ~ £150000, admittedly some of that would have been profit) lost which a start up company just can't afford.

[LordHavoc]

Great post Svartalf, I agree on all points, there's simply more money in the proprietary Windows game market, more games (stinkers and gems alike) come out on Windows than on Linux, and it's entirely because of funding.

There are few traditional publishers who would be willing to "risk" an investment in a Linux only game, and so far there hasn't even been a compelling argument from the user community regarding the market-ability of such a game even if it was made.

So all we get is cross-platform games to avoid "risk", because it's easy to convince investers that there is a market for Windows games.

So without funding, most games simply choose another platform.

This funding issue is at the heart of the problem for all zero-cost games such as Nexuiz - it's hard to find any artist (or experienced game programmer) willing to work without pay on a game "for the community", it's like being voluntarily unemployed and voluntarily starving.

[Svartalf]

But Loki didn't get any money from people using the patched version contributing to their fall (which scared off a fair few publishers I'm sure) as they ended up with lots of "useless" stock as everyone had bought a windows version and weren't buying the Linux version, that's a lot of money (if they made 5000 copies that's ~ £150000, admittedly some of that would have been profit) lost which a start up company just can't afford.

Got it in one...and they made quite a few more than 5k units from what I was led to believe when it all happened. There's a reason Loki ended up owing iD over 250k in royalties past what they'd gotten with the sweetheart deal they'd cut Loki on Q3:A.

Just because the titles phone home doesn't mean diddly if the publisher making the Linux version takes a bath on it. They most definitely do NOT pull any version reporting home as Linux out of the Windows proceeds pile and place it in a Linux one. When you bought Q3:A from Activision instead of Loki, you paid THEM and they don't do Linux versions period.

Just as there was a reason Loki got pasted the way they did, there's reasons why I keep telling people when you buy a Windows version of something, you're sending a message- one that I doubt many of the people in this forum would like to send.

[LordHavoc]

Just as there was a reason Loki got pasted the way they did, there's reasons why I keep telling people when you buy a Windows version of something, you're sending a message- one that I doubt many of the people in this forum would like to send.

The way I see it, multi-platform versions will always cannibalize single-platform versions, but seem easier to sell to the dual-boot crowd.

I think fundamentally the dual-boot crowd are the problem in the equation.

[Duo Maxwell]

The way I see it, multi-platform versions will always cannibalize single-platform versions, but seem easier to sell to the dual-boot crowd.

I think fundamentally the dual-boot crowd are the problem in the equation.

Dual boot crowd my ass, I know plenty of gamers that run linux as their only OS, that have pirated every linux game.

I'm usually one to side with the pirates but if the goal is to send a message to dev houses to make more linux titles then they aren't helping and only pirating for themselves.

I always try to tell them if you must game pirate just grab your windows and your windows only games that aren't going to be ported.

I used to be a Mac guy, same issue there, the ones that whined the most for more Mac games where the ones that had pirated the entire library of Mac titles. Now what do they get? non native hacks of the games using cider. They have nobody to blame but themselves as I'm all for pirating a copy of Maya or Adobe Studio for classes as even with edu discount it can still be ridiculously expensive, but don't pirate games if your chosen OS isn't windows as you're just removing any incentive from the game publishers to ever make native tittles.



As for the dificulty of making other types of games...

Have any of the potential game devs out there ever owned a console? Have they ever played 2d fighters or side scrolling beat em ups like double dragon? Thse kinds of games wth good quality graphics and a decent control scheme with capability of using a controller could prove quite interesting.

IMHO the 2D fighter is a completely untapped market these days, the last game I heard about from this genera was last year's Arcana Heart, yes, the perv game lol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPVRt9Bg594 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPVRt9Bg594

I think that theres a decent amount of space in the gaming market for some well done 2d games in hd quality. The best thing? since it's 2D you can pay your cousin that can draw good in beer to make some charters for you. Seriously, in a community as large as say the ubuntu forums, it probably wouldn't be hard to find people to make a few chars and draw in a few dozen animation poses for them so that they could look to be moving right.

What about 3d platformers? Wheres the open source equivalent of crash bandicoot/banjo kazooie/spyro the dragon/croc/mario/whatever

We can't have Tux and GNU team up in some epic adventure?

Can't find enough people? Try hitting the Mac users up for help, still not enough? hit every windows gaming forum. Need cash? Then see if you can get the game if small enough ported to the wii or if any size ported to the ps3, last I checked both had online game shops just like the Xbox360 has and they do have some interesting and sucessful titles.

At least as far as 2d goes theres one decent sidescoller in the same vein as the old 2d duke nukems in Metal Blob Solid, too bad the 3d versions don't seem to have that same kind of appeal.

[Aradreth]

I'm usually one to side with the pirates but if the goal is to send a message to dev houses to make more linux titles then they aren't helping and only pirating for themselves.
There is never any reason to side with the pirates. Never. If it has draconian DRM on it boycott the title entirely don't pirate it or your just proving their point. Also there was no reason to pirate Linux games, the majority use to be DRM free and if you can't afford well tough shit, save up and buy it like you would with a piece of computer hardware or a PMP. If you have to pull excuses out of your arse to justify it then don't do it.

[Dragonlord]

@Duo Maxwell:
It's not as easy as you think. I know this from my own experience. Freelancers ( and this are all people not on a payroll ) are to a large degree lazy bums. I have met a couple of people which could do something of quality but suddenly they disappear either with some lame excuse or no excuse at all. Most freelancers lack the fucking will and butt to sit a project through to the end and that's the major problem: no fucking strong will! That's the main problem. What people can do quickly is moaning about something not existing but when it gets down to actually _do_ something about it they just pull in their tail and try to stay as far away as possible from the those actually doing something. That's unfortunately the reality right now.

[matti3]

I don't want to burst your bubble but do you consider those generic-FPS-run-of-the-mill-quake-clone-using-ioquake-or-whatever "good"? I don't and that's not what helps Linux gaming. In contrary it kills it off since people perceive Linux then just as a copy-cat but with poor quality compared to serious titles.

I consider both Tremulous and Urban Terror to be quite good. Especially addictive :)

[Starclopsofish]

Has anyone taken a look at the Blender Game Engine lately? It's seen massive improvments in the past year, and now a company is optimizing and improving it with the intention to lauch a big budget multiplatform title using the engine.

Big advantages here is that this engine is intimately integrated with the premier open source 3D application, making art creation trivial. There are (likely) a massive number of Blender artists willing to participate in free projects like this on the forums.

Here's a link to the thread:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=152782

[Svartalf]

The way I see it, multi-platform versions will always cannibalize single-platform versions, but seem easier to sell to the dual-boot crowd.

How do you correlate your position with iD's or up until recently Epics or Bioware's position on this matter. They didn't cannibalize ANYTHING and they made things cross-platform.

The only time you cannibalize things is when the people can't wait and they have an option to go get a differing platform's version and drop the native binaries on the result- and there's a publisher trying to make money off of the product and support angle of things; about like what happened to Loki with Q3:A (Loki botched a few things and delayed by 3 weeks the ship date (the silly metal tins they were going to box all the units in were locked up in customs...funny that...) and nobody in the Linux community (Save for the approximately 200 that bought on non-closeout...myself included...) waited to get the LINUX version of the thing- they went and bought the Windows SKU and "patched" it.

And now people wonder why iD won't make any more officially published titles for us...


I think fundamentally the dual-boot crowd are the problem in the equation.

I don't know if they're the problem, but they're definitely a part thereof.

[Svartalf]

@Duo Maxwell:
It's not as easy as you think. I know this from my own experience. Freelancers ( and this are all people not on a payroll ) are to a large degree lazy bums. I have met a couple of people which could do something of quality but suddenly they disappear either with some lame excuse or no excuse at all. Most freelancers lack the fucking will and butt to sit a project through to the end and that's the major problem: no fucking strong will! That's the main problem. What people can do quickly is moaning about something not existing but when it gets down to actually _do_ something about it they just pull in their tail and try to stay as far away as possible from the those actually doing something. That's unfortunately the reality right now.

<*Chortle*>

I wouldn't quite so far as describe the situation that way (But only because I'm trying to be diplomatic... ;) )- but it's dead on what you just said there. You sure you're not channeling some of my regular angst on the subject there, Dragonlord? :D

[Dragonlord]

<*Chortle*>

I wouldn't quite so far as describe the situation that way (But only because I'm trying to be diplomatic... ;) )- but it's dead on what you just said there. You sure you're not channeling some of my regular angst on the subject there, Dragonlord? :D
Hehe... I don't wield for no reason the user title "Linux-Dragon of quick wit and sharp tongue" ( and that was not my idea... a friendly admin gave it to me once upon time :P ). I tend to name things the way they are. Doesn't net me many friends but it's not the friendship whores that change the world but those with ambition. :D

[dmj726]

<*Chortle*>

I wouldn't quite so far as describe the situation that way (But only because I'm trying to be diplomatic... ;) )- but it's dead on what you just said there. You sure you're not channeling some of my regular angst on the subject there, Dragonlord? :D

I'm not sure we would need all or even a significant portion of the "freelance" crowd. Open source software has tons of "free riders" and still works well. A few dozen dedicated people is worth far more than a thousand people who just whine (or WINE) all day. Granted, there are far too many of the latter:mad:, but let the group self-select the ones who are dedicated. After all, the latter would at least constitute an audience!

Of course, I would fall into the W(h)INE(r) category if I don't put my money where my mouth is and put theory into practice.

[Aradreth]

I'm not sure we would need all or even a significant portion of the "freelance" crowd. Open source software has tons of "free riders" and still works well.
Most open source software are either relatively small projects or sponsored by companies, games are slightly different as they are a massive project and have very little incentive for companies to back them. Now developers and artists still need to earn a living so will only be able to spend their free time working on the project but a lot of that time they probably want to spend on something else like with friends or family (not to mention you come home from coding to do yet more coding) so progress will be very slow. This in turn often makes people give up as they don't think it'll ever be complete so isn't worth wasting time on, and so on and so forth.

[deanjo]

This in turn often makes people give up as they don't think it'll ever be complete so isn't worth wasting time on, and so on and so forth.

In all fairness a lot of the time the projects do just die and never are complete. Just a few for example:

http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2009/03/top-10-projects-to-revive.html

[BlueKoala]

Is it because Open Source is only appealing on a large scale to the purely technical types -- the people who are more interested in code and optimizations and graphics pipelines than they are in artistry and immersion

How many artists do you know that use a Linux based operating system?

I've noticed that a lot if open source games seem to revolve around implementing features; making actual games a secondary goal.
I really don't see it as being a problem if everyone can benefit from it.



I think one thing that is missing in a lot of these projects is a good level editor and the likes. I say that from the amazing mods that are found out there in the commercial domain made by the contributing community.

I think Deanjo is really onto something. If tools were more readily available and easier to use, I bet more artists would be interested in participating. Hence having more original content as gameplay, graphic design, plot etc... to go with the technical content.

[leilei]

all this XreaL stuff is hype, but it's going to be unfortunate for all those non-developers to recommend XreaL for everything from this point on (like posts all over telling people to switch to Ogre or Irrlicht from an already working solution. Yes, even OA got that request once)

How many artists do you know that use a Linux based operating system?
It can't be me, because tablet drivers only exist for the WACOM. :/

[Svartalf]

It can't be me, because tablet drivers only exist for the WACOM. :/

So, out of curiosity, which tablet do you use? (Noting my GF has a Bamboo that works fine...)

[Dragonlord]

Out of curiosity... which tablet besides Wacom ones are worth anything in the end?

[Aradreth]

For a cheap tablet the Genius G-Pen M712 is good, according to a friend.

[Wyatt]

Pardon, but I'm going to have to play the "confused" role, here. What prevents me from implementing an RTS, terrible "RPG," fighting game, flight sim, arcade racer, or pinball machine in any of these engines, exactly?

The only practical reason I can see that there are so many FPS games is that taking an engine-with-FPS-as-tech-demo to a "full-fledged," "new" game is relatively straightforward and "simple." If people that like deathmatch combat go on to make a similar game, is it really so surprising?

Though I'll admit I'm not as familiar with IdTech and variants as I am with competitors. :/

[Dragonlord]

Reason is simple. FPS are "dumb" games. Dumb in a technical way in that you need just a bunch of weapons, a bunch of power ups and a bunch of maps and there you are, finished is your run-of-the-mill multiplayer game. Non-FPS games require much more to get anywhere especially from the programming part. FPS engines also tend to be very restrictive to FPS only ( some notable exceptions like UnrealEngine ) so they are not versatile. And what use is a non-versatile engine if I can get ( as a developer ) a versatile one from the AAA realm? Not much in fact.

[LordHavoc]

How many artists do you know that use a Linux based operating system?

I know one! He's working on my FPS game :)

I do think artists get stereotyped a bit too much, especially by the programming community - the chief reason for an artist NOT to use Linux is a smaller selection of content creation apps.

Much the same way that Linux or Mac may be viewed as appealing development platform by many programmers (ok, maybe not Mac), artists view Windows as an appealing development platform because it runs the most modeling apps, paint programs, and conversion tools.

[LordHavoc]

Reason is simple. FPS are "dumb" games. Dumb in a technical way in that you need just a bunch of weapons, a bunch of power ups and a bunch of maps and there you are, finished is your run-of-the-mill multiplayer game. Non-FPS games require much more to get anywhere especially from the programming part. FPS engines also tend to be very restrictive to FPS only ( some notable exceptions like UnrealEngine ) so they are not versatile. And what use is a non-versatile engine if I can get ( as a developer ) a versatile one from the AAA realm? Not much in fact.

I'm going to have to beg to differ on two points here:
1. FPS games often have scripted cinematics, collectable equipment, and other elements that have significant cross-over with the RPG genre (however inventory management and a lot of UI work must be added).

They also have ample amounts of AI controlled creatures, which brings them close to RTS (however map-wide routing and sector-based strategic AI must be added).

You can even look at the selection of Quake mods to see a handful of RTS or RPG games that didn't even modify the engine code at all (some of them predate the release of the source)...

All that said, there are fundamental design differences one tends to see in RTS games, RPG games, and indoor FPS games, chiefly to do with outdoor landscape handling (RTS, RPG) and stream loading (RPG).

2. UnrealEngine is clearly designed for indoor/outdoor FPS (while some other engines are solely indoor FPS focused), and requires significant tweaking for each title, which makes me question the "not FPS" claim.

It's also not very friendly to modders in terms of flexibility (as I learned the hard way when doing contract work on a game prototype in the form of a UT3 mod), proving difficult to turn into a non-FPS game without surgery on the engine code, but I assume you were speaking only of licensees.

[deanjo]

Much the same way that Linux or Mac may be viewed as appealing development platform by many programmers (ok, maybe not Mac)

Heh, ask Carmack what he uses. ;)

[leilei]

Heh, ask Carmack what he uses. ;)

Mac OS X? But that's only for the NeXT inheritance.

[deanjo]

Mac OS X? But that's only for the NeXT inheritance.

Last I heard, he develops on a Mac and iD switched over to Mac once the x86 machines came out. (IIRC IdTech5 was first shown on the mac as well). Then of course there is also Ryan Gordon who uses Mac as well.

[leilei]

idtech3 and 4 (Q3A and Doom3) was also first shown off on Macs too iirc, and a Mac q3test client came out before later Windows q3test clients also (though Linux also had a client before Win too so maybe that last one doesn't count)

There's of course old .plans of Carmack touting how OS X is going to be the the greatest thing ever since NeXT was absorbed.

[Dragonlord]

I'm going to have to beg to differ on two points here:
1. FPS games often have scripted cinematics, collectable equipment, and other elements that have significant cross-over with the RPG genre (however inventory management and a lot of UI work must be added).

They also have ample amounts of AI controlled creatures, which brings them close to RTS (however map-wide routing and sector-based strategic AI must be added).

You can even look at the selection of Quake mods to see a handful of RTS or RPG games that didn't even modify the engine code at all (some of them predate the release of the source)...

All that said, there are fundamental design differences one tends to see in RTS games, RPG games, and indoor FPS games, chiefly to do with outdoor landscape handling (RTS, RPG) and stream loading (RPG).

2. UnrealEngine is clearly designed for indoor/outdoor FPS (while some other engines are solely indoor FPS focused), and requires significant tweaking for each title, which makes me question the "not FPS" claim.

It's also not very friendly to modders in terms of flexibility (as I learned the hard way when doing contract work on a game prototype in the form of a UT3 mod), proving difficult to turn into a non-FPS game without surgery on the engine code, but I assume you were speaking only of licensees.
I don't think so. Collectable equipment doesn't make your FPS an RPG. This is a huge misbelief that went into mass production. Just because you can put on a couple of suits with better protection doesn't make an RPG. If the item is just "better" than a previous item it's not RPG since RPG involves "choice". Go see Deus-Ex to understand when an FPS has RPG elements. Nearly all FPS games today boasting with RPG elements have none at all.

Also the AI of FPS games is in general lame. I've yet to see an FPS where the AI is not so stupid it hurts. Even FPS games which boasted with superior AI ( FC for example but many others there are too ) had shit AI if played by somebody who knows his trade. RTS games are though not necessarily better in AI but FPS is usually not what I look for to find good AI.

And because mods don't change routines to implement an RTS for example doesn't make an FPS equal to an RTS. For a real RTS you need to change the AI since FPS AI is _not_ suitable for an RTS as simple as it gets. Going cheap during modding doesn't change that fact.

What goes for UEngine it's rather flexible and can be bend into all kinds of direction. Nobody said it's easy to do but in contrary to other engines it _can_ be bend and that's the important point.

[xav1r]

For a cheap tablet the Genius G-Pen M712 is good, according to a friend.

But isnt the G-Pen too small?

[Aradreth]

But isnt the G-Pen too small?
It's roughly A4 sized and costs under £90 compared to the A4 sized Wacom Intuos which is ~£300, admittedly the Intuos has slightly better spec's but that's expected considering the price difference.