Xonotic 1.0 Is On The Linux Gaming Horizon

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Xonotic 1.0 Is On The Linux Gaming Horizon

Xonotic, the open-source multi-platform game that succeeded Nexuiz, is finally moving closer to its 1.0 release...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA1Mzc

[sabriah]

"need for new, larger maps to fully take advantage of the vehicle transportation"

Artists are badly needed for ALL open source fps projects.

That means that developers should equally focus on improving editors and making import/export between various tools a priority for helping artists; most very good artists aren't programming experts.

Xonotic's webpage is terrible. In order to find out how to submit maps, it is a nightmare. If you want to submit code, it is easier...

Their tool of choice appears to be gtkradiant, but that seems terminated since years.

Googling for gtkradiant shows that darkradiant may be a better fork/choice.

It is not obvious at all for a newcomer. At least not from Xonotics homepage.



EDIT 01: Now I found out that they actually use netradiant - http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xono.../Creating_Maps

But gtkradiant is the one mentioned here http://forums.xonotic.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=13

[sabriah]

EDIT 02: In the forums at www.darkmod.com unf http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/1...export-to-map/
I discovered one can use Blender for creating maps. That message was posted 06 January 2012 - 06:30 PM.

This is quite exciting I've just found out that there's a script that can export geometry from Blender to Quake 3 .map format. That means you can not only make static meshes but also BSP entirely in Blender. It's hidden by default, you have to enable it in user preferences -> addons -> import / export.

So, this is what I mean about interoperability between tools. The capacity may be there, sort of, but it is not intuitive. No wonder they cannot find map artists.

[Azpegath]

EDIT 02: In the forums at www.darkmod.com unf http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/1...export-to-map/
I discovered one can use Blender for creating maps. That message was posted 06 January 2012 - 06:30 PM.

So, this is what I mean about interoperability between tools. The capacity may be there, sort of, but it is not intuitive. No wonder they cannot find map artists.

I think you are completely right. It is hard getting time to focus on all different aspects of game making, and artists/content creators are very very hard to find. Especially since a lot of programmers want to focus on maximizing their engine, to make it better for artists and players. It's like "Yeah, I'll do that, I just need to tweak this thing a little bit more, THEN I'll bring in more artists.". I think the Agile way to go here is to bring in artists/content creators much earlier in the process, and develop things together. But it's so hard finding them. Or at least looking for them =)

I've been developing a game (http://subspacebattle.sf.net) and I'd really like new maps and everything (I only have one static, and old meshes/textures) but I just feel "Why ask artists to join when I don't even have the time to code on it anymore". I'm using Irrlicht (cross-platform game engine, like Ogre, which both are very invisible on Phoronix for some reason) and it can import all kinds of files, so working in Blender is the preferred way to go. I'm even importing whole *.3ds files, since Irrlicht handles the BSP-tranformation itself.

EDIT: What I really wanted to say with my post: I think more information on how to contribute as a non-programmer would be very welcome on many projects. I know many technical people don't think so, but websites are important. Information flow is important. Clear and concise information is important.

[Irritant]

Tools, shmools.

Netradiant.
Blender.
Image editor of choice.

Done.

[Azpegath]

Tools, shmools.

Netradiant.
Blender.
Image editor of choice.

Done.

]

Hehe well those are some quite powerful and potent tools right there.

[curaga]

Though, it takes < 1 hour for a noob to learn how to use netradiant well. For the same noob the be able to use blender at that level, it's > 1 month.