New open source game engine?

[DeadlySnyper]

Okay, this has nothing to do with zymotic in general but has to do with all open source games. In my opinion, a lot of people are turned off from opensource games for two reasons.
1. They think free means crap... which is totally un true
2. People think the graphics are gunna suck, which to be perfectly honest do suck compared to most modern games
The first part cannot be solved becuase it is someone's opinion. The 2nd point can be solved simply by creating a modern open source game engine. As far as ive seen, open source first person shooters all basically run off the quake 3 game engine since its code was made open source. In my opinion, i would much rather play a game that has the steam engine or a ghost recon game than nexuiz because frankly the game engine is outdated. I think that the open source gaming community as a whole should be able to develop a game engine that utilizes these three things:
1. destroyable environments: you need to be able to move crap around. The thing that makes half life so appealing is the ability to pick up basically anything you want and use it as a weapon in some form or another.
2. ditch run and gun: Nexuiz is great for five minutes but after that it gets boring just shooting at people with no point. You need a plot line or at least some strategy element to the game. For online, the players need to be spread out and the game needs to have a slower pace.
3. get some better point of views: this may be a bit byast but, since im a sniper i have to say it anyway, you need to have an actually scope in the game. IMO there are alot of opensource games that would be awesome if you had the ability to pick up a sniper rifle and use scope. This also adds strategy to the game, such as getting to a better sniping position.
4. be creative: become creative with your weapons, in halo2 they have energy swords, thing of a totally wacky weapon like idk a death ray and make it be fun to use.
5. more Gore: add more gore to the game, have bodys lying around have people heads pop off when shot....
6. Better graphics: these new games such as far cry and crysis have amazing photorealistic scenery, try and impliment that into a new game engine, also use the highest version of open GL and stop catering solely to slower machines. If you need to, make two versions, one for slower computers and one for faster computers. Add high detail to the maps and make sure that all the maps are moddable.
7. ADD STORY!!!: Videogames need a good singleplayer. Without a good singleplayer you dont get attached to certain characters. You need to think like a film director and add a great story line with ups and downs, tragedy and success. Get the player emtional attached to the characters in the game.

I thoroghly enjoy playing a good video game and was happy to find that there were free open source games out there. I love open source anything and Im not trying to bash or make fun of them. This is simply a list of things that I would like to see in an open source game. Add to the list if you like or get mad at me if you like. Just understand that i dont mean harm im simply just trying to give some advice. If you actually know of an open source game that does this, let me know. I'm not an advanced programmer but, in my opinion if all the open source game developers united (the cube engine people the alien trap people and all the others) to make a kick ass game engine, it would be awesome. I understand though that this would take a great deal of effort to do, but i think it would be worth creating a modern game engine that was up to date and more fun to play.
DS

[tZork]

Moved. this has nothing to do (directly) with zymotic or nexuiz.

[TVR]

Okay, this has nothing to do with zymotic in general but has to do with all open source games. In my opinion, a lot of people are turned off from opensource games for two reasons.
1. They think free means crap... which is totally un true
2. People think the graphics are gunna suck, which to be perfectly honest do suck compared to most modern games

In your opinion, of course.

The first part cannot be solved becuase it is someone's opinion. The 2nd point can be solved simply by creating a modern open source game engine. As far as ive seen, open source first person shooters all basically run off the quake 3 game engine since its code was made open source. In my opinion, i would much rather play a game that has the steam engine or a ghost recon game than nexuiz because frankly the game engine is outdated. I think that the open source gaming community as a whole should be able to develop a game engine that utilizes these three things:

Darkplaces IS the most advanced open-source FPS engine currently, and IS NOT even based on the Q3 engine, it is a heavily modified [compare screen shots of Quake if required] version of the Q1 engine [I'll elaborate if necessary].

1. destroyable environments: you need to be able to move crap around. The thing that makes half life so appealing is the ability to pick up basically anything you want and use it as a weapon in some form or another.
2. ditch run and gun: Nexuiz is great for five minutes but after that it gets boring just shooting at people with no point. You need a plot line or at least some strategy element to the game. For online, the players need to be spread out and the game needs to have a slower pace.
3. get some better point of views: this may be a bit byast but, since im a sniper i have to say it anyway, you need to have an actually scope in the game. IMO there are alot of opensource games that would be awesome if you had the ability to pick up a sniper rifle and use scope. This also adds strategy to the game, such as getting to a better sniping position.

Nexuiz is a recreation of classical, fast-paced deathmatch; the mission statement from the front page:

... While Nexuiz has improved in all areas, it still stays true to its mission to bring deathmatch back to the basics, with perfect weapon balancing and fast paced action...

Reminiscent of the multi-player based Q3, which makes 1 & 2 unneeded, and 3 simply a bother [All the weapons are only meant for use in DM maps].

4. be creative: become creative with your weapons, in halo2 they have energy swords, thing of a totally wacky weapon like idk a death ray and make it be fun to use.

Perfect weapon balancing for a classical DM game would possibly cause the gimmick to either, A: Break balance, or B: Break the enjoyment of using the weapon.

5. more Gore: add more gore to the game, have bodys lying around have people heads pop off when shot....

As a fast-paced shooter with the current weapons, it would be implausible for anything but an explosion of giblets to happen after death, besides adding such an explicit amount of violence, is quite disturbing...

6. Better graphics: these new games such as far cry and crysis have amazing photorealistic scenery, try and impliment that into a new game engine, also use the highest version of open GL and stop catering solely to slower machines. If you need to, make two versions, one for slower computers and one for faster computers. Add high detail to the maps and make sure that all the maps are moddable.

See above, and the last release was before OpenGL 2.1 was launched.

7. ADD STORY!!!: Videogames need a good singleplayer. Without a good singleplayer you dont get attached to certain characters. You need to think like a film director and add a great story line with ups and downs, tragedy and success. Get the player emtional attached to the characters in the game.

As it has been typed before, Nexuiz is a multi-player game, similar to Q3 in some respects.

I thoroghly enjoy playing a good video game and was happy to find that there were free open source games out there. I love open source anything and Im not trying to bash or make fun of them. This is simply a list of things that I would like to see in an open source game. Add to the list if you like or get mad at me if you like. Just understand that i dont mean harm im simply just trying to give some advice. If you actually know of an open source game that does this, let me know. I'm not an advanced programmer but, in my opinion if all the open source game developers united (the cube engine people the alien trap people and all the others) to make a kick ass game engine, it would be awesome. I understand though that this would take a great deal of effort to do, but i think it would be worth creating a modern game engine that was up to date and more fun to play.
DS

Fortunately this is an opinion, and not entirely accurate either.

[THE PYTHON]

I have to disagree on Nexuiz being entertaining for 5 minutes.
Was it really that boring for you? I understand that people have different tastes.

On what you said, these aren't exactly a standard of a great game.
I'm sure these applied would make an enjoyable experience but not to Nexuiz.

Theres different styled FPS such as Nexuiz being more classic and fast paced, and various unique ones.

I wouldn't say story is always needed. Many older games don't have a elaborate story.
Take many arcade and NES games. There is some favorites from the period.

Also, I know this is your general opinion, but there is plenty of gore, head popping etc in Nexuiz.

And on your second 2., if you were playing a "regular deathmatch style" you may want to check out the Capture the Flag servers.

[ai]

6. Better graphics: these new games such as far cry and crysis have amazing photorealistic scenery, try and impliment that into a new game engine, also use the highest version of open GL and stop catering solely to slower machines. If you need to, make two versions, one for slower computers and one for faster computers. Add high detail to the maps and make sure that all the maps are moddable.

Well, Crysis graphics is rather new and I doubt we will see anything of it's kind anytime soon on Open Source games. But I give you that that Nexuiz has amazing graphics for being Open Source (and based on the Q1 engine, if this wouldn't happen I wouldn't believe it ).

Fortunately this is an opinion, and not entirely accurate either.

Agree. It's more of one opinion than entirely accurate. But still, thanks for taking time stating those. I too sometimes want a story for Nexuiz and thought it would be cool. But this is more a multi player game. I wait for Zymotic as that will be a single player game, kinda, in my perspective, a sequal to Nexuiz

[Ares]

Properly configured Nexuiz looks about as good as Doom 3... a little better in some ways, a little worse in others. If it doesn't look good to you you probably haven't bothered to configure it.

[tZork]

and if you where to start a *new* engine every time a major update or tech comes along there would be an awfull load of engines and reinventing the wheel. hell theres to many allready - beter pool the efforts and make a few good ones insted if hurds of halfassed and unfinnished ones.

[GreEn`mArine]

I think this is what he wants to say: that efforts should be concentrated on one new engine used by many projects .. which is impossible of course (too many different feature requests, uncontrollable committing, etc.). And since this forum is mainly covering Nexuiz, which is obviously a different game ganre than the one he thought it would be, this discussions is simply done with the wrong couple of people^^

[Zico]

I wonder if a small team of OpenSource developers could be able - or *willing* - to create a game with photorealistic graphics and details (or whatever) as some huge game teams which get paid for instead of doing it in their free time.

Also I always wonder if a game is actually better/funnier if the graphics are better...
Makes no sense to me, but I know many PC games have no gameplay anymore - players buy it, because graphics are good. Who cares about fun and gameplay (sorry for sarcasm).

Sure Nexuiz should evolve - and it does since this is the power of OpenSource games. Nexuiz is never really "done". And that's good, so the game changes it's face (more or less).

To compare Nexuiz with Doom3 is - in my opinion - pretty silly since Doom3 *has* much more details (in levels) but I don't say this as a negative point für Nexuiz since it has a completly different level structure which is good since I fear more details would just slow down the "fast paced gameplay" (details == obstacles, probably).

I don't see a sense in changing the engine... I also don't want to think about how long it would take to replace the whole engine. I think Nexuiz is "on the right way" (and the way is the goal ). Sure - may be my taste, my opinions.

Thanks for reading

[SavageX]

My two cents: It's not technology holding open-source games back but content.