Official announcement wrote:We formally announce the arrival of Xonotic - a free (GPL), fast-paced first-person shooter that works on Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Xonotic is a direct successor of the Nexuiz project.
Xonotic came about in the wake of recent troublesome changes to the Nexuiz project, changes that have left many of the core contributors and community members feeling that the project had been mishandled. As a result, we felt the need to organize a departure to start with a clean slate.
Xonotic will place focus on the things we love about Nexuiz, and extend our goals to become the game that many thought Nexuiz should have been.
While technically being a direct successor of Nexuiz, the Xonotic project is a rethink of the Nexuiz project that recognizes the community around it as its primary driving force and will structure itself to respect that. This means that there will never be a single person with total control over the project. In addition to the stronger focus on the community, Xonotic will set clear goals including the following:
Game changes:
* A new set of player models and animations
* A new set of sounds
* New music
* Default maps will get a makeover
* New stronger bot AI
* New names for weapons and gamemodes (especially ones using the "nex" prefix)
* Low quality textures will be dropped and replaced with higher quality ones
Project changes:
* More frequent releases
* More focus on community activities like tournaments and contests
* Global player stats tracking system, supporting anonymous player as well
* A more defined artistic direction
* More emphasis on recruiting
* Better attention to marketing and public relations
* Better organization of contributors
* Use of GIT versioning system instead of SVN
While we don't have a specific time-line for the first release under the new title, you can track the progress and updates on our website, on Twitter, Facebook and in IRC: #xonotic on irc.quakenet.org
Please visit our FAQ page for more detailed information about this project.
We look forward to creating a game that everyone can feel a part of. You are very much welcome to help in any way you can. We appreciate all of your support.
The Xonotic team
Something the official announcement mentions but imo does not highlight clearly enough: Xonotic is still Nexuiz code-wide and data-wise. Changes apart from renaming will be the new artistic direction, and of course re-branding all logos on textures, items, etc. This is a new project officially, but technically it's just Nexuiz getting renamed and continuing development from where it left in SVN. So don't worry about the core of Nexuiz getting lost... it's the same code and works the same way.
Regarding the forums; Although this forum will probably stay (unless Alientrap decides to remove the Nexuiz areas at some point) I believe it's recommended for everyone to port important topics to http://forums.xonotic.org (copy your posts and re-post them there). Imo this would be useful for topics of high importance and other topics that are still alive, but only if they address parts of Nexuiz which remain compatible in Xonotic (afaik all content will unless it uses Nexuiz branded stuff which will require the compat pack). I'll be doing that for my maps and other entries soon. Also, don't forget to change the word Nexuiz to Xonotic in any post you copy
For more information there's also the Xonotic wiki at http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/wiki It may contain info on things not mentioned in other places. I'll try to help with any questions anyone has as much as I know. Also, to help spread the news, I made an in-game script useful for informing players on any server (so those who don't read the forums or IRC won't find that Nexuiz suddenly disappeared without a trace). See http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic ... ent_script Hope everything will go well with this change
)