Some questions for an article on Nexuiz

[CKeichel]

Hi, my name ich Christian Keichel, I am currently writing an article on open source games for a german games magazine, so I have some questions to the players of Nexuiz about the game.
I would be very happy, if you can post you're views, so that I can give the reader a good picture of the Nexuiz Community.
1) Compared to an commercial online shooter, where are the advantages of Nexuiz, and where are the disadvantages?
2) Do you always find enough skilled opponents in the net?
3) Is Nexuiz played on Lanpartys?
4) For how long do you play Nexuiz?
5) Do you think the developers are listening do you, the gamers?
6) What other games do you play, and are you generally preferring Open Source games and software?
Ok this are my questions, I hope you all can help me.

[Daedalus]

hi, i'll try to answer your questions :

1) the main advantages ,imho, are unusual friendly community, that it's free and in a constant developing stage where everyone can participate

2) yes. by now there are enough skilled ppl on the servers (for me, at least)

3) on the one's i visit, yes

4) for over a year now

5) definitely a yes. although it might take some time,but your concerns are always listened to

6) well, atm i'm only playing nexuiz, but i've been playing a lot of first person shooters. i prefer 'free software', but it doesn't have to be free necessarily

thats it. a bit short, but i'm in a hurry

would you care to tell us the name of the german magazine you're referring to ?

[tChr]

Hi, my name ich Christian Keichel, I am currently writing an article on open source games for a german games magazine, so I have some questions to the players of Nexuiz about the game.

How cool

1) Compared to an commercial online shooter, where are the advantages of Nexuiz, and where are the disadvantages?

The main advantages is the community and the closeness between the developers and the users. The main disadvntage is the limited possibilities for development due to the limited recources, and that nexuiz strives to keep all code _and_ content free and open.

2) Do you always find enough skilled opponents in the net?

Not really. If i play on off hours, it can be hard to find players on neraby servers, This I find a bit unfair, as the game deserves more players, but then again, there is no budget for advertising in this project.

3) Is Nexuiz played on Lanpartys?

Yes. At least here in Norway its been played on several occations. I remember when the community made a scorelogger on request in very short notice when this started.

4) For how long do you play Nexuiz?

I've played since 1.0, and I play quite often.

5) Do you think the developers are listening do you, the gamers?

Very much so. Several examples of this might be found in this forum.

6) What other games do you play, and are you generally preferring Open Source games and software?

I dont play too many games except oldies and nexuiz


Hope this is helpful

[esteel]

1)
advantages:

• Its pure fun! I just like the style.
• Its free (you can get if for free and ALSO free the floss sense as its gpl)
• The community is the best i know compared to other games.
• It works on windows, mac, linux out of the box.
• Its highly configurable.

disadvantages:

• It has a player base big enough that one can always find someone playing but even more players would be great. Its not as widly known as commercial games and imo quite often badly bashed in reviews..

2) Yes i find enough skilled opponents in the net but as said even more would be great.
3) Yes Nexuiz is played on Lanpartys but i have not been to one in years
4) If you mean since when then since the day version 1.0 was out. First of June 2005.
If you mean per day.. on average 1hour . Have to work, its summer. But besides playing there is also other stuff i do for nexuiz..
5) Well that one is a bit unfair as i'm listed in the credits as Programmer for Nexuiz.. But in general yes the developers try to listen to what people want and are glad to help with anything.
Popular examples include the falling damage and the damge-through floor changes..
6) I prefer shooter type games and games that i can play on linux. So i have a lot of id software games installed but i also like free and opensource games. I do not really prefer opensource games but why buy a game if there is a EQUALY good free game?
Though i even play for free games now and then..

Indeed it would be nice what magazine you refer too and it would be cool to get a copy of that article when its out

[Urmel]

1)
+ The player community is much more familiar and friendly than others. You can get in contact with many of them very fast. Playable on almost every OS.

- maybe the game doesnt look very up-to-date, and the menue is more like stoneage

2) Not really always. But most of the time.

3) I heard about it, yeah. I've never been interested in those however.

4) For about one year.

5) Yes, and how they do! I never experienced developers who are that open and friendly.

6) For years now I haven't seen stuff which was worth the money, or playable enough on my hardware. In former times I played games like Doom, UT, Duke Nukem and stuff. [/quote]

[tZork]

Hi Christian Keichel. How nice of you to take the time to listen to what the community has to say before writing you article!

1
Cons
* More hardware intensive (naturally..) them commercial games with similar effects
* Not enough ppl on servers at times. That’s getting better tho.
Pros
* Strong, very friendly community. Best one I seen to date.
* It’s free. Even content is free. This means anyone can pick up and mod / bug fix / start their own game based on any part(s) of Nexuiz
* Constant evolution of the game. Commercial games have patches, but these are in 99% of the time just bug fixes and maybe some small new feature. Nexuiz is constantly getting new interesting features.

2
No, not always. Sometimes I find myself on a server with no resistance but that’s rare. It’s worth a note that I probably find myself on a server with a more skilled player(s) then the other way around.

3
Yes

4
If you mean each time its anything in-between one map and 30+ matches. I first started playing Nexuiz sometime in the summer 2005, if memory serves me right.

5
Very mutch, that’s another one of those awesome things about Nexuiz. Naturally not every idea and request gets accepted but you will always get an answer to you request.

6
Well I do try some new titles every now and then, but the only other game I play regularly is diablo2:lod. I would prefer OpenSource games if I could, but threes simply not enough OpenSource games for that to be an option. However to choose from two similar games one commercial is a no-brainer for me, and its not because one of them costs me cash, ill go for the OpenSource one any day.

[C.Brutail]

1) Compared to an commercial online shooter, where are the advantages of Nexuiz, and where are the disadvantages?

Advantages: OPEN SOURCE, FREE SOFTWARE. Have at least one legal gam on your hd This means cross platform too, there's support for Windows, Linux, and Mac too (Mac is a bit behind, but that's only couse the dev team could use more Mac developers, not becouse they don't want to support Mac.)
But this is more then just free. You're free to modify, to develope further, you can do ANYTHING you want with it.
But the biggest one: the community is very good, we're all friends here.


Disadvantages: developement is slower, then commercial games, patches come out not so often. Bugs can occour, and those that were discovered are fixed slower (there are hotfixes, but can be different from ppl to people.

2) Do you always find enough skilled opponents in the net?

I'm living in mid-east europe, and I can find servers with good pings all the time loaded with players matched to my skills, yes.

3) Is Nexuiz played on Lanpartys?

Afaik yes, there was a Japan tournament where there was a ladder in Nexuiz too.

4) For how long do you play Nexuiz?

Nowadays not so much (real life), but when I was realy active, I was playing 4-5 hours pro day.

5) Do you think the developers are listening do you, the gamers?

Absolutely! And they are very helpful too. I remember times, when I had a bug with flares back in 1.5, and divVerent made me a hotfix in 5 minutes , so I could test my wip map.

6) What other games do you play, and are you generally preferring Open Source games and software?

I prefer playing games, that can entertain me, wether it's an FPS, an RTS, a bord-game, or an arcade one. But mostly I prefer "unrealistic" FPS games like the allmighty Quake ( ) and the Unreal series.[/quote]

[bmaker {ger}]

1) Compared to an commercial online shooter, where are the advantages of Nexuiz, and where are the disadvantages?
- advantage: it's for free and it's a very fast game
- disadvantage: many people don't like free games, they think they aren't as good as commercial products

2) Do you always find enough skilled opponents in the net?
- yes

3) Is Nexuiz played on Lanpartys?
- of course

4) For how long do you play Nexuiz?
- 2 weeks

5) Do you think the developers are listening do you, the gamers?
- yes. and.. *psshh* they talk with me!

6) What other games do you play, and are you generally preferring Open Source games and software?
- yes, im using many open source products, e.g. OpenOffice.org (Office suite), joomla (ContentManagementSystem), SharpDevelop (IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironment for writing .net applications)... and much more!


EDIT:
I've to ask a question: which game magazin is it?


- bmaker

[mehere101]

1) Pros: Free as in beer, so the only thing you pay for is bandwidth. Also, the community is quite friendly and responsive.
Cons: Not enough North American dedicated servers/players on said servers

2) Occasionally on the American servers, but the European servers are usually fairly skilled

3) Nexuiz is good fun, and since its free its easy to set up

4) I generally start up nexuiz and release my stress for about an hour at a time

5) The devs. are really good about changes. They always will at least look at a potential balance issue and see what they can do about it.

6) I am into whatever interests me. Right now that would be an odd mix of RTS's, Mechwarrior 4, and Tribes Vengeance, but as those games get old that'll all change. I don't prefer free software per say, more that if its free and has all the features of something that costs me $1000 *cough* Photoshop *cough* ...

[KadaverJack]

1) pros:
- it's free of charge
- i can mess around with the code
- it runs fine on linux
- has someone mentioned the friendly community yet?

cons:
- it's kinda hard to find artists that are willing to GPL their work

2) yes, most of the time, but i won't complain if there were more ppl playing Nexuiz online...

3) yes, i was managing a small lan about 10 days ago and ppl really enjoyed playing Nexuiz. And as already mentioned someone posted pics from a japanese lan some time ago. But i guess most of these lans are private ones, not the big commercial ones were all the CS kiddies attend

4) I started playing Nexuiz only about an hour after 1.0 had been released, that was over a year ago...

5) Like esteel i'm not really impartial, but we try to listen to the gamers (we want them to play Nexuiz and have fun after all. An online game with no players would be rather useless). However it's sometimes hard to please everybody (e.g. the new physics in 2.0: half of the ppl loved them, the over half hated them )

6) I prefer opensource games/software (i'm linux user), since it's always nice to see what ppl can archieve in their spare time. I really like UT (the first one), but Neverwinter Nights is pretty much the only commercial game i play atm. Some open source games i play: http://www.wesnoth.org/ http://wormsofprey.org/
(however i don't play that much atm, due to real life...)