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XreaL: The Most Advanced Open-Source Game Engine?

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  • #31
    Some clarifications

    Originally posted by Eragon View Post
    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).

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    • #32
      Originally posted by LordHavoc View Post
      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 .

      Originally posted by LordHavoc View Post
      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).
      Last edited by Raedwulf; 10 April 2009, 02:01 AM.

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      • #33
        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.

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        • #34
          Originally posted by Duo Maxwell View Post
          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.

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          • #35
            Originally posted by Duo Maxwell View Post
            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.

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            • #36
              Originally posted by elanthis View Post
              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.

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              • #37
                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.

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by elanthis View Post
                  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.

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                  • #39
                    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:

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                    • #40
                      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:



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

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