A Battle For Good Open-Source Game Graphics?

[L33F3R]

i hope the flames die down. Irritant do you have examples of stuff you have worked on?

[Irritant]

i hope the flames die down. Irritant do you have examples of stuff you have worked on?

Me too, I honestly was not trying to fan them, just trying to get a perspective on why a few people here seemed so angry about FPS gaming engines.

I am the lead developer of Alien Arena http://red.planetarena.org

I looked at Dragonlord's project, and it looks like there is a great start, which makes it all that much more confusing as to why this argument is taking place. He seems to have the ability to make the kind of engine he wants, so there is no need to lament others for not doing so.

Our engine, much like many other engines is being developed for a specific game, and we are a very small team of four, so we don't have the resources/time to worry about making things easier for others to use our engine. As it stands, I've already posted that the only tools you need to work with it are Blender, Gimp, Radiant, and a sound editor. So there isn't really a need for us to create new tools when there are already free ones in place to use(though we did make a radiant of our own for the game). Other than basic physics, most of the flexiblity would come from the game code(meaning you can really make it do most anything). As I stated before, there have been a number of interesting projects created from id Tech that isn't FPS(UFO AI for example).

[L33F3R]

Ahhhh well i must say i have had a good wob of fun playing your game .

Radiants strengths are also its greatest weakness. It is very capable but to the degree that it has a terrible learning curve compared to say unreal or hammer. Same goes for blender unfortunately enough . Radiant has also branched off a bit. You get qe,gtk,net,dark,zero radiants to name a few and they all do basically the same damn thing.

[Irritant]

Ahhhh well i must say i have had a good wob of fun playing your game .

Radiants strengths are also its greatest weakness. It is very capable but to the degree that it has a terrible learning curve compared to say unreal or hammer. Same goes for blender unfortunately enough . Radiant has also branched off a bit. You get qe,gtk,net,dark,zero radiants to name a few and they all do basically the same damn thing.

Yeah I couldn't agree more. I was a longtime Worldcraft user, and when I switched over to Radiant, it took quite some time to be productive again. Blender is still something I never quite get used to, at least in the animation dept. It's very difficult IMO, the interface is very confusing. Still Blender is a fine program, I really liked it once I got the hang of it.

[Svartalf]

Me too, I honestly was not trying to fan them, just trying to get a perspective on why a few people here seemed so angry about FPS gaming engines.

Because the bulk of them are derivative things that're largely lame.

I am the lead developer of Alien Arena http://red.planetarena.org

Heh... Nice game. I've enjoyed playing it in the past with other people.

I looked at Dragonlord's project, and it looks like there is a great start, which makes it all that much more confusing as to why this argument is taking place. He seems to have the ability to make the kind of engine he wants, so there is no need to lament others for not doing so.

It's because many, if not most, of the FOSS FPS game making crowd aren't really innovative. You're not one of them, and complaints about "yet another FOSS FPS" are not reflective of YOUR endeavors- and shouldn't be taken that way.

[Svartalf]

As I stated before, there have been a number of interesting projects created from id Tech that isn't FPS(UFO AI for example).

Oh, thought I'd address this remark...

Yes, there's interesting non-FPS projects using it, but it's not quite the same thing as using an engine purpose-built for more than FPS. I'm sure you could accomplish similar with AA's engine code, but you'd also be writing largely the same thing Dragonlord's working on, but with compromises to accomodate the original engine's codebase- or end up with something that doesn't even remotely resemble the original engine.

[L33F3R]

It's because many, if not most, of the FOSS FPS game making crowd aren't really innovative. You're not one of them, and complaints about "yet another FOSS FPS" are not reflective of YOUR endeavors- and shouldn't be taken that way.

< Because coders are not very creative. >

That statement as we know it would be far from true. But it seems that FOSS games are for the most part, quake 3 deathmatch clones with similar weapons. The ones are original used to be mods (with few exceptions). Something has got to correlate with this bombardment of shoot the bot with the rocket launcher style fps games.

[Svartalf]

< Because coders are not very creative. >

That's not QUITE what I was going for- truth of the matter is, many coders aren't all that creative in the artistic or game design sense of the word.

If you think for a longish moment about the following remarks you made:

But it seems that FOSS games are for the most part, quake 3 deathmatch clones with similar weapons. The ones are original used to be mods (with few exceptions). Something has got to correlate with this bombardment of shoot the bot with the rocket launcher style fps games.

I think you'll find that there's a correlation- and while the original ones were mods, they found something different, and went in novel ways with differing weapons, gameplay, etc. The bulk of them didn't leave their roots or deviated from the munchkinesque (a' la the D&D or Steve Jackson Games concept for the term...) stuff we keep seeing.

[mirv]

We're happy little vegemites as bright as bright can be...
(what I always say when people start getting riled up).

Anyway, I agree with a lot that many of the open source engines are very geared towards coders rather than artists, and this is something I realised some years back. That's why in my own hobby pet project, I'm creating an editor in tandem with an engine (at the moment its more of a playground for ideas). I'm also not interested in designing anything that's been done and so actually started playing with unique terrain texture ideas before I heard of etqw. It's been in a workable state for some time now, but is a pain to create content for (which is why I've moved back to making the tools for it again). Unfortunately, in the past when I've mentioned the word "tools" people think that it's a solved problem, and any can be used so just make an engine. That's not the best way to allow others to make content for it.
I also heartily agree with what Irritant said earlier in that game code != engine code. Just look at what people have done with the Unreal engine, and from the Quake2 engine.

And in regard to an example use of something I said earlier - Dragonlord, don't dismiss something you haven't seen

[L33F3R]

The bulk of them didn't leave their roots or deviated from the munchkinesque (a' la the D&D or Steve Jackson Games concept for the term...) stuff we keep seeing.

true say.

Xreal engine looks positively positive if i might say so. I think its about time i played with it