Urban Terror HD: Going Away From Open-Source

[yogi_berra]

There is some difference between zero cost end-result and zero cost progress

Good luck finding anyone that will work for free.

[RaideR]

Hi ,

There has been a huge amount of speculation around this new version of Urban Terror. A large ongoing debate can be read at

http://forums.urbanterror.info/topic/23841-a-new-era-of-urban-terror/

Urban Terror HD is going to build on the strengths of our game and dispel many of weaknesses and in which case, we hope, will be more enjoyable to play!

Regards

RaideR
NetAdmin, Team Frozen Sand

[oibaf]

Hi ,

There has been a huge amount of speculation around this new version of Urban Terror. A large ongoing debate can be read at

http://forums.urbanterror.info/topic/23841-a-new-era-of-urban-terror/

Urban Terror HD is going to build on the strengths of our game and dispel many of weaknesses and in which case, we hope, will be more enjoyable to play!

Regards

RaideR
NetAdmin, Team Frozen Sand

Hi, I read the thread but I didn't see any official response to the "huge amount of speculation" many are asking.

First, if the move to the 11 years old codebase of q3 1.32b dropping the ioquake3 engine is confirmed, for sure the game will lose a lot of features and fixes contributed by the community.

Also, from an ethical point of view, it's not very nice to close the game source after having had a (partially) free software version in the past. Fortunately other games are doing the opposite (i.e. 0ad was released as GPL + CC-BY-SA and after this move is gaining new developers and a huge amount of new features).

So while HD could be a somewhat better UrT (and maybe give more money to the developers if that was the point of closing the source) it's a bad move for a lot of Linux and free software supporters.

[Irritant]

From the article:

"From the next version on out, Urban Terror will be its own standalone game with its own engine and no longer a mod. This means we can do the tech we want instead of having to keep backwards compatibility with vanilla Q3."

This makes little sense to me at all. There was nothing stopping the team from using IOQ3 as a base and forking with their own tech improvements, and keeping it open sourced, was there?

[etnlWings]

You make a wonderful technical argument here as to why we all need network sound for a locally played game.

Your trolling was good up until this point.

[devius]

No one as in no one. There is not a single ioq3 mod that has released anything using png.

Ok, so "no one" actually means "no ioq3 mod". Got it.

You make a wonderful technical argument here as to why we all need network sound for a locally played game.

Pulseaudio is a sound daemon that HAS network capabilities. No one is forcing you to use it through the network. Linux is known for its networking support, so having a sound server that works across the network makes sense (I know that for you it doesn't, but the devs aren't working only for you). I can see the advantages of using pulseaudio for a game that makes use of voice communication, since it allows the user to set volume levels per application (e.g. lower system sounds volume while playing).

[yogi_berra]

having a sound server that works across the network makes sense (I know that for you it doesn't, but the devs aren't working only for you).

What would make sense is to fix the underlying problem with Linux sound before you add another layer of complexity to the situation.

I can see the advantages of using pulseaudio for a game that makes use of voice communication, since it allows the user to set volume levels per application (e.g. lower system sounds volume while playing).

Oddly enough, most games with voip utilize it without relying on a networked sound daemon.

[devius]

What would make sense is to fix the underlying problem with Linux sound before you add another layer of complexity to the situation.

I don't think there are too many problems with linux sound these days. Alsa drivers provide harware mixing or a software fallback in case the former isn't available, it's possible to achieve low latency with JACK in cases where it matters and the quality of the software resamplers seems to be adequate. Hardware support could be better, but apart from that what other problems are you referring to?

Oddly enough, most games with voip utilize it without relying on a networked sound daemon.

Fair enough. I didn't know that. The thing is that in linux most things work in a server/client fashion, so I think it was inevitable that that concept would be used in the audio sub-system to add network capabilities to it.

[etnlWings]

What would make sense is to fix the underlying problem with Linux sound before you add another layer of complexity to the situation.

a) false dilemma b) since when is supporting current APIs 'adding complexity'? I suppose ioquake3 shouldn't support modern OpenGL features either - 'cause of, ya'know, all the complexity n'stuff.

[Svartalf]

This makes little sense to me at all. There was nothing stopping the team from using IOQ3 as a base and forking with their own tech improvements, and keeping it open sourced, was there?

No, there wasn't, Irritant. They just wanted to keep it all to themselves and arranged a way to do it- and tried to frame it such that they weren't able to do those things within ioquake3.

Lame.