Baseio Game From Ioquake3 Failing To Advance

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 29 May 2013 at 10:58 AM EDT. 4 Comments
LINUX GAMING
It was in early June of last year that developers behind the ioquake3 open-source game engine announced Baseio as a new standalone Quake3-inspired game to include assets licensed under the Creative Commons. One year later, there really isn't anything to show for this open-source game.

The point of Baseio was to have a standalone game powered by ioquake3, the de facto open-source version of the id Software Quake 3 engine, to show off gameplay possibilities and other features. All of the games maps, audio, and other content would be put out under the Creative Commons, which is different than how many of the open-source game art assets are handled today by other projects.

From the beginning I was fairly critical of the project as they really didn't set out for an original game or to drive any new innovations to separate it from other ioquake3-based projects, but basically a hodgepodge game that put the license at the forefront.

Baseio wasn't aiming to be a visual masterpiece either. The artwork looked awful -- as is sadly the case for many open-source games. Some ioquake3 developers felt my comments were unfair and that it was basically placeholder artwork. Well, sadly, one year later there is nothing more to show.

There hasn't been any news updates on baseio, there is no Git repositories under the ioquake account, and obviously there's been no game release. The staging area for the proposed game, the Ioquake3 Wiki, is also quiet.

The Baseioq3 Wiki page hasn't been updated since last December. One of the post-announcement updates to the Wiki proposed shipping the game with flat-shaded looking surfaces (really poor graphics, arguably even worse than the originally proposed artwork) in order to "ship this as soon as possible."

While Baseio might not be moving along well -- if at all -- at least the upstream ioquake3 engine continues to progress. Per the project's Git repository, the most recent activity is just hours old. The ioquake project is also maintaining repositories for the Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy games that were recently open-sourced. For more modern open-source game technology, the open-source Doom 3 community still isn't vibrant.
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