Sauerbraten rated worst Open Source FPS?

by SanHolo on 12/30/2007 22:54, 131 messages, last message: 11/25/2017 23:24, 118483 views, last view: 04/27/2024 14:17, closed on 11/25/2017 23:38

There's an article over at Slashdot that links a report of linux-gamers.net which compared 7 open source shooters. Since the site is slashdotted ATM, all I can get from /. is the ranking: (best to worst) Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten.

I hope the site will be back online soon to see their arguments... :P

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#89: Re: polish

by Megagun on 01/04/2008 17:22, refers to #75

Bleh. I was just writing an extremely (!) lengthy post about the reply by Drakas, inserted some screenshot of Tremulous to give you all an idea about some way of adding polish, hit backspace and everything was lost.. Pure awesomeness. I'll try to sum up what my post was a bit about.... Sorry for the lack of any explanation of whatever I'm about to say now; my motivation to reproduce my entire post isn't existing.

The general outline of my post was though that I haven't gotten the time to actually contribute to Sauerbraten, because of other projects which already too are all competing for my attention and motivation. Rest assured, though, I know enough about content creation to be able to talk about it without looking like a total oblivious fool..

Motivation (ideas based on my own experiences with motivation and projects, feel free to use googling skills to read more of my ideas regarding this subject and the source of my ideas about motivation): Motivation is built by showing interest in a project and contributing interesting ideas to it (by means of an intellectual discussion). Motivation is key in developing. Decrease motivation by not giving enough feedback when asking for feedback about bugs (IE: hardware, software settings, errors being given, etc). Decrease motivation of the people who are going to increase developer motivation (read: people doing intellectual discussion!!!) by flaming. motivation is key. Motivation is powerful. Do not underestimate the strength motivation gives you when developing a project.

Drakas: have you yourself contributed to Sauerbraten? Looking at the readme, the wiki, and Quadropolis, it seems like you have not. Are you one of those people who yells "CONTRIBUTE PLZ!!" to those people who want to have an intellectual discussion about things regarding a project, whilst not actually contributing themselves?

And yes, I actually have dealt with content creation before. So I think I at least know enough about it to be allowed/able to talk about it.

Sound stuff (want to contribute? Go ahead!):
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ (requires registration to download, can play through a flashapplet)
http://ccmixter.org/
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (use it to change sounds you want to change a bit!!!)

Polish in general: Polish only is not good (see WarSow: awesome polish, yet I do not like the game itself due to the gamestyle). Lack of polish means game not being really awesome (Tremulous: lots of people who do not 'get' the game and gameplay: Tutorial mode would fix it). Polish is good. Gameplay is good. Together they make awesome. Lack of polish in a game makes irritativeness and lack of seeing how well the game actually is.

Polish: Tutorial modes for editing, playing and multiplayer etiquette (SENDMAP and GETMAP and showing whta can go wrong: a user building a house, but destroying another's palace in coopmode)
More polish: tremulous-style tutorial mode (http://home.deds.nl/~megagun/temp/blaattrem.jpg look to the left)
More polish: look at Urban Terror 4.1's tutorial mode!

Whoever had trouble with getting a serverlist on Tremulous on mac: Tremulous by default sets the multiplaer serverlisting to "LAN/LOCAL". Might want to switch that to "INTERNET" to get the serverlisting.
Tremulous: note that Tremulous has Creative commons game media and awesome weapon sounds and models.
Urban Terror, whilst having great weapon sounds, is not licensed under something like CC. but asking the UT developers might be a good idea? Lots of realisticish weapon sounds with great quality!

General outline of post: why flame and decrease developer motivation when you can have an intellectual discussion and thus INCREASE developer motivation?
Other outline of post: Contributing without having thought-out ideas makes useless and stupid.

Note that I respect developers. No developers => No Sauerbraten. It is never my intention to badmouth developers or decrease their motivation to work on Sauerbraten.
Also note that developers should also be aware of the fact that their content or work might be replaced eventually due to better content or a change in project goals. This is completely naturally. If someone makes a sound that isn't really high quality, they should be aware of the fact that it might be replaced later on.

----

Now excuse me while I go and play some Sauerbraten. Love the Ironsnout. Including the Ironsnout in favor of the Ogro made Sauerbraten look much more polished. Great job! :D

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#90: Re: My two cents

by JadeMatrix on 01/04/2008 19:36, refers to #88

steve_e: Cubescript Tutorial chs 1-4 (kinda) posted. Will fix license soon.

Megagun:
AFAIK, Drakas is not a content contributer; however, imho he contributes alot in discussions on various topics.
Automatically set to local/lan? I'm pretty sure I changed that... not that I've have much time to learn new games lately...
And I like the ogro. If we could get a new (read md3) ogro model, that would be a good start to letting players choose their in-game appearance (start with either ogro, IS, model3 and model4... 2/4 isn't a bad start)

(+ 2 2) lol

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#91: Re: polish

by Drakas on 01/04/2008 22:58, refers to #89

As a matter of fact, yes, I have; read: "woop clan", "fragfest". "Not letting the gamer community evolve into a dead community."

You have the keywords; the rest should be self-evident.

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#92: Re: polish

by Halleck3 on 01/04/2008 23:01, refers to #89

"Drakas: have you yourself contributed to Sauerbraten? Looking at the readme, the wiki, and Quadropolis, it seems like you have not. Are you one of those people who yells "CONTRIBUTE PLZ!!" to those people who want to have an intellectual discussion about things regarding a project, whilst not actually contributing themselves?"

I laughed out loud in real life at this question :D

Drakas is very important and while he does not contribute actual "content" he is needed very much around here. He contributes to gameplay ALLOT. His clan is probably the most highly regarded of any (imo) and the irc channel he provides houses all of the major players and contributers to the game. On top of all that, he organizes the fragfests. Fragfests are huge tournaments that happen quarterly for each major region (america, europe, and australia). Plus, his clan also owns many public and private servers. I think he is just as much of a contributer as anyone else, and I'm sure everyone here would agree with me.

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#93: Re: polish

by Drakas on 01/04/2008 23:05, refers to #91

And it is quite funny to hear all those people say that the community is non-existent. That's because they're themelves not an alive part of it.


Every piece of content on the internet has its fans and people involved inside. From the text-based RPG games to Usenets to Wikipedia to little Flash game projects.... to a small ncurses application created on FreeBSD... ... someone looking after their small but yet significant forum. You simply can't judge it by not having been involved!

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#94: Slashdot

by Visceral on 01/04/2008 23:25

Personally, I just found out about the game via the slashdot article. I've been playing for about a day or so now and I'm hooked, it's a ton of fun. I've maxed just about everything out on my 8800gts and it looks very, very nice. It's rough around the edges, but it looks like people are aware of that and planning to address those issues in the future. In anycase, it\'s easily more fun than the other FPS games I tried out in that slashdot article, and certainly, without a doubt, the best looking.

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#95: ..

by James007 on 01/05/2008 05:28

if you want a game that has warsow's movement, just play unreal tournament3. if you cant afford or run it unreal tournament 2004 is also available at the bargain bin for about $5(U.S.)

idk, but the movement is nothing new. it could be fun i guess, it doesnt really impress me tho(the graphics.... as well).

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#96: Re: ..

by SheeEttin on 01/05/2008 06:05, refers to #95

I'm still waiting on the UT3 Linux client. >_<

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#97: Re: ..

by SanHolo on 01/05/2008 23:11, refers to #96

I'm still waiting for the UT3 Mac client. *(-_-)*

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#98: ..

by James007 on 01/06/2008 00:05

same here SanHolo, i got it for the PS3 tho. its cool, but some of the stuff disappointed me.

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#99: Re: polish

by JadeMatrix on 01/08/2008 00:14, refers to #89

UT3, GoW, and ET:QW all come out for Mac this year... I dunno which I want more.

Just played Tremulous for the first time. I made the mistake of joining a finely-tuned-strategy clan server. So within 5 minutes I get voted (11 to 3) a constructing ban. Either I find a Newbie Server or quit playing... having a collective construction points system is just too annoying. I'll go ET any day.

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#100: ..

by James007 on 01/08/2008 21:33

same dude, i want them all :P

im not to fond of tremulous any more, i was pretty good back then though.

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#101: ..

by person99_128 on 01/13/2008 07:34

This depends on how you look at it.
It is the worst of the 7 best... meaning it is the 7th best.
Sauerbraten isn't a balanced FPS like those other ones, it has incredible gameplay and stuff, but again, it is unbalanced.
For instance:
3 maps on sauerbraten:
Urban_c
Corruption
Skycastle
Lets look at the basics of these maps:
Urban_c - Modern day war-torn city type level.
Corruption - Sci-fi style enclosed arena.
Skycastle - Fantasy castle based in the sky.

What do they have in common? Absolutely nothing.

At the time of the post of that article, the guns were:
Pistol - WW2 style odd pistol.
Shotgun - Double-barreled skeet-shooting and hunting shotgun.
Rifle - WW1ish bolt-action rifle.
Machine gun - Modern-dayish mountable machinegun.
GL - Sci-fi grenade launcher.
RL - Weird sci-fi style RPG shooter.
They also had very little in common.

And to top that, the model at that time was a strange ogro.

Now at least, most of the things are alike, all the guns are sci-fi, most the maps are sci-fi, you have a sci-fi style model. I can see where sauerbraten is shifting.
It would probably get at least 2 more ranks up if they checked it again.

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#102: ..

by DFM on 01/19/2008 06:05

I'm pretty new to SB.

The first thing I do when I install SB is change to 2D menus.

I find the 3D menus slower and harder to use. They feel 'tech demo' to me - pretty but pointless.

I don't know whether other newbies feel the same way.

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#103: Re: ..

by Hirato Kirata on 01/19/2008 06:41, refers to #102

Both styles have their appeal.

one likes 2D as it stays with you wherever you go, but it also disables your mouse (in an interacting with the game kind of way). like for example showscores, much preferable to have in this method.

3D is also liked as you can still interact with the world even with the menu still open. but alas this one's downside becomes quite obvious when you're moving.

~Hirato Kirata

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#104: The article was BS...

by Scorge on 01/19/2008 20:35

I like SB, but honestly it's kind of a slow, slightly prettier version of Quake. It does have it's charms though, and even though I don't think it's the best out of 7, it's certainly not the worst.

Warsow is just ugly, I played it once and quit

World of Padman looked pointless on the website.

Alien Arena is about as stable as a jello skyscraper, but it fun.

Open arena is fun enough, but I don't like the fantasy thing in Quake 3

Tremulous is okay, kinda imbalanced but quite entertaining.

Sauerbraten is cool; I like the game play, although sometimes it seems sort of... slow. The weapons seem out of place at times, and there's no real theme to the game. On the upside it's fun, it has some single player maps, and it's pretty.

Nexuiz multiplayer rocks (with the exception of the Nex gun) no need to dis a game unnecessarily.

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#105: ..

by makkE on 01/26/2008 16:20

"if you want a game that has warsow's movement, just play unreal tournament3"

LOL, you made my day. Hillarious.

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#106: ..

by James007 on 01/26/2008 19:18

from what the dude described he made it sound like UT3, my bad.

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#107: Sauerbraten, definitely not the worst.

by Rinkydinky on 01/28/2008 19:44

This article was written by Sepht, who is a warsow player and tester. The article is complete garbage.

I think Sauerbraten's engine is the best of the lot, it's fast, looks great, and while it's got a few things that need finishing, I really also like the new models and maps. The game plays smoothly, and it's a ton of fun.

Warsow, is hardly the best of the lot. And judging by the way their community is imploding/disintegrating following the .4 release, I think they are moving backwards in fact. Weapons are just quake3's, and the maps, especially in last release are of very varying quality. Their previous release was much, much better.

Alien Arena and Nexuiz, I'll lump them together because they are so similar, are both decent enough, but I'll give the nod to Alien Arena because it has nicer art and plays a little smoother, tho it's weapons need better balance. Both can look pretty with settings turned up, but both are resource hogs.

Tremulous? Bah. Gloom rippoff with a shitty menu system and mediocre models. It's gameplay is too unbalanced to be taken seriously. It's only popular because it's concept is popular(see Gloom and Natural Selection).

The worst of the lot, definitely Open Arena. The whole fantasy/anime theme is borderline offensive in it's presentation, and the maps are in some cases painfully poor in quality and layout. I imagine when CPMA standalone and Quake Zero come out, this project will fade out.

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#108: ..

by James007 on 01/28/2008 19:56

I agree with what your saying, but I think nexuiz deserves a little more credit than alien arena. Nexuiz is like a free better looking/playing version of UT2004(except w/o some of the UT gametypes). Alien Arena... was just disorientating to me when i played it for 15minutes. I just couldnt get into it or understand why it played the way it did.

Warsow is just confusing and way overrated to me. With all of the talk about e-sports and competitiveness. Like what the heck is that? i just want to play a game. I mean i played it, and its movement system was kind of different. People make it out to be like god or something though. I would rather just jump into a DM or TMDM match of Nexuis, and it only looks 3x better too...

Open Arena is simple... fun at first but just ugly and way to repetitive. I think its the worst of the open fps's too.

Tremulous is cool.... not to good looking and at times seems very unbalanced. It has a steep learning curve and can be very aggravating for new players.

i dont know much about all of these open source games, this is just my simple probably biased opinion. just like every one else's.

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