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My review on Sauerbraten

by lionsword on 05/26/2008 09:34, 18 messages, last message: 06/08/2008 17:28, 2725 views, last view: 05/05/2024 03:13

Usually, I do reviews as requested from other people, often my friend.

About a week ago, I was searching on Wikipedia to find out about a meat called Sauerbraten. I found the meat, but I also found a little link that said \"Sauerbraten (game)\".
The first thing that went through my mind is \"WTF?\" followed by \"This has to be shit.\".
I cannot believe how wrong I was.

Well, looking at a couple of screenshots and reading about it, I gave it a download.

Note: All of the below is only my opinion.
And here, first time I have done a review without someone requesting me, is a review for Sauerbraten (As a game engine):

The first thing I noticed when I started up the game was the graphics. I had not seen some of the shaders that were in there, I was impressed. Superior specular mapping, great bump mapping, but the lights weren\'t all that great.
But I soon found out the lighting was just bad on the startup map, and went on to look at some more maps.

I have never seen any free game with graphics the quality of these.
I immediately started messing with the editing engine, and immediately got hooked.
This has to be one of the most intuitive editors I have ever seen. The idea to just click and build, no going to external programs, no nothing. What would take you days in something like GTKRadiant (ID Tech 3/4 level editor) takes a few hours in Sauerbraten.

However, the editor comes at a cost of power. While you can build quickly, it is harder to do smaller details without external map models such as pipes, or a sink.

On the other hand, it isn\'t very hard to pull a map model. You can do a 5-minute fully shaded sink with simply free programs such as Blender and Gimp. And no, I am not calling blender nor gimp simple. I even have a review on Blender as a game engine.
The hard part is getting it in the game,
the scripting language is easy, but is hard to find some good documentation for (at least, for me)getting started.

The FPS side of the game is lacking. Last time I checked people couldn\'t run at 30 miles per hour.
The physics system is...basic. Lets say you push a barrel...it moves with you, but can\'t get knocked over. If you shoot it (non-explosive barrel) with a rocket launcher, it will fly 20 feet without rotating at all on any axis.
And once you get past the physics system, there is the AI.
The AI unfortunately can\'t be changed pr added to without recompiling the engine.
And as-is, it isn\'t very good at all.
They chase you...sure, and even try to jump up stairs, but they will happily hop into a puddle of lava, or run over a grenade if it happens to be in their dodge path of a circle.

For people who skip sentences and get bored easily, here is a pros/cons version:

Pros: Extremely easy-to-use editor, great graphics running on weak video cards, and of course, cross-platform.

Cons: Weak physics system, weak AI, scripting language is lacking.

My suggestions:
The graphics are fine for now. A good level with high-quality textues.
One serious problem I have with the engine is the fact that the bigger textures are, the bigger they are stretched. A simple texture-stretch would allow the shaders to be used on high-res textures, to make it look even better.
The physics system would be the hardest thing to change, but it is also pretty much required if anyone wants to do a serious FPS or something with this. With a fairly good physics engine, it would people to code things like Vehicles, Ragdolls, etc.
The AI needs to be integrated into scripting instead of the engine itself, allowing for people to quickly script and add their own characters without having to edit the source and recompile the engine.

Board Index

#1: ..

by Hirato Kirata on 05/26/2008 11:42

firstly, even if graphics are fine, too bad, they're still gonna get better :P

now, in CVS there's a /texscale command you can use to scale textures up or down... older version (like assassin) require you to provide extra arguments to the texture command whilst loading the texture (don't get me wrong, you still need to do this in the loading phase)

physics has improved quite a bit in the development version, mostly related to colision and slopes. CVS also has support for skeletal animations in the md5 format, but ragdoll physics isn't going to be considered for a long time, and vehicles can already be done with some exploitation, or as I heard a few say, link 2 physents

Also if you want to see some of the good levels, I'd suggest checking out duomo, hallo, thor and hades, the first two are currently only in CVS... there's also a community site where you can get plenty of maps, and little fan made mods ( http://www.quadropolis.us )

finally, I think if you experiment with the scripting for a while (I learned by checking other people's work and playing with the menus), you'll find the "language" to be capable of a heck of a lot. There's loops, echos, the ability to use pretty much any function available in the engine, set aliases. execute aliases... though the only let down for me is the notation, the test for equality is written as (= 1 1) in cubescript, like wise for addition, it's (+ 1 1) instead of 1 + 1

~Hirato Kirata