Free Software FPS Games Compared

An anonymous reader writes "Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction."

Lies

[Smordnys s'regrepsA (1160895)]

Wolfenstein, I still love you!

Re:

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

OpenArena games still seem limited to FFA and with about 70 servers, the community is rather small.

Not in my experience. There are a bunch of CTF maps that are usually full of people.

Re:Lies

[antdude (79039)]

What about DOOM? Better than Wolfenstein games to me. :)

It's like the games of yesteryears...

[MindPrison (864299)]

...coming back to frag you once more! I do like World of Padman...funny story, funny graphics....aw heck...funny game. Community 3d games are actually a lot more fun when they try to be themselves (original, don't have to conform to much of the real deal), look at Bz-flag....crap graphics...still fun as h*** to play and there are still hundreds of servers with thousands of players playing it.

Re:It's like the games of yesteryears...

[ardor (673957)]

Why is it that open source so often implies a total lack of care for details and usability?

Lack of natural selection. If a commercial game's user interface sucks, few people will buy and play it, unless its overly hyped. Reviewers tear apart the game, word of mouth names it a real stinker, it doesn't sale, developer either goes bankrupt or learns from the mistake. Or doesn't - and goes bankrupt, eventually.

Open-source projects don't depend on sales. While this allows for experimental genres and fresh ideas, it also takes away some incentive to polish the product's user interface (bugs OTOH are more likely to be fixed).

Re:

[Fred Ferrigno (122319)]

Lack of natural selection. ... Open-source projects don't depend on sales.

But they do depend on volunteer developers. Natural selection is quite obviously in effect among OSS projects, only the criteria for success is the ability to attract developers rather than users. This can lead OSS in a different direction compared to closed source. In the long run though, the difference is not that great since most developers prefer to work on projects that people actually use.

Re:

[ardor (673957)]

Natural selection is quite obviously in effect among OSS projects, only the criteria for success is the ability to attract developers rather than users.

But the consequence of failure is very different. Nothing bad happens to the developer if no one is attracted to the project. In commercial games, one flop often means the company is shut down and you lose your job.

They Missed

[phoenixwade (997892)]

They missed AlephOne - the OS marathon development... Still very playable even on very lightweight equipment.

Re:

[DurendalMac (736637)]

I was thinking the same thing, but Aleph One is still very unpolished and bloated after years of development, not to mention that at the core, it's still an antiquated engine.

WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[Tibor the Hun (143056)]

Open source and free are not mutually exclusive as most of us know.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is free, but I don't think is open source. Maybe it is, it is based on either Q2 or Q3 engine, and Q2 engine is open sourced (or GPLed), maybe Q3 engine is as well.
But anyway, it seems as if the summary equates open source with free and free with open source.

Re:WTF, is it free or is it open source?

[Drasil (580067)]

The Enemy Territory source code has been released, had it been considered I'm sure it would have come in in the #1 or #2 spot. ET is based on the Q3 engine, which has also been open sourced. Generally I'm not a fan of shooters, but I've probably spent thousands of hours playing ET. It may be that games that were developed with a closed source model and then later the source was released were not considered, I dunno, it's slashdotted.

Re:

[88NoSoup4U88 (721233)]

Afaik, only the source to mod the game has been released, but no GPL-ed open source release (as has happened with all the previous id software engined titles)... But I'm positive we'll eventually be able to have a peek at that too.

Back on topic, I've played most of these games (except Alien Arena), and I always found it a bit disappointing to see what people created with access to the source: In the end (with some exceptions, such as Tremulous), most of these mods/total conversions just turn out to be ano

Re:

[Darkael (969121)]

While I agree that ET is a great game (though medics are overpowered IMO), only the source code for the game logic has been released so far. ET is still closed-source for the most part.

W:ET is *not* open source.

[reality-bytes (119275)]

The in-game logic source code was released in 2004 to aid 'modders' but the game engine itself remains closed to this day (although it may eventually be released).

I know it sounds paradoxical but W:ET was never derived from GPL code (in the licensing sense) because id Tech 3 was under a closed license when it was licensed to SD (This may lead to issues with SD/Activision ever being able to relicense the source)

Re:

[Ai Olor-Wile (997427)]

Free Software should be assumed to mean "free as in speech." Y'know, as in the Free Software Foundation. As in Richard Stallman's going to kick your ass. With a katana. (Now, where is that xkcd strip...)

Urban Terror?

[by Anonymous Coward]

What about Urban Terror? http://www.urbanterror.net/ [urbanterror.net] . Just released a new version. It's a pretty fun game.

Xinerama

[Jethro (14165)]

I have yet to see one game that works correctly on a Linux box with Xinerama. At least in full-screen more. Some of them won't even let you change resolution at all, let alone tell them to run in a window.

When they run in full-screen they tend to span the displays and have all the action right in the middle so the important stuff is split in two.

And quite a few games crash on the weird resolution.

I'm not saying I've seen Windows games work on dual-head or ever support two monitors, but at least they have the decency to just pick a screen and use that one.

Re:

[arth1 (260657)]

I'm not saying I've seen Windows games work on dual-head or ever support two monitors, but at least they have the decency to just pick a screen and use that one.

There are some titles for Windows that support multiple heads: Flight Simulator X, for example.
X2 supports two monitors, but with the inexplicable requirement that your secondary monitor has to be to the right of the primary, cause they've hardcoded the screen edges for the mouse.

Then there's titles that won't run at all unless you disable one moni

Re:Xinerama

[Kent Recal (714863)]

Erm, sounds like you have no single-screen modes configured.
Read up on the MetaModes option in xorg.conf.

Mine looks like this:

Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024_60.00, 1920x1200; null, 1920x1200"

And I can play ET, AA, Tremulous, etc. just fine. The second screen simply goes off when a game requests fullscreen.

The-Cheap-And-Bored-Dept

[Joe Snipe (224958)]

Wow, another list of free games? The last three articles weren't enough?

Re:

[witte (681163)]

The last three articles weren't enough?

Of course not.
It's stay-happy-news from the whaa-no-new-fps-in-my-xmas-stocking dept.

(...It can get awfully lonely in this basement with no new games to distract me.)

Nexuiz, Alien Arena 2007, WoP

[thePsychologist (1062886)]

I've tried these three games. I'm a FPS fan and when I moved to Linux I wanted some free shooters, so I took a look at these three, in the order in the subject. Nexuiz: Good but gameplay doesn't seem solid. The sound effects were pretty bad on my system at least and the weapons are weaker that Q3 I think. After a while I had this problem where all the textures were replaced by weird looking patterns and I gave up trying to fix it. An ok game but nothing really special. Alien Arena: This is the first free

Re:

[Sigma 7 (266129)]

Alien Arena: This is the first free game that I played that I actually like and would play seriously. The controls are solid and the weapons are well-balanced.

The controls (I include the UI) are only as solid as Quake 2. I normally switch weapons through the mouse wheel since it's hard to memorize the number slots for the weapons across the massive number of FPS games. In Quake 2, you only see the current weapon selection - IIRC, there may have been an icon that showed you which weapon you were switching to.

The one time I tried Alien Arena was the same time I noticed this. After playing Quake 3 and UT, this isn't a feature I can play without. In fact, I coul

What about bzflag?

[rastoboy29 (807168)]

bzflag is a good free game, which just goes to show that fancy graphics have nothing to do with how good a game is.

Re:

[u235meltdown (940099)]

BZFlag is not a FPS game, it is a "First Person Tank Shooter" according to Wikipedia... hmm, I guess it counts as "FPS"
maybe they disagree with the 13,300 registered players that like it

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Calling bzflag a good FPS is like calling IRC a good MMORPG.

Re:

[bar-agent (698856)]

like calling IRC a good MMORPG

"IRC, where men are men, women are men, and 14-year-old girls are FBI agents."

Sounds like a MMORPG to me. :)

Three cheers for John Carmack,

[shish (588640)]

seeing as 6 out of the 7 games are Quake-based :P

It strikes me that open source has a reputation for really good code and half-assed presentation, so I wonder why there aren't many free-from-day-1 game engines :-/

Re:

[Rogerborg (306625)]

Because every developer thinks that they can write a better engine, and every producer thinks that an engine is only worth what you pay for it. Both of these observations are from personal experience.

dim3

[AHuxley (892839)]

Also see dim3, a free open source 3D game engine with tools. Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
http://www.klinksoftware.com/ [klinksoftware.com]

Suggest me one...

[Stormwatch (703920)]

All the mentioned games seem to be about network deathmatches. What would you suggest for someone who prefers story-driven single-player games?

(having an OSX version would help a lot too)

Not ready for the mainstream

[obeythefist (719316)]

Until they have way too many WW2 FPS games. Amirite?

But seriously, in many ways I'm surprised at the lack of progress in the gaming areas.... the games do look quite mature, but nothing comes close to Crysis. One can argue that, yes, Crysis has huge dollars behind it. But open source games should never need to reinvent the wheel... doesn't that count for something? Shouldn't that mean the games evolve constantly from the same rich base?

Re:Free FPS Games

[liquidpele (663430)]

It's a myminicity link! Mod down!
This one is for the "budgieton" account...

So far, I've counted 3 myminicity accounts spamming slashdot:
spx2.myminicity.com
fohootville.myminicity.com
budgieton.myminicity.com

Motion Twin is the company that makes the product, email them and complain about the accounts here:
[e-mail]

Also, if slashdot would follow redirects on links and display the final destination domain after the link, that would be great.

myminicity 'spam' - off-topic

[Animaether (411575)]

the problem with myminicity (and indeed most such sites before it) is that they do not consider it spamming. In fact, throwing that URL out as much as you can - on your blog, on forums, in your feeds, by IM and so forth and so on is the whole -point- of that site... as it is visits that cause the 'city' to grow.

Good luck finding rules on where a 'player' is allowed to post the URL(s). Even more luck to you finding a 'report abuse' page or contact address. Good luck getting any response whatsoever from co

Re:

[liquidpele (663430)]

You must be new here.
The guy I replied to got modded as troll, and slashdot hid the comment.
If you click the "parent" link for my post, it'll show you the one I replied to.

Guess slashdot needs to put something there so it doesn't look like my post is a child of yours, huh?

Re:

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

already posted bug report, its in hand.

me: D2 Reply to hidden parent appears joined to previous thread

pudge: Yes, this is known, and we know it's a problem. We have plans to deal with it.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1849018&group_id=4421&atid=104421 [sourceforge.net]

Re:

[Sepht (874769)]

and I'm an idiot once again, proper formatting this time!! Here is my draft copy

About two weeks ago, Joe Barr posted a feature on Linux.com titled "New Alien Arena 6.10 blows away its FPS competition" yet gave no real comparisons with other similar games. This was done in the same style as Barr's previous feature, "Tremulous: The best free software game ever?" which described Tremulous but also lacked comparisons and relations to other games. This feature hopes to be a thorough comparison of the major fr

New Sauerbraten available

[Lord Satri (609291)]

The latest version of Sauerbraten, 2007-09-04

TA is a little late. There's a new Sauerbraten available since a few days, and it is significantly improved over the previous available one. (don't ask me why this group doesn't use version numbers...)

Re:

[Sepht (874769)]

Yes I know, the top of the article mentions that it was written two months ago. The release of the new Sauerbraten was what promoted me to post this before it got too out-of-date.

Also the end of the article contains the following note, "Notes: Since the original writing, Sauerbraten has released a new version that has more RPG elements and seems to make progress in being a more full-fledged game. I actually haven't had time to update the article." Perhaps I should have put that under the Sauerbraten secti

Re:

[jandrese (485)]

Ow! My Eyes! Crushed under the massive wall of text...

Re:

[BenoitRen (998927)]

I cleaned up the grammer

Somehow, I don't think you did a good job...

Re:

[xRelisH (647464)]

most of these shooters would be considered pretty good...in 1996.

I think that's a little unfair to say when most retail games have multi-million dollar budgets and these games are made by volunteers.
I can't guess as to whether you went to college or not, but most colleges have a competitive formula SAE team [wikipedia.org]. The team is made up entirely of volunteers, and some of the primary goals for being in such a project is to learn more about what goes into building a functional vehicle and for sheer fun -- it's

Re:

[Cyblob (800812)]

Maybe because a game is not just a piece of software and most decent games have hundreds of full time graphics programmers, mission designers, texture artists, concept artists, AI programmers, skybox artists, effects artists, animation engineers, networking programmers etc. These kind of resources just aren't available to open source games, at least not to the same level as commercial games.

Re:Fun, but....

[edwdig (47888)]

Unless you're really trying to push the limits of your target platform hard, programming is a drop in the bucket compared to the work done by the artists and level designers. The level designers probably have more to do with good gameplay than the programmers.

Level design is also a REALLY tedious process. Making a good level requires replaying the level over and over slightly tweaking things to get them just right. It gets old fast, and you get really sick of the level in the process. And of course you have to deal with the issues that come up from playing the level that many times. It's very easy to memorize the level you're working on, and end up making the level way too difficult because of that.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Right on! Because lord knows top-notch games like Portal never get their start from small-budget hobbyists working in their spare time.

Oh, wait...

Re:Fun, but....

[by Anonymous Coward]

Quake was released in 1996. OpenArena uses the Quake III engine.

Saying OpenArena "would be considered pretty good...in 1996" is like saying the SR-71 Blackbird would be considered "pretty good" in 1935.

It's such a ridiculous understatement that the only possible explanation is that you're British.

Interesting, but...

[turing_m (1030530)]

your comment would be considered insightful... in 2005.

Re:

[Sepht (874769)]

Yes Quake 3 is free software, but Quake3 can't be called a packagable 'game' in the sense of 'free'. The game materials are still proprietary and not free. The engine is free software, and in fact, all the games on that list use GPL engine that were built on iD's released Quake1/2/3 engines. However they also can be considered packagable 'games' with free content. The article should have made that distinction though.

Re:

[sahonen (680948)]

I played many games over a several days. I almost never saw the humans win unless there was a huge skill stack on the human side. Far more often I saw the aliens win, and occasionally a sudden death which inevitably went to the aliens.

What was the most frustrating for me was not being able to buy upgrades or evolve because I hadn't killed enough people yet. Especially at later stages in the game where practically everybody had evos and upgrades, it was incredibly difficult and frustrating running around

Re:

[sahonen (680948)]

Exacto-friggin-lutely. I've always liked the Mario Kart approach to game balance. Where Counter-Strike consciously emphasizes the difference in skill between the two teams, Mario Kart tries to minimize it by giving better powerups and more speed to the players in the back of the pack, creating a close and competitive race even between players of different skill levels. This keeps the game fun and exciting for all players instead of simply handing an easy victory to the better player. Lopsided games are *nev