New 'Reloaded Edition' of Alien Arena Open Source FPS Released

An anonymous reader tips this news from IndieDB: "Alien Arena: Reloaded Edition has been released. This is a major release of this game, with many new features, and a veritable truckload of new high quality content. Every aspect of the game has been improved upon and expanded, from the engine, to the game code, weaponry, and overall gameplay. Some of the new features for this release include: Many new rendering features; Twelve new/rebuilt levels; Two new player characters, the Overlord and Warrior; Brand new 'super' weapon, the Minderaser; Improved antilag code; "Simple" items rendering option; Improved and expanded movement; Improved Bot AI, particularly with CTF; New music, and music 'shifts' in game situations; and a variety of bug fixes and code cleansing. Alien Arena is free to download, free to play, and the code is open sourced, and that will never change."

Re:Cool!

[Lose]

I agree entirely. I'm not sure about Alien Arena, but I have noticed with a few of these open source FPS games, particularly AssaultCube (I used to love playing AssaultCube), a certain social phenomena will occur where only a handful of the "elite" developers, contributors, and players will be recognized and their ideas accepted as okay to be part of the game. Anything which conflicts with their interests is deemed bad for the game, even if the larger portion of their user base prefers these "bad" ideas.

So, slowly but surely, the large, interested communities who enjoyed what the elites did not will fade away and find other games. The end result being something like a few weeks ago when I tried to get on one of these games again just to see if things calmed down, and all I saw was a bunch of empty servers.

I understand that people would be protective of their work and after a while, sensitive to ideas of change. I also understand OSS permits people the option of splitting from a community and making modifications to a game they feel make it better. But when it comes down to banning players and servers alike from a master server for playing certain maps and modes too much, then you have a problem.