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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Open-Source Cube FPS Game/Engine Updated 39

Posted by simoniker from the bang-bang dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There's a new release of the open source multiplayer/singleplayer first person shooter Cube available on the official site. According to the site, this update, which has freely downloadable 'Win32/MacOSX/Linux/LinuxPPC clients and Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD servers' includes 'lots of new great SP [single player] and DM [deathmatch] maps, new textures, mapmodels, a completely new soundtrack yet again, and a variety of code improvements such as better animation.' - the history document has more info on the changes."
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Open-Source Cube FPS Game/Engine Updated More

Open-Source Cube FPS Game/Engine Updated

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  • Hardware reqs (Score:1, Interesting)

    by vijaya_chandra ( 618284 )
    absolute minimum spec: p200 with tnt2/v3 (15-20 fps @640 depending on map)
    reccommended spec: p500 with gf1/radeon or better (50-60 fps on most maps)
    ideal spec: 1ghz and gf3/radeon8500 or better (fluent in all cases)
    says the online ReadMe

    it'd be good if those really are the real requirements

    (Hope it's not like the 300MHz or more recommended by MS for XP)

    • Re:Hardware reqs (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      On my 667 mhz pIII with Radeon 9000 in Fedora Core 1 at 800*600, I average about 50-70 FPS in medium/low detail areas. But most of the time during play in large areas with enemies, I get about 24 FPS, even with graphics set to lowest detail. Changing the resolution has reletively little effect. (Unless it's set to 320x240) The detail settings really only change the frame rate by one or two frames per second on my system. The biggest source of speed increase in Cube is to sete the field of vision to somethin

  • As a long time cube fan, (Score:5, Informative)

    by I(rispee_I(reme ( 310391 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:13PM (#9233698) Journal
    I feel compelled to mention that the author has written other engines besides cube; those can be viewed here [fov120.com]. Oh yeah, he worked on Far Cry, too!
  • This thing is no more advanced than the engine used in Doom 1/2 (2.5D at best) and in Duke Nukem 3D. This engine cannot be used to make "rooms over rooms."

    This open source 3D-engine is so far behind UT2K4, Doom 3, and HL 2 that it probably stands a next to zero chance of making the leap to real 3D in the near future.
    • You think Cube 2 [fov120.com] would stand a chance, then?
    • Urgh. Well that's too bad.

      It's still neat to play with, though. I just started playing with it, and the ability to make 'lumpy' terrain is much greater than what you have in ZDoom or Build. And real time lighting is always nice :) having 2-dimensional maps certainly makes map building easier, too.

      But if they could extend this to a true 3D engine, that'd be ub3r c00l.

      In the meantime, I'll put off learning C# for a while to play with this :)

    • Re:This isn't a real 3D engine. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Drakker ( 89038 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @08:23PM (#9234062) Homepage Journal
      That is completly beyond the point. Cube's goal is to be FUN. Not to compete in the commercial games market.

      It is real 3d, but to keep things simple, the rooms are limited to what you call 2.5D. That's why it playable even on old computers. If you want room over room, you can always make md2 models and insert them in your level, it works marvels and still looks good, if you are good with ligthning of course.

      The working of the engine is actualy very clever, try editing for it, it's done in the game itself and it's very fast. I have contributed a couple of levels for this release and after having edited for Cube, I'd hardly go back to a "real 3d engine" because Cube is so much more FUN to edit for.

      So, next time, before posting something like this, maybe you'd want to consider the actual goal of the project.
      • That is completly beyond the point. Cube's goal is to be FUN. Not to compete in the commercial games market.

        But the only thing you really need in the commercial game market is to be Fun. Counter Strike uses the old half life engine and is still insanly popular despite it's outdated graphics.

    • Re:This isn't a real 3D engine. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @08:23PM (#9234064)
      You are mixing up quite a few issues, namely the difference between a 3d renderer and a 3d map format. Cube is decidedly 3d... take a look at the screenshot... does it look 2d to you? What do you think cube looks more like, a 2d sidescroller or quake?

      The orginal doom had a 2.5d renderer and a 2d map format, OpenGL doom ports now have a 3d renderer still with a 2d map format.. they are 3d engines. Cube is a 3d engine with a "mostly" 2d mapformat, but that is just a limitation for convenience, and doesn't affect things like physics, e.g.:

      http://www.cubeengine.com/images/screenshots2/sc re enshot_802899.jpg

      see the bridge on that shot? players can be on top of and below it at the same time. No limitations.

      As to doom3 et al... Cube is not even competing againt that. It has some pretty cool features of its own which doom3 will never have. But for your uninformed mind that is not going to matter, is it?

  • Woo-hoo! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sunlighter ( 177996 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:26PM (#9233778)

    I beat the Slashdotting! I found out about this on Doom World and I've been playing with it all day.

    Couple of helpful hints for Windows users. First, run cube.bat in the root directory; the cube.exe in the bin directory mysteriously crashes if you run it directly. (Well, it did on my system.) Second, if you have a slower system, like I do, you might actually want to edit that cube.bat file and set the resolution to 640x480 instead of 1024x768!

    • Well, on my system, I read the readme file which says "Install, and run the cube.bat.", which funnily enough worked first time.

      Pretty awesome for an open source engine, just need to find a server with some players on =/

  • platforms (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dingd0ng ( 660596 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:27PM (#9233780)
    How come this game that is open source, with what I have to think are fewer financial or programming resources than for-profit games, can manage to release a game for 4 platforms? For most games, you get a PC version, and maybe a Mac version or a Linux version significantly later. I know cross platform games exist, but I don't think I've ever heard of a release like this one.

    • Re:platforms (Score:1, Interesting)

      by illuminata ( 668963 )
      Support's probably your biggest issue. With a small open source project the developers don't have to worry so much about having to offer great support. Not many people will ask how to get this or that working, reporting so many bugs, etc. As the project grows and better support for other platforms is wanted from the users, people with more of an expertise on those platforms can be of service. The open source world can sometimes use that "if you don't like it, fix it yourself" mentality in this case.

      Because

    • Re:platforms (Score:2, Interesting)

      by magefile ( 776388 )
      Lack of features (no major video or sound, no room-over-room, low-rez, yadda, yadda, yadda => no need to support Nvidia XYZ or similar)

      Lack of code - it's very short

      Lack of support (it's a hobby)

      Manual config editing - the game doesn't have to screw around with figuring out what settings are mutually compatible - you do

      If you want a game engine that can be used in a game that's actually enjoyable, try (these are just the ones I've personally tried) Aleph One (the renamed version of Marathon Infinity)

    • Re:platforms (Score:2, Informative)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

      well, they've picked the cross-platform compatibility as a goal right from the start - sticking to APIs that are not pain to port over.

      Commercial game developers typically pick one or two platforms and then "optimize extensively" for those platforms. They want optimal, efficient and platform-aware programs, not academic-technical masterpieces. (Do a "grep -r goto *" in Quake source one day. Try to read the code without a noticeable eye bleeding. =)

      Cube isn't developed with the goal of maximizing the pro

  • Does anyone have a working mirror? None of the sourceforge mirrors seems to be carrying it, or they're just plain slashdotted.

  • I'm impressed (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Nasarius ( 593729 )
    It looks great and it runs very smoothly. But is there an option to invert the mouse Y-axis anywhere? :)

  • This game rules! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @09:40PM (#9234450) Homepage Journal
    It's small! It's FAST! It's free! It's FUN! What more could you ask for?

    I played tonight for the first time. Multiplayer play reminds me a lot of Quake. The maps are all very pretty. The lighting effects are really quite good. It's true that it doesn't currently support true 3d maps (although there is a hack to get rooms over rooms using map models), and that gives the maps a sort of doom-ish feel, but WTF? Does that really impact the fun of deathmatch? I don't think so!

    Screw you for releasing such a fun game that I had to waste two hours of my evening playing it! Bloody video game time pirates. :)
    • I forgot to mention, SEAMLESS LINUX SUPPORT! That's huge for me, huge for a lot of Linux users. I just downloaded it, unziped it, and ran it! Okay well I had to emerge some SDL libraries but that was no big deal. Heh it even runs under wine, although the window is misplaced on the screen. probably easy to fix tho.

  • Cube modifications (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nomihn0 ( 739701 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @12:52AM (#9235219)
    Cube is a really great game. The best part about it is its customizability. There are many people out there working to mod the game. One really great example of the Cube engine being modified is Death Illustrated. It is a very original game in which you play the hero of a black and white ink-sketched comic book. It has similar gameplay to the original Cube game but the ambiance is really something, especially considering the limited tech they're working with. Here's a link, they are definitely worth checking out: Death Illustrated [deathillustrated.com]
  • ...and I have one with to say, this game rocks. It's really accessible, I was playing online and getting frags within a few minutes and it's all free. For the sake of a 20 meg download get this game now :o)
  • Its not like the creator isn't addressing the "problem" of floor over floor. Check out this link:

    http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/

    Its made by the same guy. It's only in alpha version right now, but it's level editor is already almost complete! Check out the "real" 3D!
  • It runs fine on my PIII 500MHz with 192MB of RAM and WinME, but that's not the point. Some may think it is crappy at first, but at least rftm before you play. Also, this server can be run on a dialup connection (so says the docs). So yeah, it is pretty neat. The new version is far superior to the old version. Better animation, new soundtrack, and other improvments, among other things. If you are looking for a game to waste a few days (or weeks on. ;)) Get this game. :)

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