New Open Source FPS Blood Frontier Shows Promise

Softhaus writes "The guys at Blood Frontier have been busy for the last two years working on a new FPS called (surprise) Blood Frontier . This game is an enhanced Cube 2 engine with original artwork and new gameplay (including a kid-mode, which optionally turns off the blood — a nice option for a change). Add the new paintball mode and you have a real 'game community' here. The code is all there (complete for you to play with), the team listens to feedback from the community, and the game is great! It's nice to see these talented guys showing a true free software attitude. They've mentioned that the first actual release is scheduled for next Friday. Does anyone know of other great open source games that are truly 'open?'"

Re:Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[gambino21]

I see the list has a screenshot for Battle for Wesnoth. I started playing it a couple months ago when it was mentioned here on Slashdot, and it's really fun. It's a turn based strategy which is maybe not as intense as a RTS or FPS. But it's perfect for me because I have young kids and frequently get interrupted, so I need a game that I walk away from without messing up the game.

Re:Alphabetical_list_of_open_source_games

[ShieldW0lf]

Check out the High Seas add on. It's like Sid Meyer's Pirates! meets Wesnoth.

Re:Blood optional

[moderatorrater]

I appreciate those options for myself. I remember with TA: Kingdoms turning off the blood because my archers would shoot a guy so many times that blood would be spurting out nonstop, which I found gross at the time. Same with the gore in the original UT. I can see parents appreciating that in addition to people who just don't like gore.

Also, if you do paintball mode it turns it from a game where you're killing people to a game where it's just some guys playing paintball. Does it change the gameplay? Of course not, but it does change the entire frame of reference for the violence in the game. I can see that being desirable for parents and I think it's a great idea. My friend and I were talking about how they should do something along the lines of Unreal Tournament: Nerf Edition, where all the guns are nerf guns.

Just because you don't care doesn't mean that parents don't care.

Re:And?

[causality]

So what makes this online FPS stand out from all the other ones?

There's Nexuiz, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tremulous, Urban Terror... I had my fill of first person shooters years ago and yet for some reason they're still being developed and offer little to nothing different over the last one.

I think you weren't trolling and were merely stating your opinion. The mods and one poster (who was also rewarded by the mods -- do you see the self-reinforcing nature of derision?) have effectively ridiculed you because it was very easy to do. You may not have known it but you stuck your neck out and they gleefully took a swing at it. They don't know they are making a statement about themselves and the appeal that low-hanging fruit has over them, as you may not know that this was predictable given how limited their prevailing mentality is.

What I believe you were really saying is something I mostly agree with, which is why that's easy for me to recognize. I remember when the original DOOM came out. I played the hell out of it. Somewhere after DOOM ][, I got tired of first-person shooters in general. The appeal that those had for me, which was a fast-paced challenge and a gritty environment with blood (not so unique now), was not a lasting appeal. What was a fast-paced challenge becomes repetitive gameplay and what was a realistic, gritty environment with blood got old quickly and no longer seemed more immersive. I can play almost any first-person shooter and feel this way about it. The weapons look different and the enemies look different from game to game but otherwise it has the exact same effect on me, an effect which has lost its novelty.

What's odd for me is that the one exception to this, that is, the one FPS game that I have played (though do not own myself) is Halo 3. I'm referring to the actual campaign missions; the online "deathmatch" play is no fun for me because there is no way I can invest the time to become as good as the kids who don't have jobs. I'm not sure if it's the AI or something about the game mechanics but I really have fun playing it, and that's saying something since I am no fan of MIcrosoft and I don't precisely make a secret of that fact. Generally though, I do agree with you about FPS as a genre.

Re:Blood optional

[hitnrunrambler]

I don't know what the purpose is, but I have to say I like the option personally. Does blood spatter enhance the game for you? Then go for it, but for my taste many gore effects just help to juvenilize most games; it's like endless penis jokes in an Adam Sandler movie, if I had the option to turn off "13 year old mode" I'd actually be able to enjoy the experience.

But..,

[Hurricane78]

... is the server still that horribly unsafe bare-bones packet-switch, that it is in Cube 2?

For those that don't know the details: The "server" of Cube 2 (Sauerbraten) is really basically just sending update packages around. No rules/physics validation, server simulation, or cheat checking of any kind. This, and the fact that it is open source, made it possible for every noob with a bit of C/C++-knowledge, to change some rules, and cheat like crazy.
I played it for some months, and saw people flying around, beaming themselves to where they liked it, completely defeating game physics, and making every shot a perfekt hit.

If this is not fixed, there is no reason to play that game, because you can't determine a winner anyway. (Or is it going to become a contest of the greatest hackers? ;)

FPS fun is a delicate balance

[stokessd]

I've played a lot of FPS' up to Unreal2004, and some are clearly better than others. There's the obvious map features, like size vs. player number, overall layout, wall design with hiding places, etc. And that's not even counting the artistic side of texture mapping and making it look interesting.

But the player dynamics, and weapon characteristics combine to subtly change the intensity/speed of the game. For example the archaic Marathon was very slow due to show shot speed comparatively weak weapons. Quake III has much stronger weapons making distances seem shorter due to the killing power.

Unreal has a great balance, of player speed, map size and weapon strength/diversity that makes it consistently fun to play. It also has reasonably good AI for the bots. This balance seems to be elusive in FPS, as there are so few who really get it right, and you can see that in the communities they spawn.

I hope these OSS projects can match the balance of a great FPS even if they don't have the deep pockets or manpower to spend on visually stunning maps.

Sheldon

Re:Kid mode?

[Tom]

Oh yes, absolutely. Just think of the chiiiildren. Remove from sight what offends you and everything will be fine. You can't change human nature, but you can push it underground, into repression, where you can then capitalise on it. That's been modus operandi of the catholic church and every other conservative power group for at least a thousand years, probably a lot more.

See, removing child porn from the Internet is so much more important than actually finding and locking up the people who produce it. And filtering out the blood from a shooter is a lot better, and also easier, than stopping to think that you're, you know, like shooting people, blood or no blood.

In fact, there's some research out there (not undisputed I should say, to be totally honest) that indicates that displays of "clean violence" is more likely to result in actions of violence than splatter, blood and gore, because the consequences of violence are hidden and thus don't enter consideration as much.

OpenBVE, for train sim buffs

[jkxx]

While train simming is not exactly a hot genre it has been entering the mainstream as of late. The proprietary contenders currently include Kuju's Rail Simulator and Auran's Trainz series. Both are closed-source but use plain XML for all their data files which makes developing easy for these sims. Microsoft decided to re-enter the race with a new "Microsoft Train Simulator 2" bragging that they have endless resources and will beat any competitor. A few days ago, however, they canned the project along with everyone at ACES who had been working on it. Anyway, where it gets interesting is a freebie (fully open-source) sim called openBVE which can be found at http://openbve.uuuq.com/en/index.html [uuuq.com]. While its predecessor BVE was not fully open, openBVE is and it's making rapid progress, especially as of late. A video showing off its capabilities is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtITwxTWLyM&fmt=18 [youtube.com]. So as far as train sims go, yes there is at least one that's starting to turn heads and it's good to see something that's not an FPS for a change.

Want new FPS mechanics? Here's your chance!

[Acord]

We're not looking for tried and true - double jumping, in-air directional impulses, moving bullets that make sniping hard and aimbots less than useful, a redirection from collecting crap on a map(ammo, armor, health etc.... THERE IS NONE!) We want to make something cool and different. If you've got ideas, let's hear 'em!