Open Source FPS Blood Frontier Releases Beta 2 113
An anonymous reader writes "The open source FPS Blood Frontier has now made their beta2 release. From the article: 'After many months of development, and massive amounts of input from the public, we are proud to present you with the new release of Blood Frontier, v0.85 (Beta 2). This new version totally redefines and improves the game in many ways, creating a whole new style that makes it almost nothing like its predecessor.'"
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
"proper anticheat system" = server admin who bans cheaters. problem solved.
Re:It's "bloody" fun! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any sufficiently advanced cheating is indistinguishable from skill.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:It's "bloody" fun! (Score:4, Informative)
It still ruins it kinda. Sure you get off the idiots who run around at 100x speed aimbotting and killing everyone, but discreet use of esp hack that shows you where enemies are or if someone is coming behind you will still give major advantage to the cheater. It will not ruin the game completely, but it still makes it kind of stupid.
Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games. You don't even need to debug assembly and create a hack for it, you just need to edit the source code and build your own client. Open source anti-cheating system has the same problems too, and in addition open source community would probably yell against locking down the client with such system. Sure, server admins can still ban the obvious cheaters, but this is one of the things commercial games (and commercial anti-cheating software) will always have advantage over open source games, at least until we can actually just render the player screen on server and transmit it over the internet.
Re:It's "bloody" fun! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games. You don't even need to debug assembly and create a hack for it, you just need to edit the source code and build your own client.
Not always.
It can be solved by not sending to your client any information you shouldn't know as player or character.
It's fricking hard, but not impossible.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that on similar level of "hard" (perhaps even on greater...) to simply streaming the image to client with sufficiently low latency?
Re: (Score:2)
Not even close. As long as computers are better at tasks than humans, the issue remains.
i.e. Think about an aim-bot. A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data. And even if you do the whole streaming-game thing, bot likely will still exist, that process the stream and emulate user actions far quicker than a human could
Re: (Score:2)
A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data.
If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.
Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition. And their massive cluster still sometimes has to make you wait a few seconds while they try to figure out what the hell you said.
So, getting back to what you said:
Think about an aim-bot.
There are generally going to be two things happening here:
Either you've discovered a surefire way to distinguish real targets from noise, in which case, the army probably wants to tal
Re: (Score:2)
It's not really hard to make aimbot work so that it's not so obvious, it's only bad cheats that just jump to point to enemys head and shoot. It's obvious of course. But it's trivial to add smoothness and human-like errors to the movement. The data is there. Client knows where enemy is (because it has to be drawn). It's a matter of few cpu cycles to calculate the new direction to aim at and make command to shoot. No human can possible, ever, work that fast.
Another problem is ESP, warnings and other such chea
Re: (Score:2)
A computer is going to be more accurate and faster than a person with the same data.
If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.
Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition. And their massive cluster still sometimes has to make you wait a few seconds while they try to figure out what the hell you said.
I would think that there's a slight difference between determining the vector from one known object (the local player) to another known object (an enemy in the local player's viewport) and doing voice recognition.
Re: (Score:2)
If you've actually got the algorithms to back that up, you'd be a pioneer in AI.
You're joking, right? The theory behind an aimbot is pretty much as simple as it gets. And it's not like you have to kill every person on the map, you could easily use the aimbot to achieve "snapping" to the target or what not.
Want to prove it? Dial Goog-411. That's right, that's Google doing voice-recognition.
While I'm sure you've proved something, it has nothing to do with this. If the task isn't suitable for a bot, don't do it with a bot. You'll notice I also qualified it with a statement "as long as a computer is better at the task" part. Things like social element and group work is go
Re: (Score:1)
An aimbot that works from only an image would not be that easy, true but an aimbot that interfaces with the game state and simply reads player positions from there is trivial since AI agents already do that (of course usually with some artificial inaccuracy and delay to prevent them from simply wiping players out).
Re: (Score:2)
it's trivial to add smoothness and human-like errors to the movement.
At which point, it just becomes an arms race. Add a human-like delay, and a human can win. Add "human-like" misses, and chances are, they'll show a predictable pattern.
Client knows where enemy is (because it has to be drawn).
There are several ways to fool this kind of cheat, however. One possibility (making it up as I go) is to send false information about an enemy position, such that it likely won't be drawn (behind/in a wall, or with an invisible model) and watch for clients that immediately snap towards that target.
Another problem is ESP, warnings and other such cheats that do not directly interface gameplay, but give cheater a huge advantage because he gets a lot more info than other players.
To a certain extent, you can't really do anyt
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Since there's no "-50: Hopelessly Wrong", I'll sacrifice modding parent as Overrated to post a reply that will hopefully re-clue anyone who reads and believes it.
Even with access only to the data you "should know", it's still TRIVIAL to mod a client in ways that provide significant advantages. No offense, but parent has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, and obviously no actual experience in this area.
Rather than listing 20 or 30 trivial cases that disprove your claim, I'll just take the most obvio
Re: (Score:1)
This won't help too much. There will always be ways to cheat. Especially if you know exactly how the server is checking the validity of the client.
The only solution is for the server to check if the client uses an unmodified version of the game. Exactly that is, what "trusted computing" is promising to deliver.
I still don't believe trusted computing is possible if the client has total control over his machine (is root) but at least in theory that's the only answer I can think of to solve the cheating proble
Re: (Score:1)
Actually this is and will always be a major problem with open source online games.
Actually, for some genres, an authentication scheme based on PGP's web of trust could be used to restrict who is able to participate on a match. Anybody that is obviously too good to be true could be collectively banned. Those who can't be subjectively detected, don't hinder the gameplay.
If I had the time, I would implement something like that for Frozen Bubble... (oh, but I *hate* Perl)
Spurious G ratings for experienced players (Score:2)
If you have too many G rating you will of course not be allowed on most servers.
But if an experienced player of previous games in the same genre ends up randomly matched with less skilled players due to too few games played to establish an Elo ranking, expect a significant number of spurious Gs due to the vast skill differentials. Let's say Jin8, one of the half-dozen players worldwide who have achieved the "Grand Master" grade on Tetris The Grand Master 3: Terror-Instinct, has just signed up on your puzzle game server. He could play falling block games almost with his eyes closed, as
Arika presents invisible Tetris (Score:2)
Anybody that is obviously too good to be true could be collectively banned. [...] If I had the time, I would implement something like that for Frozen Bubble
So you like puzzle games, and you want to ban players who appear too good to be true. Would you end up banning Jin8 from playing Tetris? He's actually that good [youtube.com]. (Fast forward to 5:00 and watch for 20 seconds and be amazed.)
Re: (Score:1)
As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective. If the guy is notorious for being good, he would not be banned, even if I do vote for banning him. And for what I am familiar with, you follow other's gaming abilities develop, from sucking to good. So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.
As our anonymous friend replied above, this scheme can help identifying players grades [I also thought about the kyu's and dan's of Go! :-) ]. I am pretty sure Jin8 would find bo
Re: (Score:2)
As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective.
And it's not me that lacks the distinctive singular and plural for "you"; it is post-1650 English.
So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.
Unless the game is a sequel or clone, as the game of the article appears to be of the Quake series. Of course a player who was an expert at Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, and Quake 4 will instantly start playing Quake 5 awesomely. Jin8 was an expert at Tetris the Grand Master and Tetris the Absolute: The Grand Master 2 before he started playing this game. Likewise, a Go player in a dan skill level will instantly st
Re: (Score:1)
As I said, it's not me that bans, it is the collective.
And it's not me that lacks the distinctive singular and plural for "you"; it is post-1650 English.
Would you care to elaborate? English is not my primary language.
So if a player instantly starts playing awesomely, something is wrong for sure.
Likewise, a Go player in a dan skill level will instantly start playing awesomely on a new Go server.
The problem at hand is 'new user with good skills', in which existing users with similar skills would be pleased and willing to play with. Nevertheless, inferior players would still be able to restrict him from playing with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Would you care to elaborate [about English's lack of distinctive number in second-person pronouns]? English is not my primary language.
Some languages have multiple words for you that distinguish singular from plural. For instance, Spanish has tu/te singular, usted/lo/la polite singular, and ustedes/las plural. German has du/dich singular, ihr/euch plural, and Sie polite. After a look through your recent Slashdot posting history, I see you appear to be familiar with places that speak Portuguese, so I'll look that up on Wikipedia: tu/te singular, você polite singular, vós/vos plural, vocês polite plural. English, on the other
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Strangely we see all kinds of abuse in Spring but noone seems to bother altering the engine itself to make a map hack.
Is it fun? (Score:4, Interesting)
Judging this book by its cover, this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago with Quake 3: Team Arena. I watched the video, looked at the website, but all of the improvements listed there boil down to either move better, or kill more stuff. Anything actually original about the gameplay that makes it Killzone 2 kind of fun?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You're totally correct about crazy and weird [youtube.com] at least.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Despite looking great, Killzone 2 isn't THAT much fun. It's the killer graphics that made it a hit.
It's more than just the graphics. Engineers who can repair items, plant sentry turrets, or the ability to launch flying sentries. Medics who can heal/revive teammates or drain energy from the enemy. The ability to plant spawn points can really make a difference in the game balance too. Saboteurs and cloaked snipers, while not that unique, rounds out the player balance. There's also how it seamlessly switches between the different game types (Assassination, Search & Retrieve, Search & Destroy, B
Re: (Score:2)
It's more than just the graphics. Engineers who can repair items, plant sentry turrets, or the ability to launch flying sentries. Medics who can heal/revive teammates or drain energy from the enemy. The ability to plant spawn points can really make a difference in the game balance too. Saboteurs and cloaked snipers, while not that unique, rounds out the player balance...
Yeah, Enemy Territory is great.
Huh? What the fuck is "Kill Zone"?
Re: (Score:2)
So it's Tribes circa 1998?
the ability to launch flying sentries.
Oh, excuse me, Tribes with the Shifter v1 mod.
(That actually also describes Battlefield 2142 and probably a dozen other games.)
Re: (Score:2)
So it's Tribes circa 1998?
the ability to launch flying sentries.
Oh, excuse me, Tribes with the Shifter v1 mod.
(That actually also describes Battlefield 2142 and probably a dozen other games.)
Must be, because obviously Killzone 2 is simply a clone of Tribes with no unique gameplay or features.
Re: (Score:1)
That would actually be a major selling point around here.
Re: (Score:2)
nah, looks like another FPS tuned for a 13-old with a caffeine and sugar high...
Re: (Score:2)
What's the difference? (Score:2)
good content is hard to get for free.
This isn't the case for computer programs, as shown by the free software movement over the past two decades. So why is it the case for meshes, textures, maps, audio, and scripts?
Re: (Score:2)
Because Creative/Artist types want to get paid, good reliable artists are hard to find.
I lost one of my best 2D artists to a Flash Game developer.
Maps might be easier to get if Textures were already available, and scripts you might be able to get if the scripting tools were easy enough to attract writing types.
I don't know enough to say much about the lack of audio out there.
There are good royalty free meshes and textures available on the web for a fee, anyone good at modelling usually finds a way to make a
Free software has paid contributors (Score:2)
Because Creative/Artist types want to get paid, good reliable artists are hard to find.
Programmers also want to get paid, yet many work on free software for free in their spare time, and some even get paid by big companies to develop free software like Linux, Qt, Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. I'm still not seeing the cause of the difference between the executable and nonexecutable portions of a game here.
Re: (Score:2)
But are any of those paid OSS contributors working on games?
I'd seriously like to see a set of Free as in Speech/Beer 3D Elements developed (Soldier, City Block, Assault Rifle, Gunshot Audio and Run/Jump/Walk animations for the Soldier) that any developer could plug into their game as a basic level and see if their engine works correctly. The level should have stairs, portals (doors/windows), and things to jump on. This should allow you to test opening/closing doors, occlusion, indoor and outdoor lighting a
Re: (Score:2)
But are any of those paid OSS contributors working on games?
Not that I can think of, but that's why I'm asking what's the core difference between free games and other kinds of free software that makes free games less conducive to paid contributions. Is it because you can't build a business model around selling support to medium and large businesses? In that case, free game developers would need to start marketing their products to arcades and Internet cafes.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, I think you're going to find more support in the Netbook and Phone market. Sure they might not pay much, if anything for the OS, but they're still selling a product and the end user might want to play games on the bus, train, plane, or waiting at the airport as much as the next guy.
When I bought my Droid it didn't come with 1 game! It comes with the market that lets me buy games and apps, but am I expected to believe that Verizon couldn't pony up for one Tetris/Chess/Checkers clone on a $299 p
Re: (Score:2)
AI
You've already answered your own question. Writing a proper AI is damn hard.
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like it will make a great Quake 3 Arena replacement as-is, can't wait for single player and co-op. I especially like the nice graphics, very different from the sub-par to downright shitty graphics that are common on FOSS games.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's almost impossible to get people to work on a single vision without paying them. Everybody has ideas and wants to contribute but for a proper original work you need something consistent. The reason so many FOSS games are clones of popular games is because the vision of "let's make an opensource clone of game X" is easily understood and everyone knows the result.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Has a terrible UI, too. I had a debate with one of the game programmers last time this got posted to Slashdot. (Why!???! Is it really that slow of a news day?)
Shoved it in a blog post if anybody cares: http://blakeyrat.com/2009/02/stupid-slashdot-exchange/ [blakeyrat.com]
Re: (Score:1)
They have to be like that. I play Section 8 and many people whine about combat being too slow in that game because you don't get one shot twitch kills and whatnot (especially how they can't be the hero and wipe out a whole squad just with their 1337 skills when the obvious solution to that problem is to bring your own squad). I've seen a video of MW2 being played with dual shotguns, it never seemed to take more than one shot to kill a player. It wasn't so much a firefight as a game of hide 'n seek where the
Re: (Score:1)
Well, Quake 3 was fun in the day and it still is fun today (see Quake Live).
If this open source game mimics the gameplay of Quake 3, it's something I could enjoy.
What I'm wondering about though is what this game offers beyond what Quake 3 (Quake Live) offers. Graphically it looks pretty much on par with Quake 3, but then we're talking about a 10 year old game here. Since the sourcecode for the Quake 3 engine is released under GPL, I don't see what the point of this project is, as they could simply build the
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say it's noticeably worse than Q3 graphically. Remember it's not only about the engine, also art assets.
Re: (Score:1)
And Quake's art isn't under a free licence, so if we're comparing the art, it's no longer true to argue "there's no point because there's already something just as good under GPL".
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't play Killzone 2. What made it so good?
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't play Killzone 2. What made it so good?
See my other post [slashdot.org]. You should play it. It just feels right. Everything's fluid and natural.
Maybe, but tagged !quake3 (Score:2)
From the wiki [sourceforge.net]:
The game is a single-player and multi-player first-person shooter, built as a total conversion of Cube Engine 2
That alone adds a dimension that simply won't be there in Quake 3: real-time, multiplayer map editing, on the server, while others are still shooting each other.
Re: (Score:1)
this looks like a remake of what I used to play more than a decade ago
This! I mean it's wonderful that many talented coders donate their efforts into games like this. But what we need is some open source designers, graphic artists and such.
The game may be fun, but when I look at the screenshots, all I see is the same blocky maps and ugly textures that I've seen 10 years ago.Due to this, I myself and probably a lot of others are not even going to download it and give it a try. It might be the most _fun_ game on the planet, but it does need a visual 'hook' to lure people in to
Re: (Score:1)
The bad graphics in Spring are mostly caused by not being a clone of TA but a rip-off. The common mods like BA are straight up ripped material from an ancient commercial release.
What do you mean with installation troubles though? At least in Windows it's just doubleclicking the installer and hitting next a few times.
"almost nothing like its predecessor" (Score:2)
More like an alpha release and they're still sorting out the requirements.
Re: (Score:2)
No, really, it's betta
(Say it out loud)
Subject (Score:2)
It looks interesting from the video, but I'm tired of playing Quakelikes after all these years. And I only played Quake for the first time about five years ago.
Clones and similar games are inevitable, of course. I just wish someone would start cloning other hallmark FPS games, like Serious Sam, Doom, Perfect Dark, etc. I'd really like to see some sort of espionage-based FPS out there in open source; something like Splinter Cell, Perfect Dark, or Rainbow Six. Fun things like cloaking devices, remote cameras,
Re: (Score:2)
Don't count on clones of "other hallmark FPS games" that you mention (at least not on any bearable level of quality)
Quakelikes are easy to make not only thanks to engines for the taking but also relatively easy game asset creation (it helps that there are lots of map makers, itself thanks to higher relative ease of making deathmatch map than interesting single player level)
Well, perhaps Serious Sam at some point, that can be made more or less procedurally.
Re: (Score:2)
Tribes2's been reactivated thanks to tribesnext, but it's basically on life support again thanks to one particularly sociopathic "competitive" player.
Serious Sam HD is out and supposedly has a reworked netcode so it'll work better now. It's basically a 1:1 with new graphics and a new engine as far as I know but tbh when it comes to Serious Sam I'm fine with that. Some singeplayer is worth replaying.
Re: (Score:2)
Details, please. How does one player manage to kill off a game?
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.themellin.com/t2history.php [themellin.com]
Point of note:
"You think you're being sportsman-like and friendly when in reality you are being uncompetitive and childish."
The man's entire worldview revolves around how he is the one true savior of the one true Tribes gametype and everyone else who doesn't just agree with him but actively assist him in harassing the rest until they also join is a part of some vast conspiracy led by a guy named Qing to ensure that Tribes dies and nobody plas it.
He's basically singlehan
Re: (Score:1)
Some people compare Section 8 to Tribes. I have no idea how accurate that is since I've never really played Tribes so take it with a grain of salt.
They already made this game (Score:1, Flamebait)
Ugh (Score:2)
Another unoriginal arena shooter. Sure it looks very pretty but it doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done a million times before.
Please stop making these now.
What about warsow?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Warsow is, as I see it, a Quake clone that adds walljumps & some extra movement skills. Every weapon is a weapon that's in Quake, with the exception of the Gauntlet/Machinegun hybrid.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes I will admit that the learning curve is steep, but that's half the fun right there!
Uh, wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing I can think of is Aleph One/M1A1 and while Bungie certainly knew how to make a good game I think it's kind of sad that in the FOSS FPS doma
Re: (Score:1)
A person starts a game to be entertained by it. Encountering massive skill differences right away and being required to put a lot of work into the game before it becomes fun tells them to go elsewhere and play something fun instead. You can make your extremely skill-based games but they must be fun from the moment the player starts the game up or he will not stay. No arcade game bludgeoned you with its super-hard parts right at the start, they knew people wouldn't throw another coin in there if they get the
Re: (Score:2)
Q3A remake? (Score:2)
Looks like a low-quality Q3A remake.
I don’t think it can beat Q3A CPMA (and Defrag [youtube.com]) though. Especially not with the XreaL engine [xreal-project.net] and High Quality Quake models and textures.
!opensource (Score:2)
This is not an open source project. From data/textures/readme.txt:
(C) 2007-2009 Blood Frontier Team, all rights reserved.
The "textures" package included in Blood Frontier may only be distributed
with the Blood Frontier package. Redistribution or repacking outside
this context without the author's consent is strictly prohibited.
If you want a real open-source shooter that rocks, try Nexuiz [osreviews.net].
As an FPS gamer (Score:2)
... I'm always curious why the open source FPS games look like they are about 7 or 8 years behind the closed-source industry.
Its like they're not even trying to compete. Go to the Game Developers Conference, guys... Take some notes... See what the top devs are doing in the future and start doing that NOW. Then you'll catch the wave at the right point.
open source FPS always catch my attention long enough to notice this consistent failure to get with the times.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The problem is assets, not code. A single competent developer can easily turn even something as old as the original *QW* engine into something that is technically on par with anything currently available, even massively-overhyped "awesome" engines like crysis.
A single competent developer can't make 400MB of high-quality textures though, or model and animate 30 monsters, or create the 500 sounds a game needs not counting the voices of humanoid creatures, and so on.
Even if you have several artists/modelers/et
Re: (Score:2)
A single competent developer can easily turn even something as old as the original *QW* engine into something that is technically on par with anything currently available....
If this were true, I would think most developers would do so with the freely available older engines. That isnt' the case. Companies like Epic sell their Unreal Engine to many companies. If it were so simple, people wouldn't need to buy.
Or maybe my facts aren't perfect in that assumption. I'm just a speculating gamer. Tell me something about this biz. :)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't think the Unreal Engine is so popular because of its core engine but because of the toolset it comes with. That toolset is extremely powerful and thus cost efficient for creating a game.
Re: (Score:2)
dude... big entertainment (yes, these GREAT big games, like GTA, Gears of War, Modern Warfare, Uncharted, etc.... They take millions of dollars to develop. GTA 4 cost TONS and was worth every penny.
They gotta be driven by profits, and people gladly pay for good games. Its not something that really *needs* to be done for free. People love games like they love everything else they do a lot of in life. You like to skate, you buy skateboard and wheels n stuff. YOu like to rock climb, you get into it, you b
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not on crack. I gave the games a try instead of sitting back and prejudging everything for 10 years and assuming they're all junk.
It's too bad you've let your prejucides keep you away from fun. Your own fault, I guess.
If you think tetris can even hold a fart to flame in comparison to Uncharted 2, you've either got a tetris tattoo or you've got one extra chromosome.
Either way, you're an anonymous coward. Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just having a good time watching you eat sour lemons all day for sheer lack of appreciation.
Life sucks huh?! Its so horrible!
Like I said, your prejudice is ridiculous, and thats why you're such a clown. The game mechanics in U2 are amazing. You'd never know, though.. You're still waiting for them to make it 2d and require the pressing of one button and down to keep it slow enough for you.
I'm 28. Kid, no. Been gaming over 20 years. I've tried it all and, unlike you, i've found a way to appreciate gr
Where is the game in FPS? (Score:1)
I have played a lot of FP shooters. The innovation from one generation to the next in terms of graphics and stability has been wonderful, brilliant, and lacking in magic.
What is missing, and what could make the next big FPS is gameplay. Anyone who wants to do it right needs to sit down, play with 3-5 friends some Renier Knizia board games
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/2/reiner-knizia [boardgamegeek.com]
as an education is what gameplay co