Nexuiz (Fully Opensource 3d game) needs developers, could yo

[mikeeusa]

Hi. I was wondering if you would be interested in helping out a opensource game called Nexuiz. It's a quake based game that has had a number of releases over the years and uses quake C for it's game code and regular C for it's engine code as it uses the darkplaces engine. Most things are good with it; it supports bump and normal mapping and reflective shaders, texture blending shaders etc (though it doesn't support fur shaders yet). The maps are well made and have good flow. All of it, including the art and maps and models, are GPL. It even has a fork of GTK radiant and q3map2 as of a month ago now tailored to it's specifications. I enjoy making maps for the game, it permits the creation of everything from space junk to nice accurate castles... and supports PNG (in addition to TGA and jpeg) as a texture format... which I like because thats what I use to make my own textures (which are all GPL aswell).

The one problem is that it now has only one main developer (divverent) and about three part time contributors. Div has alot of pressure on him and needs help. As it is now he does both most of the quake C additions and the engine adaptions. Nexuiz needs more quake C and normal C coders (and could use a modler, animator, and all that jazz too). I myself make about one map per month or two for nexuiz (I've made 24 so far) but I can't code in either of the languages (I'm a perl coder) and it's difficult for me to wrap my head around quake C as it's so diffrent for me. I also make some (GPL) music from time to time so I guess I'm more of an "artist" than anything else. Anyway, this is a pretty advanced game as far as opensource releases go, I was wondering if you or anyone you know of could lend a hand.

Note: Their website is http://www.nexuiz.com and http://www.sf.net/projects/nexuiz. There are some videos, download packages (including source in the zip), and a forum. The game runs on linux, windows, and mac (and recently div ported gtkradiant to the make system and removed unneeded dependancies so that will be able to be ported everywhere too).

Thanks for reading this Smile
--Mike--

[Wazat]

Hey there. Sorry I didn't reply sooner, the forum made it look like there were no new posts for the past week or so.

The last time I developed for Nexuiz I added the game modes (rune match, ctf, domination, etc) and a couple of odds and ends like the laser-guided missile option. I haven't really done much with it since. Crashed and pulled away from modding for a while again.

What kind of Quake-C work needs to be done on it? If you can list a few relatively self-contained features (like the game modes, etc) then you may get a few people interested.

[Urre]

I'm pretty sure it's about finding a co-maintainer, seeing as div0 does almost everything himself nowadays. He currently seems to be the only DarkPlaces dev as well, seeing as LH is more busy than ever.

[leileilol]

successful troll is successful.

[Urre]

I know who he is, but the jist of what he says is true.

[MauveBib]

Ah, I remember banning him from the Nexuiz forums and several chat rooms years ago. Good times.

Good to see he's got through a whole message without saying "death to women's rights". Maybe he's finally grown up?

[leileilol]

Good to see he's got through a whole message without saying "death to women's rights". Maybe he's finally grown up?

nope

this is the official call.

[-z-]

He has turned over a new leaf. If you can't tell by the original post he's really trying to make a difference. I believe the ban was uncalled for and due to a previously established personal bias. He was provoked in the thread that led to this ban. Knowing of his previous outbursts, I don't think it's fair that he was getting picked on. This was his second model and he was trying to hard but these self-proclaimed professional artists decided to shit on him... yet they were never reprimanded.

We should aim more to encourage, not discourage the efforts of others no matter what level their ability.

successful troll is successful.

And what are you doing here? He's obviously just trying to help, I think this was comment was uncalled for.


But yes, we could really use more developers, divVerent is often overwhelmed with requests and the project could very well die if he were to step down. We now have 24 weapon slots and the recent addition of CSQC has brought upon some wonderful innovations such as a sexy looking scoreboard, radar and other fun things. The sounds by Tenshihan are AMAZING to say the least. We'd love to keep this snowball going and take some pressure off of divVerent. This project has great potential and we'd love your help.

[leileilol]

If you can't tell by the original post he's really trying to make a difference.

Not really. The Inside3D front page had a news item about a call for help for Nexuiz prior to the existence of this thread. This thread is part of his truce bait troll tactics, believing this place is one unaware of Nexuiz, or his own dangerous antics.

[-z-]

Clearly, you're an expert when it comes to accusing people of things.

I don't understand why you can't let sleeping dogs lie. Do a little research before spreading hate.



edit: looks like my words inspired leileilol to do something... unfortunately it was to spread more hate:

[12:16:11 pm] *** leileilol sets a ban on *!*@*.hsd1.fl.comcast.net.
[12:16:11 pm] *** You have been kicked from channel #openarena by leileilol ([-z-]).

I'm not sure how these actions are helping anyone... I'm sure your intentions in the AT thread were good natured... but you attacked a person's work based on a guess... when he CLEARLY has credentials you didn't care to look up.

[MauveBib]

ok, let's cool off.

-z-: For those of us who've been on the end of mike's filth before, it's reasonable for us to chose not to be in involved with him. Frankly, his views are horrifying, and he's not the sort of person I have any desire to associate with.

leileilol: Point made, back off.

[-z-]

So a few things we can use help with (for those interested):

- New weapons
- Segmented models
- New player models
- gibs moved to client-side
- better bot AI

Off the top of my head.

You can find out more in #alientrap on irc.anynet.org

[Wazat]

Wow, I had no idea mikeeusa was the same guy from IRC. I second MauveBib's comment. That's probably the best way to say it.

-z-:
I don't do IRC much anymore, but I could probably code a weapon or two. Mind posting a list of weapons you guys would like done? If there's something that catches my fancy I can stop by the irc channel for more details.

-Wazat

[-z-]

For weapons, there has been a lot of talk about a melee weapon recently. Many consider Nexuiz too fast for such a weapon but I do not believe this to be true and a melee weapon would add a well needed dimension to the game.

I posted a reply in another thread on ID3 about melee weapons. I, personally would like to see a knife as I described there but I am open to other ideas as well. Someone had suggested perhaps a secondary fire on the laser acting as a melee.

As for other weapons, it's pretty much your freedom to choose. I asked esteel about the possibility of adding new ammo types (currently we have 4, shotgun, bullets, rockets and cells) and said he didn't see why not now that we have all these slots.


As for gametypes, which you mentioned earlier. I had developed an idea for an "abstract data type" that could be used for many different game types, putting the power in the hands of the mapper.

I would be ever grateful if you could implement this:


The original intent was for a race/defrag type game type but it could theoretically be used for many other things, covering all currently existing game types. Though some (such as OUNS would require added attributes to eggs and baskets such as "damage").

[Wazat]

An effective melee weapon in nexuiz is an interesting challenge. Players move extremely fast, and especially with lag it becomes very challenging to hit anything even with ranged weapons. Hitting with a melee weapon could be harder than jumping off a ledge and twirling around to headshot an enemy with the nex who you saw in the corner of your eye just as you jumped past a corner... with a 0.32 second window of opportunity. A melee weapon with lag might be harder than doing that consistently.

I would strongly recommend this weapon have a wide kill range (swing the knife and it harms in an arc around you), and that it have a moderate rate of fire, or preferably very high damage. The axe in Quake is completely infeasible for this task because it does too little damage (minimum of 4-5 hits to kill), is very short range (64 dist if I remember right), and only affects targets directly in front of it. That's a miniature kill threshold and it's completely useless in a game like Nexuiz.

Some possibilities include:

• A rapid fire weapon that creates a damaging forcefield around you that harms targets you get near and reduces bullet damage. (shield gun)
• A sonic knife (progressive blade?) that vibrates so rapidly and violently its surface looks blurry, and it cuts right through anything in its path. 1-2 cuts with this should basically kill a freshly spawned player.
• A progressive blade like that knife except it's at the end of a long polearm shaft for a much wider swing radius. Alt-fire jabs forward for about double the distance, but only straight-forward instead of an arc kill range.
• A combination gun and blade. Whether it's a blade attached to the gun to allow the whole thing to be swung or stabbed, or just holding a knife in one hand and the blade in the other.
• --My friend's QuakeRPG mod had a weapon where the gun was in one hand and the knife was in the other, and you could control each hand independently with the primary and alternate fire buttons.
• --If the gun is attached to the blade, maybe a successful stab locks them in place and the gun automatically fires a powerful shot that launches them forward and dislodges them from the blade. Or the gunblade can be swung back and forth and the gun can be firing in an arc while it's swung.
• A blade that actually propels you forward as the projectile. By holding the attack button you fly forward faster than you could run, holding the blade out in front of you. Hitting the alt fire causes you to stab the ground and do some radius damage. If you're in the air when you use the alt fire you plunge to the ground, and the farther you fall the more damage you do and in a wider radius.
• A flame whip or electrical whip, Ratchet & Clank style. It swings out in a wide arc and briefly slows enemies it hits. This makes them easier targets for more attacks but not sitting ducks, and their best action is to turn around and shoot you. Maybe you're also slowed down while whipping so you can't be running circles around them at the time.

Assuming we could agree on an idea and get a talented modeler equally excited, each of the options above would be very easy to code and have working. Just remember that the modeler has quite the task ahead of him. The weapon model must be made, and then potentially every player model must be altered so that it has melee weapon animations appropriate for the weapon we make. I sure hope Nex uses a common skeleton or something for its player models or that could be a daunting task. That's all the more reason to do something like a shield gun that doesn't need special player anims.


As for the generic game mode builder you mention, it kind of seems like the TF entity system. I understand it was incredibly open and you could make almost any kind of game mode you wanted. It seems to me like making a dynamic and open system like that would be a lot of work, so I'd want to leave it up to someone who has done that sort of thing before.