OpenArena Message Boards

greetings
it would be interesting if we could make an extensive version of open arena (like a new mod), perhaps taking advantage of idsoftware id tech 6, or unreal engine 4, or even cryengine 5, mizuchi, or any other engine running on Vulkan api? like a new mode taking advantage of the already existing content. what are your feelings towards this topic? please let me know. looking forward.
kind regards

I agree on you. New maps , new characters , and drivers / frameworks compatibility...

I was talking that with my group today.

Sorry to bring your expectations down, but changing engine has already been proposed several times... IIRC, developers' answer was that engine and gamecode are too much strictly related. It would be a mess to switch to anything different than id tech 3... also considering that keeping compatibility with stuff designed for Q3A is one of OA goals.

See also (DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/NOTTODO

Because engine switches are totally worth it and don't hinder progress of anything ever.  Everything's always about graphics.

i see your point on not to change engine. I think it's relevant. while it would be cool to see an opensource mod of quake 3 running on a modern engine, just as we've seen with quake 2 when quake 2 evolved was released, I think it's in a way too much work to be done (switching engine might be a pain in the ass, once all the content must be rebuilt from scratch, and then it's one more thing to get maintained), but there's nothing open source at the level of quake live, both graphically and in terms of API. so, I think in a way, it could be actually like pretty interesting to sort of port open arena, to something like ue4, and in between compiling it for both standalone, as well as WebGL. but I see your point not to do so, and I think it's valid. I was just trying to bring further ideas to the community. looking forward. cheers. tiago

and it's cool to have an open source game at this level that can run, for instance, in SOCs or mobile devices, based in arm, such as the raspberry pi, or really old computers, specially in terms of resources economy

I do not know Quake Live "in terms of APIs"... however for the little I know about it, it's basically id tech 3. Probably with various tweaks, but still id tech 3.

Also, one may notice that OA engine is not exactly the id tech 3 from the original q3a source release. OA engine inherited various changes by ioquake3, and added some changes of its own (e.g. optional support for GLSL shaders, optional new particle system, etc.)...

If you like OpenArena to run on "mobile" hardware, OA3 content reboot should give better performances on low-end hardware thanks to more accurate content selection (e.g. items around the map made using fewer polygons)...

Quake Live still uses a fixed function GL 1.1 pipeline and is actually behind OA's current engine on github in some spots (like overbrights and widescreen)

so maybe just working out towards adding some graphics tweaks and effects, just like you see in quake live (i.e.: motion blur, ambient occlusion, etc.)