Falling Apart

[tuppe666]

I have never been so confused in all my born days. I've found this site...which was a little tricky to find, and only know about it existence from the sound requests on the linux games tome.

I'm lost in it all really; I don't even know where to begin. This seems to be one of the few sites I understand in all this Quake3 nonsense. I have been through beta, deserted, and most importantly mods that are trying to become standalone.

I started this quest because I treated myself to a new graphics card after reading an article about Tremulous. It hasn't failed to disappoint in the slightest; its fantastic.

Now me being stupid thought there must be lots of these projects kicking around with everything I like little communities, and some good people trying their hand at something fun...but its not.

I might as well start with Doom because well thats at the beginning, and for those of the right age, and access to the right machines it was ace. Its still worth a play around with, Maps were pretty bad then...now I read on one site 3000. Apart from being overwhelmed, its a lot harder that click a button and off you go.

I looked at freedoom, which has some good stuff in it mind. It looked like it could solve all my problems, but its *still* not there, they had some lovely new wall textures, but they seriously need a animator. Last time I looked it had turned into another mod. I could have cried then.

Quake1 was if anything more tricky, The ex-commercial stuff is actually pretty easy to find, and the program itself once you find one in development is pretty good, but again the levels and mods are the same too many  and not easy to get to, but Nexuiz turned out to be a little treasure.

Now Quake2 other than it being really nicely packaged with the expansions with Quake4. Again lovely models and ooodles of maps, lost in it all. I make a shocking discovery...maps are compiled. I kid you not you could have knocked me down with a feather. I even saw that the map sources have been released for quake II.

Now I'll mention my first Total Conversion. I'd got it in my head that it was some kind of collaboration...a sort of collection of good ideas put together in one place...and it is...almost. I looked at D-Day I actually downloaded and played(sic) a game by myself on the empty servers, a linux version no less. The levels look dated, but are really nicely put together. Its dying and the community knows it, someones has sensibly chosen a Quake II/III engine called EDL, and there are efforts to move it across, and you can feel from reading the forums how much they care, and some are trying to move the models to Quake III...and then I realise someones not releasing the source. I was just a little shocked to be fair.

Marathon is a revelation, maps, models everything in one place, I even asked on irc for some icons...which the fell over themselves to provide. For the love of GOD I wish I liked that game. I've tried I have really tried.

Now I suppose I should have just posted this bit about Quake III total conversion Urban terror, but really someone must understand my distress. Urban Terror looks great...it probably is great. They amongst others are thinking about going standalone. Its a sensible move esp since I've had Quake Gold on back order from the other side of the world for TWO WEEKS, and the servers are not as popular as they once were. Seriously I have read some garbage on forums in my time, but they are shocking. A dying mod will not go ioquake3 because they wont release the source. I don't even understand what it is licensed under. The best bit is they have 30...and I have read them, discussing cheating and punkbuster. Apart from me believing that cheating in online games is like taking steroids to play tiddlywinks. They seem to think that without it the world will end. There is talk of it moving to Quake4 I really hope they do, because they are crackers on there. I feel better there is not a linux client available, and thats not right.

I should say licensing or direction is the problem with all this stuff, but its possessiveness thats killing it all off, which is kind of strange when its the some of the best quality gaming available to me on linux.

I've currently got my fingers crossed for three mods.
Western quake
World of Padman
Transfusion

I can't wait to see how these work out, but until then I will be playing Open Arena 0.6

I don't know the right place to post this stuff, but I've had four frustrating days...and I'm still playing Tremulous. I'd love to hear any comments for my sanity.

[dmn_clown]

You can't do anything about people's anti-social behavior, and not sharing source is anti-social, Richard Stallman is right about that. (Let alone the possible breaking of the GPLv2).

Though I am more inclined to agree with a certain Debian AMD64 contributor when he said "People don't release their source code because they are embarrassed by the way they code."   

[tuppe666]

To be fair I wrote the post after trying to understand the mod community(sic).  My problem is I still don't understand it. I think the proof is I'm posting here because I understand this  project.

I can easily understand why someone would do a mod; map; total conversion. I have nothing but the highest praise for such an endevour.

What I don't understand is why anyone would like to see that effort, go to waste, because I can't believe they do. I suspect all they want is short term credit for a good job; believe that there effort is somehow devalued by others being able to change/improve/imitate some of there work. The reality is the reverse.

[dmn_clown]

Well, there are open projects that are dead too, like WolfGL.

I can understand moving on to a "better" project I just don't understand the lack of sharing source and technique where it is possible. 

[tuppe666]

To be fair the WolfGL stuff is still there, and I remember last time I looked there was an updated project from it.

What I do think is strange is that the content rarely moves forward. The main reason for this being that the engine is released and not the content, which is why I have such hopes for this project because its got the chance to move forward.