Is Open Source Multiplayer FPS as a whole dying?

Not sure if i'm wearing nostalgia goggles by saying this, but I remember how almost a decade ago various open source Quake games had fairly active communities despite their age, and Urban Terror, Warsow, the original Nexuiz, etc were still popular. Now it seems that there aren't any major new FLOSS FPS games to be hyped about. Xonotic (no offense) and Unvanquished haven't had a new stable release (relatively speaking for the latter, of course) in years; Netquake and Quakeworld are almost ghost towns; Quake 2, Quake 3, and their related mods (except possibly the CPMA pickup scene) are ghost towns filled with bots pretending to be players (look at the average "popular" Q2/Q3 server. You'll see several players that aren't marked as "bots" per se, but all come from the same ip. The worst of these have fake pings as well). As for other open source FPS communities, I have found that Saurerbraten and Openspades are fairly popular, but have sleazy communities. Assaultcube's community isn't the worst, but it's nothing to write home about. Red Eclipse seems to border between a ghost town and not having the best community for the few that remain. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, Star Wars Jedi Academy had their source code released, but considering the fatal combination of .dll instead of .qvm as well as a sv_pure system, might as well have remained closed source. What little remains for Jedi Outcast doesn't make itself easy for outsiders to join. Doom 3's game logic isn't available under GPL apparently (possibly not counting BFG edition) Aside from Doom 3 and BFG edition, no other Id Tech 4 or Id Tech 5 games have been open sourced... shall I go on?

To me one major appeal of open source gaming is (in theory) that the only limitations to playing a game are on how powerful the hardware is. If it's powerful enough, it doesn't matter if the architecture is different, the operating system is different, the endian is different... it just works (As much as I hate the idea of using that cliche lol). It's a shame that true multi platform FLOSS fps games, perhaps FLOSS games as a whole, seem to have stagnated.

(Could you fix the copy-and-paste mistakes in your post?)

Not sure if i'm wearing nostalgia goggles by saying this, but I remember how almost a decade ago various open source Quake games had fairly active communities despite their age,

Many here share your nostalgia here. It's undeniable that the popularity of AFPS is declining among the new generation of gamers. People who still love AFPS are getting old and have to deal with more real life responsibilities so there are fewer active users around.

And many folks here are still trying to slowly grow Xonotic, in different ways. Some are trying to make it more new user friendly; some try to make it easier for old users to find each other; some hold competitions; some contribute new ideas, code, models, maps, videos, etc.; some setup servers with fun features; etc. And there have been a lot of heated debates in the community about whether one change is better than the other. What I see is people's passion about Xonotic.

I personally don't believe we can shift back the global gaming interest, but I expect this cult to survive the decline.

I discovered Xonotic on March 25, 2015, and wrote my very first post 3 days later, basically saying that I had been looking for a game (and its community) to grow old with and I wanted it to be Xonotic. Time has proved that I made the right choice, for me.

To me one major appeal of open source gaming is (in theory) that the only limitations to playinga game are on how powerful the hardware is. If it's powerful enough, it doesn't matter if the architecture is different, the operating system is different, the endian is different... it just works (As much as I hate the idea of using that cliche lol). It's a shame that true multi platform FLOSS fps games, perhaps FLOSS games as a whole, seem to have stagnated.

Most people would emphasize the freedom to modify/improve the games, but your take on the pros of open source is interesting. Are you worried that soon we may all have to migrate to a new CPU architecture because of recent vulnerability?

Not sure if i'm wearing nostalgia goggles by saying this, but I remember how almost a decade ago various open source Quake games had fairly active communities despite their age,

Many here share your nostalgia here. It's undeniable that the popularity of AFPS is declining among the new generation of gamers. People who still love AFPS are getting old and have to deal with more real life responsibilities so there are fewer active users around.

Doesn't need to be an AFPS per se...just a good multiplayer FPS that's open source (preferably FLOSS). Several years ago I mentioned how the FLOSS "market" lacks a true rival to the Battlefield series of games, and considering how badly the newest ones are turning out from the microtransaction and "loot box" front, along with the EA Star Wars Battlefront games. Granted, an active FLOSS AFPS would also be nice.

To me one major appeal of open source gaming is (in theory) that the only limitations to playinga game are on how powerful the hardware is. If it's powerful enough, it doesn't matter if the architecture is different, the operating system is different, the endian is different... it just works (As much as I hate the idea of using that cliche lol). It's a shame that true multi platform FLOSS fps games, perhaps FLOSS games as a whole, seem to have stagnated.

Most people would emphasize the freedom to modify/improve the games, but your take on the pros of open source is interesting. Are you worried that soon we may all have to migrate to a new CPU architecture because of recent vulnerability?

I wasn't thinking of Meltdown and Spectre specifically when I wrote this post. As for moving to a new CPU architecture, there's too much "legacy" software for that to happen, and i686/x86_64 emulation hasn't reached full speeds for other architectures to take over.

As for modding and such, yes, I love how open source allows you to look at the internals of a game. (Pity I can't code...) That being said, it's not like there are no closed source games which don't give a wide berth for modding. Even popular console games from the past couple generations (mostly Wii and a few Wii U games but still) have had huge mods (Project M anyone?). 

In fact, sometimes it bothers me when a multiplatform game has the most mod support for the Windows version, as there's a good chance a console emulator will be up and running before PC emulation catches up (tell me. Can you run...say... the PC version of the original Unreal Tournament on an ARM arcitecture at full speed? How about with something more accurate than Dosbox? I didn't think so)

Doom 3's game logic isn't available under GPL apparently (possibly not counting BFG edition) Aside from Doom 3 and BFG edition, no other Id Tech 4 or Id Tech 5 games have been open sourced... shall I go on?

you know that Bethesda bought id software in 2009? Releasing id tech 4 as gpl was one of their last moves before bethesda bought them.
Id tech 5 aka the rage engine is property of bethesda so its up them to release it as open source. This will most likely never happen, as bethesda is the inventor of paid mods.

It's a shame that true multi platform FLOSS fps games, perhaps FLOSS games as a whole, seem to have stagnated.

Why are you wondering? basically all major engines released sdk's to their engines as free to use. the unreal engine 3 sdk became extremly popular and launched many indie games. Freeware and paid games too. there is also the rise of steam, which makes extremly easy to buy games and to sell your game. Also sales like the steam sale or the humblebundle, which allow you get several great games for very little cash. Free to play games. Last but not least, giveaways. Several times a year publishers and developers give a way their games for free (yes, i know it's PR), but as gamer you are happy as you can play a AAA title from a few years ago for free.

the open source part doesnt bother many people, most people just look at the price and if its free, its good.

Please stay on topic!

(the split part is here)

Maybe one factor is that the young tinkering community has moved to other genres (like minecraft and it's FOSS clones), leaving only the "old farts" contributing to AFPS like Xonotic... and those usually have less free time and probably often think that this "looks good enough" being used to old school graphics.

Why I like open source games is because to some extend it makes it possible for you to play the game you love the way you want. Because in the long run it will be just you, your friends and the game. Open sources might be getting less popular, because there are increasingly more games each year and less people dedicating themselves to just one.

Why I like aFPS specifically is because you don't need massive teams or playerbases in order to play them. Pickup channels are decent at organizing team matches, deathmatch is kinda "non serious whatever fun" and for duel you only need one person to play with. The way meta works in your typical aFPS makes even 1v1 interesting and exciting, which may be something people coming from team-based games with team-based objectives might not understand at first.

Do I find Xonotic dead? I would prefer to call it "not available for everyone". It may be dead globally, but for EU you can play it actively pretty fine as long as you're not expecting servers to be packed 24h/7. Many of the other aFPS are also similarly active in different regions like that. For a game to be dead, I'd expect the master server be shut and it being literally impossible to get one match online.

I don't think any playerbase for a multiplayer game will last forever; eventually they will dwindle to a small playerbase if any. There are several completely dead or unremembered games especially those on console where their online service has been discontinued even when their release came with massive hype. Compared to that Xonotic is doing fairly well considering no major advertising campaigns.

But with regard to growing a community, pessimism doesn't work well.

An opinion of my own, I think there's a lot of underutilized ideas in AFPS that haven't really been "integrated" with the base game despite several mods having those concepts for years by now. So I think there's much potential for new content.

An opinion of my own, I think there's a lot of underutilized ideas in AFPS that haven't really been "integrated" with the base game despite several mods having those concepts for years by now. So I think there's much potential for new content.

Yes and no... Xonotic actually has a problem of too much obscure mutators and interesting new ideas hidden within that few players even know about or that there are servers for.

So adding even more content would probably not help at all.

Personally I think Xonotic should be stripped down to what people actually like and use about it and thus having a lean package. Any new ideas or existing mods can be forked out by interested players/developers to prominently feature as (related) stand alone games.

An opinion of my own, I think there's a lot of underutilized ideas in AFPS that haven't really been "integrated" with the base game despite several mods having those concepts for years by now. So I think there's much potential for new content.

Yes and no... Xonotic actually has a problem of too much obscure mutators and interesting new ideas hidden within that few players even know about or that there are servers for.

So adding even more content would probably not help at all.

Personally I think Xonotic should be stripped down to what people actually like and use about it and thus having a lean package. Any new ideas or existing mods can be forked out by interested players/developers to prominently feature as (related) stand alone games.

To clarify for example, the grappling hook is a familiar weapon and concept, but the inclusion of it in a match basically makes most other movement techniques near pointless to do i.e why strafe jump and build speed when a grappling hook grants the same or more speed with less effort. So if a map or challenge were appropriately designed such that the grappling hook is balanced with conventional movement techniques, I think that's fresh gameplay by itself at least for Xonotic.

Fundamentally I mean to integrate the new concepts in a way compatible and balanced with the base game, as opposed to making even more.