Vengeance – (DISREGARD, NO NEW FORK)

**EDIT**

In the best interest of both communities, I've decided not to start a fork. I don't want to split the community any more so than it already is. Please disregard what I've said about Vengeance; I have something else in mind.

Thank you,
-pcl

fooork the fork? there is no spoon! this seem like a downright dumb idea to me, as you stated above the community is quite split already. why not maintain a mod within Xonotic instead? that way you benefit from the steady improvements to Xonotic and can maintain your leetness however you like.

I don't understand how these differences cannot run with custom configurations, can you please elaborate on some of the parts that cannot be configured to your liking?

So.. why not continue with Nexuiz? As far as I understand you prefer Nexuiz. I mean, yes Nexuiz is kind of dying, but the question is: "Why?". If Vengeance will be similar why should it appeal to more players than Nexuiz has now? Also (great exmaple Xonotic) not everyone will move, so the little Nexuiz crowd will be kind of divided again, thus lack of players.

But good luck with that.

Seems pretty pointless to me. It would be smarter just to mod Xonotic to play like Nexuiz (or whatever your definition of Nexuiz is... every major version had different gameplay) or pick up where Nexuiz's development left off. Also, Xonotic 0.5 is A LOT different than 0.1, and is in almost every way a step up from Nexuiz.

Although I agree with the thougts by my previous psters, I think I should add that Nexuiz now has such an aura-of-dying-out around it that will make it hard to continue that project succesfully. So in the respect of marketing I can understand it. Whether this means it can ever be succesful is doubtful, but I still wish you all the best with it.

If you want more elitism in xonotic I suppose you create some kind of pro-mod. This will also split the community to some degree but still keeps it unified in some way. Tbh it would be lame to just "steal" the work of the xonotic devs and merge it into your own game. At least give xonotic a chance and try to put your ideas into a mod. If your mod is really what people are waiting for, it will be dominating soon and you get what you want.

+1 for a venegance mod
boo for backporting stuff into nexuiz

Edit:

While Xonotic may be catering to newer players and a lower skill base,

A low skill base is what you want usually (=easy to get into), what matters is the skill ceiling (=how good can one get). If your goal is to scare newbies off to feel elite yourself, have fun with playing the same 10 people over and over again..

Hard to tell my feelings about this whole project without sounding like an asshole (which I really don't intend, honestly), but this whole project, especially with the videos statements in mind, the project sounds like an epic fail from the start.
Let me explain why.

Nexuiz never had any large playerbase. As I could read from ESR forums, hardcore quake3/ut/warsow players never got it's movement's floatyness, the weapon configuration was all wrong, ugly playermodels, high system specs etc.
Also, the community wasn't so cohesive, as you'd think. People always came and left the game. Almost every major release had it's own playerbase, because as stated above, they were so different from eachother. What kept a few together from the beginning was not really the game, but the friendships it forged, or the excitement of developing the game itself.
A lot others just left because real life came in the way.

"It was during this time that many of the developers, too, experienced a divide among themselves. Because of this, development had seized, as did interest in both games."

This is what I call an utter LIE. Please, tell me who are those developers of Xonotic, who really left the project for sure, without clearly stating this in public, reasoning their department with your statements later. I can only name one, (Dokujisan).
When I look at the names on the developer tracker (http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic), half of the names I don't even know (probably just registered to follow a few issues), the others have rather real life issues, than lost of interest in the project.
Also, with a git tracker http://git.xonotic.org/ this active, I wouldn't say Xonotic development is seized...

"It is expected that GPL Nexuiz will inevitably decay without active development and a dwindling community"

That's correct. No doubt in that.

"Although premature, Xonotic is very much different than Nexuiz in regards to both gameplay mechanics and overall developmental philosophy and ideas".

That is still correct, but let me point some things out. In gameplay mechanism and weapon balance, Xonotic is a lot more polished and seems more cohesive, than Nexuiz ever was, and if you've followed the all famous "weapon balance thread phenomenon", ideas and feedback from the community was lot more kept in mind, than it was in Nexuiz ever.
If you think that the change in developmental philosophy from "let's slam together everything from low quality to über high, mixing styles from über realistic to cartoony and future punk" to "following one, future themed style and high quality compared to maximum optimalisation" is a bad idea, I don't know what future shall I forsee for your project.

"It would seem... gaming experience... over simplified... This leaves gameplay to be quite repetitive and uninsprired."

Let me tell you one thing: time and people are changing. Also, preferred taste too. For me, Nexuiz never had any real cohesive weapon balance (nade+nex combo whoring anyone?). Xonotic has a very well thought out weapon balance, every weapon now has it's own purpose, it's advantages and weaknesses. But these are there for those, who'd like to know the game mechanisms more deeper, than Average Joe, who'd only like to play 20-30 minutes a day, and still would like to have fun. And our game mechanism offers that opportunity too: to enjoy the game, you don't have to understand the weapons in their very depth.
So as I stated it in the beginning of this block: time and people are changing. People got lazy. Or just grew up - I can see on myself too, I don't have time now to play a game for hours per days, just to learn it, so I can later have fun with it. I just want to hop in, play, relax. So a guy like me, won't be interested in a game, that doesn't offer this opportunity - I'll try to play 5-6 games, and delete it, stating "it's crap". For me, at least, it is.

Xonoitc is presented as the successor to Nexuiz, but ironically, with every new release is a new contradiction to Nexuiz's roots and heritage. Irrevocably, Nexuiz will die, as will it's succesfully unique style."

What releases are you talking about? 0.1 and 0.5? Judging from only two official releases, clearly stated one as "alpha", and other as "beta" ?
If you linger for the old weapon settings so much, there's no need to fork. As stated above, you can still write a weapon/physics balance "nexuizclassic.cfg" (but really, which one? 1.0? 1.5? 2.x ? Because if you ask me, 1.5.x was the best).

About your goals:
Being portable under 300MB: Please tell mw, why is this so utterly important. Looking at the memory sticks nowadays avaible, everything under 2GB is considered portable. I haven't seen an USB stick smaller than 2GB in the last 5 years or so.
Xonotic 0.5 is now 943MB large. You can write it 4 times on a DVD. Sure, it won't fit on a CD, but honestly, who the hell writes CDs now anyway?

Legacy support for older hardware
FYI Nexuiz's legacy HW support was always a lie and a MYTH. I know, because I've made a very long, detailed test about it, running Nexuiz on almost all maps, with different gamemodes, on a low end hardware, that officially was said as minimum, and it was barely playable. Too bad the alienTRAP forum is down and lost, so I don't have the link to prove it.

Official site with all infos, tutorials etc.
All I can say, good luck for that. The most boring, time consuming job. Writing documentation is very hard, and the worst part is keeping it up to date.

Encouragement for competitive gameplay:
Honestly, good luck to find enough players for constant laddering. I can remember the times when Quake3 was new, shiny, and the de facto competitive game. It had a very thrilling community, worldwide and local. And check this out: it was awfully hard to organise an online tournament, even if it had some real price, like a new GPU, or anything like that. I'd say: If you don't have at least 50 ACTIVE (playing day by day) competitive players, don't even dream about ladders and tournaments.

And now... the most ridiculous part in your announcement... we need more developers developers developers!!!
First question: who is "we" ?
Second:

-People! I have a great idea! Let's sail away for a great adventure! I'll be the capn', I'm searching for crewmen! We'll sail the great ocean, dig treasure, and have a lot of fun together! Who's with me?
-YAY! ADVENTURE! When does your boat leave port?
-Oh, I don't have a boat.
-... Wut? You don't have a boat?
-No, I don't have a boat YET. We have to build it.
-Ooookey, let's build a boat. Where are all the tools and resources?
-I don't have them. I assumed you'll bring them, for the sake of adventure!
-... Sure, whatever. But tell me, do you at least have enough food for the trip?
-No, how could I have it? I'm only the capn' ya know, HARR HARR!
-But at least your company might have...
-I don't belong to any company! I'm free!
-... Capn... with full respect... can we see at least the map, or the picture of the treasure we're searching for?
-Hell no.
-How so?
-I don't have a map. I don't need a map! We're just gonna sail, where we want to go, and inevitably there'll be treasure!
-... Yeah, whatever. Where do we sign?
-Ere' on my coat! It's waterproof, the ink won't be washed off from it!
-What?

I hope you got my point.

I'm not telling you, you have bad ideas. Not even that I oppose them (why should I, honestly?). But I don't think you've thought this through enough.
Anyway, good luck with it. You'll need it.

Legacy support for older hardware
FYI Nexuiz's legacy HW support was always a lie and a MYTH. I know, because I've made a very long, detailed test about it, running Nexuiz on almost all maps, with different gamemodes, on a low end hardware, that officially was said as minimum, and it was barely playable. Too bad the alienTRAP forum is down and lost, so I don't have the link to prove it.

I remember reading some of those posts. Hell, I think we might be able to find them in this archive:

http://archive.alienTRAP.org/forum/

EDIT: Just look in the performance section, you'll see all kinds of complaints about the game on hardware that more than meets the requirements.

Thx Lee_Stricklin. I've found it:

Read, and cry:
http://archive.alienTRAP.org/forum/viewt...=12&t=1354

I was/am not a regular Nexuiz/Xonotic player. I kinda come from old Quake3 some years ago, played many other games as well, but just occasionally when I had the time. I don't care for competition in gaming, I just play for fun.

I met Nexuiz couple years back and was really nicely surpised to see something for free, that could kinda get me as excited as Q3. Not everything in Nexuiz was the way I would have liked it (we all like different things), but Nexuiz came pretty close. Then after I heard that Nexuiz kinda stopped and Xonotic was born, I was wondering what comes next.

After seeing Xonotic 0.1 and now 0.5 I have to say that its really great, even better than Nexuiz in my oppinion. Visually for sure, no need to go into that. It looks awesome ! But also the Gameplay is very nice.

I know a bit from my past about game communities splitting, which most of the time not really made things better for the future of a community. However I think that Xonotic was a important step here, it also brough fresh wind into the whole thing. Again, most of visually. You might say that graphics don't make a game, and I agree. But sometimes the eye also enjoys the change and in this case mine sure did.

So now I am reading about a possible yet another split, people trying to make yet another fork from Nexuiz, kinda pretending that their idea is the best and should be done because of it. I dont see the point. Why can't people be happy with Xonotic ? I know so many retail games that are a disaster compared to what Xonotic is offering. Does this planet really need another Nexuiz fork ? I don't think so. Besides, it might splits people again and who really would benefit ? Noone. Because it only drives away more people. These days, with so many bad games coming out, its all about maintaining a game & its community to make it last, not to split it even further.

I have to say my thanks to the creators of Xonotic for this cool Game. I might not play it on a daily basis, but I enjoy it every time I do play it. Thanks for that.

Besides, what the hell is that stupid Video for ? Does a forum post (with the same text) not surfice ? Do you really need to write and talk it ? Oh my god

Good luck.

Always the same story in open source...

The community of the open projects always is quite limited, so let's stop contributing to a project that actually has future, to make a fork because 'in some map there's a light in one corner that i dislike'

The open projects like this always need more production capacity and quality, divide the community because of a fork (or even re-fork) is to blame that open projects are almost always "the crappy clones of succesful comercial games" and players keep them away.

So anyway, good luck.

@PCLizard: why not work on continuing official Nexuiz instead? alienTRAP does not forbid you to continue it, they'll happily give you svn access I'd bet.

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Sorry for not being as specific, I should say that technically it's a Xonotic fork. We really liked the panel hud, so it would not make sense to port things back to Nexuiz rather than start out with something that already works. Keep in mind this an early build of Xonotic; I think sometime in June of 2010? Of course, I suppose one of the main reasons why we couldn't just make it as simple as "here's some configs, glhf" is that we wanted to remove a lot of the stuff that wouldn't be used as often in a competitive community. A good example would be vehicles. Also, one of our goals is to make the game lighter. 2GB, although it might not be nearly as big as some commericial games, is much larger than, for example, Nexuiz 2.4.2 (which was what, about 400MB?).

C.Brutail: You have some valid points (I would like to take the time and explain each thing, can't at the moment), but I'm afraid you don't know the whole story. What you said about Dokujisan is right, and actually is part of the story you might not know. Regarding "development has seized in both games", my apologies; that was poorly worded. I was just referring to nexuiz.

I've got to go now, but when I get back, I'll make another post in this thread with specifics and more reasoning as to why we decided to go this route. Also, in all honesty, how would this split up the community anymore? The current nexuiz community is so small that another "splitup" would be negligible. From what I can tell, most people on this forum is satisfied the way Xonotic is turning out, so I can't imagine this project hurting Xonotic in means of splitting the community even further. The people we would want to attract don't play either game anymore anyhow. Maybe I'm just not seeing it the way you guys are; some clarification would be appreciated.

-pcl

Basically, i'm going to say this once and as clearly as possible:

This is a mistake.

It is simply moronic to start yet another project from this where we already have a very sound foundation and easy to work with set up, especially in the fact that you probably have no developers who can really work on this, except for maybe an amateur programmer and a few mappers at best. Xonotic will get a real competitive balance/physics set later, although right now i'm working on the public one mostly as that is more important for now. Perhaps I should just jump onto that immediately to avoid such an idiotic thing as splitting up the already small Nexuiz community again, diverging away from the *real* project.

Either way, there is no way you'll be able to start a project like that without many developers on board, the best thing you could do is instead a mod for Xonotic (which would be FAR better in general) -- Still, creating your own repository (and maintaining it with Xonotic fixes or such), hosting everything yourself (website, as said in video), building releases, doing any extra artwork/replacing media with your own logos and such, ACTUALLY PROGRAMMING CODE FOR THE GAME, etc, probably none of those things will be feasible with your new project.

Also, our game can actually be very small, you seem to be missing this -- We just don't currently have an extremely small build available, though with different/more compression (for sounds and textures) it could be extremely small to those who don't care about quality and rather want just the core of the game with small models and no textures etc.


Create a mod instead (or even just work with me on a competitive balance/physics set), and i'll help.

I couldn´t have say it better. Please accept his advise pcl, I really don't think that making a new game is the best idea.

I understand the concern that some people have, so I'd like to get a conversation going on #venfps (quakenet). I want to hear from both sides and be informed (both sides being xonotic and nexuiz). The least I would want to do is harm the community even further, but I feel as if there's no saving the Nexuiz community with Xonotic since so many people within Nexuiz dislike Xonotic. I know some of you will be like, "Well, Xonotic 0.1 was bad compared to Xonotic 0.5. We corrected a lot of things!" which is fair enough, but I think it was both the first impression, as well as the differences that caused such a separation. If you can join in, I'd greatly appreciate it.

-pcl

My dear pcl, this is madness. Just stop with it now, you will never succeed, you wont get the programmers, mappers etc etc etc you need by just posting one video on youtube.

You keep saying we, but do you even have one REAL developer?

Just create a new balance, togather with Samual, I do agree with you in some points regarding gameplay, but forking Xonotic? Madness!

I don't understand the excitement? Anyone can make another fork, what's to get emotional about?

In case the people behind "vengeance" have the means to make that fork a good one, then welcome. I think there was no such discussion when MirceaKitsune did its own fork "Vore Tournament", so why should anyone get excited about this one? I for one don't understand what's to fork anyway instead of making a mod, but if anyone feels he/she is capable of pulling off the entire thing, then great, another free OSS FPS.

So again, good luck.

Of course anyone is free to fork if they like Halogene. However posting abt it here means that he does want the input from the ppl here (or perhaps fishing for dev and supporters). So just as hes free to fork, ppl are free to speak their mind of it. "Vore Tournament" is not perceived as a competitor for players as its extremely niched.

The thing that makes me regard this as such a dumb idea is that, even tough 'they' may aim for a very different game-play and want to strip away all the visuals in favor of small size (why this matters today.. i dont get. but sure) - its basically the same project anyway. Splitting the development and players when both can easily exist within the same project is not helping either to get better. I dont agree with "the more projects the better", id rather see less projects that WORKS better

Hope that clarify my initial early-morning-pre-coffee post xD

Oh and that vid... cheeeeeesssyyyyyy scnr.

Vengeance is a new fork with a goal to retain key factors that made nexuiz so successful.

In fact, was nexuiz so successful?
The discrepency in opinion of a lot of people (the ones pro-xonotic vs the ones who prefer nexuiz) comes from this very question.

Some, like pcl, answers yes, probably because they had a lot of fun with nexuiz, regardless of nexuiz community size. And a legitimate successor of nexuiz should "retain key factors" of nexuiz.

Some, like xonotic core community, doesn't agree (from my understanding, it even was a central goal of the xonotic project) and rather want to offer a popular game; not excluding to lose some nexuiz roots.

Since xonotic development has started, I must admit that I constantly had the feeling that there haven't been enough exchanges between these two classes.

If Nexuiz players (who are these people anyway ) rejected a whole game based on a 0.1 alpha release then that is just... immature. A lot of people had their opinion about 0.1 but instead of sulking in another game they became very vocal. There were heated discussions on irc and this forum and this caused a 0.5 release that is much more appreciated generally. The game is much closer to the Nexuiz experience than it was at 0.1. So for a chnage I disagree with RATWM here, those players spoke out and changed Xonotic.

What I find a bit odd is that Nexuiz is now considered by these players as a game that was set in stone. But every big release was very different from the previous one. It's actually amazing that so many old 1.x players are still here. I agree with C. Brutail, this is more about the community and the friends we have made in it than the gameplay. Nexuiz was synonymous with radical changes every major release. If there had been a Nexuiz 2.6 or 3.0 even, it would have been radically different than Nexuiz 2.5.2, or even Xonotic 0.5. Major changes were coming, balance wise probably as big as 0.1. Not the same changes maybe, but of the same magnitude for sure. Would people have forked then? I don't think so, because Nexuiz was never forked in its lifetime afaik (until Xonotic or Vore - and Vore does not count). With all the changes, players either just left and new ones came in, or they had accepted (sometimes even liked) the Nexuiz way of reinventing itself every time and stuck around.

In other words: just stay in this community, change the game where you can by speaking out here or on IRC and do specific things in a mod. Then do your best to also switch the other Nexuiz players to Xonotic. The people that seem so avidly against this right now will love you for it and there is as much room for diversity in this project as there are willing people. Developers that could help you work on a mod for example, but would less likely to help on the fork. Don't miss or dismiss that because of one 0.1 release.

Without reading all the comments here. I am a very disappointed in that video..mainly because of the following line:- "Because of this development seized, as did INTEREST in both games".

This already sounds out to make out that Xonotic has no interest from anyone and that not many people are going to play it..

I also think it's unfair to say that Xonotic does not have much of a learning curve and that it leaves gameplay to be unrepetitive and uninspired.

I mean come on, no need to bash the game in the video that's just cheap man. And on that note, there's some things in Xonotic with the weapons that even I didn't know :/ like the bouncing grenade being able to be timed, I guess I just don't use the weapons enough but that's another discussion!

Anyway I'll read this thread I doubt I'll go commenting on other stuff, just disappointed at the blatant dig at Xonotic in that video.

In the best interest of both communities, I've decided not to start a fork. I don't want to split the community any more so than it already is. Please disregard what I've said about Vengeance; I have something else in mind.

Thank you,
-pcl