Project Nex

I actually really, really like Xonotic. The bunnyhopping system that was implemented was inspired by Xonotic. I even ordered our programming team download Xonotic to discuss with them all of the things we liked in your game to see what we could build off of. And publicly and in a recent video (not the ESR one) we just recorded I even complimented your game and how its influenced us.

I respect Xonotic still as a game, but the team behind it just lost my respect personally for the rude and unwarranted comments presented in this thread.

Though, its a shame. People are going to BM you, especially when you are a team really trying to do something different and unique. Our game is getting a lot of unwarranted hate and disrespect, that honestly, I don't think we deserve.

It's called expressing an opinion, and if you cannot tolerate us using that very same right you provide ALL of us by posting your stuff up on the internet, then you're too weak-skinned for this. hell, if you can't take a small forum of dudes who play an open-source project's criticism without getting snobbish and quickly blaming it on their prejudice, instead of trying to correct some of their assumptions or win them over, you sure as hell aren't ready for global reception of your product. not at all.

But I know our project is going in the right direction. And the esports investors and organizations who we are in talks with agree.

names?

One thing I can agree on 100% is the name. Its still a hotly debated topic amonst the team. What I can say is to think of it a project name and not a final one.

it's bad. it's only 3 letters with a predictable first one, small, forgettable. If you are releasing for a long-dead genre, no matter what market, your name better be good. I would suggest something with pretty much nothing else associated, likely not a word in the dictionary - if you will build a story off of these suits, do the name off of it too (titanfall)

If you are interested follow us on reddit.com/r/projectnex to get a notification when its up. I don't want to advertise our product here like that out of respect for the devs.

why? you need all the publicity you can get

Actually we have a programming team of three right now. All but one less experienced programmer (boy holy damn does that guy sponge up information) have 8+ years of professional experience. One main netcode programmer, and the other two help out here and there. One to program the game itself, and the third programmer ties it all together. Our programming team right now is lightyears ahead of the art team, which is rare for indie games.

We're looking for more artists because many times people only really make a model for you and then just disappear. Thankfully we just hired a part time modeller out of pocket for weapons. And we have some awesome concept artists, but we haven't showed much concepting yet.

Here is our shield gun we just have near completion: (We also got Marmoset for Unity, so I can't wait to mess with it so that we can achieve a look just like what you can see here)
This is the low poly model, 5k, 4096px textures which will be brought down to 2048. But we are using Amplify Texture so maybe we can get away with the crazy res at no ram overhead. Hm, not sure, we'll see.

I have high standards and will turn away free help if its mediocre. As the art director, my job is to make the game look good by guiding the artists. They are the inhabitants in a vehicle on the highway, and I'm the GPS system getting them to their destination system. And I need artists in the same vehicle and not in a different car on the other hemisphere.

If our team didn't have the talent it has, our goal would be unrealistic. But thankfully we have some incredibly awesome, kind dedicated people on our team.

so.. only programmers and artists, one group of which is not on the same page as the other? three, instead of two, a big increase? you are planning a commercial release when, exactly? and who directs the programmers? there is a hell of a lot more shit to code in a game than netcode and "the game" - very general, and if one person did the almost the entirety of "the game" then it would take very very very long before you had anything close to release ready within the next few years even.

We are going to release another video explaining how bhopping is really going to be implemented. This was more of a proof of concept rather than a final project. We just tried to be more transparent, and sadly we'll have to reduce the opacity on the transparency node in the material editor it seems.

The map style is oldschool, but not sure if it will stay that way or not. If we have to go BSP that's fine, but if funding allows, I want mesh based design. We'll see. Either way, thanks for the compliments.

i personally liked more the tiled style you showed off in the first video more - i'm assuming there is something wrong with the lighting in that video, it doesn't seem right there.
and i will have to agree with other people - you are just packing in movement techniques without thinking about how all this wall stuff and bunnyhopping stuff and strafing and double jumping comes together; desperately trying to appeal to all by being "unique" in having crammed everything ever possible in one game isn't a good kind of unique, don't you think?
and if you are thinking about how it comes together, then i would disagree with your assessment..

That's a shame. You should always keep your eyes on the competition. Criticize all you want. Because your rude, unwarranted, negative attitude towards us for no reason makes me want to crush the competition even more. You can keep that elitist attitude, but we at Nex don't put ourselves above anyone in such a manner.

This elitist "I'm an arena FPS fan, everyone else sucks" attitude is what keeps producing dead games like Xonotic and Warsaw (even though they are great games, and I do mean that). Nex is inclusive to everyone. None of on the team personally think that we are superior to everyone else. I've sat and watched most of the videos all of our competition has to offer. I respect them, you never know if suddenly they are going to make something great. And you nudging us off like this shows overconfidence and arrogance.

overconfidence at what? we're not in the market with you. we have less at stake, a small fanbase already, and the opensource community has little to nothing to do with how much money is coming in and coming out, and whether we can put food on the table, unlike yours. so consider it a gift that we try and criticize you, prepare you for what you will recieve, if you do happen to come into the mainstream spotlight, instead of this.

That'sIf our extremely successful Greenlight shows anything, its that this is a product a significant amount of people want. Titanfall proves to me that the general gamer just wants cool 'parkour' movements to do around the map and to shoot things. Our game delivers that on the lower levels, but so much more on the competitive aspects. We're making a video explaining this in detail, I jsut got to get back to editing it.

if you attempt to sum up the "general gamer" demographic (which doesn't exist, btw, any term with that vague of a terminology shows you cannot pinpoint really who you are trying to appeal to) in one sentence, you will fail. this is why you need more people on your team, my friend.

oh, and btw, we are part of the "competitive" market that you want to appeal to (or do you, since you only seem to care for the "general gamer" in that paragraph back then?), you'd think you'd have a bit more care for us and how we recieved your product initially; a poor choice to act high and mighty instead.

I genuinely look forward to the possibility i will be proved wrong, that your product turns out excellent, and i wish you luck.

Love,
me

If you all weren't important to us, then why would we not make a response? If we didn't care about the competitive communities, we'd just ignore all of you guys. And yet we don't.

If you want a successful game, you market more broadly. If you market soley to competitive people, its as good as dead on arrival. We want an esports title, and to have a game that people want to watch requires a lot of people to play the game at all levels. Before even considering amazing observer interfaces and things like that, you need an audience of people who play and want to watch your game.

Its in part why we hired on our esports manager to help make sure we have the ability of a strong esports presence. He's got several years experience working for big teams and organizations. On the art side, I'm making sure the interfaces are clean and to slavedrive the programmers to make the programming flexible for changes. Also everything down to the way particles look and things like that are competitively designed.

Its like a pyramid. The design of the game at its peak still is made for the competitive player, and then some adjustments are made for low level player accessibility.

Love him or hate him, Destiny made a great point on Unfiltered.
http://youtu.be/xn2MfrvS-G0?t=25m22s

I respect Xonotic still as a game, but the team behind it just lost my respect personally for the rude and unwarranted comments presented in this thread.

For the record: the only people involved with the Xonotic team in this thread are Mirio and I.

I understand that you took my comment on lawsuits seriously, but you have to understand it from our context. I was jokingly referring to past issues with the Nexuiz trademark which made the developers fork the project to create Xonotic, and the Nexuiz trademark is now something that I like to poke fun at. None of my comments in this thread are to be taken as threats or disrespect toward you and your collaborators, which is why I thought to add that disclaimer in my first post. I should have expected that you might come across this thread, so I should have made myself clearer. I'm sorry for that.

I'm fine with this thread staying, it's on-topic and comes from the initiative of a trusted community member.

well, i'm glad to get a response, if not one that doesn't address my points, and in a much more receptive tone than the last; it's good to know you have more people on the team than programmers/artists. And it seems you are more the general manager then just the art director, if you manage both the art and the programming as well.

If you want a successful game, you market more broadly.

wrong. look at Starcraft, as in the video you linked, it marketed to a very specific crowd at first. and it was successful, if not on a casual level; it blew up massively in the competitive stage. the key is not in the broadness of your marketing, but in the impact you make (obviously)

If you market soley to competitive people, its as good as dead on arrival. We want an esports title

so you want an esports title primarily, not a casual one, and yet you forego the very same (or a modified one, more similar to league of legends) approach which worked hugely for starcraft II (in the competitive market, which was what they marketed to and only what they marketed to) in favour of what you have now? having people watch is not neccesary from the get-go, that is a by-product of having people play, which is what matters much more.

edit: sorry this got a bit jumbled

Its like a pyramid. The design of the game at its peak still is made for the competitive player, and then some adjustments are made for low level player accessibility.

with using this strategy, you take a huge risk in f'ing up the core mechanics by pandering to the casual market, and in making the game too complicated or overdrawn for new players to bother with. some of the core mechanics MUST be noob-friendly, because they are, well, core mechanics.

in addition, you take the risk, which, as i see you are closer to getting to now, trying to shove in everything to get that appeal and failing. a massive amount of planning and careful pruning of a lot of stuff that doesn't work and does work is required.

Again, much luck wished,
me

I respect Xonotic still as a game, but the team behind it just lost my respect personally for the rude and unwarranted comments presented in this thread.

Where? Only a few dislikes about certain things, but not "hururururur THIS SUCKS". Also positive comments.

The only sentence I see is where I quote you, however it's not meant negatively. It's just that our lead developer creates similar sentences, that I enjoy.

Anywaaaaaaaaaaaay,
feel free to post updates here, we have nothing against it! And this is a very friendly community after all, you won't find the ESR hate here. We got the same hate there. Also we are not dead, cause we're not even alive yet (0.8 to come across soon)!

You may want to guide some free artist (models) to us..

Is there any IRC channel actually?

Maybe I confused a dev with a fan of the game. But the whole "We didn't even watch the video.." was a really rude thing to say. Online we don't have the luxury of intonation with text, so I can only read it as is what I perceive. So for me its like "wtf? You guys are awesome at Xonotic, y u do dis?" So if I misinterpreted something my apologies.

Every game that isn't Quake gets hate on ESR. They like Reflex because its basically CPMA reskinned. Reborn because its 2gd. I thought Warsaw was really good, and it got shit on so bad. If the competitive people don't like you, and you only market to them and they shun you, your screwed. And if you succeed, its a small player base, which is fine if that's more your goal set.

I wasn't necessarily bash your community numbers. If anything I was surprised there wasn't more people playing. But then again, you guys kind of seemed to get dumped on for no real reason. Actually Tek Syndicate promoted Xonotic on their show 1-2weeks ago. There main guy Logan is a Quake player, but really is into Xonotic.

We've had some free 3d guys help us out. But the quality of work was never up to par, or they didn't quite match our style. So we hired Ruben and are paying out of pocket for it all. Same with one of our main programmers.

If you want to hop on IRC with us you are more than welcome. We're on quakenet. #Projectnex

Even if to an extent we are competing devs, I really don't like the angry mentality some communities have. At the end of the day, there really is no big esport FPS game(s). I believe more in everyone getting a 1up because it benefits arena fps and esports as a whole. Though, admittedly, I'd still prefer Nex be the top of the arena shooters, but I want competition and not the only arena fps with some esports exposure.

The general fps gamer (anyone who doesn't play really competitive fps) wants and likes arena fps, they just don't know they do.

Every game that isn't Quake gets hate on ESR. They like Reflex because its basically CPMA reskinned. Reborn because its 2gd. I thought Warsaw was really good, and it got shit on so bad. If the competitive people don't like you, and you only market to them and they shun you, your screwed. And if you succeed, its a small player base, which is fine if that's more your goal set.

PLEASE don't judge the competitive FPS community by ESR. they practically masturbate to quakelive, and only quake live, and are truly the snobby "elitist" people you are talking about.

I wasn't necessarily bash your community numbers. If anything I was surprised there wasn't more people playing. But then again, you guys kind of seemed to get dumped on for no real reason. Actually Tek Syndicate promoted Xonotic on their show 1-2weeks ago. There main guy Logan is a Quake player, but really is into Xonotic.

we didn't really get "dumped on" so much as we haven't gotten publicity in the first place, we are opensource, no advertising budget

Even if to an extent we are competing devs, I really don't like the angry mentality some communities have. At the end of the day, there really is no big esport FPS game(s). I believe more in everyone getting a 1up because it benefits arena fps and esports as a whole. Though, admittedly, I'd still prefer Nex be the top of the arena shooters, but I want competition and not the only arena fps with some esports exposure.

hell yeah! even though it's good to see you want to see the genre on a rise again as a whole, you've also gotta keep your own pockets filled, so you've got to have some success

It's nice by Tek Syndicate and it made some people try the game. The plan is to really do PR when 1.0 comes out and not before, so players don't get a bad impression in first place. For example TotalBuiscuit would made one of his videos about it and that should be great.
If the playerbase does not grow from there - we're kind of screwed.
I guess I'd be still playing, because I just enjoy most people here (even if it's only to chat).

Every game that isn't Quake gets hate on ESR. They like Reflex because its basically CPMA reskinned. Reborn because its 2gd. I thought Warsaw was really good, and it got shit on so bad. If the competitive people don't like you, and you only market to them and they shun you, your screwed. And if you succeed, its a small player base, which is fine if that's more your goal set.

PLEASE don't judge the competitive FPS community by ESR. they practically masturbate to quakelive, and only quake live, and are truly the snobby "elitist" people you are talking about.

I wasn't necessarily bash your community numbers. If anything I was surprised there wasn't more people playing. But then again, you guys kind of seemed to get dumped on for no real reason. Actually Tek Syndicate promoted Xonotic on their show 1-2weeks ago. There main guy Logan is a Quake player, but really is into Xonotic.

we didn't really get "dumped on" so much as we haven't gotten publicity in the first place, we are opensource, no advertising budget

Even if to an extent we are competing devs, I really don't like the angry mentality some communities have. At the end of the day, there really is no big esport FPS game(s). I believe more in everyone getting a 1up because it benefits arena fps and esports as a whole. Though, admittedly, I'd still prefer Nex be the top of the arena shooters, but I want competition and not the only arena fps with some esports exposure.

hell yeah! even though it's good to see you want to see the genre on a rise again as a whole, you've also gotta keep your own pockets filled, so you've got to have some success

Oh of course not. But ESR right now is where most of the people are. The only other community bigger is CS:GO, to my knowledge. The issue is ESR is the 4chan of competitive communities and the circlejerk will trash talk your game constantly. I actually come from a UT background. Been playing since 2002. I have a long background in arena fps, like I'm sure you all do.

Ahh, the open source quandary. I love open source but sadly the way things like copyright work and how things are run you just can't really monetize it. Well I'm sure you can, but its tough. I guess we have the benefit of a more closed game (but we plan for a map editor and modding) meaning profit. Thankfully I have a background in film and music. I need to get a good scriptwriter together so that we can do some funny live action commercials to help market Nex even more.

Its just funny how Epic/ID stopped making arena fps games. "f it! we're done!"

Oh of course not. But ESR right now is where most of the people are. The only other community bigger is CS:GO, to my knowledge. The issue is ESR is the 4chan of competitive communities and the circlejerk will trash talk your game constantly. I actually come from a UT background. Been playing since 2002. I have a long background in arena fps, like I'm sure you all do.

mhm, CS:GO is not an arena FPS, simply competitive, so i wouldnt put it in direct comparison, per se - but it's true about ESR, it's the only outstanding arena FPS playerbase site which sucks

Ahh, the open source quandary. I love open source but sadly the way things like copyright work and how things are run you just can't really monetize it. Well I'm sure you can, but its tough. I guess we have the benefit of a more closed game (but we plan for a map editor and modding) meaning profit. Thankfully I have a background in film and music. I need to get a good scriptwriter together so that we can do some funny live action commercials to help market Nex even more.

fear not for us we've got tricks up our FOSS sleeves.

Its just funny how Epic/ID stopped making arena fps games. "f it! we're done!"

haha, that was because no money with them! quake live server financial support will inevitably run out, and with everybody leaving, especially carmack...

PrettyAwesome, seeing you get quite lot of negative critisism (not that it's unexpected, that even happens within our community when developers make contreversial descisions, such as weapon balance and LG ) you might be interested in this thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments...ontinuous/ The general opinion seems to say that interacting with the community directly might not be very practical. Although community feedback is important, you need quality community feedback, not random personal opinions.

As for not being able to monetize free games (in the sense of free speech), i disagree slightly. While earning money off of SP games, it might be a bit hard to monetize, but in case of a multiplayer game its very simple (I would like to believe), provide servers and require a purchase to connect to them. Sure someone might create tons of good servers and then let you connect gratis, it does not really make sense (since it cost them money to host them). I would at least like this to be the case.

This is an interesting development and I can't see anyone really badmouthing the game here itself. The name is something different and there is no wonder that it brings back some bad memories about Nexuiz.

The Nex also remains a weapon in both Xonotic and Nexuiz.

I think it would be a huge help for this new game to change it's name, for it's own sake. You don't want to get confusion and you certainly don't want to get it associated in any way with the commercial Nexuiz game which was a flop.

As for the negative feedback you have got elsewhere, I think you can safely ignore it as they'll be negative about most things. None of the people commenting there have opinions that really matter.

I love open source but sadly the way things like copyright work and how things are run you just can't really monetize it. Well I'm sure you can, but its tough. I guess we have the benefit of a more closed game (but we plan for a map editor and modding) meaning profit.

I think you and the developers of Xonotic (I'm not one, but I've put in the odd thing I wanted to see) may have very different reasons for developing.

I have never looked upon game development as a career choice although it was once an option to me. The reason for not doing so is that it simply doesn't make much money in general, so it's ironic then to say that open source is difficult to monetise! You'd be better off in a different industry, getting paid more and then developing open source software as a hobby. That's how I view it and I do have a friend who's in game development and I earn an awful lot more than him. Yes, true, there's the odd person who earns a lot of money but the bosses of big firms like EA are the guys making the real money.

I say this of course as a fan of open source software.

Now, as for 'esports', that's another thing I can't properly understand as a commercial venture for this reason: The big money in real sports comes from the sale of broadcasting rights. This is why Bernie Ecclestone is enormously rich... and possibly going to prison for bribery. How many people currently would honestly want to watch esports on TV? Hardly anyone. Yes, there might be people spectating matches on the Internet but when the World Cup final attracts hundreds of millions, it simply isn't in the same league.

This reflects in what players earn. Right now the highest cumulative earnings of an eSports player are Lee Jae Dong of South Korea:
http://www.esportsearnings.com/players/1...e-jae-dong
He's earnt around 500k USD in 8 years of professional playing of 'StarCraft', whatever that is. I earn more than he does unless he gets lucky and it all pales in comparison to the 78.5 million USD that Tiger Woods earns per year.

Also it's hardly something to impress people to say that you play games professionally unless your audience is 8 years old. The bank manager isn't going to be too impressed either when you ask him for a mortgage as you're self emplyed and your income fluctuates so much. So you're better off just playing games for the fun of it and getting a proper job to put food on the table and a roof over your head.

As for not being able to monetize free games (in the sense of free speech), i disagree slightly. While earning money off of SP games, it might be a bit hard to monetize, but in case of a multiplayer game its very simple (I would like to believe), provide servers and require a purchase to connect to them. Sure someone might create tons of good servers and then let you connect gratis, it does not really make sense (since it cost them money to host them). I would at least like this to be the case.

I really doubt it works that way. Do you think a Xonotic server that requires payment to connect would meet any success at all?

Now, as for 'esports', that's another thing I can't properly understand as a commercial venture for this reason: The big money in real sports comes from the sale of broadcasting rights. This is why Bernie Ecclestone is enormously rich... and possibly going to prison for bribery. How many people currently would honestly want to watch esports on TV? Hardly anyone. Yes, there might be people spectating matches on the Internet but when the World Cup final attracts hundreds of millions, it simply isn't in the same league.

You kidding, right? In Sweden it is becoming really big, our government funded channel is broadcasting esport and one of the bigger commercial television channels as well.

---

I really doubt it works that way. Do you think a Xonotic server that requires payment to connect would meet any success at all?

Of course not! I mean it might work for AAA-ish titles, were you do PR and such so you actually have a initial user base at launch.

EDIT: Tripe-A might not be correct word, but commercial. Xonotic is after all gratis whether it would be distributed freely or propeitary.

You kidding, right? In Sweden it is becoming really big, our government funded channel is broadcasting esport and one of the bigger commercial television channels as well.

Yes, it's spreading, but very unevenly; here in the US esports has practically no coverage in mainstream media and isn't a big thing at all, outside of twitch streams.

Of course not! I mean it might work for AAA-ish titles, were you do PR and such so you actually have a initial user base at launch.

EDIT: Tripe-A might not be correct word, but commercial. Xonotic is after all gratis whether it would be distributed freely or propeitary.

no that's stupid, i wouldn't go on any server i have to pay for regardless of how damn "triple-A" it is

Before starting off my response to this post. First let me say thank you for taking the time kojin^ for post our game on the forums here. However it might be against the rules seeing as its a rival product in a sense. Either way, thanks a ton.

No problem, I was actually quite interested in the concept of the game and some of the mechanics I saw

I do like that it isn't being focused at just competitive players, I'm a firm believer you take/make a fun game and the players make a competitive community out of it, rather then trying to make a competitive only based game.
I'd rather play a game that casuals can enjoy and see populated public servers.

---

Every game that isn't Quake gets hate on ESR. They like Reflex because its basically CPMA reskinned. Reborn because its 2gd. I thought Warsaw was really good, and it got shit on so bad. If the competitive people don't like you, and you only market to them and they shun you, your screwed. And if you succeed, its a small player base, which is fine if that's more your goal set.

PLEASE don't judge the competitive FPS community by ESR. they practically masturbate to quakelive, and only quake live, and are truly the snobby "elitist" people you are talking about.

Just wanted to say, this is very correct. Still find it amusing that a lot of the ESR users want a competitive game, yet shun every other potential idea out there if it isn't basically quake.

I'd also agree on your thoughts about Reflex and Reborn. I mean Reborn, there's not even anything to see yet!

Anyway don't want to go to much of a tangent on the thread.

Be good if you could keep people updated on this thread time to time of the progress of the game.

Secondly, do you intend to have a 'every weapon will be balanced' process.
I find these days, the 'hardcore-fps' crowd / mainly competitive players, want weapons to be really balanced. Often finding that it is quite difficult for newbies/casual players to be kept interested because they can't get a frag easily enough. I really like UT as an example because even though the weapons are strong, casual players could/can still make frags on public servers and competitive players will always push the envelope with weapons anyway.

no that's stupid, i wouldn't go on any server i have to pay for regardless of how damn "triple-A" it is

You don't seem to get my point. I mean you purchase the game as usual and that non-purchased/official clients won't be able to connect to any servers (unless they host themselves, which the majority won't).

Before starting off my response to this post. First let me say thank you for taking the time kojin^ for post our game on the forums here. However it might be against the rules seeing as its a rival product in a sense. Either way, thanks a ton.

No problem, I was actually quite interested in the concept of the game and some of the mechanics I saw

I do like that it isn't being focused at just competitive players, I'm a firm believer you take/make a fun game and the players make a competitive community out of it, rather then trying to make a competitive only based game.
I'd rather play a game that casuals can enjoy and see populated public servers.

---

Every game that isn't Quake gets hate on ESR. They like Reflex because its basically CPMA reskinned. Reborn because its 2gd. I thought Warsaw was really good, and it got shit on so bad. If the competitive people don't like you, and you only market to them and they shun you, your screwed. And if you succeed, its a small player base, which is fine if that's more your goal set.

PLEASE don't judge the competitive FPS community by ESR. they practically masturbate to quakelive, and only quake live, and are truly the snobby "elitist" people you are talking about.

Just wanted to say, this is very correct. Still find it amusing that a lot of the ESR users want a competitive game, yet shun every other potential idea out there if it isn't basically quake.

I'd also agree on your thoughts about Reflex and Reborn. I mean Reborn, there's not even anything to see yet!

Anyway don't want to go to much of a tangent on the thread.

Be good if you could keep people updated on this thread time to time of the progress of the game.

Secondly, do you intend to have a 'every weapon will be balanced' process.
I find these days, the 'hardcore-fps' crowd / mainly competitive players, want weapons to be really balanced. Often finding that it is quite difficult for newbies/casual players to be kept interested because they can't get a frag easily enough. I really like UT as an example because even though the weapons are strong, casual players could/can still make frags on public servers and competitive players will always push the envelope with weapons anyway.

But if servers are populated, that means the Quake guys cant come onto our forums and complain about how dead our game is like they do in the Quake Live forums! Where's the fun in a game with a large player population?! You got to stay small, elite, and superior. Most importantly make all other FPS communities hate you.

The most ironic part is that the Quake pros that we have spoken to all think the game looks really cool and are super open.

You don't seem to get my point. I mean you purchase the game as usual and that non-purchased/official clients won't be able to connect to any servers (unless they host themselves, which the majority won't).

what?? you purchase the game and then non-purchased...? how would you have a client in the first place if you didn't purchase the game?

PrettyAwesome, the sarcasm is strong in thee

You just do as with any other game, you go and purchase a binary from Steam or whatever other distribution. But, it's free. So you can go download the source if you want, but if you build the source you can't connect to the theirs servers stealing bandwidth, so you need to host it yourself. So basicallty all common users will not notice any difference besides they now got more freedom. They can run the program however they want etc., just not connect to someone else resources.

It's just an idea of what I would say is more fair DRM.

Ok, just a couple of things here:

First, you cannot blame the Xonotic community for not being receptive/impressed by what is essentially another game that is competing directly with it for the same piece of a dwindling fanbase. If you posted in Warsow, Alien Arena, or Open Arena forums, you'd likely get similar responses. It's not necessarily right, or enlightened, but it's simply the nature of game communities and fanbases.

Second, ESR is the last place you should be looking for any type of constructive criticism or input. You won't get much. Before Quake Live, it was Quakeworld and CPMA that they masturbated to, and anything else was garbage in their eyes. At one time Warsow was actually well received there, but once Warsow started making changes to their game, those changes were panned heavily, and yeah, the game got shit on the same way Nexuiz and Alien Arena did. You don't want to get into arguments and debate them, don't make the same mistake I did many years ago - it's a no win situation for anyone.

Quake Live is probably the single entity most responsible for the "death" of the open sourced Arena Shooters. Prior to it's release, the open sourced, free games had much larger playerbases and communities. QL basically sucked the life out of each and every one of them, funneling the majority of new players into it. Then the QL community became filled with well, the ESR types, and turned off many people to the genre. As QL has slowly died, and no commercial Arena Shooter has captured the imagination of young players(think of failed attempts such as Shootmania, commercial Nexuiz, etc), the genre has become somewhat forgotten outside of the hardcore communities. The popularity of slow paced, easy to learn FPS shooters like CS or COD hasn't helped either. A large rift has been formed, where the Arena shooters are populated by a small group of veterans that routinely stomp the few new players into submission, and interest is lost.

I don't know if "unique" is necessarily the right approach for reviving the genre. "Better", "Modern", "fun", might be the better ideal. You can't worry about the ESR types shitting on a game - they represent a microscopic fraction of the FPS gaming culture - and they are themselves only a shadow of what there were a decade ago. Currently, I don't believe that ANY of the free Arena Shooters are good enough to capture the imagination and interest of new gamers(and that includes the one that I develop too). Getting the Arena Shooter genre back on the map is going to take a lot of hard work, intense development, and for the lack of a better term, "buzz".

You just do as with any other game, you go and purchase a binary from Steam or whatever other distribution. But, it's free. So you can go download the source if you want, but if you build the source you can't connect to the theirs servers stealing bandwidth, so you need to host it yourself. So basicallty all common users will not notice any difference besides they now got more freedom. They can run the program however they want etc., just not connect to someone else resources.

It's just an idea of what I would say is more fair DRM.

DRM is stupid. i don't want it in any form if possible, no matter what kind of stuff you have to do. A very big turn-off.

@Irritant's response is excellent, except for the fact we are not directly competing with project nex (yet, it is possible), we are both incomplete projects

DRM is not stupid, it's just that the current forms of it are stupid. What I suggested is what most commercial multiplayer games already use, that is, a login system to play multiplayer. (Not that I like to make a new account for every game, or even have to login at all, but this is easily solved by having the "key" in the downloaded version, this would also prevent cheating since you can't modify the sources and then build the game and connect to the official servers)

DRM is not stupid, it's just that the current forms of it are stupid. What I suggested is what most commercial multiplayer games already use, that is, a login system to play multiplayer. (Not that I like to make a new account for every game, or even have to login at all, but this is easily solved by having the "key" in the downloaded version, this would also prevent cheating since you can't modify the sources and then build the game and connect to the official servers)

Well, that's a much better idea then whatever the heck you were saying before - but an account system just makes sense with a commercial purchase, it's not really DRM. I would love an account system, of course, but then i cant change names Yes, DRM is stupid.

Just for the record, "aa"'s post about the criticism reflex came across utterly self-ironic to me and I understood it as making fun of people that judge gameplay and physics without actually having had the possibility to try out the game. I don't think the project Nex has been received badly by this community, but maybe I missed something.

On another note, could we please quote only the parts of other people's messages that we are actually referring to? Excessive quotes make the thread extremely hard to read. Thank you so much. (Edit: just realized that actually applies only to PrettyAwesome) :o)

Anyway, good luck with that project - it doesn't look interesting to me personally but I'm not representative for anything, I actually lost interest in all computer games except Xonotic since they either a) require selling personal data to steam or similar, or b) don't seem to offer any real gameplay depth beyond the main story or c) would require me to spend more time on them than I have.

Quake Live is probably the single entity most responsible for the "death" of the open sourced Arena Shooters. Prior to it's release, the open sourced, free games had much larger playerbases and communities. QL basically sucked the life out of each and every one of them, funneling the majority of new players into it.

Correlation does not imply causation. There are plenty of other reasons why open source arena shooters went down in the past 4+ years.

And to be honest, less ignorance and more openness would have a positive effect here. The whole genre is dying, people play DoTA, CoD etc nowadays. A new game that could bring people back to playing arena shooters would be a blessing for everyone who loves that genre. Instead, I read stuff like how those new games are "competing" with current opensource projects. Totally lost contact with reality imo. Games like OpenArena/AlienArena were cool in 2005, nowadays they don't compete with anything anymore. Xonotic is neat but still far from being a polished product and Warsow had its chance but failed to attract players.

Quite the contrary, a new game that brings arena shooters back to big events like dreamhack would be the best thing that could happen to Xonotic. There will always be people who prefer free software (oss or free of charge) and that's where Xonotic can fit in.

I think what most free or not arena shooters tend to neglect and not prioritize on due to it's "casual side" is the singleplayer campaign. It not being competitive is actually not true at all. *Insert an enthusiastic essay of admiration about the speedrunning community here* Quake 3 would have been so much bigger with a single player campaign, anyone getting raped in the pub servers must have fantasized about it at least once. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, speedrunning community is what keeps titles like Quake, Half-Life and their engine relatives alive and entertaining to watch even for those unfamiliar to the engine exploits. Imo it sends out a bigger message and can get casuals converted into hardcorers much easier than pvp tournaments. On top of it, those familiar with the engine exploits are arguably the best thing the competitive and the constructive sides of the community could have.

Did I hear a mention of a singleplayer campaign in Project Nex? If so, then definitely go all out with it. Any fan of the engine or the genre in general will flood over, learn, conquer it and lure in generations of challengers. That's what speedrunners do and they do it because if it can be done quick, there's always a demand for it.

Another question which I asked in youtube or somewhere (I don't remember) Is the game gonna be played through a browser or a standalone application? My experience with shooters done with Unity and provided through a browser have been nothing but great so far, so I'm going to be very skeptical if it's not planned out to be the latter. EDIT: I guess the big and fat Greenlight topic answers that one for me.