Status of Xonotic?

What is the status of Xonotic?

During the 10 Years, I have been with this community there have been some ups and some down. The Illfonic controversial, which lead to Xonotic, was probably a major turning point. The goal was to improve the game and learn from the mistake from the past.

Now roughly 7,5 years later it looks quiet grim for Xonotic.

The community is getting smaller and there is less activity. The development also slowed down significantly, measured by the time between releases. Yes, I know people come and go, but when more people leaving then coming it is a bad sign.

Something needs to be changed or 1.0 will not see the daylight and Xonotic will be another Open Source projects, which silently dies.

In my opinion there three things that would help the project big time.

1. More PR.
Yes, I know it has always been “We start with PR, when we have 1.0”, but let’s face it. Xonotic right now needs more attention. The hype about the rebirth of the arenashooter could be used to attract new players and contributors. Not everyone will be happy with new UT or Quake Champions, if these players know about Xonotic they might check it out and like it.
Something similar also would apply to the contributors. Active development, a chance add something of your vision and you can see it in game. No one likes to improve something dead.

2. A Roadmap.
A clear visable roadmap for everyone what is the goal for the next version. What is the goal for 0.9, for 1.0 and for 1.x ? I mean something easy to read and not just a suggestion "go to dev tracker".  
For example: Add feature A. Improve Feature B. Adding Maps for the DM and CTF. Fixing the following bugs. Also a detailed description or a link the bug in the dev tracker, so everyone who would likes to contribute has an idea what is expected, to get together to 1.0 and further.
 
3. Get Xonotic in Distributions and on Steam
This one explains it self. 
At many places like this there is still Nexuiz: https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/department/p...s/?page=15 and not Xonotic
Yes, i am serious about steam. Many people have their games there. It's the biggest gaming plattform. There is also at least one other Open Source game http://store.steampowered.com/app/434520/Simutrans/
In the 0.1 days i would agree there is not enough to show of, but now there is more then enough to show of and it's in a good state.
What do you think? More people are needed, and if there are more people some might stay for more then a few matches.
 Before anyone starts, i am fully aware that everyone is supporting this project their free time. 

The idea of the roadmap is cool.
Maybe on the website, main page, a paragraph stating the planned features. And, maybe precisely explaining all tasks needed to be done, so if someone with the proper skill comes across it, making him/her think: "yeah, I could do that".
Maybe by sorting the most urgent stuff? I don't exactly know what's planned in a near future, but that would maybe be nice to recenter the activity on the most important things. Once again, I don't know much about it. But just  a question while talking about this: what are the missing features before the 1.0? Maybe it's not that important?
There are many people out there with the right skills, for instance about assets, that could do some nice stuff.
In a nutshell, this section would be: "How can I contribute?". Because, simply a link to Git, is kinda scary somehow. You simply don't know how you can actually help.

About advertising: well, that's maybe a good idea. Well, the game is more than playable in its current state, so maybe what needs Xonotic is, in fact, more non-empty server. That would give a nice boost to the community, perhaps.
I don't know how much work is needed to make it available on other Linux distros repositories (there was a talk about it not so long ago, in fact, about Debian).
I know most people disagree about Steam, but hell, I also think that's the way to go. A lot of people are centered around it, and having it available at a glance would be nice (even if it's not totally free/open-source/DRM-free and such).

Maybe a last thing: more tutorials about everything. There was a tutorial map planned, if I remember well. And as an example, for mapping, I had to look for information on GTKRadiant tutorials, and also stuff about Warsow. These are close, of course, but I couldn't find any Xonotic mapping tutorial.
So, the idea would be: maybe a well written Wiki? I don't think that already exists. This Wiki would explain everything, from the history of Xonotic to mapping tutorials, and basic combat techniques, etc.

The EU side still seems to be going vs North American player base which seem to have died off quite a bit. 

I think the only way you'll get something going and unless the devs are already do this is to set up an organization/foundation and have a person/people in control of each department.

Also at least for me Vanilla is pretty boring, maybe make Overkill/Minsta more of official game modes and let it trickle down to Vanilla for new players?

Well, I mostly agree with this.

I started to play Xonotic right after 0.6 release, and it looks like player activity has been decreasing ever since. The DCC servers used to be active almost all day long!
Now vanilla is barely alive, and the pickup scene is the only reason why modes like TDM, CA etc. are kept alive (in vanilla).
I know that Overkill activity also decreased a lot, not sure about the state of InstaGIB.

On the other hand, not sure if I'm right, but I think XonStats data actually proved that the player activity didn't decrease? I guess Antibody knows about it.

I remember there was some sort of features roadmap for Xonotic 1.0, but I can't find it on Gitlab anymore.

Just like cortez, I realize that all the devs are working on this project on their free time. I am unable to contribute to the code myself so I'm sorry if I sound grumpy.
I just enjoy this game a lot, and it makes me sad that it's stagnating while it would deserve some hype. The game is mature in its current state!

Having this game on Steam would be the best way to advertize it to more players, but would it be easy to achieve? Warsow got greenlighted and was never released on Steam...

Well, I mostly agree with this.

I started to play Xonotic right after 0.6 release, and it looks like player activity has been decreasing ever since. The DCC servers used to be active almost all day long!
Now vanilla is barely alive, and the pickup scene is the only reason why modes like TDM, CA etc. are kept alive (in vanilla).
I know that Overkill activity also decreased a lot, not sure about the state of InstaGIB.

On the other hand, not sure if I'm right, but I think XonStats data actually proved that the player activity didn't decrease? I guess Antibody knows about it.

I remember there was some sort of features roadmap for Xonotic 1.0, but I can't find it on Gitlab anymore.

Just like cortez, I realize that all the devs are working on this project on their free time. I am unable to contribute to the code myself so I'm sorry if I sound grumpy.
I just enjoy this game a lot, and it makes me sad that it's stagnating while it would deserve some hype. The game is mature in its current state!

Having this game on Steam would be the best way to advertize it to more players, but would it be easy to achieve? Warsow got greenlighted and was never released on Steam...

For NA players just look at ESK/SMB Minsta its dead and since I've used Xonotic since 2012 its always been busy and had 15+ players on and most were from NA.

The EU side still seems to be going vs North American player base which seem to have died off quite a bit. 

Even in Nexuiz days there where many more EU players then NA players.

On the other hand, not sure if I'm right, but I think XonStats data actually proved that the player activity didn't decrease? I guess Antibody knows about it.

I would say it depends, but i think we could agree that the activity was and could be better. http://xonotic.org/posts/2017/xonpickups...-examined/ , if you look at the pickupstats they definatly decreased. Personally i would consider them as a bit more important, as the average pickup player stays around for longer and spends time regualry.

Having this game on Steam would be the best way to advertize it to more players, but would it be easy to achieve? Warsow got greenlighted and was never released on Steam...

Warsow became a standart game on gog, when create an account there it gets added automatically to your libary.

Has any of the devs considered trying Patreon as a means to work on this game?

From the gamer perspective, I think Xonotic with its default settings is extremely hard. In order to play on the level of skilled people you must know the position and respawn rate of all items on the map and you must use very obscure physics tricks. I think most people who grew up in the 90s now have families and full time jobs and today's kids have tons of easier games to play and a lot of them are free as in beer. As a result, almost nobody plays Xonotic. Nobody wants to invest several years of their time to have a chance against skilled players. My main goal of my development is lowering the skill ceiling and making game accessible to younger generation and myself. For example, I've coded random start weapons which would give people something better than shotgun at spawn and plan to create a class based mutator like Team Fortress 2.

The easy games of the past generation are in-browser javascript/flash games which were also free. (The difference being, at the time microtransactions & lootcrates weren't a common business model, and behavioral psychologists weren't commonly hired at game companies).

Aside from that, I think the years of experience in order to learn is a massive hyperbole. So far I only played Xonotic and AFPS for 1 year; prior to that, my playing experience in FPS was limited to begin with. While I am not crazy good, nor do I feel any entitlement to stand a chance against top players, I've generally been able to win by a large margin in the average match out there- that's not saying much- but objectively, I'm capable of doing those "obscure physics tricks" (circle jump, strafe jump, ramp jump), using the little ramps around the maps, and timing the items (and really, the respawn timers are right on the HUD when you spectate or when the match is in its warm-up phase).

The one thing you might be right on, is that the default Xonotic settings aren't conducive to learning how to play the game. E.g the default rules with regard to item pick-ups have no restrictions, which the player in control can just hog item spawns and leave nothing to the out of control player. They also don't incentivize learning the rate of item respawns because restorations to >100 aren't special anymore. There is also more lenience and less feedback on strafing to facilitate learning advanced movement. Additionally, FFA/DM is the most popular mode but it also endorses bad habits (i.e carelessly charging forward at an opponent immediately after spawn, which I've observed in other players- they do this because it *works* and often in Deathmatch there's a good chance, especially overcrowding a map, that someone will be injured and a few hits from death).
After a long while, I think people realize they're doing the same things- not learning anything new- on different maps, and understandably getting bored.

tl;dr I don't attribute unpopularity or player decline to the supposed complexity of the game, I'd sooner pin it on the well-intentioned attempt to close the skill gap, that ultimately obfuscates or lengthens the learning curve.

I got another view on this point. I guess if people don't manage to find other player around their level, its simply means that the fresh player pool is completely empty. Other games, to make people learn, had a constant amount of new players trying to learn the thing. What often happened, in that case, is that you give them basic tutorial, and put them together on the same server. 
I mean, most of the players I found on the servers are mostly always the same. The thing is, we don't have any constant newbies pool. And I think that's why people actually don't have time to properly learn the game, while the servers are full of high-skilled dudes (or average, but from a newbie's point of view, what does it change?).
I've seen games dying because the only ones left were the pretentious kings of gameplay. They were maybe the most skilled players out there, but any newbie coming was considerer like shit and consequently, never came back. This was NS2.
Of course, it's not like that at all in Xonotic, but we have to make it accessible for newcomers (written tutorial, principles explanation, and a tutorial level).

Of course, it's not like that at all in Xonotic, but we have to make it accessible for newcomers (written tutorial, principles explanation, and a tutorial level).

There is already a written tutorial: https://gitlab.com/xonotic/xonotic/wikis...bie_Corner (accessible via the "Guide" link on the xonotic.org homepage).
But it's only in English, and having something integrated to the game (like a tutorial level) would be even better of course.

There is already a written tutorial: https://gitlab.com/xonotic/xonotic/wikis...bie_Corner (accessible via the "Guide" link on the xonotic.org homepage).
But it's only in English, and having something integrated to the game (like a tutorial level) would be even better of course.

Aw, my bad, I didn't see it. Well, maybe we could translate it? That's why I was talking about a Wiki, which is maybe an easier format to apprehend?

There was a game tutorial in Warsow, to explain (not so) basic movement. I really needed it. And there was one in Nexuiz too, if I remember well. Has anyone started a tutorial map yet? By taking Halogene's tutorial as a guideline, that would actually be nice.

For what it's worth, I don't think dumbing down the game will improve player retention.
Xonotic is and always will be a game of skill, so there simply isn't a case where a new player should be able to play on par with a highly skilled player. They're still able to play together on public servers where large enough groups amass that the skill gap isn't important, but such groups aren't gathering as often any more, making the skill gap high enough to cause those new players to leave without a single kill.

That said, there's always room for improvement in the default configuration and mechanics, and changes to those become increasingly difficult the more we advertise the game, as players will become accustomed to the current balance (let's face it, it already  takes 3 balance threads, a tournament and half a year to get anything changed in the core balance as it is, let alone with a larger, more opinionated community).

As for the large span of time between 0.8.1 and 0.8.2 - Two of the lead developers disappeared for the months surrounding the standard release schedule, so we were forced to stumble through the release process without any guide or assistance, and to release without some potentially major fixes and features.
Despite everything, 0.8.2 was a solid release, and a proper checklist now exists for the releasing process, preventing such stalls in the future.

Most people play arena shooters, because they reward skill and are not toned to down to be accesable for as many people as possible. A tutorial map is ok.
But in my opinion it only needs more players. Why? It's simple there are players on your skill level and if there are players on your skill level the chances that you win from time to time are rising. No one like to lose all the time.
@Mario: the solution for the other issues you described is simple. A project coordinator. i am sure everyone is aware that there are many ideas and there are people who want them in the game. A project coordinator, could be solution to streamline the game and avoid that it becomes a mess.

Most people play arena shooters, because they reward skill and are not toned to down to be accesable for as many people as possible. A tutorial map is ok.
But in my opinion it only needs more players. Why? It's simple there are players on your skill level and if there are players on your skill level the chances that you win from time to time are rising. No one like to lose all the time.
@Mario: the solution for the other issues you described is simple. A project coordinator. i am sure everyone is aware that there are many ideas and there are people who want them in the game. A project coordinator, could be solution to streamline the game and avoid that it becomes a mess.

Except which servers have always been the most populated? The modified ones, especially the Minsta ones. The only ones that were popular that had standard weapons were the vehicles ones whether it was MON Vehicles, Mofo Vehicle or now Jeffs.

Either way none of the open source FPS games are really popular or still around.

Aside from that, I think the years of experience in order to learn is a massive hyperbole. So far I only played Xonotic and AFPS for 1 year; prior to that, my playing experience in FPS was limited to begin with. While I am not crazy good, nor do I feel any entitlement to stand a chance against top players, I've generally been able to win by a large margin in the average match out there- that's not saying much- but objectively, I'm capable of doing those "obscure physics tricks" (circle jump, strafe jump, ramp jump), using the little ramps around the maps, and timing the items (and really, the respawn timers are right on the HUD when you spectate or when the match is in its warm-up phase).

I'm playing Xonotic since 2013 and have read Newbie Corner but I still don't bother with strafe jumping, dodging, wall blastering since I don't have time to invest learning it and actually using it in the game. The majority of players are like me. I also have no idea where the items are on the maps and what is their respawn rate. I just want to run around and shoot people and do some objectives.

When I'm playing the game I'm usually compiling C++ in my brain since I have other problems in my life and I'm taking a break.

I bet the ratio of I just want to have crazy mayhem fun and blast away is 80% of the player base vs I want to put in 6 hours per day for months to learn the whole weapon, movement and pick up system and be competitive.  You could always promote it as pro and casual. There's the Pro Vanilla Weapons side and Casual FFA Minsta/Overkill side for those that want to get just into it and kill and stuff.

Except which servers have always been the most populated? The modified ones, especially the Minsta ones. The only ones that were popular that had standard weapons were the vehicles ones whether it was MON Vehicles, Mofo Vehicle or now Jeffs.

Either way none of the open source FPS games are really popular or still around.

But we're facing the current status of Xonotic with those as the most played modes?
The server browser suddenly didn't have instagib, vehicles, etc gone from the server list, and the instagib/vehicles/etc scene didn't run out of servers to play on.

I bet the ratio of I just want to have crazy mayhem fun and blast away is 80% of the player base vs I want to put in 6 hours per day for months to learn the whole weapon, movement and pick up system and be competitive. You could always promote it as pro and casual. There's the Pro Vanilla Weapons side and Casual FFA Minsta/Overkill side for those that want to get just into it and kill and stuff.

I don't know why you want to portray learning to play as a strenuous daily regimen. It's another play as you go sort of deal. The exception is that many people play various mods and gain experience that don't carry over to the standard game, and overall FFA/DM isn't too helpful either.
E.g instagib players on average don't learn how to strafe, despite how ever many years they played- they don't have to because they have a grappling hook.

Except which servers have always been the most populated? The modified ones, especially the Minsta ones. The only ones that were popular that had standard weapons were the vehicles ones whether it was MON Vehicles, Mofo Vehicle or now Jeffs.

Either way none of the open source FPS games are really popular or still around.

But we're facing the current status of Xonotic with those as the most played modes?
The server browser suddenly didn't have instagib, vehicles, etc gone from the server list, and the instagib/vehicles/etc scene didn't run out of servers to play on.

I bet the ratio of I just want to have crazy mayhem fun and blast away is 80% of the player base vs I want to put in 6 hours per day for months to learn the whole weapon, movement and pick up system and be competitive.  You could always promote it as pro and casual. There's the Pro Vanilla Weapons side and Casual FFA Minsta/Overkill side for those that want to get just into it and kill and stuff.

I don't know why you want to portray learning to play as a strenuous daily regimen.  It's another play as you go sort of deal. The exception is that many people play various mods and gain experience that don't carry over to the standard game, and overall FFA/DM isn't too helpful either.
E.g instagib players on average don't learn how to strafe, despite how ever many years they played- they don't have to because they have a grappling hook.

Really what I'm saying is what Xon is doing up to now obviously its not working as year by year there's less people. There's also the NA vs EU side where the EU side seems to embrace FOSS more openly/open minded about it.

Single/simple weapon play works. I've seen it with my severs,  CRA and Shotgun attracted both casual and competitive players, same with Minsta and Overkill mind you the CRA going down was my fault as was the Shotgun server when I neglected them and stopped running them for a while. 

I'm going to go with promote the easy casualty, have fun right now and then have the pro all weapon side.  There should also be a public match making/pick up page/site. I use IRC as I've been on IRC since 1997 but for drive by players most wont bother to be connected to an IRC channel and register themselves with the pick up bot.

You know, I think that these non-vanilla gamemodes are mostly played by ancient players.
And always the same, so they made their choice. Myself, I mainly play Insta. Because I find this mod to be cool, and that's what I like.
And I think usual players have made their mind too, and that's why they play their favorite gamemode. As the game becomes more and more ghostly, the veterans play their favorite gamemode, as they had the time and the dedication to look for precise stuff in the game, for what they like.
Does not mean we should put that to trash, of course. IMHO, it just means that we need newcomers to revitalize all aspects of the game, and not the same players always doing the same thing.
If I remember well, on Nexuiz, a lot of people were actually playing vanilla. So it's a good thing, and it means that it could actually work.

Mario: given the long delay between 0.8.1 and 0.8.2, and the resulting FPS and net lag related issues that some people suffer with 0.8.2, is there a "rough" timeline on when we'll see 0.8.3/0.9.0?


I guess what I am wondering is what is currently holding us up from putting out a 0.8.3 with the current fixes that seem to affect the various FPS and net lag bugs. I've had to refer a lot of people who complain about this stuff in IRC/Discord on how to update to an autobuild to work around these issues. I suspect that there's a LOT more out there that get these problems and just walk away, which is hurting our ongoing player base.

Lyberta: That's only open bugs, and while there a fair few things in there that do need to be fixed, there's also a lot of stuff that could wait (eg: pretty much everything tagged Enhancement for example). And some of that stuff was probably there when 0.8.2 was released.

Basically I'm thinking just fix all the critical bugs that stop gameplay, crash things or cause major frustration for the player.

Also, getting a new release out the door might encourage a new wave of players to check it out, or to come back, especially if some of the major bugs (eg: the net lag with bots and the FPS issues) get mentioned in the release message.

Also, getting a new release out the door might encourage a new wave of players to check it out, or to come back, especially if some of the major bugs (eg: the net lag with bots and the FPS issues) get mentioned in the release message.

They also need to know about it. Nobody will check it out, if there nobody who knows about it. PR!

As for PR, we always need more of it. As an example, if anyone wants guidance with writing articles for the blog or even a new page/guide, please let us (the team) know! We are more than willing to help. If you've done something cool with Xonotic that you want shared with a larger audience, we can put it on Twitter or Facebook.

I've done a lot of YouTube videos (83), blog posts (30-something), and XonStat features (countless) in my seven years with the project. I don't have much time for these things anymore, but I still want the game to succeed. Now more than ever Xonotic - and the goodwill it has - is in the hands of the community. OUR community. I'd like everyone in it to feel empowered to make positive changes that push the game forward! It's all open source in the truest sense of the term, after all.

A few concrete examples:
- Do you know how to make YouTube videos? Start making tutorial videos and putting them out there!
- Do you know how to package software into RPM and DEB archives? We would love to have our releases easily installable via your OS's package manager. As a bonus, this would also push us to release more often.
- Are you passionate about a particular aspect of the game (e.g. Overkill/InstaGib)? Write up your experiences and post them for others to read and discuss!
- Run some whacky tournament to show how customizable and fun this game can be. Remember when Mirio did a slap-only tourney? It was awesome AND hilarious.

This is all very much a team effort, and you don't have to be anointed as an "official" team member to contribute.

Xonotic is the last Open Source FPS i enjoyed. It is a good platform and needs little updates after a while. The userbase could be larger, but this is a general problem with Arena Shooters.
Most people i showed Xonotic were not interested in the Genre, but people who played Arena Shooter liked it.

Things what would be nice in the future:
- Roadmap, bugfixes before new features  (Edit: Bugtracker: https://gitlab.com/groups/xonotic/issues)
- get in the repository of distributions or in AppStore
- more advertisement
- improve frame rates

Yeah Anibody, you already did a fantastic job on all your work.

This is all very much a team effort, and you don't have to be anointed as an "official" team member to contribute.

Have you be a offical team member to reach out to big gamingsites / youtubers for coverage?
In my opinion that should be reserved for the official team, as it's about the presentation of the game.

This is all very much a team effort, and you don't have to be anointed as an "official" team member to contribute.

Have you be a offical team member to reach out to big gamingsites / youtubers for coverage?
In my opinion that should be reserved for the official team, as it's about the presentation of the game.

To add on to that, I actually remember reading somewhere saying explicitly not to create social media pages for Xonotic because a core team member will do it instead.