Still no release?

Hello, some of you may remember me from way back in the day.

Anyways, it's been a long time (about 8 months) since Xonotic was announced, why have we still not released something? We had plenty of hype from other sites like Slashdot, and we could have capitalized on that by releasing earlier. It's too late now, but I think we need to re-examine the release process.

From what I can tell, Xonotic seems to be suffering from "Duke Nukem Forever Syndrome", where we want to add more and more awesome features, but never release anything. The best thing for any open source project to do is to release early, and release often, and doing otherwise jeopardizes the project's success (for a number of reasons I could go into, but they should be obvious). For a game like Xonotic, I could see a new release every 4-8 months, depending on how big the changes being worked on are.

I feel that having a very specific timeline (eg. feature X will be in 1.0, feature Y in 1.5, etc.) would be most beneficial. I haven't been following development too closely, but my advise would be to whittle the features down to just the ones that are essential for the release. For example, if an old weapon is going to be replaced by a new one, then prioritize that since it will affect gameplay immensely if you add it in later. Skimming through the roadmap, I think a good amount of the items could be deferred. From what I can tell, the larger features are being worked on in their own branches in the git repo, which is good, it allows you to add them to the main game when they're done, and it won't hold up a frequent release process.

I'm sure I won't be interpreted this way, but I don't mean to sound like the project leaders are incompetent, because I know they're far from it. I just think that the community has been waiting for a release for a long time, and we need to examine why we haven't released yet.

A beta release is due out soon. I think it's a bit early to consider it having "duke nukem syndrome" when it's been less than a year.

Btw, Nexuiz on consoles isn't released yet either. They are releasing in first quarter of 2011. When they get released, our project will naturally get a boost in attention as people lookup what "nexuiz" is. If we're releasing beta soon, then 1.0 will probably happen soon after that. We'll benefit from the attention of the new release of Nexuiz.

Since this is a fork (born from controversy), I think it's important to get the best impression possible. Visually, Xonotic is looking good. There are still issues with player model sizing and weapon balance. If Xonotic were released a couple months ago, it would have been given a bad reaction. I pushed a lot of people from my HOCTF server to compile and check out Xonotic in it's development form. Most of the reactions were negative. If Xonotic were released two months ago, it would have been a disaster for the project.

Over the beta testing period, those major issues should be ironed out and the game will be ready for a proper release. Personally, I think it would have made sense to have an immediate release (v 0.1?) back in April or May, which would have been Nexuiz with a different name and a new menu theme. However, since that didn't happen, the next best option is to simply make sure the game's major issues are figured out before 1.0.

The beta 0.1 as a christmas present would be nice

I think some main problems are the physics and balances for xonotic. Actually, there are about 4 balances for the weapons and at least 2 different physics. (imo the one with more nexuiz-like feeling is better )
In any way, the important features for the beta are already done, maps - especially ctf-maps - are the thing that needs to be done.

The beta 0.1 as a christmas present would be nice

Nice idea !

But I think we should avoid putting too much pressure on the development team. They have a heavy load and there is much expectation from the whole Nexuiz community. They want the best open source FPS, let them time, contribute and help them to decide. That's everything we can do !

However, a release date had better wait for future players.

It will be released.... WHEN IT'S DONE I think the major issue is getting official maps done and figuring out what balance will get in the game. There was also a bit of rebranding (some of the ammo and the strength powerup still have the Li character) that needed to be done, but not a whole lot from what I can tell.

If Xonotic were released a couple months ago, it would have been given a bad reaction. I pushed a lot of people from my HOCTF server to compile and check out Xonotic in it's development form. Most of the reactions were negative. If Xonotic were released two months ago, it would have been a disaster for the project.

I imagine that had something to do with the physics and balancing. I too was irritated at the 2.6 SVN balance and the earlier balanceFruit and Fruitphys which is why I started tweaking my own.

Wow, 8 months is Duke Nukem syndrome?

Considering how many of the assets are being completely rebuilt from the ground up, I'm not surprised it's taking so long. I'm glad the team is going for this approach of having everything be fresh. It'll help make a great impression and not just seem like a simple, silly re-branding of the old stuff.

Thanks shoeberto. getting slapped a "Duke Nukem syndrome" tag was sorta depressing. Im glad not everyone thinks that.

yer , take the time , get it right
just stay active guys!

also down load what is avaliable and test , test , test

:^

Because we're all human, and we all do this on our free time. Making a game almost from scratch is no small task, and with the first screenshots we already raised the bar a lot higher than at Nexuiz ever.
Want to speed up development? Join us, and look for something to do.

Releasing too soon will leave a lasting bad impression for many years to come. One of the main Nexuiz problems was that it was released too soon! The first version was not as good as it could/should have been and Nexuiz NEVER recovered fully from that to hit it into the mainstream big time. There have been plenty of discussions about that on the old forum as well.

I do think the main site could be updated more often with new screenshots and videos. Nothing major just some new stuff to look at a couple of times a week would be cool. I update 14 websites on a daily basis, I can add one to my workload, just let me know...

From what Dokujisan said, now I can see why there hasn't been a release yet. Like I said, I haven't really been keeping track of development, so I wasn't sure what was going on, and I ended up overreacting by suggesting a bunch of things I probably didn't need to. I was just a bit afraid that Xonotic would fall into an endless cycle of improvement, with no release. Obviously these things will be ironed out over time.

What I was trying to get at was that a lot of projects (Chromium in particular) incorporate features as they're finished into releases, so certain features don't end up delaying the final release, so incorporating something similar into Xonotic probably wouldn't be a bad idea. The most important part is that it's playable.

By the way, it may be a good idea to make a nightly build available for testing purposes if there isn't one already; it would give you a lot more feedback, which would speed up getting those issues ironed out. Compiling things from the git repo is fairly difficult, so I'm not sure if you're doing that on purpose or not to cut down on noise.

Anyway, sorry for stirring things up, I'm sure that you're all working as hard as you can to make Xonotic the best it can be.

i believe community need also comments like this to speed things up

Compiling things from the git repo is fairly difficult

It's as difficult as downloading and unpacking a (~2.5GB) build every day. Just a bit more dependencies to install.

And of course it's very difficult on platforms not meant for geeks^Wsoftware developers. :P

If you dont want to wait then live on the bleeding edge and get the dev version. O wait, compiling from the git repo is difficult?! I found it easy with 1-3 steps. Oh, you're Windows user aren't you?

If you dont want to wait then live on the bleeding edge and get the dev version. O wait, compiling from the git repo is difficult?! I found it easy with 1-3 steps. Oh, you're Windows user aren't you?

I'm not saying it's hard for me, I'm just saying it's hard in general for most people. I run linux, so it's not really an issue for me, but I'm sure it's a problem for most windows users.

Skimming through the roadmap, I think a good amount of the items could be deferred.

You were skimming through the correct roadmap, right?
I don't really see anything here that can be deferred: http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/...tatus_id=o

Hm, never saw that type of roadmap..
In any way, there are a few new entries. Scaling down the size of the loading image wont stop release of beta, imo. But if player models are too small (!) there is a problem with the maps, which are more or less exactly (just some of them, I think of "gasolinepowered" aka space_elevator) for that size of player model!

http://cia.vc/stats/project/xonotic
In short: it's not dead. Quite the opposite in fact, just follow how many dev updates we have daily and you'll realize.

10039 messages since the first one, 7.89 months ago, for an average of 33.95 minutes between messages

Of course lots of these are merges and such, but still.

---

In any way, there are a few new entries. Scaling down the size of the loading image wont stop release of beta, imo.

But this would probably be a three minute job for someone who knows engine code.

But if player models are too small (!) there is a problem with the maps, which are more or less exactly (just some of them, I think of "gasolinepowered" aka space_elevator) for that size of player model!

The bounding box size is still exactly the same as before. It's the models themselves that look thinner than the bounding box, they are still just as tall. So simply scaling them up won't work, then the head ends up outside the bounding box (BAD). Making them have armor etc to make them thicker could take weeks by a skilled artist, and we currently don't have anyone with both the talent, motivation and time to do such a thing it seems.

For me they don't seem any smaller then UTs models for example, I mean in comparitive game-size, brightskins will help a ton though, perhaps in the future (for the more competitive players) we will get a fullbright skin/model size like in nexuiz with mulder is it?

Anyway, release won't be far off

Where is the Beta?

Where is the Beta?

you missed that line
21 closed (72%) 8 open (28%)

http://dev.xonotic.org/versions/show/8

Damn it

But, keep up the good work!
Hopping, you all guys gonna release soon.