This is great for Xonotic[1] and Warsow[2]! I hope the majority will look for a new FPS on Linux and Macintosh and find either Xonotic or Warsow, both great games. Warsow even got through the Steam greenlight program and will be on Steam soon.
1. Xonotic is a fusion of Quake and Unreal Tournoment. It features secondary fire mode, loads of modes and original maps and foremost a really awesome community. I highly recommend to try out this title if you are interested in this genre. 1.0 is not released yet, but it's already very mature and fun, it's also completely free software. http://www.xonotic.org/
1. Warsow is a Quake with a unique twist regarding movement and graphics. It got that Borderland cartoonish look and it fits really well in this fast paced genre. It also features a "dash", that is that you can turn without loosing velocity and do walljumps etc. Loads of great original maps, and a active community. Highly recommended as well. Warsow has reached it 1.0 release and is has a free software engine, but the game assets are proprietary. http://www.warsow.net/
Also there's Cube 2 - uglier than the ones you mentinoed, but it has a fantastic built-in level-editor that minecraft fans should love since it uses a very twisted perversion of voxels - the landscape is cubes where you can nudge the corners around. Somehow, this lets people build terrain that looks like this:
That and I love the beautiful simplicity of the weaponspread. Shotgun, Rocket-launcher, Sniper as the main weapons, and a chain-gun filling in the BFG10k's role of "OP weapon that you burn through the ammo in seconds" and a pistol and grenade launcher for "crappy stuff you start with". Also, you can melee in instagib mode. Just enough stuff to keep the game interesting without bogging you down with too much crap.
Edit: Also, there's OpenArena. It's a one-man-show and has some ugly models, but it gets the job done of being a complete content replacement for Quake 3 and capitalizing on Quake 3's open-source code to give you a 100% free/opensource implementation of Q3 complete with compatibility for most mods.
I'd highly recommend both of these games. I'm really hoping that the lack of Mac/Linux support in Quake Live will bring more players to the Xonotic and Warsow community. If you are into quake-like FPS, do yourself a favor and check out Xonotic or Warsow.
The QuakeLive team currently only has a single developer and it seems that they would have nowhere near the developer bandwidth to do a WebGL port (as great as a WebGL QuakeLive would be!)
As a long-time fan of the Doom&Quake games I would personally want to volunteer to help out on the JS porting aspect (I work on Emscripten, the compiler used in the Unreal Engine port and others).
However, how feasible this would be would depend on how portable the codebase is and so forth, which is not publicly known.
Many Quake players play at such a high-level of play, that the limitations of the web would instantly make the game unplayable to them. There's an awesome project at http://www.quakejs.com that have basically done this with emscripten (I'm friends with inolen, you've probably already talked to him).
Problem is, websockets are currently TCP only (TCP is unacceptable for a fast-paced real-time game). I guess there's WebRT but the support for that is not very widespread. Chrome and Firefox render webgl using vsync, which adds an unacceptable amount of mouse latency to mouse input. Chrome apparently won't render at 60hz+ even if your refresh rate is above it. I'm sure there's some additional latency between mouse events and updating the game too. It's a very compelling tech demo, but not something at the level that could be sold as a complete product yet.
WebRTC works well in Firefox and Chrome, and provides UDP networking. See for example https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread - so we should definitely be able to do that in quakejs. Totally agree that TCP is not great for FPS games.
About vsync etc., I am not an expert on those. But the game should be able to render at 60fps (equal or better to consoles), see the demo above and also Epic Citadel etc.. Any worse means there is a bug, and we should file an issue and try to get it fixed.
Sorry, I meant to say greater than 60hz. QuakeJS certainly hits 60, but 60 is often considered the minimum, especially as 120hz LCDs become more popular. (Most QUAKE LIVE LAN tournaments are played on 120hz LCDs, and there is still a small but loud segment of players that will play on CRTs to get 144hz)
Disabling vsync in about:flags definitely works, although it's an ugly thing for end-users to have to do. I've benchmarked 100> FPS by quake3's timedemo command through this method, although I don't recall trying to play the game and determining if the frames are actually being painted at that rate.
Yeah, I guess for that community super-high refresh rates can matter. But I think it's reasonable for those types of users to know how to change an about:config option ;)
The Unreal demo has some annoying micro stuttering that a Quake Live player would never put up with. Besides rendering there's also sound, input and networking to sort out. It's not insurmountable, but there's a big difference between a tech demo and a final product.
Not sure which stutter you refer to. Could be a bug in a particular browser.
Sound and networking are certainly possible. Sound will use HTML audio or Web Audio, if the C codebases uses SDL audio (there is audio in the citadel demo). And networking is possible with not much effort, see for example https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread
But I fully agree that a week for a tech demo is a small part of the work that a full product needs. Still, that it was just a week seems to say that a full product is feasible, probably months of work. Perhaps id doesn't want to spend that amount of time, and that's understandable if they have other priorities.
At this point (as you know), quakejs is a fairly ironed out port of ioquake3.
I've just never released it due to assets. I wanted to finish cross-compiling quake3 QVM-based mods to JS in order to enable playing some of the popular mods (with their own assets), but that just never happened.
I really wish some permission could be granted to use the original quake3 demo assets - it'd be great to have such a demanding gaming project for browsers to work on improving.
Yeah, definitely aware :) I didn't mention quakejs because I wasn't sure you wanted attention on it yet.
If assets are the last thing missing for you to launch it, what would it take to resolve that (not using the official assets, but something else)? Perhaps I can help or we can find others that can.
Code access is to a minified client-only source * for an Open Source engine, gamers could possibly write their own backend matchmaking service and host and maintain it themselves, but I suspect this isn't worth most people's time.
(that said, anti-aimbot type stuff might be a real problem)
* As someone else pointed out, ASM.JS is more than just minified, it's unreadable. Eg, Epic have UE3 ASM.JS hosted online.
Sure, it only takes one guy to write an OSS backend clone. Does he host it, or does the user host it? If the user hosts it, does it work on Windows, is it a simple install, can an average person figure out how to run their own dedicated server using the software? Does the maintainer respond to bugs? Does the maintainer have time to maintain the app? Does the maintainer work for free?
WebGL runs at basically full speed on the GPU. And JS can run at about half the speed of native code, when compiling a C++ codebase like we are talking about here.
So this would be far faster than typical 2006 perf.
> and access to all source code.
Look at optimized+minified compilation output in JS, it is just as unreadable as a native binary.
Second, there's a lot of little fiddly bit-twiddling for certain parts of it, like the PVS sets and whatnot. I would be unsurprised if JS doesn't deal with that well.
Third, the level of play is such that stuttering, pauses, or hiccups, even if only on the order of tens or hundreds of milliseconds, can be unacceptable.
And now I feel nostalgic for the times when there was shooting if the shooters.
There was always something special about the Quake 3 (and 2) engines - the fluidity, freedom and speed they provided in the games were unmatched. I don't know if it was the engine itself or the developers that flocked to these engines but the feeling of the shooting and movement on the games developed on the Unreal base is much more clumsy. Don't know exactly why.
Was at a hackathon at a university a while ago, and took a few minutes to unwind by fragging some nightmare bots in Q3. I ended up with a few students looking over my shoulder, asking what game I was playing.
There's a certain elegance and efficiency of movement the old arena shooters give you that's missing in many of the CoD clones these days--Painkiller has come closest to matching it, along with the Serious Sam tomfoolery.
"Over the past few years, browser support for plugins such as QUAKE LIVE have dropped off significantly, causing problems for plugins to operate in a consistent and working manner. With the recent announcement of Google Chrome's roadmap [1] to turning off plugin support and the upcoming changes in Firefox [2], it seems that now is the time to make the transition."
2. (From John Carmack's comments at QuakeCon 2012 [3]):
"Linux is an issue that's taken a lot more currency with Valve announcing Steam for Linux, and that does change, factor, you know, changes things a bit, but we've made two forays into the Linux commercial market, most recently with Quake Live client, and, you know, that platform just hasn't carried its weight compared to the Mac on there. It's great that people are enthusiastic about it, but there's just not nearly as many people that are interested in paying for a game on the platform, and that just seems to be the reality."
Based on John's comments regarding Linux, they just are not seeing the return to make it a priority. He mentions that Mac does better than Linux, but perhaps not enough, again, to be a priority.
I went looking for a record of the statistics, but I know that the Humble Indie Bundle 9 had a larger gross revenue share from Linux than Mac, plus significantly higher per-user average payments from those who claimed Linux.
But yeah, Steamboxes will make Linux a viable sales platform for games. Without it, you are basically looking at an OS that users have to manually install unless you buy from one of the three Linux pc boutiques online or the specific Dell / HP laptops with Ubuntu, and then you still only have Ubuntu as a distro option.
If Linux ends up in stores, especially on the cheaper end playing all the Indie games, running SteamOS at least, the market will explode.
I want to say I'm disappointed id is becoming effectively dropping the platform, especially when it has higher adoption numbers now than it ever did when they released any other game for it. Their games probably represent 90% of pre-Humble Bundle / Steam hours played on Linux, considering all the mods and such.
I think the takeaway is there are less people interested in playing a traditional deathmatch first person shooter on Linux than other platforms. Personally, I find them to be boring and overdone. There are much more exciting types of games being made by the indie community than a modified version of a game from 1996.
What a strange turn of events for gaming on Linux. AAA developers are porting their games over, while iD is pulling support. I don't think anyone would have guessed this.
Other than Valve what AAA developers are porting their games to Linux? I suspect opinions differ wildly on what constitutes a AAA developer. None of the developers that regularly top the console sales charts are working on Linux ports.
Whilst abandoning the browser plugin stuff makes every sense (it never worked well, on any platform), dropping Linux/OS X at a time where those platforms are on the rise (especially with Valve's move to Linux and Windows 8 being universally disliked) is probably not the right direction.
As a decade long Quake Live player and subscriber, I am really disappointed by this move. The team was forced to make this move because of the lack of native browser plugin support in future Chrome versions. It seems that the QL team only has one developer at the moment and he is not familiar with Linux.
Seems like a wrong move to move away from Linux/OSX when the rest of the gaming industry is moving towards Linux/OSX...
Quake Live is just Quake 3, which was native and cross-platform by design. Why the hell are they removing OSX/Linux support? Are there any technical reasons for this?
If they were smart, they'd put it on Steam, integrate some Steamworks stuff, and enjoy a larger fanbase along with relying less on their own backends. Steamworks could even help them monetize things like skins.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Quake Live was cool because it was Quake III running in the browser. Take it out of the browser and it becomes... Quake III again. Which is cross platform. What the hell?
Slightly related story, first time I ever played Quake Live was against F4taL1tY, with instagib railguns. I lost by one point and challenged him to a CS match. (played cal back in the pre-source days) He declined... but I got a signed t-shirt.
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Over the past few years, browser support for plugins such as QUAKE LIVE have dropped off significantly, causing problems for plugins to operate in a consistent and working manner. With the recent announcement of Google Chrome's roadmap to turning off plugin support and the upcoming changes in Firefox, it seems that now is the time to make the transition.
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This isn't a "bad move" for them by any stretch. It's a cost/benefit ratio that doesn't lean in favor of linux. The iD that would burn cash just to serve the community is long gone. There just isn't much return on investment from their perspective to maintain a linux port.
Breaking News: Soon you will GET to play Quake as a program that you download and install, rather than HAVING to play it in the browser because...seriously...who wants to do that?
The source code for the Quake 3 engine was also released under the GPL and is available from the ioquake3[1] project. It's currently ported to work under at least Windows, Mac (Universal Binaries), Linux (x86, x86_64, and PPC), and Solaris (both SPARC and x86).
Quake Live is already native and fully supports Linux. They are only changing the installer from a browser plug-in to a stand alone.
Given that they acknowledge they have customers on Mac and Linux and yet they couldn't be bothered to choose an installer that supported them I think we all know where this is heading.
They only thing I will say about that is that there is only a single developer working on this project at the moment,so maybe his resources are better used on something else than developing a mac/linux installer.
I dont get really get why they dont use asm.js/nativeclient to make it work without plugins on all platforms. Probably too much hassle but a game like QuakeLive feels like the perfect candidate for asm.js (Quake3 codebase is already opne source, relatively small, not resource heavy, OpenGL based)
I've been using Linux as long as I've been playing Quake, since 1996. I'm a Pro subscriber to QL. This doesn't bother me. What bothers me is no Rocket Arena mode!
1. Xonotic is a fusion of Quake and Unreal Tournoment. It features secondary fire mode, loads of modes and original maps and foremost a really awesome community. I highly recommend to try out this title if you are interested in this genre. 1.0 is not released yet, but it's already very mature and fun, it's also completely free software. http://www.xonotic.org/
1. Warsow is a Quake with a unique twist regarding movement and graphics. It got that Borderland cartoonish look and it fits really well in this fast paced genre. It also features a "dash", that is that you can turn without loosing velocity and do walljumps etc. Loads of great original maps, and a active community. Highly recommended as well. Warsow has reached it 1.0 release and is has a free software engine, but the game assets are proprietary. http://www.warsow.net/