A new release of
Cube, an OpenSource
first-person shooter, is now available. A single download supplies the
Win32/MacOSX/Linux/LinuxPPC clients, the Linux/Solaris/FreeBDS servers, as well
as the source code. The
readme offers further information on the new version, and here's a
general overview of the project:
Cube is an open source multiplayer and
singleplayer first person shooter game built on an entirely new and very
unconventional engine. Cube is a landscape-style engine that pretends to be an
indoor FPS engine, which combines very high precision dynamic occlusion culling
with a form of geometric mipmapping on the whole world for dynamic LOD for
configurable fps & graphic detail on most machines. Uses OpenGL & SDL.
Allows in-engine editing of geometry in full 3D (you fly around the map, point /
drag stuff to select it / modify it), which can even be done simultaneously with
others in multiplayer (a first!). Has simplistic but effective fine grain vertex
lighting that looks like lightmapping and can do dynamic lights & shadows.
Doesn't need any kind of map precompilation, even lighting is done on the fly.
Has very simplistic quad-tree world structure that can do slopes (heightfields
with caps) and slants, water, does decent collision detection & physics, has
client/server networking that goes a long way in giving a lag-free game
experience, and features a Doom/Quake-style singleplayer (2 game modes,
savegames) and multiplayer (12 game modes, master server / server browser, demo
recording) game with some uncompromising brutal oldskool gameplay.
Most of the engine design is targeted at reaching feature richness through
simplicity of structure and brute force, rather than finely tuned
complexity.