Surprisingly good FPS engine - Sauerbraten

#1 dude your funny... took your screenshots eheh it has a nice look to it, reminds me a old engine i used to know that was also free, can't remember it now.

#2 Woops sorry, I was going to take some screencaps but decided to just post that image... forgot to edit that little part out ;)

#3 It does have spiffy graphics.. the level building from inside the game is a very neat feature. Definately one to keep an eye on.

If you don't feel like cutting and pasting, you can link from here, just don't go here.

#4 That's fun in an updated-Doom-kinda-way - and it runs great on the Mac! Thanks for pointing this out!

#5 the map editor is pretty cool too. the best thing about saurbraten is the source code. It's so small and simple. it's a perfect example for people building their own engines in opengl. Theres very little assembly and it's relatively simple to follow, except for the geometric mip-mapping code which I could never get.

#6 I cant believe you guys didnt recognized that one. Thats "cube" a quite unique free FPS engine that has been running around for a few years, that must be the latest version with actual hardware shaders and all. nice.

Anyway the idea behind the cube engine is pretty simple and effective (let me get a bit technical here) instead of using a polygon soup or a bsp to store the levels, cube uses a grid like structure to store heights and matarial data (textures etc) in quads (aka "cubes" hence the name)as a result the collision detection is so fast and simple you can actually use raycasting for PVS or AI is also very easy on the memory footprint and storage as well (which makes it ideal for downloading user made levels, a version actually had realtime level deformation) sometimes you can also use models as decoration, as long as they are spherical or box collision friendly. (you dont want to ruin the collision detection speed with per-polygon collisions ) it is possible to add floor levels, but it can be a bit tricky.

The problem is (of course) you cant do curved shapes in the levels (a centrical RING or curved corridors like those in Q3, Prey or GOW are not possible) , but since in most deathmatch FPS's speed is the main ingredient not realism so that really is not an issue.

#7 Sauerbraten and Cube (its predecessor) are nice engines. Josh Ritter recently got it up and running in TGB as well. It is a nice, clean interface. I would prefer it if there was a more integrated way to load models and such into the levels since the editing interface is so slick, but I'm sure that will come.

#8 Its Cube (2) , same engine Seed was based on.

#9 Impressive, downloading to try this out now.

#10 It doesn't have any kind of skeletal animation support yet, but that is on the way.

#11 Yeah cube is a brilliant engine, so easy and neat to use.

Sauerbraten has really improved through since I last saw it :-).
The last screen shot looks amazing for this engines geometry limits!

#12 Its a nifty engine. However, my big gripe with it is that the geometry inherently looks blocky, and there seems to also be a limit on how small blocks can be.
Of course, i probably wouldn't mind so much if it had user friendly (i.e. not cryptic) editing tools and some way of easily importing polysoup models to fill in the details.

It also ran a tad bit slow (especially when playing the rpg maps) on my macbook, though then again that is to be expected.

#13 @James
Yes, the block size is a drawback, and the polysoup import is made more difficult by using a .cfg file to define which models are used. One must reload the map to reload the .cfg file. I am not sure, however, how much easier it would be to make the editing interface. It would be nice to have a visual cue to let you know what you have selected as you edit. But the keyboard and mouse combination is rather intuitive, though not nearly as friendly as Cube was (but then cube had less going on as well).

#14 So does the engine use Marching Cubes for everything? That's what it sounds like, from the description of how it stores geometry.

#15 It also supports md3 environmental models with lighting and collision. The world geometry is octree based... it really is worth downloading and checking out. It is pretty cool. Switch to the editor with 'E'

#16 Anyone know what the name of that last map is called?

#17 @Tim: Good taste. I tried to find that area too and never did. I am not sure what map it is in or if it isn't included :(

#18 Ah that old engine. I remember messing around with Cube ages ago and the map editor was insane. You can edit the maps right in game and even edit the maps multiplayer. From what I remember the developer of Cube and Sauerbraten was hired by Crytek because of the unique level editing in his engine. I haven't played with the Far Cry level editors, but I am sure they were pretty nice.

#19 hmm, i heard of this before, and i tried downloading but the link doesnt work

can someone upload it plz?

maybe on some of these sites:

www.rapidshare.com

www.megaupload.com

www.speedyshare.com

www.yousendit.com

#20 The download works fine. I just downloaded it for my G5 last night and my laptop today.