i started playing Trem in late 2014 and i think i am very last newbie that has joined this game :). I have read many opinions about problems of this game from experienced players on this forum , so i think maybe newbie perspective will be helpful. So, here it is :
Game development
It it diffucult for newbie to start learning the multiplayer game with low and decreasing community and also the game which is not updated. I know it is almost imposible to increase number of players but what about new version? This will give hope to new players that the game is not dead and it is worth to start playing it. I have found out that currently 3 (!) new version of Trem are being made: Tremlous 1.3, Murnatan and Unvanquished, by three development teams. And all three teams has failed so far. Is there any possibility for you to work together to release anything new?
Lack of ANY advetisement
If you looking on internet for free game you rather won’t find out about Trem. That is another reason there is no new players: simply they don’t this game even exists. I was looking for some good open-source game, and after trying many of them i have finally found Trem . Maybe you could try google web-site positioning? Moreover, if you find Trem you will probably install and search players on 1.2 version which has no players…
Gameplay
The main problem with gamplay is often camping. There is really no incentive to attack other team (better to wait until other team starts feeding), so it is necessary to wait long until suddendeath to get some action. Also there are some issues with unbalanced gameplay, but i know you are trying to fix this
Thanks for your insight, it is always welcome despite being a new player or not.
I definitely share the concerns that you have listed here and I think it is safe to say that the development team not only acknowledges these problems but also puts them at a very high priority. I personally have made a number of these issues apparent and I know many others have.
Working together may not be a possibility due to each project taking a different direction. I know that one project intends to monetise their work which I cannot imagine the developers of this team would agree with. However, I would love to see the individuals developers of each team work together and potentially combine resources in order to speed up each others projects (think almost like a scientific research agreement between two different countries).
The latter issue you mention about the 1.1/1.2 player base barrier has been removed as we now have a multi protocol client and a server that allows multiple versions of tremulous to connect. This has allowed a combination of both tremulous player base/communities. In terms of direct advertisement we will likely be making introductions through steam, youtube or twitch streams and events.
Gameplay modes and balance are being adjusted and maps are being constantly analsysed/created to provide as balanced gameplay as possible.
I think another concern that many people ask about is the outdated graphics. With improved map textures and the use of the ioq3 gl2 render we look to overcome this. I think many people still like the outdated style of quake/tremulous but would defniitely welcome some texture and ambient improvements.
Hold up. I don’t think it’s accurate to label these initiatives as failures thus far. Lets step back a bit:
Before I begin, I’d like to avoid giving anyone the false impression that I am neutral and unbiased on this matter. GrangerHub is not exactly = Tremulous 1.3, but right now they are close together for mutual benefit. I am a moderator for GrangerHub. I’m not a developer, but I am friends/acquaintances with a few of the higher-ups. I donated occasionally to the website. Therefore you should NOT take anything from this post as fact and stay skeptical.
Currently Tremulous 1.3 is balls-deep in SOON™ development territory. Despite this, its issues are discussed publicly and the same applies to it’s current status. AFAIK, it is far from abandoned (let-alone released), so I don’t think its correct to say it “failed” yet. It’s biggest mistake thus far, is the development team giving the community the false impression of a close release date, then running into roadblocks and not retracting that impression immediately.
That being said, there are consistent development games being held on Saturdays/Thursdays on the Test Server, giving the public a glimpse of what to expect. As of this time, this is the project I have the most interest in as the successor of Tremulous 1.1.
Currently in development as a Unreal Engine 4 title, it isn’t fair to say they failed yet. Unlike Tremulous 1.3, it will neither be free nor open-source. I wish the developers the best, however a Tremulous that is not libre is a hard pill to swallow from most of us who fell in love in Tremulous 1.1. Its clearly designed to be accepted as a different beast.
Unvanquished is probably the black sheep of the current forks, despite actually being released and being updated multiple times until halfway into 2016. They appear to have competent resources and intelligent people behind it, but the alphas they released thus far didn’t attract a userbase at all.
In my opinion, its not difficult to see why. Right now its more-or-less a Frankenstein version of Tremulous (it uses unfinished, newer assets with some 1.1 leftovers) that encourages snow-ball tactics thanks to it’s “Momentum” system. It replaces the 1.1-style “Stages” system with a bar that increases/decreases based how active the team is at kills/building/destroying/etc. Even though it was designed to dis-incentivize camping, in return it favors cheese-strats where the team that wins early will keep up their advantage until they cripple the other team’s chances at a comeback.
Atleast that was my impression about a year ago. Perhaps you could say they failed in regards to the OP, but is it really fair to do so to whats basically alpha builds? They haven’t released anything since April 11th and based on what I could interpret from the forums, its because they are shifting gears based on the feedback they got. I also wish them the best of luck and hope that they push out a build that would change the opinions of people like myself.
I will have to concur with Ckit:
Each “branch” seems to be taking the spirit of Tremulous 1.1 and building a new game out of it. Tremulous 1.3 seems to be the most conservative in it’s overhaul, while we have Murantan as it’s extreme opposite and Unvanquished sitting somewhere inbetween. Frankly, it seems unlikely that all three projects are willing to abandon their goals into a single “super project”.
Honestly, I think thats okay. I’d rather have competing groups of people try to build a version of Tremulous they believe will succeed, instead of it being dominated by one “super” group or being left to rot all together. Unlike 1.2, there will be external pressure to push out a Tremulous people would want to play the most and in my eyes, thats can only be a good thing.
Thats why we should encourage all branches to succeed to the best of their abilities.
Welcome to GrangerHub’s forums. I greatly appreciate your feedback and hope to see more of it on these forums .
I wouldn’t say that any of the three projects you have mentioned above have failed so far, as none of those projects have released a beta version yet, and all three are still under development. But those three projects do have different goals, purposes, directions, and styles. Additionally, more than one of those projects can ultimately be successful at the same time, as it isn’t necessarily an only one can survive situation.
Tremulous 1.3 is the project we are focused on developing here at GrangerHub. The goal of the 1.3 project is to address the many problems that got in the way of the old versions of Tremulous, and to initiate an actual successful Tremulous revival.
Tremulous 1.3 is built on the ioquake3 engine (the same game engine the earlier versions of Tremulous are built on), is based on the latest dark legion Tremulous code from github.com, and is actually compatible with the old versions of the clients and servers. We are developing a new game play (Swirl Game Mode), however the old vanilla game plays of 1.1 and of gpp would still be available as game modes in 1.3, and old Tremulous mods could be ported to 1.3.
Most of the code we are working with is publicly available and even now anyone can contribute to that code (even developers from Murnatan and Unv if they wanted to). We haven’t released all our code yet as we are working on having a level of quality that would maximize the chances of success for a successful initial release.
The multiprotocol feature of 1.3 does address the old split in the community between 1.1 and gpp, where now when we play Tremulous of any version we can all play on the same servers. However, until the initial release, at the moment there are only 3 multiprotocol servers (the GrangerPub server, the GrangerClub server, and the test7341 server) all hosted by GrangerHub. But multiprotocol is only one of the many important features included in 1.3, and hopefully after the initial release the community will fully migrate to 1.3 making multiprotocol unnecessary.
GrangerHub does have public development games on our development server (the test7341 server) every Tuesday (@Hendrich seems to have forgotten about the Tuesday games) , Thursday, and Saturday, where we test new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Murnatan is a commercial proprietary closed source project that is being developed on a game engine (Unreal 4) different from what Tremulous is built on. Murnatan was originally called Tremulous 2.0 but due to the fact that the intended use of that project would go against the terms of Tremulous’ GPLv2+ license, they had to change their name, and start fresh with new code. Their development is closed, they currently don’t have any public testing, and at the moment they don’t have any publicly released clients nor servers. They generally have a different target audience from that of Tremulous.
Unvanquished is a free and open source project that is built on their own game engine (Daemon) different from Tremulous’ game engine but is in part based on Tremulous’ code. Their code is licensed GPLv3 which allows the code from Tremulous to be used in Unv, but not the other way around without changing Tremulous’ license to GPLv3. The focus of their development thus far seems to be more on their game engine than their game. Unv’s client & servers are not compatible with the old Tremulous clients/server.
The Unv project has their own vision on how their game and their community should be and is a different game from Tremulous. Unv does have alpha releases of their clients and servers (including their source code), however at the moment they have far fewer active players than even the current population of Tremulous.
I agree, advertisement is very important, and we do plan on heavily advertising as we get closer to the initial release. However, we haven’t done that yet as we want to have something more to show the public that they can experience themselves and get a good first impression. In particular a new pre-release client that is easy to install and available on a download page here at the GrangerHub website, and production quality highly active 1.3 servers that show off both the Swirl and Vanilla game modes.
Just want to clarify one thing: despite of my complaints, I greatly appreciate any of Your efforts to improve this game.
I wish you good luck with your project and hope you will succeed!
Last unvanquished release was in april and they used to make monthly regular releases.
Now not even servers are up anymore.
Its a damn shame if it would go down the crapper, they worked so hard on it and even though i wasnt a huge fan i must say it was very well made.
Atleast it has actually ok bot support, cant say the same for trem.
I do hope in the future foss fps engine developers collaborate more.
