22nd March 2010 at 02:23 PM

The Current State of Nexuiz, Welcome Xonotic [part 2]

The current mood in the community is somber, feelings have mixed about the future of the Nexuiz community.

There is an official news post on the matter at http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/news

Details have been unfolding as information about the IllFonic Nexuiz game is learned, tensions are high while leadership fails to subside the community in this time of doubt.

Underneath it all however, a fire burns. It's a burning love for the core culture we've built our community around. From this fire, rises a new game set to preserve the values in which we hold sacred to our GPL game. Xonotic is a GPL fork of Nexuiz 2.5.2svn. This new game and community was brought to life by core contributors of Nexuiz who realized there was no future in the relationship with project owner, Lee Vermeulen, who chose to capitalize on other people's work and failed to provide restitution.

To avoid being repetitive, I ask you refer to the Xonoitc FAQ for details about this fork.

As for the future of the Nexuiz Ninjaz, this site and services will stay online until we're ready to migrate over towards xonotic, which we've designed the core community to encompass many of the services we currently offer as unofficial tools for Nexuiz.
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3rd March 2010 at 01:01 AM

The Current State of Nexuiz

A lot is unknown at the moment. The first time we had any idea something was up, was when Dokujisan created the Nexuiz.com makeover? Nexuiz going to consoles? thread on Alientrap Forums. The buzz on IRC and on the forums indicates that the "owner/creator" of Nexuiz / Alientrap, Lee Vermeulen has sold the name and domain Nexuiz(.com) to a game maker by the name of illfonic.

According to LordHavoc (developer of the Darkplaces engine, who was apparently in on the deal), the game was licensed as such:

Quote:[6:14:56 pm] <LordHavoc> id sells id tech 2 (quake+quake2) licenses for $10k
[6:15:22 pm] <LordHavoc> my modifications and the contributor modifications (which I obtained permission for) were an additional expense
[6:15:39 pm] <LordHavoc> thus they licensed darkplaces as a whole
[6:16:06 pm] <[-z-]> contributor modifications, as it patches div or samual or dib mrbougo, etc submitted?
[6:16:43 pm] <Samual> For example, motionblur
[6:21:11 pm] <LordHavoc> yep

It appears that all the games art will be redesigned but it's unclear as to whether this art will be inherited by the original Nexuiz (probably not). There are also questions about possible GPL code being re-licensed without author's consent.

As of right now, it appears as if the deal was made for the reputation of the name and reputation it has built. This, of course, has the community quite upset as the original Nexuiz will likely be made the victim in a comparison.

So as for now http://www.nexuiz.com represents the new game supposedly for the PS3 and http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz represents the original (optionally, the more phonetic http://www.nexiuz.org works as well).


As a contributor to both nexuiz and alientrap, I'm upset about the way this was handled. Apparently only 3 people out of the 26 currently in the developer chat knew about this, (2 being Vermeulen and LordHavoc). This has many of the developers questioning their contributions and efforts as well as the ethics of some.

Here is Vermeulen's current response

We're still trying to wrap our heads around the situation on IRC.


[b]UPDATE[/url] Illfonic's response http://alientrap.org/forum/viewtopic.php...040#p76039
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3rd March 2010 at 12:17 AM

The Current State and Future Plan of the Nexuiz Ninjaz

I wanted to make a note on the current state of and future plan for the Nexuiz Ninjaz, before I get to the state of Nexuiz (GPL), which we've recently found out had it's name sold by Lee Vermeulen without anything being mentioned to the community or the bulk of development team.

The Nexuiz Ninjaz were founded on the belief that all things could be seen as an art or discipline that can be mastered and refined. We came together to build strength in our community by sharing ideas in areas we'd believed to have currently mastered, such as movement techniques, weapon strategies, flag capture methods, server managemen, map mapping, graphic design, web applications, music, sounds, videos or anything you can imagine relating to the GPL game Nexuiz that tickled our spirits.

This community has been seen through many glasses and met with many attitudes through-out our lifetime. We've lived through different eras of Nexuiz and tried many things.

Recently, interest in "staff" has been dwindling and that decline in interest also hurt the quality of the site and we (mostly me) let things get out of hand. Particularly with the forums (spam bots) but also with the maps and servers, which I've neglected.

As some of you know, I have been working for a company for the past 8 months or so and that workload has been pretty consuming at times. I do a lot of what I've been doing for years. Building, configuring, programming and networking computers/devices together. Doing that all day it can be hard to do the same thing when I get home. However, as an investor in myself and in this community, I do plan to rejuvenate the website(s)/community by reapplying the skills I've been fine-tuning at work to here.

Making sure of this are some of the ninjaz, you'll likely see hopping around on some of the best Nexuiz servers for CTF and best Nexuiz servers for DM, mookow, PC Lizard and Dokujisan, who have been been greasing the wheels of dojo_v2 development.

As for future of the website, I think I want to re-evaluate our needs and re-design the way I go about integrating services into it. I feel like in some ways, it caused more frustration than ease. Please reply here or PM me about usability issues and what you'd like to see improved.
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26th September 2009 at 03:02 PM

So it's been a while

It's been a while since I've last posted. I've been pretty busy with different projects and focusing on different aspects of Nexuiz when I can. I was hoping to come back from this drought with an announcement of the release of 2.5.2 but as you can see, alientrap is having a little trouble getting the final product out the door. Beta builds have been around for a while, and various developers are at different points in testing, focusing on different areas.

The Nexuiz Ninjaz Servers run close to latest SVN but it's not always up to date. Dokujisan runs a tight ship on HOCTF and tastefully applies changes. He puts a lot of time into these servers and currently I think they represent one of the strongest cultures within the Nexuiz community.

The new version of Nexuiz features a lot of neat changes, which I'll cover in finer detail in the future. Some of the highlights that I find most interesting are the added effects/motion blur, the new tutorial map to help situate new users (or mildly entertain veterans) and the new HUD.

Vermeulen, the man who started Alientrap has been recently promoting a new 2d game (windows/xbox only) called capsized.

I've been keeping tabs on Nexuiz in a reserved manor recently but like a ninja, I've been taking note as to where this community currently stands and envision a stronger more streamlined future. Through my new job, I've been exercising my web and computer discipline. Working with Linux in many different environments, on many different devices, my understanding has evolved. I plan to use these skills to benefit the Nexuiz community by revisiting and expanding on old projects in a way I find easier to manage to keep the projects progressing. A lot of this has been put off awaiting the next release so I can get the servers stable and rework the code that runs them. The other thing I need is the time :).


Back to Nexuiz, The Official Nexuiz Website has gone through some behind the scenes changes and we're considering connecting with sister site run by Dokujisan, NexuizNews.com. All bloggers at Nexuiz News have the chance to become an official writer for Nexuiz.com News, doubling their exposure and helping the Nexuiz community.


The facebook group for Nexuiz has been growing and Nexuiz Ninjaz group has formed. As always, you can find the most active in the community on IRC.
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24th June 2009 at 09:29 PM

Vote for Nexuiz!

Nexuiz is one of the finalists for Best Project for Gamers.



no need to sign up.
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29th May 2009 at 04:40 AM

NDT - Nexuiz Development Toolz

NDT or Nexuiz Development Toolz is a set of bash helper functions I've been developing over the past three days to provide myself with a script that sandboxes Nexuiz for development, making up for the downfalls of some of the existing SVN checkout scripts.

Before you read any further, this script is currently Linux only, perhaps OSX will work too but it's written in bash so I don't know if you can get it working with cygwin or what.

Unlike other existing SVN checkout solutions, NDT is very modular in it's approach to development. Rather than a top-down everything must update and everything must compile approach, NDT offers the flexibility of allowing you compile every individual part of Nexuiz independently. The engine (darkplaces), the compiler (fteqcc), the Nexuiz server, the Nexuiz menu, the Nexuiz client. Recently, I've just integrated the ability to checkout/update/compile NetRadiant.

All these things can be checked out/updated/compiled separately but ALSO together with a quick command (./ndt -u) making it an ideal solution to replace existing scripts if you have any interest in developing.


NDT was created with developers in mind. Because of this, it assumes you're going to be making code modifications and so it exports (by default) to two directories, nexuiz_vanilla and nexuiz_dev which use custom userdirs, ~/.nexuiz_vanilla and ~/.nexuiz_dev respectively.

Having this separation in code, means you can easily take advantage of the patching features I've included. --create_patch, --apply_patch and --revert_patch, see --help for more.


Even if you're not a developer, you can still take advantage of this script, pay attention mappers!. You don't have to install nexuiz for development, in fact, you can just use this script to install NetRadiant from SVN with the following commands:


and to update in the future



This program is still in early beta (0.7 as I'm writing this) but I plan on actively developing it as I learn more about QuakeC and developing for the game itself.


Here's a screenshot to better illustrate what the hell I'm doing:



I've checked the code into git, so my advice to you is to use git to stay updated. If you're on a ubuntu system, do something like the following:

Install dependencies for Nexuiz:

Install git core and checkout ndt:

edit the settings in my.ndt.conf to reflect your environment then:



This will checkout, compile and export Nexuiz (and optionally NetRadiant) for you, "installing" your development environment.

Anytime you need to update the script, use the following command:



To track progress of the project: http://github.com/z/ndt/
(2) comments »

21st May 2009 at 01:43 AM

First North American 3v3CTF Ladder to begin

Hello all North American Nexers.

We're officially announcing the first North American 3v3CTF Ladder, which will begin during the week of May 25th (depending on the setup time for registrations, map selection, server setup, mumble setup).

The purpose of this ladder is to generate activity for the North American clan community. Any clan members within the North American region are welcomed to participate. We hope that this boost in activity also carries over to the EU and AU communities as well.

If you are interested in joining the ladder, visit NexuizClans.com to register.
This is a ladder and NOT a tournament, so it will be ongoing and you can join at any time.

Nexuiz servers will be provided for this ladder. There will also be a Mumble voice server made available.

We are currently in the process of selecting the map pool for the ladder. Voting is going to be quick, as we are trying to expedite this process. If your favorite map doesn't get included during this round, don't worry. We will adjust the maplist over time as new maps get released and as we get feedback from the clans.

Each clan gets to select 3 maps that they like and 3 maps that they dislike from the voting pool. When you know your map selection, the clan leader should send a private message to Nifrek on the forum or in IRC. Don't announce your votes publicly as it may influence other votes.

To vote on the maps, follow this link : http://nullgaming.com/nexuiz/ladder

If you have questions, you can post them here, or you can ask in the
IRC channel: irc://irc.quakenet.org/nexuiz.clans


Thanks!

Dokujisan
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