[gtaylor]

Not only is this a really awesome thing for Epic to do, it could have much further-reaching consequences than UT if it's successful.

At the very minimum, it's going to be an excellent source of quality net/graphics code samples for UE4 developers. If it's wildly successful, we may see some neat ripples around the industry.

Also, this thing is going to get Occulus'd, Hydra'd, and everything else. That's going to be fun.

[blakerson]

A few fun ways this also looks like turn-of-the-century FPS world:

-We could see an FPS rise in eSports prominence again

-Mods built on top of one game create tons of variety accessible to one player base

-Mod developers have an easy way to become recognized game developers

Also, not related to the old Quake / UT / Half-Life scenes, but the marketplace for assets will be on top of a game that isn't Team Fortress 2, so there's much more creative latitude once mods are released (disclaimer: I love TF2).

[neohaven]

I love the movement mechanics of previous UT games, between always-run, dodging (doubletap a direction), double-jumping, and walljumping (jumptowards a wall, doubletap opposite direction), it was a rather entertaining game to play. Add to that the completely crazy weapons by today's FPS standards, and you have something I haven't seen in a long while.

I wish it would come back.

If it has that, that game has a player.

[Argorak]

The interesting thing about the weapons was that most were rather slow-moving and projectile speeds were very important. So motion prediction was far more important than for modern shooters.

Shooting someone out of the air with a rocket launcher was a feat.

[wlesieutre]

Shock combos were an especially fun one. You had to predict where someone would be and get a shock ball (probably the slowest projectile in the game) near them, then shoot the ball out of the air with a scan-hit beam to blow it up.

I'm really excited to see what they're doing here.

[Argorak]

Right. My favourite stunt with the shock rifle was shooting a ball straight or down, then jumping over an obstacle and then hitting the ball to kill another player. Very impressive to look at, but actually doable with a bit of training.

[jmccune]

I hope they include the impact-hammer + teleporter puck combo. It was SO FUN blasting that puck across the map then teleporting to it, not to mention trying to defend against such a move with the shock combo.

[rurounijones]

One reason I loved the original Tribes game where the main weapons were slow moving like the spinfusor and grenade launchers.

That, coupled with the high mobility (Jetpacks!) of the players lead to real duels that could last a while.

[Argorak]

Phew, I spent far too many hours on Katabatic. :)

Tribes is a great game favoring mechanics over realism.

[thoughtpalette]

Such an amazing game and the modding community was huge.

I played PB_mod from 00-04'.

[ashashwat]

This is true for Quake 3 Arena too. Mid-air rocket shots is impressive to pull off and are dominantly portrayed in frag videos like Annihilation.

[Argorak]

Yep, though Q3 sported more very fast moving or instant hit weapons (Shotgun, Plasma, Minigun, BFG, Railgun). On the other hand, Q3 also had faster player movement speeds, making hits even with fast weapons an exercise in tracking.

I still love playing Q3 as well, especially because of the driving soundtrack ;).

[blakerson]

I bet it will. The open-source competitive shooters I can think of (Warsaw, Quake3's Challenge Pro Mode mod [in the sense that it was designed by community]) all had interesting and complex movement schemes.

And since we now have Github, all that awesomeness is just a pull request away...

[Crito]

There was even a Quake mod called "Defrag" which "de-fragged" the game (removed the killing), making it soley focused on movement. Really neat stuff; hard as hell but really rewarding when you start to get the hang of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBs_lslyuY

[Cthulhu_]

Similarly, 'surf' maps for Unreal Tournament (if I recall correctly), which was capture the flag without the shooting, requiring players to run an obstacle course and abuse the game physics; dodging sideways up a steep ramp caused people to launch in the air, that kinda thing.

[mhitza]

Racesow (Warsow mod) did the same thing. Except in the movement repertoire you also had wall jumps and dashes. Which meant you could keep your speed even when doing 360 degree turns.

[ashashwat]

I tried and gave up. Fragging is easier than controlling the motions. I was not even able to master strafing in-spite of seeing lot of youtube videos.

[mhitza]

Depends of the tutorials you followed. I've started with double beat strafe jumps (where you do 2 jumps before the direction change), then switched to single beat and almost got halfbeat working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-FDOhsUNrU (Warning very loud)

[zobzu]

defrag is "just maps", the physics were essentially CQ3 (standard Q3 really) or CPM (challenge pro mode)

ie most of the amazing stuff is done with something close to original q3 physics (1999 and earlier for beta players)

Turns out q3 physics and netcode are still among the best there is today for FPS with low player count

[Qantourisc]

Xonotic also fits the bill quite well.

[TheCapn]

>We could see an FPS rise in eSports prominence again

Arguably CS:GO has been picking up steam lately hitting the #2 spot on Twitch.tv fairly constantly and spiking greatly during big tournaments.

This announcement couldn't have come at a better time as FPS is once again gaining competitive traction.

[mkal_tsr]

Maybe this will finally push Valve to upgrade to 128 tick competitive servers if they wish to grow CS:GO quicker.

Think about it ... we're getting open-source game engines with streaming and competitive scenes reigniting, this is awesome.

[sjtrny]

CS:GO is definitely the biggest FPS in eSport right now. Unlike CoD and Halo, the player base has been steadily increasing.

[fokasu]

And on top of that CoD is going to be at the xgames. Not sure how that will be seen but eSports is getting more and more recognition

[nadagast]

I'd love to see FPS rise in eSports again. Here's to hoping this new game has some advanced movement techniques (bhop!).

[YourCupOTea]

We are already seeing an FPS rise in eSports again. CS:GO has held 2 $250,000 prize pool tournaments in the last 6 months. It's the second most played game on steam with daily peaks over 150,000 players.

[sleepybrett]

Halo(still) and Call of Duty have huge eSports prominence

[corin_]

I wouldn't call Halo 'huge', and it's extremely US-based, CoD on the other hand is doing pretty well (in terms of esports) outside America as well.

[Pxtl]

They said "free" but not necessarily "free/open-source"... they might just mean they won't be doing an e-shop in game.

[belorn]

You can only share the source code with other Unreal Engine licensee who is authorized to access the same version of the engine as yours, and if you copy and paste the Unreal Engine code into your own project or engine, the your product will be governed by the EULA and royalties will have to be paid.

TLDR: This is non-free. It is not open source, its not free software, and it is unlikely to ever exist in distributions like Debian and Ubuntu.

[jholman]

In fact, their FAQ says that the UE4 code will be incompatible with free licenses, in particular GPL and CC.

https://www.unrealengine.com/faq , Ctrl-F for "copyleft".

[wfjackson]

Even ignoring the e-shop, AFAIK, you need the Unreal Engine to build the source and it's Open Source but not exactly free/Free.

Previous discussion on Unreal Engine 4.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7429774

[vezzy-fnord]

You're right, it's gratis. I highly doubt it'll satisfy the definition of free/open source software, as it'll (understandably) lack redistribution rights.

It's still a highly daring development model, all things considered. The concept itself is hardly new, but it's the first time an AAA developer has adopted it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[danudey]

It also won't satisfy the definition of free/open source software in that the source code likely won't be available under an open-source license (though they're using GitHub, so maybe).

They didn't say word one about the code being open; just the development process and the progress they're making.

[eyko]

> All code and content will be available live to UE4 developers on GitHub.

[krisdol]

On a private repository with a non-OSS-Compatible EULA

[kevando]

If rockstar does this with GTA, I would be so happy.

[lucb1e]

If any big company did this with their games, I would be happy too. Competitive and cross-platform are features few big games have these days.