''OpenArena'' is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

and

open-source video game An open-source video game, or simply an open-source game, is a video game whose source code is open-source. They are often freely distributable and sometimes cross-platform compatible. Definition and differentiation Not all open-source games ...

. It is a

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

, and a

video game clone A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, bu ...

of ''

Quake III Arena ''Quake III Arena'' is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. The third installment of the ''Quake'' series, ''Arena'' differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing prima ...

''.

Development

The ''OpenArena'' project was established on August 19, 2005, one day after the

id Tech 3 id Tech 3, popularly known as the ''Quake III Arena'' engine, is a game engine developed by id Software for their video game ''Quake III Arena''. It has been adopted by numerous games. During its time, it competed with the Unreal Engine; bot ...

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

released under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

. OpenArena was officially released for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. Third parties have also ported the game to

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project em ...

, Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

. The game was also unofficially ported to the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

Gameplay

''OpenArenas gameplay mirrors that of ''

'' with some quality of life improvements, such as awarding a character points for pushing another character to their death. The game can be played online (against other human players) or offline (against computer-controlled characters known as

bot Bot may refer to: Sciences Computing and technology * Chatbot, a computer program that converses in natural language * Internet bot, a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet **a Spambot, an internet bot des ...

s). "Singleplayer" mode allows players to play a predefined series of deathmatches, unlocking a new "tier" of four maps after completing the previous one, or to create custom matches in any game type through the "skirmish" mode.

Game modes

OpenArena has the following gamemodes: * Free For All: classic Deathmatch where players are all pitted against each other and the player who has the highest score at the end of the match wins. * Team Deathmatch: a team-based variation of Free For All, with two teams of players being pitted against the other. * Tournament: The game chooses two players in the server and makes them duel, in a classic "winner stays, loser gets out" setting. * Capture the Flag: team-based mode where each team spawns in a base which contains a flag. They must capture the enemy team's flag while keeping their own flag from being captured. * One Flag CTF: a variation of Capture The Flag where a white flag spawns in the middle of the map and the teams must bring it to the enemy base. * Harvester: Each team spawns with a Skull Receptacle with a Skull Generator that spawns in the middle of the map. By fragging enemies, skulls appear in this generator. The players must collect skulls of enemy players bring them to the enemy base in order to score. * Overload: Each team has a crystal in their base. The players of each team must travel to the enemy base and destroy this crystal in order to win. * Elimination: a team based mode where both players must frag all of their enemies in a "Last Man Standing" style match. The team with the highest number of points wins. * CTF Elimination: a mix of Capture The Flag and Elimination. Teams score by fragging all enemy players or capturing flags. * Last Man Standing: a non-team variation of Elimination where all of the players start with a finite number of lives and frag each other until only one of them remains. * Double Domination: a team-based mode which features two control points, and the players must hold them in order to score points. * Domination: a team-based mode that has control points scattered throughout the map; the players must secure these points in order to gain points for their teams.

Reception and impact

The game is one of the most popular open-source first-person shooters, particularly among fans of the original Quake III. OpenArena has been criticized to be incomplete, with some saying that this detracts from long term play. The game has been praised for its portability and ability to run on old hardware, as well as creative bot design. OpenArena has been used as a platform for scholarly work in computer science. Some examples include streaming graphics from a central server, and visualizing large amounts of network data.

References

External links