''OpenArena'' is a free and open-source video game. It is a

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

, and a clone of ''

Quake III Arena ''Quake III Arena'' is a 1999 first-person shooter game 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 primarily on mult ...

''.

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 its 1999 game ''Quake III Arena''. It has subsequently been used in numerous games. Commercially, id Tech 3 competed with early version ...

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

released under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later

license A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) 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 part ...

. OpenArena was officially released for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. Third parties have also ported the game to

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

, Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. 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 collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

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 or 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 **Spambot, an internet bot ...

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 Arena''. However, some others has criticized it as incomplete, 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