CodeRED: Alien Arena
Encyclopedia
Alien Arena is a free, stand-alone first-person shooter
computer game based on source code
released by id Software
. Begun by COR Entertainment in 2004, the game combines a 1950s-era sci-fi atmosphere with gameplay similar to the Quake, Doom, and Unreal Tournament
series. Alien Arena focuses mainly on online
multiplayer action, although it does contain single-player matches against bots
.
Alien Arena has been released for Microsoft Windows
, Linux
and FreeBSD
. The game has been free to play since its inception, and there are currently no plans to change it to a pay-to-play
format. However, as of version 7.20, it features in-game advertising
, in the main menu and in some maps. While the game's content is proprietary, the CRX engine is open source.
. It also serves as an IRC
client
for chat between players. The game uses modified Quake II physics. Most Quake II trickjumps, such as strafejumping, will work in Alien Arena. However, dodging, which isn't found in Quake II, has also been added to the game.
, which has been rewritten to include support for such features as 32-bit high-resolution
textures
, 3D models used as architecture in maps, GLSL
per-pixel lighting effects, parallax mapping
, normal mapping
, ragdoll physics using the Open Dynamics Engine, server-side antilag
code, shader
s (GLSL
and rscript), textured particles
, semi-true reflective water with per-pixel distortion shaders, reflective surfaces on entities, light bloom
, real-time shadows, overbright bits, real-time vertex lighting
, and other graphical effects, all of which can be turned on or off in the menu. As of CRX version 7.30, OpenAL
is used for sound on all platforms.
-style games, CodeRED: Battle for Earth and CodeRED: Martian Chronicles, were released during 2003. Following these games, Alien Arena received greater development focus. The final upgrade to the two single-player games was made available on February 18, 2005. The "CodeRED" title continued to be used until Alien Arena 2006 was released in November 2005, promoted as a "sequel" to the old CodeRED version. Alien Arena 2007 (CRX version 6.00) was released in September 2006, and Alien Arena 2008 (CRX version 7.00) appeared in March 2008. Alien Arena 2009 (CRX version 7.30) was released in June 2009. Alien Arena 2010 (CRX version 7.45) was released on July 29 2010. Alien Arena 2011 (CRX version 7.50) was released on December 16 2010.
, and is considered one of the best free first-person shooters. GameSpot noted the use of '60s-style sci-fi imagery and good selection of weapons and maps.
and Ladders
to weekly free-for-all matches.
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
computer game based on source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
released by id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
. Begun by COR Entertainment in 2004, the game combines a 1950s-era sci-fi atmosphere with gameplay similar to the Quake, Doom, and Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is a futuristic first-person shooter video game co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It was published in 1999 by GT Interactive. Retrospectively, the game has also been referred to as UT99 or UT Classic to differentiate it from its numbered sequels...
series. Alien Arena focuses mainly on online
Online game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
multiplayer action, although it does contain single-player matches against bots
Computer game bot
A bot, most prominently in the first-person shooter types , is a type of weak AI expert system software which for each instance of the program controls a player in deathmatch, team deathmatch and/or cooperative human player. Computer bots may play against other bots and/or human players in unison,...
.
Alien Arena has been released for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
. The game has been free to play since its inception, and there are currently no plans to change it to a pay-to-play
Pay to Play
Pay to play, sometimes pay for play, is a phrase used for a variety of situations in which money is exchanged for services or the privilege to engage in certain activities...
format. However, as of version 7.20, it features in-game advertising
In-game advertising
In-game advertising refers to advertising in computer and video games. IGA differs from advergaming, which refers to a game specifically made to advertise a product.The IGA industry is large and growing...
, in the main menu and in some maps. While the game's content is proprietary, the CRX engine is open source.
Gameplay
The game features an internal server browser for finding other players online, and the external Galaxy program performs the same function without having to launch the game, akin to The All-Seeing EyeThe All-Seeing Eye
The All-Seeing Eye, known to its community of users as ASE, was a game server browser designed by Finnish company UDP Soft. It helped online gamers find game servers. ASE took two years to develop and was introduced as shareware on June 15, 2001....
. It also serves as an IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
client
Client (computing)
A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....
for chat between players. The game uses modified Quake II physics. Most Quake II trickjumps, such as strafejumping, will work in Alien Arena. However, dodging, which isn't found in Quake II, has also been added to the game.
Game engine
The game is powered by the id Tech 2-based CRX game engineCRX (game engine)
The CRX game engine is an opensourced, cross platform program that was derived from id Software's GPL code releases by COR Entertainment. The engine is primarily used for the game CodeRED: Alien Arena. The engine makes use of Quake II data formats such as .md2 and the BSP map format as well as...
, which has been rewritten to include support for such features as 32-bit high-resolution
Image resolution
Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail....
textures
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
, 3D models used as architecture in maps, GLSL
GLSL
OpenGL Shading Language , is a high-level shading language based on the syntax of the C programming language...
per-pixel lighting effects, parallax mapping
Parallax mapping
Parallax mapping is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games...
, normal mapping
Normal mapping
In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping, or "Dot3 bump mapping", is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents. It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a low polygon model by...
, ragdoll physics using the Open Dynamics Engine, server-side antilag
Lag (online gaming)
In online gaming, Lag is a term used to describe delays between the action of players and the reaction of the server . Although it is commonly used to refer to delays caused by high latency, it is occasionally used to describe delays caused by insufficient processing power in the client and/or server...
code, shader
Shader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
s (GLSL
GLSL
OpenGL Shading Language , is a high-level shading language based on the syntax of the C programming language...
and rscript), textured particles
Particle system
The term particle system refers to a computer graphics technique to simulate certain fuzzy phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to reproduce with conventional rendering techniques...
, semi-true reflective water with per-pixel distortion shaders, reflective surfaces on entities, light bloom
Bloom (shader effect)
Bloom is a computer graphics effect used in computer games, demos and high dynamic range rendering to reproduce an imaging artifact of real-world cameras. The effect produces fringes of light around very bright objects in an image, obscuring fine details...
, real-time shadows, overbright bits, real-time vertex lighting
Gouraud shading
Gouraud shading, named after Henri Gouraud, is an interpolation method used in computer graphics to produce continuous shading of surfaces represented by polygon meshes...
, and other graphical effects, all of which can be turned on or off in the menu. As of CRX version 7.30, OpenAL
OpenAL
OpenAL is a cross-platform audio API. It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those of OpenGL.- History :...
is used for sound on all platforms.
History
As of March 11, 2011, the latest version of the game is version 7.51. Although it had been in development since 2003, Alien Arena was first released as a beta in August 2004, with the title CodeRED: Alien Arena. Two single-player, campaignCampaign (role-playing games)
In role-playing games, a campaign is a continuing storyline or set of adventures, typically involving the same characters. The purpose of the continuing storyline is to introduce a further aspect into the game: that of development, improvement, and growth of the characters. In a campaign, a...
-style games, CodeRED: Battle for Earth and CodeRED: Martian Chronicles, were released during 2003. Following these games, Alien Arena received greater development focus. The final upgrade to the two single-player games was made available on February 18, 2005. The "CodeRED" title continued to be used until Alien Arena 2006 was released in November 2005, promoted as a "sequel" to the old CodeRED version. Alien Arena 2007 (CRX version 6.00) was released in September 2006, and Alien Arena 2008 (CRX version 7.00) appeared in March 2008. Alien Arena 2009 (CRX version 7.30) was released in June 2009. Alien Arena 2010 (CRX version 7.45) was released on July 29 2010. Alien Arena 2011 (CRX version 7.50) was released on December 16 2010.
Critical Reception
Alien Arena has been compared to Quake III and Unreal TournamentUnreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is a futuristic first-person shooter video game co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It was published in 1999 by GT Interactive. Retrospectively, the game has also been referred to as UT99 or UT Classic to differentiate it from its numbered sequels...
, and is considered one of the best free first-person shooters. GameSpot noted the use of '60s-style sci-fi imagery and good selection of weapons and maps.
Competitive Tournaments
The Alien Arena community holds various periodical tournaments in which players can compete. These range from CupsTournament
A tournament is a competition involving a relatively large number of competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:...
and Ladders
Game ladder
A ladder tournament is a form of tournament for games and sports. It is an extended tournament, which can potentially go on indefinitely. In a ladder tournament, players are listed as if on the rungs of a ladder. The objective for a player is to reach the highest rung of the ladder...
to weekly free-for-all matches.
See also
- First-person shooterFirst-person shooterFirst-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
- List of free first-person shooters