Red Eclipse
Encyclopedia
Red Eclipse is a multi-platform
, free
, and open source
first-person shooter
that runs on top of the Cube Engine 2. The game is predicated around multiplayer based action, but can be played offline against bots
as well.
, with commercial support from the developers' business counterpart, dot3 labs.
or Unreal Tournament
. The game consists of a variety of modes, which can be extended with any of twelve "mutators". For example, the "Capture the Flag" mode can be used in conjunction with the "Instagib" and "Jetpack" mutators, changing how the game is played. This allows players to experience more flexibility and variety when playing the same mode. There are also seven mode-exclusive mutators, which can only be played in certain modes.
Aside from the more traditional modes of its genre - among them Deathmatch
, Capture the Flag
, and Defend the Flag (akin to King of the Hill
), Red Eclipse offers two more unique and original modes of play. "Bomber-Ball" pits two teams against one another with the objective of throwing the bomb into the enemy team's goal before it explodes. In "Time-Trial", players race through a level to compete for the best times.
Bots are also available for all modes and mutators when teams are short of human players, as well as for offline practice matches.
Red Eclipse's weapon arsenal consists of a pistol, sword, shotgun, submachine gun, flamethrower, plasma gun, rifle, grenade, and rocket launcher, each with primary and alternate fires. Each weapon also has variables that the player can alter to change their behavior, such as particle size, accuracy, the reload and fire rates, and damage. This enables players to experience diverse gameplay while still being in the same match or server.
systems allow the player a variety of ways to move about a level via wall-kicking, wall-running, dashing on the ground and mid-air, and double-jumping. Similarly to the weapon variables, there is also a list of environmental variables, allowing players to easily create their own modes. Variables pertaining to physics, such as jump height or distance, movement speed, and gravity, are all changeable in-game to allow for different gameplay.
, Defend the Flag, Bomber and Time-Trial
In addition to the game modes, there are twelve mutators which extend the game modes:
Furthermore, Red Eclipses game modes could have multiple mutators to extend the mode, such as having Capture the Flag with the Instagib, Teamplay, and hover mutators, which enables one-shot-one-kill styled gameplay, and players to hover.
) world model. An octree in Red Eclipse is a cube that can be split into eight smaller cubes that can then be done the same to. This allows for complex level geometry and easier editing which can be accomplished through the game's built in editor.
) was more processor-intensive than sending new streams of triangles to the graphics processing every frame, which limited its performance on more modern hardware where memory bandwidth
is a greater limiting factor. Instead, Red Eclipse uses the rendering engine
in Cube 2, which is designed around modern graphics processing units, which perform best with huge batches of geometry already stored in video memory
. Lighting is precomputed into lightmap
s—image files that correspond to geometry as textures—for efficient batching, with an additional stored directional component, that allows for efficient shader-based lighting effects.
"waypoints" can also be generated dynamically as the level is played. Lighting is accomplished through precomputed lightmaps
. Each cube-shaped node in the octree
represents a renderable volume, simply referred to as a cube. Each edge of this cube can be lengthened or shortened to deform the cube into a variety of other shapes. Corners of cubes can also be "pushed" or "pulled" to create crude curves. The what you see is what you get
realtime editing has enabled level designers to add a plethora of detail to maps, while reducing the time spent on actual creation. This is in contrast to traditional modern polygon soup
3D engines which take a model generated as an essentially random batch of triangles from an external modelling program, and attempt to spatially subdivide the model's triangles after the fact by splitting them to fit into tree structures, such as a BSP tree
or even an octree
, that require costly pre-processing to build.
Red Eclipses in-game mapping feature results in a large variety of custom maps. The diverse nature of the Cube Engine's mapping feature allows for creativity and almost endless possibilities for custom maps. Another aspect of Red Eclipse is the ease at which custom maps can be shared. They can be easily shared with others through community sites such as Quadropolis. A map from Quake III Arena has been remade for Red Eclipse engine by players, and was included in the 1.0 Ides release of Red Eclipse.
Map editing in Red Eclipse can also be done cooperatively online with other players.
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
, free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
, and open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
first-person shooter
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...
that runs on top of the Cube Engine 2. The game is predicated around multiplayer based action, but can be played offline 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,...
as well.
Development
Red Eclipse is built upon the Cube Engine 2. Version 1.0 was released on the 15th of March, 2011. The game is under the permissive Free zlib LicenseZlib License
The zlib License is a permissive free software license which defines the terms under which the zlib and libpng software libraries can be distributed. It is also used by other free software packages....
, with commercial support from the developers' business counterpart, dot3 labs.
General
Red Eclipse is a multiplayer first-person shooter with a style of play comparable to Quake III ArenaQuake III Arena
Quake III Arena , is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly...
or 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...
. The game consists of a variety of modes, which can be extended with any of twelve "mutators". For example, the "Capture the Flag" mode can be used in conjunction with the "Instagib" and "Jetpack" mutators, changing how the game is played. This allows players to experience more flexibility and variety when playing the same mode. There are also seven mode-exclusive mutators, which can only be played in certain modes.
Aside from the more traditional modes of its genre - among them Deathmatch
Deathmatch (gaming)
Deathmatch or Player vs All is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into many shooter and real-time strategy computer games...
, Capture the Flag
Capture the flag
Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base...
, and Defend the Flag (akin to King of the Hill
King of the Hill (game)
King of the Hill , is a children's game, the object of which is to stay on top of a large hill or pile as the "King of the Hill"...
), Red Eclipse offers two more unique and original modes of play. "Bomber-Ball" pits two teams against one another with the objective of throwing the bomb into the enemy team's goal before it explodes. In "Time-Trial", players race through a level to compete for the best times.
Bots are also available for all modes and mutators when teams are short of human players, as well as for offline practice matches.
Red Eclipse's weapon arsenal consists of a pistol, sword, shotgun, submachine gun, flamethrower, plasma gun, rifle, grenade, and rocket launcher, each with primary and alternate fires. Each weapon also has variables that the player can alter to change their behavior, such as particle size, accuracy, the reload and fire rates, and damage. This enables players to experience diverse gameplay while still being in the same match or server.
Movement and physics
The game's "Impulse" and parkourParkour
Parkour is a method of movement focused on moving around obstacles with speed and efficiency. Originally developed in France, the main purpose of the discipline is to teach participants how to move through their environment by vaulting, rolling, running, climbing and jumping...
systems allow the player a variety of ways to move about a level via wall-kicking, wall-running, dashing on the ground and mid-air, and double-jumping. Similarly to the weapon variables, there is also a list of environmental variables, allowing players to easily create their own modes. Variables pertaining to physics, such as jump height or distance, movement speed, and gravity, are all changeable in-game to allow for different gameplay.
Game modes and mutators
Red Eclipse has six different game modes excluding the in-game editor: Campaign, Deathmatch, Capture the FlagCapture the flag
Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base...
, Defend the Flag, Bomber and Time-Trial
In addition to the game modes, there are twelve mutators which extend the game modes:
- Teamplay – Default on CTF, DTF, and bomber-ball; splits players into Alpha(blue) and Omega(red) teams and uses bots to make it even if there is an odd number of players.
- Instagib – One shot kills and rifles only unless using Ballistic or Mideval mutators.
- Onslaught – Adds neutral waves of zombies to fight.
- Vampire – Hurting other people increases the attacker's health.
- Medieval – Swords only.
- Ballistic – Rocket launchers only.
- Arena – Have a choice of two weapons.
- Expert – Only headshots deal damage.
- Duel – Two people at a time; other players on a server observe and wait.
- Survivor – Everyone spawns at once then last man standing wins.
- Hover – Replaced jetpack in v1.1. Players may hover upon double-jumping.
- Resize – As a player's your health decreases, so does their size.
- League – Attributes of character's size and speed are determined by their choice of weapon.
Furthermore, Red Eclipses game modes could have multiple mutators to extend the mode, such as having Capture the Flag with the Instagib, Teamplay, and hover mutators, which enables one-shot-one-kill styled gameplay, and players to hover.
Technical details
Red Eclipse utilizes the Cube 2 engine, which uses a 6-directional heightfield (or octreeOctree
An octree is a tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly eight children. Octrees are most often used to partition a three dimensional space by recursively subdividing it into eight octants. Octrees are the three-dimensional analog of quadtrees. The name is formed from oct + tree,...
) world model. An octree in Red Eclipse is a cube that can be split into eight smaller cubes that can then be done the same to. This allows for complex level geometry and easier editing which can be accomplished through the game's built in editor.
Rendering engine
The original Cube engine's rendering engine assumed that overdraw (where polygons that do not appear in the final scene are occluded via the z-bufferZ-buffering
In computer graphics, z-buffering is the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional graphics, usually done in hardware, sometimes in software. It is one solution to the visibility problem, which is the problem of deciding which elements of a rendered scene are visible, and which...
) was more processor-intensive than sending new streams of triangles to the graphics processing every frame, which limited its performance on more modern hardware where memory bandwidth
Memory bandwidth
Memory bandwidth is the rate at which data can be read from or stored into a semiconductor memory by a processor. Memory bandwidth is usually expressed in units of bytes/second, though this can vary for systems with natural data sizes that are not a multiple of the commonly used 8-bit bytes.Memory...
is a greater limiting factor. Instead, Red Eclipse uses the rendering engine
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...
in Cube 2, which is designed around modern graphics processing units, which perform best with huge batches of geometry already stored in video memory
Video memory
Video memory is a term generally used in computers to describe some form of writable memory, usually RAM, dedicated to the purpose of holding the information necessary for a graphics card to drive a display device...
. Lighting is precomputed into lightmap
Lightmap
A lightmap is a data structure which contains the brightness of surfaces in 3d graphics applications such as video games. Lightmaps are precomputed and used for static objects. Quake was the first computer game to use lightmaps to augment rendering. Before lightmaps were invented, realtime...
s—image files that correspond to geometry as textures—for efficient batching, with an additional stored directional component, that allows for efficient shader-based lighting effects.
Mapping Editor
Red Eclipse retains the Cube engine's built-in map editor, in which the player is to fly around the game world manipulating and deforming volumes referred to as cubes. This, as well as weapon and other entity placement is achieved in real-time, and can be done cooperatively online with other players as well. AIArtificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
"waypoints" can also be generated dynamically as the level is played. Lighting is accomplished through precomputed lightmaps
Lightmap
A lightmap is a data structure which contains the brightness of surfaces in 3d graphics applications such as video games. Lightmaps are precomputed and used for static objects. Quake was the first computer game to use lightmaps to augment rendering. Before lightmaps were invented, realtime...
. Each cube-shaped node in the octree
Octree
An octree is a tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly eight children. Octrees are most often used to partition a three dimensional space by recursively subdividing it into eight octants. Octrees are the three-dimensional analog of quadtrees. The name is formed from oct + tree,...
represents a renderable volume, simply referred to as a cube. Each edge of this cube can be lengthened or shortened to deform the cube into a variety of other shapes. Corners of cubes can also be "pushed" or "pulled" to create crude curves. The what you see is what you get
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
realtime editing has enabled level designers to add a plethora of detail to maps, while reducing the time spent on actual creation. This is in contrast to traditional modern polygon soup
Polygon soup
A Polygon soup is a group of unorganized triangles, with generally no relationship whatsoever. Polygon soups are the default output format when geometry is exported from a 3D modeling package, such as Maya or Blender. As soon as any kind of hierarchical sorting or clustering scheme is applied, then...
3D engines which take a model generated as an essentially random batch of triangles from an external modelling program, and attempt to spatially subdivide the model's triangles after the fact by splitting them to fit into tree structures, such as a BSP tree
Binary space partitioning
In computer science, binary space partitioning is a method for recursively subdividing a space into convex sets by hyperplanes. This subdivision gives rise to a representation of the scene by means of a tree data structure known as a BSP tree.Originally, this approach was proposed in 3D computer...
or even an octree
Octree
An octree is a tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly eight children. Octrees are most often used to partition a three dimensional space by recursively subdividing it into eight octants. Octrees are the three-dimensional analog of quadtrees. The name is formed from oct + tree,...
, that require costly pre-processing to build.
Red Eclipses in-game mapping feature results in a large variety of custom maps. The diverse nature of the Cube Engine's mapping feature allows for creativity and almost endless possibilities for custom maps. Another aspect of Red Eclipse is the ease at which custom maps can be shared. They can be easily shared with others through community sites such as Quadropolis. A map from Quake III Arena has been remade for Red Eclipse engine by players, and was included in the 1.0 Ides release of Red Eclipse.
Map editing in Red Eclipse can also be done cooperatively online with other players.
See also
- Cube 2: Sauerbraten
- 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