Alien Arena: Combat Edition

Being powered by the CRX game engine (with ODE), Alien Arena is an open source and 100% free old-school deathmatch 3D first-person shooter (FPS) game that includes modern features. Built for fraggers by fraggers!

With a strong focus on online multiplayer action, Alien Arena includes a total of 25 levels, 9 detailed characters, 8 weapons, 2 vehicles, 5 gameplay modes (DM, TDM, CTF, All Out Assault, Deathball), and much more for you to discover.

By combining the 1950s-era Sci-Fi atmosphere with an amazing gameplay, which is very similar to the Doom, Unreal Tournament and Quake game series, Alien Arena is now available for the Linux, Microsoft Windows and FreeBSD operating systems.

The game has been successfully tested on major Linux distributions, on both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

What is new in this release:

• Combat Edition now includes the brand new Alpha Demo of Alien Arena: Tactical, a completely new mode of play that is objective oriented, slower paced, and requires precise teamwork in order to defeat the opposing team.
• Tactical pits Aliens vs Humans in a struggle to disable the enemy base by disabling their defense systems, destroying several key components and sub-components. Each team consists of three different player classes, each with a different ability that interacts with other classes. Working together a team can destroy their enemy much faster than if not.
• The Alpha Demo contains a single map, Tac-Extermination, and serves as a proving ground for the evolution of this new game. Some of the artwork is placeholder, as this is an Alpha, and several other game play elements regarding physics and abilities are not yet implemented.

What is new in version 2011 7.60:

• Renderer/Client:
• 1. Subsurface light scattering and rim lighting.
• 2. God Rays from sun objects.
• 3. Dripping water rain effect POV.
• 4. Dripping liquids on walls effect.
• 5. Glowing ember and blowing trash effects.
• 6. Smoother transition of dynamic and static lighting of meshes.
• 7. Chained particle effects(i.e improved lightning, etc).
• 8. Fix endian related bug in IQM loading routines.
• 9. Added tooltips to GUI.
• 10. Simple items rendering option.
• 11. Fix timedemo code.
• 12. Conditionals added to rscripts.
• 13. Various optimizations in MD2 and IQM rendering.
• 14. Optimizations in shadow rendering.
• 15. Improved LOD scaling.
• 16. Fix ogg-vorbis read to use host endian order.
• 17. Added framework for adding instrumentation to HUD.
• 18. Sanity checking for corrupt bsp files and content.
• Gameplay:
• 1. Smart bombs now shootable.
• 2. Added Mind Eraser weapon.
• 3. Improved weapon switching/selection.
• 4. Improved antilag to compensate for built-in latency.
• 5. Added forward and backward dodging/improved dodging overall.
• 6. New bot CTF ai and other bot ai improvements.
• 7. Removed restriction of being able to change teams in team games.
• 8. Added "adrenaline" music when flags are in play.
• 9. Extended weapon respawn times for duel mode.
• 10. All doors now shootable.
• New Content:
• 1. Dm-extermination.
• 2. Dm-leviathan2k12.
• 3. Dm-bloodfactory2k12.
• 4. Dm-crucible2k12.
• 5. Dm-dynamo2k12.
• 6. Ctf-extermination.
• 7. Ctf-purgatory.
• 8. ctf-vesuvius2k11.
• 9. tca-zion2k9.
• 10. tca-purgatory.
• 11. tca-extermination.
• 12. Martian Overlord player character.
• 13. Martian Warrior player character.
• 14. New TCA spiderbots.
• 15. Improved LOD's.

What is new in version 2011 7.53:

• Extended use of VBO for big performance increases
• Signifigant improvements to bot AI
• "Dm Lights" server option
• Improvements to menu code
• Improved stats algorithms
• Entity definition files
• Optimized and improved vegetation rendering
• Variety of bug fixes and code cleansing
• Two new maps
• Optimizations to IQM and MD2 rendering
• New "Ultra" skill level
• Speed hack detection improvements

What is new in version 2011 7.52:

• Brings new features, levels and bug fixes.

What is new in version 2011 7.51:

• Extensive rewrite of bsp surface rendering for a massive performance increase
• Complete rewrite of vertex buffer object code
• Complete rewrite of post process effects(pain, heat wave distortions, etc)
• Improvements to light volumes
• Improvements to shadow mapping for dynamic shadows
• Massive renderer cleanup and re-or
• First editions of a developer reference
• Improvements to vehicle hud rendering
• Added configure option for Unix/Linux ANSI color console output
• Integrate ODE library into Unix/Linux build to avoid potential problems
• Variety of graphical updates
• Three new/revamped levels
• Fixed bug with vid_restart on map change, for much faster map loading
• Added downloading of iqm meshes

What is new in version 2011 7.50:

• Ragdoll physics using the Open Dynamics Physics Engine
• Implementation of AutoTools
• Extensive re-write of in-game IRC client
• Two brand new maps - Annihilation and Neptune
• Player models and skins updated
• Fixed LOD meshes for all player models
• Added alphamasking to ppl lit BSP surfaces
• Fixed dodge-chaining exploit
• Extensive code cleanup in many areas
• Faster particle rendering
• Updated MacPorts build
• Fixed bugs with exiting vehicles
• TTF fonts for console and game messages
• Fixed issues with colored names and kick/ban routines
• Reworked auto-bot kick and auto team balancing
• Fixed and cleaned up various rscript issues
• Option to replace vehicle consoles with 2D HUDS
• Listen servers automatically passworded
• Fixed OpenAL segfaults when no devices are defined
• Fixed precaching of base player models and their weapon models for much smoother gameplay
• New music added for various maps
• Fixed server issues with intermissions, and player names
• Revamp of dm-babel
• Updated/improved various shaders
• Streamlining of several bsp surface renderer functions

What is new in version 2011:

• Do you like old school deathmatch with modern features? How about rich, colorful, arcadelike atmospheres? How about...retro Sci Fi? Then you're going to love what Alien Arena has in store for you! This game combines some of the very best aspects of such games as Quake III and Unreal Tournament and wraps them up with a retro alien theme, while adding tons of original ideas to make the game quite unique.
• Alien Arena is a furious frag fest with arenas ranging from the small, to the massive. With a large built-in player base, it's never hard to find a good match going on, at any hour of the day. The community is friendly, as well as prolific. Dozens of maps, models, and various accessories have been created by community members to add on to the game experience. The CRX engine that powers Alien Arena has received very signifigant upgrades in recent releases, resulting not only in stunning new visuals, but vastly increased performance as well.

What is new in version 2009 7.45:

• New skeletal model format.
• Soft shadows.
• Faster, more accurate lighting.
• Major optimizations for faster rendering.
• Fixes for old vertex animated meshes.
• All player models re-animated with new skeletal format.
• Fixes in IRC client.

What is new in version 2009 7.40:

• Five new maps!
• Two new weapon models.
• Improvements to the renderer.
• Security and memory bugfixes.
• A variety of gameplay changes and tweaks.
• Antilag bugfixes.
• Revamped menu.