Play OpenArena

Haiku doesn't provide today 3D acceleration, meaning that you are limited today when applications or games require of lot of graphical computation power.

However it doesn't mean 3D is inaccessible on Haiku because software rendering still exist.

A good example is Open Arena on Haiku, an open source clone of Quake 3 Arena, which will be demonstrated in this article.

The machine used to play with OpenArena is a NUC Intel with the below specifications :

Don't be afraid about the RAM, I'm only using it in case of big compilation projects ;)

To install OpenArena, select "All packages" in HaikuDepot and type "quake" :

Select OpenArena and proceed with the installation.

When the game is launched you will see the main menu below :

Let's do some setup on the "System" part :

If you would like to play in windowed mode, select "Fullscreen> Off" :

You can also change the resolution if needed.

The other interesting part is the controls. If the default shortcuts for the "Look" controls don't suit you, you can change them:

Same for the "Move", note the down/crouch or the run/walk shortcuts which can be useful in game:

You can also change the "Shoot" part, especially the shortcuts for the weapons selection :

I never use it, but you can define a "gesture" control in the "Misc" part :

Single player

Now, let's start a single player game in the main menu :

I don't like the default "Tier 1" levels, so I click on the "Skirmish" button :

There's a nice level in the space named "wrackdm17" :

Click on "next" to complete the selection. And then "fight" :

As indicated in the previous screen, the game is composed of one human -you- and two bots : Grism and Andriy.

The game mode is "Free for all", meaning the winner is the one who will do the maximum of kills :

This level is nice, because it's like an open field in space and you can jump between the various platforms:

I was surprisingly impressed by the speed of the game without 3D acceleration but also its stability.

No crash to notice during the game play (only one crash when quitting the application).

When playing a "Free for all" game, it's possible to add some bots, if you think there's not enough action :)

Multiplayer

If you would like to fight with other human players, you need to enter the "Multiplayer" mode :

If you know some friends, you can host a game server by clicking on the "Create" button :

Then select the level and the type of game (Free for all, Capture the flag, ...) and then "next" :

By default the server is opened for 8 players, you can confirm with "Fight" :

I've tested to connect from another machine with Windows and OpenArena client.

It was working like a charm :

The opponent was called "Haiku", strange ?

Sorry Haiku, I decided to frag you :)

Multiplayer - Internet

A last possibility is to play with human players you don't know, by selecting one of the possible internet servers :

Most of the time, it's working fine also. You can join the game or decide to be a follower of the game like below :

In the server info, this hostname indicated the server type as CTF (Capture the flag) :

Conclusion

OpenArena is a good surprise on Haiku and is really fun to play.

If your Haiku system is installed on a bare metal machine, I encourage you to give it a try.

You can check the frame per second statistics (FPS) by entering the console (tilde key).

Then type :

/cg_drawFPS 1

On my machine, this statistic was around 30 FPS :

Any feedback you would like to share on the game ?

You can put a comment just below :)