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Coming soon to Steam Early Access, Tomatenquark is another attempt to revive a classic free and open source first-person shooter. The developer sent word today via Twitter, that it should be releasing in the next few weeks.

Tomatenquark describes itself as "a community homage to Cube 2: Sauerbraten", being based on the code of Cube 2 and their hope is to back ongoing development of the game and build up a community around it. With gameplay inspired by the fast-paced classics like Quake, their aim is just to bring back good classic first-person fun with various game modes. However, it also has the Cube Engine 2 editor which brings cooperative map/geometry editing in-game.

Seems like they're doing a similar thing to Warfork, another recent free and open source shooter that also released on Steam based on another classic Warsow.

You can follow Tomatenquark on Steam, and find everything on GitHub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments

Nanobang Apr 28, 2020
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Just to be clear, is this a (multi-mode) FPS arena shooter? Cube 2, Sauerbraten, Warsow, etc. were always intriguing looking options on the pre-Steam Linux gaming landscape back in the day, but they lacked any real single-player appeal.


Last edited by Nanobang on 28 April 2020 at 11:10 am UTC
Linas Apr 28, 2020
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Assets for Cube 2: Sauerbraten are non-free, so they will have to build a lot from scratch. That is not a small undertaking.

Cube 2 is quite a unique engine because it follows a fat client / thin server model. This allows for really low input lag, and more accurate aiming and movement for the players.

Although the engine is not entirely open source. The netcode provided in the source code is not compatible with the one in pre-compiled binaries for Cube 2: Sauerbraten. That caused quite a bit of drama when Debian Games Team wanted to package the game. The author claimed that this is to prevent cheating, and refused to do anything about it. Whereas Debian needed to rebuild the engine for multiple different architectures that they support. The source version ended up in Debian. Well, that was a trip down the memory lane...
Drakker Apr 28, 2020
Quoting: NanobangJust to be clear, is this a (multi-mode) FPS arena shooter? Cube 2, Sauerbraten, Warsow, etc. were always intriguing looking options on the pre-Steam Linux gaming landscape back in the day, but they lacked any real single-player appeal.

Yeah its multiplayer only. You can play with bots but they aren't very good. The main "single player" appeal of the game is level editing. The editor is a joy to use, its so easy and quick. I have made so many levels for that game. I wish I still had enough free time to make more today.
Fohlen Apr 28, 2020
Hey there! I am one of the core developers. Currently Tomatenquark (TQ) only offers multiplayer support.
However we are in the process of adding a campaign. In comparison to Sauerbraten we would like to keep a more consistent art-style across the content that is delivered with the game (which will reflect in continuous storyline across the campaigns).
If there are further questions please comment here or on Discord!
Tchey Apr 28, 2020
I miss slow paced tactical shooters...
axredneck Apr 29, 2020
Quoting: FohlenHey there! I am one of the core developers...
Are you planning to take something from Red Eclipse 2? (e.g. some code)


Last edited by axredneck on 29 April 2020 at 8:44 pm UTC
Fohlen May 1, 2020
Firstly we do support custom maps (which is also a feature that RE2 has). We will want to cover Steam Workshop as well!
From a gaming perspective, there might be slight weapon changes in the future.
Most notably we will want to port the racing mode from Red Eclipse into TQ. This has been a long-requested feature in Sauerbraten, and we feel that it is fun and should be done!
axredneck May 1, 2020
@Fohlen, one more question: will there be advanced lighting like in Tesseract and now in RE2?
Fohlen May 8, 2020
While it is not on our agenda right now we might consider porting features from Tesseract. This mostly depends on how many people get involved in the project, and if someone is interested in porting such features. Personally I like the idea, so I'm all for it.
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