News archive

To reduce the payload of the index page of our wiki, we gather old news on this page. Instead of just deleting news on the main page we copy the whole message (with time and stuff) onto this page.

News messages

New PPS in HS10 — September 2010

The Orxonox PPS will be held once again this autumn semster. We, the PPS teaching assistants, are thrilled to be able to offer another exciting PPS for the students of the 3rd semester of the D-ITET. We encourage students of the D-ITET to check out the PPS site? and the game (or at least have a look at the screenshots). If you have any questions regarding the PPS (or anything else regarding Orxonox, really) please do not hesitate to contact us. We are looking forward to welcoming you to our PPS and we hope to have a lot of fun developing Orxonox together.

Orxonox package for Ubuntu and Debian now available

The Orxonox developer team is happy to announce that Orxonox can now be downloaded for Debian and Ubuntu in form of two distribution packages. Our Personal Package Archive allows users to update Orxonox when there were changes committed to the package. Even though this is not the announcement of a release, it is major news as Orxonox was never available so handily to this date. From this point on the basis for further packages and releases in the form of packages is set. You will find more information on how to install the package on the download page.

Orxonox Convention XII — June 2010

We're proud to announce the 12th Orxonox Convention in Zurich. It will take place on Jun 3rd at 12:30 in the ETZ E81. We will present the latest developments and achievements of Orxonox in a short presentation with a live demo. You can find the flyer ​here.

Orxonox in Blitz — April 20th, 2010

x3n? wrote an article for the ​Blitz, the student magazine of the electrical and mechanical engineers at ETH Zürich. The article with the title "Pizza und Spiele" (allusion to ​Brot und Spiele) is written in German and is about Orxonox in general and the PPS course we offer for students of out department at the ETH. Pizzas and Coke are very important for our nightly coding sessions and we are grateful to the ​AMIV for paying our bills. x3n explains what Orxonox is, how it was founded and how the PPS course came about. The article concludes with an invitation to the next presentation where the students of the PPS will present their projects.

Grab your copy of the Blitz during the following two weeks at the ETH or read the ​online version.

PPS in FS10 announced — February 2010

In light of the coming spring semester, the Orxonox team has appointed a couple of Orxonox maintainers as PPS leaders to be able to offer another PPS for the students of the 2nd and 4th semester of the D-ITET. We encourage students of the D-ITET to check out the PPS site? and the game (or at least the screenshots). We are also always happy to answer any unanswered questions you may have about the PPS in specific or in general. Please contact us.
We are looking forward to welcome you in our PPS and we're hoping to have a fun time developing Orxonox together.

Major Improvements in Network Code

Orxonox should be fun and what's more fun than playing with your friends? That's why we always had a strong multiplayer mode in focus. With recent major improvements in our network code we moved closer to this goal. The network data load of one pass has been reduced by nearly 94% to 4.6KB in an empty level with 50 bots. The time to prepare and compress the data has been reduced to nearly a fifth of the previous time consumption.
This allows us to better synchronize large levels and even when a lot is happening in the scene you will experience less lags in multiplayer mode.
Additional to those immediate improvements the structure of the network code has been improved. In prospect of future multithreading, network tasks are now better separated and could be processed in parallel.

Developers Finish Tag 0.0.4 — January 2010

With the new year the developers of Orxonox reached a new milestone (we call it tag) in our development. Tag 0.0.4 includes all the new features from autumn 2009!

• Our GUI is now much more elaborate and you are finally able to configure things like graphics and sound settings in the options menu.
• The steering of the space ships is improved and more intuitive.
• The weapons arsenal has been stocked up with steerable rockets.
• The overall sound effect and music has been expanded and improved, so it is now XML-loadable, event-driven and 3D sound is supported as well.
• Last but not least, we have more space ships for the human race and music tracks for better atmosphere.

Overall these changes enhance the game experience a lot and we look forward to implement more features in the near future.

Orxonox Convention XI

We're proud to announce the 11th Orxonox Convention. It will take place on Dec 16th at 13:15 in the ETZ G91. Please feel free to come by and have a look at the most recent developments and achievements. You can find the flyer ​here.

Somebody set us up the bomb! — July 2009

Due to a software upgrade all style sheet information got lost somewhere on the server. We are eager to fix the page as quickly as possible. Until then you will have to bear with the standard design of TRAC.

Meanwhile you can meet us in the IRC channel over the new ​web interface we set up. So you do not need a client to join the channel.

Review of Convention X — May 28

The Orxonox developer team was proud to present the next great step of Orxonox. The presentation was great according to many from the attendands and great praise was expressed. As Orxonox made the first time impression that it is fun to play and acctually playable, mainly because of the three new gametypes developed by the PPS students, but also because of a new pickup system including a inventory using the GUI. The graphics had made another leap with more and nicer effects and a greater variaty of content. Last but not least there is finally sound in Orxonox, which helps a lot to create a exciting atmosphere.

Start of PPS (FS 09) — February 26/March 2, 2009, 13:15

The year is fresh, the semester even fresher and the Orxonox PPS is the freshest! We, the PPS teaching assistants of Orxonox, want to welcome the students from the second and fourth semester of the D-ITET, who subscribed to Orxonox. We hope you will have a great PPS and will have as much fun as learning experience. We are looking forward to work with you on your contributions to the project. Check out this site? to find out more about the PPS!

Convention IX — December 17, 2008, 13:15

The ninth Orxonox Convention will be on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 13:15. The presentation will be in room ETZ E81. We're looking forward to presenting the achievements of this semester!

Upcoming Orxonox Convention IX — December 17, 2008

Last time you saw the best Orxonox you have ever seen, this time you will experience what huge steps can be done in just one more semester of hard work. Our motivated students will present their work and we guarantee a great show in December. Come back to this page to learn time and location as this will be decided soon.

New PPS Semester — September 23, 2008

The new ETH semester has begun last week and the subscriptions for the Orxonox PPS are out. We will be attending 10 Students until the end the semester with the hope to have interesting contributions like always.

Server Downtime — July 19, 2008

As you probably have noticed, our server was not reachable for the past weeks. We had to restart it, and for some reasons, it did not come back, and it took some time to figure out the problem. But we are back.

Upcoming Orxonox Convention VIII — May 29, 2008, 13:00

The best Orxonox you have ever seen! It's maybe not the most beautiful version right now, but the new features are worth to look at. Come to the Orxonox Convention to see what the PPS students did during the last semester and how much Orxonox improved. The presentation of our work will be in the ETZ E9. Take an hour time to have a look at the most furious 3D shooter on Linux.

Revision 1000 reached! — 6th April, 2008

We have reached revision 1000 since we changed our engine to Ogre. Right now we work on a scripting engine, input system, network support, models and textures, core libraries and HUD.

Arcturus released!! — March, 2008

After quite some work we want to release our latest version of Orxonox. Feel free to download and test it on your computer. We would be very happy to hear some feedback from you. Also our support sites may need some update, so please ​tell us, if something is not working right.

Starting PPS FS 08 — February 28, 2008, 13:15

Another semester and PPS starts. We want to welcome the PPS students and hope for their support with Orxonox. Let's have fun and create something cool. Get more information on this page?. The Orxonox-PPS-Leader-Team () is looking forward to coach another group of students from the second year at the D-ITET. - Orxonox-Team

Finished Arcturus Milestone! — February 27, 2008, 14:00

With the reassignment of some tickets and closing the last few tickets, Orxonox Version 0.1 is now ready for release. It's really cool, what we did in only one semester. We're proud to announce that the release is coming soon. Although you can't do THAT much you can get a feeling of the potential our decision to change to ​Ogre. - Beni?

AMIV supports Orxonox — February 26, 2008

The ​AMIV decided to support our project financially. The association will bear future costs of the PPS, when we organize another pizza evening.
We want to thank the AMIV for its generosity and think that this is another good opportunity to say how cool the AMIV is and what nice people are working there. Thank you Pädu? for representing Orxonox before the AMIV.

Upcoming Orxonox Convention VII — December 19, 2007, 14:00

The PPS is coming to an end and we're working on the game to be able to present something on the next Wednesday. See how well the game progressed since October and what interesting things our PPS students established in the last weeks. Come to the Orxonox Convention VII in the VAW B1, right behind the Gloriabar Mensa.

New Framework Development in Progress — November 20, 2007, 13:15

Most of the road blocking design questions have been answered and the orxonox code development crew is back on track again. Current work includes a brand new core framework basing on ​Ogre, loading, class hierarchy, networking, particles, player control, artificial intelligence, physics, weapon system, hud and many cool models! We all wish the development crew good luck in their mission! Check out the forum for more news.

Start of Orxonox PPS — October 4, 2007, 13:15

The list of the PPS subscribers has been published. We are happy to welcome the 14 interested students who want to learn more about game design and open source development. We're looking forward to work and learn with you. The PPS starts this Wednesday. - Beni?

Orxonox V2 — September 26, 2007, 23:54

The Orxonox Think Tank was a success. We talked about the future of Orxonox and we agreed, there will be an Orxonox V2 that bases on an external graphics library (which is not yet defined).

Orxonox Think Tank — September 24, 2007, 18:00

Orxonox think tank about the route the game has take and changes for the next semester. All the people who want to contribute ideas meet at hofzges place at 6pm.

Redesign of Orxonox Website — September 23, 2007, 21:28

The webpage task force (Hofzge?, Nowic? and Beni?) is close to finish the redesign of the Orxonox Website. With help from Patrick? we came to the conclusion that the website should be integrated into our wiki and that the wiki needs a major redesign. Thanks to Pascal Graf, who designed the new wiki, we were able to give our side a new look and advantages to visitors, developers and site administrators.

Orxonox Convention 6 — June 21, 2007, 11:45

The sixth Orxonox convention is in town! Be sure to join in at 2 p.m. at the ETZ E1 at Gloriastrasse 35.

Orxonox Blog — April 20, 2007, 11:45

To improve the popularity of Orxonox, I started a blog at the ETH. Check it out on ​this page and leave a comment! - Beni?