h1. Public Relations

Our first announcement of this project is coming immediately after illfonic first announces their Nexuiz game at GDC http://www.gdconf.com
Their announcement could happen anytime during that conference, which is held March 9th - 13th.

Here, we will organize the ideas behind our first project announcement.

The main goal for this introductory announcement is to state *1) our reasons* and *2) our plans*, but we will focus more on our plans. This announcement shouldn't focus on finger-pointing. Rather, it should focus on our own values and the goals that we plan to accomplish with this new game. We will have to touch upon the *broken trust* that stemmed from decisions made behind closed doors. But our main goal for this announcement is to make our intentions clear, and, of course, to unveil the new name. We want to begin filling up our IRC channels and our website.

h2. Words we will try to not use, or use limitedly:

* Fork
* Nexuiz
* Alientrap
* Illfonic

h2. What is going on?

# a new game formed from the major contributors of Nexuiz GPL
# the name of the game is Xonotic
# the website is xonotic.org
# irc channel is #xonotic on quakenet

h2. Reasons

# trust issues
# a fresh start
# focus on our values

h2. Project changes

# restructure project leadership for more balance
# improved project organization
# more community focus
# better attention to marketing and public relations
# a more defined artistic direction
# more emphasis on recruiting and communicating with new contributors to the project

h2. What will change in the game?

# new set of player models
# new set of sounds
# default maps will get a makeover
# new names for some weapons and gamemodes, especially ones using the "nex" prefix

h2. Timeline

# we can't give a timeline
# instead, we will invite people to our IRC channels and to our website to keep updated

h2. The name

# some reasons why we chose the name

h2. Summary

# We appreciate everyone's support
# We look forward to creating a game that everyone will enjoy.

h2. Details or topics we will not mention in this announcement

(better to spread out to future announcements)
# Central user system
# Website features
# Details about roles

h1. Our announcement

(Here is where the announcement copy will start)

We'd like to formally announce the beginnings of our new community project, Xonotic.  The founders of this project and community were first Nexuiz[link] developers, contributors and believers.  Following the March 1st announcement of IllFonic's aquiring of nexuiz.com and the rights to the name for their closed source PS3 version of Nexuiz, a large portion of the community has joined together to create Xonotic.  Beyond being a first person shooter based on Nexuiz (GPL) 2.5.2svn[link], Xonotic aims to be a rethink and reorganization of how we share a GPL video game and organize the services around it.

h1. v2 expanded by Spaceman

We formally announce the beginning of our new community project, Xonotic[link].

The founders of the Xonotic[link] project and community were once Nexuiz[link] developers, contributors and believers.

On March 3rd 2010 IllFonic announced[AT link] their aquisition of nexuiz.com[link], the rights to the games name and a commercial licence for the original Quake 1 game engine for a closed source console version of Nexuiz.

Following their announcement a large portion of the community joined together to create Team Xonotic[link] and an enduring legacy. Beyond being a first person shooter based on Nexuiz (GPL), Team Xonotic aims to be a rethink and reorganization of how a community creates an open source video game and organizes the services around it.

A distinct lack of leadership (the announced 253 hot fix is 5 months late), the underhand manner that AlienTrap used to sell the game code and the loss of the Nexuiz identity caused a huge uproar in the game community. This brought together the game coders and players in a community revolt.

Team Xonotic[link] will be run by a small team of volunteers with no one in total control. All significant decisions will be made by an elected body of six people.

Xonotic 1.0 is planned to be released in about 6 months. Today a compatibilty pack has been released that will rebrand Nexuiz 252.

Team Xonotic

h1. v3, edited by a grue

We would like to announce our new community project, Xonotic[link].

On March 3rd, 2010, IllFonic acquired a commercial, closed-source license for Nexuiz and its engine, together with rights to the game's name. When it became clear that the deal had been finalized, a large portion of the community joined together to create Xonotic[link] and continue development under a new name. We firmly believe that under the existing circumstances this is the only way for the project to remain free, open-source and community-based.

While functionality-wise being a direct successor to Nexuiz, the Xonotic[link] project is a rethink and reorganization of how community creates an open source video game and organizes the services around it. The idea is to bring game development and design under the community control and to change the development process in a way that will make it easier to contribute. The major organizational change is that the decisions affecting the game at large will be made by an elected group of six people, XSG (Xonotic Steering Group), with no single person maintaining total control.

The major technical change is the transition of development to the Git version control system, which should make collaboration much easier. While the push (i.e. write) access to the master branch will be limited to a few people, many more will have permissions to create and maintain topic branches, which can then be easily tested and integrated into the master.

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Team Xonotic