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### FAQ - General

- What's the relation of the Intensity Engine to Sauerbraten/Cube 2?
  Some major differences include:

- Goal-wise, Sauerbraten/Cube 2 is an FPS, whereas the Intensity Engine aims to be a general 3D gaming/virtual worlds platform.
- Syntensity lets you create all kinds of games. Each 'map' can be a completely new game, with unique events, rules, weapons (or even having no weapons at all), physics, etc. For example, creating an 'ice material' is very simple.
- Syntensity lets you easily modify games. If you have a good idea for how to improve an existing game, then you can clone it, make the change, and start playing it immediately with other people. There is no need for manual downloading, compiling, or waiting for a new release.
- Games are written in JavaScript, and Syntensity utilizes the high-performance Google V8 JavaScript engine to make things speedy.
- Syntensity has a central user account system. This should help to deal with cheating, etc.

Technically speaking, the Intensity Engine builds upon the Sauerbraten/Cube 2 codebase. While it uses far more code from other sources - like Google V8, Python, SDL - it uses those other components as unmodified libraries, whereas the Sauerbraten/Cube 2 code is modified where necessary, and in general the degree of integration is very high. So in a sense the Intensity Engine might be considered a fork or a mod of Sauerbraten/Cube 2. Looking at it that way, the Intensity Engine has the following features that might be considered 'engine additions' to the Cube 2 engine:

- Much more general entity system in C++ and JavaScript
- Google V8 JavaScript engine integration, for game logic scripting
- Python integration for various high-level functionalities
- Automatic network protocol code generation
- Asset system, with features like dependencies and mutability
- Various improvements for thirdperson camera movement, network bandwidth, etc.
- Django-based master server for central user accounts, shared asset management, etc.

- I can't find our how to do some things that are mentioned in this wiki - the client program doesn't seem to have them as options.
  There are two relevant places where you can do things: the client program, and the website.
  - The client program is the program you download and run, which you use to play and create games.
  - The website is, well, the website, www.syntensity.com
  Some things are done on the website - for example, creating new assets, or requisitioning a server to run an activity. Others can be done in the client program - like play a game, or edit a map and upload it. This wiki should say where each task can be done, but it might contain some mistakes - sorry about those.
  This state of affairs definitely has some annoyances, like needing to log in separately on the website and in the client program. We intend to unify things and in that way make them a lot simpler, hopefully in the near future.

Updated on Sep 18, 2009 by Alon Zakai (Version 7)