Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project - Dev interview

Check out this very interesting interview of a developer for the Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project. This covers the upcoming "Christmas" release of version 2.1 and touches on topics such as:

• New AI
  
• Multiplayer


• Updated terrain rendering


• Requirement for Vertex Arrays (No more software rendering support)


• New hitsystem.
  

The blog is German, but this interview was done in English. There is also a German version on the blog.

Aliens Versus Predator

Aliens Versus Predator for the PC and MacOS was released in 1999 by Sierra/Rebellion to very good reviews, scoring mostly between 80% and 95%.

“Where the game deviates from the norm, and succeeds beyond expectations, is in its rendering of three distinct viewpoints and its effective re-creation of the film series' unrelieved sense of dread.” -GameSpot

On release it generated a lot of controversy due to the difficulty of the game. The difficulty was compounded due to the lack (or as retro gamers called an enhancement) of saving between levels. Saves were later returned in a patch with limitations.

The game is distinguishable from other generic FPS at the time because of its choice of characters to play as. You can choose either a marine, which feels somewhat familiar; predator, which has a nice array of weapons and vision modes; and alien, which only has access to melee weapons but makes up for this by rocketing about, treading walls and drinking the juices from its victims for healing (very cool.)

Two years the game generated more controversy by having its source released to the community, allowing it to be ported to Linux. However, although this project is fully playable, it is abandoned; and no other projects have been initiated.

From here, a developer could continue the source to improve compatibility with other systems by supporting standard APIs or update the 8 year old graphics. At this point we could ask Rebellion if they would considering releasing the game as freeware to allow it to be packaged with new compiles of the source, with the possibility of including advertisements for newer games.

Dark Reign: The Future of War

Dark Reign: The Future of War might as well have been named, the future of Real Time Strategy (RTS) games as it marked a significant step forward with the inclusion of functions found in modern RTS games. The shift was considerable, as while the game was released ten years ago, it took many years before features such as build queuing/stacking or building exit way-points would become standard features in modern Real Time Strategies.

I can remember in 1997; a time when gamers of the day would purchase magazines to ascertain whether a game was worthy of some green; Often being weary of magazines that would have commercial interests. PCPowerPlay, an Australian magazine was renowned for giving detailed reviews, and getting medieval on the asses of average games. However, Dark Reign was praised; later receiving game-of-the-year, typically reserved for the likes of Half-Life and Warcraft 2. It was now clear to the late 90s RTS gamer that they would forgo adhering to the latest 90s craze, and instead buy a copy of Dark Reign knowing that it would become a LAN party prerequisite for years to come.

So there you have it. 10 years ago Dark Reign reigned supreme. But where is it now? It’s actually hard to get a legit copy of the game. (or even semi legit via ebay). Simply checking the number one Dark Reign fan-page will bring you to a hacked version of the full game that allows the game to be run on Windows XP and even Vista.

I feel this is an ideal time to open the source on this one, or even release the game as freeware. At this point an active community still exists and I have already heard from a developer who is interested in porting Dark Reign to the GP2X handheld Linux console. Allowing the golden Dark Reign days to live on will ensure the franchise, owned by Activision is maintained.

I will write a letter to Activision and Auran expressing this and report back with the response.

S.W.I.N.E. - The response

I got a response from StormRegion today regarding my request to release the source for S.W.I.N.E. They explained that currently they are not releasing the source as the future for S.W.I.N.E has not been determined yet. This gives up hope in two ways. Firstly, we can hope that StormRegion releases the source in the future when the game engine is no longer used and secondly we can hope for a sequel to the awesome S.W.I.N.E. game.

A sequel is an interesting point, as StormRegion has grown considerably since S.W.I.N.E, being renowned for their excellent Codename Panzers series. In the meantime be on the lookout for Codename Panzers: Cold War to be release quarter one, 2008.

S.W.I.N.E.

Swine is a unique game for being probably the first slow paced tactical real time strategy. Released by StormRegion in 2001, it was made freeware after only four year. This is despite receiving fine reviews and continuing support for the game.

The game in itself is rather simple and childish as you play either the Rabbits or the Pigs (French or Germans) in a World War 2 scenario. However, it stands out because of its focus on tactics which has a significant impact on combat. Many of these ideals were included in future StormRegion games, such as Codename: Panzers.
Another striking feature is the graphics which seemed very next generation at the time. Even today it looks like a well-made budget title and simple gorgeous at high resolutions such as 1600x1200.

As this game is freeware with no sign of a sequel, it seems like a perfect time to request the source to be released. If this were to happen, the game and engine could be ported to other devices and updated to support current operating system technology and libs. It could also allow the graphics to be improved. The time seems ideal indeed.

I have recently fired off an email to StormRegion and will soon report on the results.

Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project

Warzone 2100 was released for PC and Playstation in 1999 to positive reviews. The game was developed by Pumpkin Studios and Published by Edios.

Screenshot shamelessly stolen.

Below are some examples of the reviews at the time.

http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/160/160652p1.html - (80/100)

"Mostly it boils down to taking great ideas found in other RTS titles and combining them into one. Pumpkin Studios did a fantastic job with that task
and this one is certainly worth playing all the way through.”

http://au.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/warzone2100/review.html - (7.6/10)

“Warzone 2100's highly navigable 3D engine, unique campaign structure, and multiplayer gameplay should please most real-time strategy fans."

Although these reviews certainly didn’t make it Game-of-the-Year, there were a
lot of people who would have considered it the game of the decade. In fact,
popularity of this game continued for years after Edios had canned support.

Despite this, community projects were developing hacks to patch issues. Finally
a group called “Pumpkin-2” created a petition requesting the sourcecode.

http://www.petitiononline.com/pumpkin2/petition.html

Not only did Edios release the source in 2004, but they also released all resources needed to play the game with the exception of movies.

With the source-code, the community spawned a few Warzone related projects; however, the most enduring and significant one is the “Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project”

Major improvements are:

• Portability – The game can now be played on PC, Mac and Linux with the possibility of many more to come thanks to the use of standard development libraries.
• Eye Candy – The resolution can be changed on the command line which allows support for modern resolutions. Also the graphics simply looks a lot better.

…and lots more. I can‘t seem to find a list of changes.

Where to now? The Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project is always looking for developers and graphic artist to donate their time with many items on the todo list. Check out the contributions section. Also, with this past history, is it now time to ask for early "Earth" games to be set free which are developed by Reality Pump.

Introduction

With this blog I intend to do the following:

• Report on commercial games that have become open source.
• Write about my attempts to convince commercial game companies to release source code to games that are either abandoned, not supported with current hardware or those that have a strong community desire to be ported.
• Keep up to date with projects that make use of released code.
• Catalogue a list of commercial games that have released their source code as well as a list of those who have rejected.

I hope to cover all games from all systems; Even DOS games written in spaghetti code. And when source code is offered I would seek people to start a port, or at the very least make the source available on open source sharing sites such as sourceforge.

I hope you all enjoy reading and would be happy to act on suggestions for games that people would love to see opened up.