Dynamix Closed Down?

ioctl writes: "According to Planet Tribes, Dynamix is being shut down by its parent Sierra (or more appropriately, Vivendi Corp.). Story here and here. Looks like my buddy just wasted $50 on Tribes 2... =P"

Tribes 2 gone? Doesn't have to be.

[Dasher42]

I am utterly surprised that the V12 engine, a derivative of the Tribes 2 engine by GarageGames at www.garagegames.com [garagegames.com] hasn't been mentioned. With minor exceptions where Sierra's intellectual property was removed from the engine and replaced with other code, it essentially the source code to the Tribes 2 game engine, already near the state where it could be used to create high-quality games for Linux. The EULA requires a $100 per-seat license fee for the source code and distribution must be through GarageGames, but the model seems quite pragmatically attractive, seeing as how open source hasn't quite caught on in the 3D games arena like it has for operating systems etc. If you ask me, this is a big chance to improve the gaming scene for alternative platforms.

$50

[iGN97]

$50 dollars can hardly be spent on anything more worthwhile than Tribes 2. It's a great game, and it's been released. I don't think all the servers out there will disappear.

Condolences if this is true...

[ClayJar]

Having been one of the fans whose hopes for the Babylon 5: Into The Fire space combat simulator were screwed by Sierra, I can only say that this is yet another bucket of water in the ocean of disgust for anything related to Sierra.

The B5:ItF fans and developers fought for about two years to keep the project alive somehow, and at several turns, Sierra (and whatever parent company, of course) all but threw monkey wrenches into the process. Now the project is officially dead, and I will probably retain my bitterness toward anything Sierra (other than mountains, which are not associated with the company using the name) for a very, very long time.

And don't ask me about TNT. :/

Re:A sad fairwell...

[nanoakron]

I almost cried the day I heard that Sierra was taken over by a French (I hated them already, this was just fuel to my fire) megacorp and was shutting down production of ALL the games that made them famous in the first place.

When they killed off Space Quest (amazing stuff!!), Kings Quest, QFG, PQ etc etc. they didn't just take a few games off the market - they killed off an entire GENRE of computer games, games many people grew up playing.

Sure, it's great to get out your awp and blast holes in people when playing counterstrike, or run in guns blazing with Quake, even develop an army and tactical attacks on the latest Dune 2 remake (because let's face it, that's all they are nowadays). But I'll never forget the infuriating, involving and downright entertaining times I had playing Sierra's quest games. Modern 'adventure' games don't even come close - I've played 'Blade of Darkness' and both Diablos, but where is the puzzle that takes an inventive and amusing solution to complete and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment when you get past it?

Where's the involving storyline, the interesting characters?

Quest games (Sierra oldschool) are gone, but they need to be resurrected - both for first time gamers (ages 10+) to develop lateral thinking skills and the idea of following a storyline, but also for us veterans who just miss the genre.

That's my opinion anyway.

-Nano.

p.s. I want to see a Spacequest Movie made :) heh - check out 'Roger Wilco's Broomcloset' run by Jess Morrisette (sorry, don't know HTML)

Re:Condolences if this is true...

[Lumpy]

If you are looking for something that is very very close to the B5 universe check out www.parsec.org

Parsec is a really cool project but it does require some pretty decent hardware as the graphics are quite heavy. you can jump from system to system, you dont have unlimited firepower, you have to recharge from either a station or from the star in that system... etc...

BTW, it's beta and freeware (but not open source yet.)

Posts from Dynamix Employees

[ShaggusMacHaggis]

here are some posts from dynamix employees that i've ripped from http://www.tribalwar.com "It is true that the lot of us were locked out of the building today. Why this is happening nobody knows for certain, aside from those in upper management at Siera/Vivendi. The whole thing is quite a shock for most of us, aside from those few in upper management at Dynamix who could not manage the meager bit of human decency that it would have taken to give us a warning. It is like that in corporate america, these people really do not seem to have come equipped with a soul. I blame the 60-70 percent of Sierra that has nothing to do with creating anything but instead leech of the top like a bloated lamprey. Not only are they the cause of this situation, but they are the ones that stand to benefit in the short term whether they intended it or not. This liquidation is all about artificially inflating 3rd quarter profits for V/U, much like releasing before the game was ready wasabout inflating 2nd quarter profits.We should have become wary last week when a part of Dynamix management took their sick days afterreturning from a visit to Sierra One thing I would like to say about the Tribes team: Please do not hate Dave Georgeson or the rest of the team. We all busted our asses and worked longer thanhumans ought to to make this game great, and you willsee that the latest beta patch has many of thefeatures that were cut for release, and the stabilityand performance that it should have had. Dave did whathe could to make this game work and fought for moretime when Sierra insited that we ship a buggy game. He also has been religious about reading beta and meta tester's input and post release comments and doingwhat he can to make the game what the audience wanted. Please do not flame this guy. He can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, and working under him was hard, but I really think that he tried to do you right with T2. (Dave, Mitch, and Eric can ignore that comment). Trust me, this whole thing is a lot more complex that that, and cuts straight to the heart of the greed of VU's corporate interests. If you work for a major conglomerate, this will happen to you too someday. These types do not care about you or anything but cash. I would like to say also: Thank you for your help in making the game. We tried always to weigh game changes against the community's wishes, and where we have failed, it was not for trying. We did our best. So long, and thanks for all the Fish. See you in the pubs." and from Rated Z, a dynamix employee (and great tribes player) " Ok, I've kept my mouth shut for a long time. I'm Eric, and working for Dave wasn't "hard", it was fucked! I will never work for anyone like that again. Whoever you are, Anonymous employee, no offense, but you must have had an office in the far corner. As for Dave trying to do you (the Tribes playing public) right: Bullshit. Dave did what Dave wanted to do. And Dave's "you" was the 5 guys on TW that posted 2 page bitches about one thing or another who managed to offend him enough that he replied. Actually, I shouldn't even say "caught his attention" since a major part of his day was spent surfing and posting on TW. Dave G is/was PRODUCER, not Publicist, QA Lead, Art Director, and Lead Designer. There were 30+ people on that team; everyone of them worked very hard, and very long. How many of them have you even heard of? I love Starsiege: Tribes. I've played 5+ days per week, since the day it came out. First, as BMF Balefire, then as Rated z. I try hard not to appear a bitter, petty, disgruntled ex-employee, but I'm sicker than shit of the spin doctoring that I've seen on this forum in the last few months. So here I am, disgruntled and saying "Fuck that." "

Think Again

[powerlord]

After two bad experiances getting games from Sierra (as publishers) I decided to pass on by.

One of the two was Lords of Magic. Quite honestly the game was buggy, features were missing (like the note in the Readme file that going to the World map would crash the game). This was nothing but Beta at best and I was very anoyed after 2 months waiting for patches, to the point that I just gave up.

THe other (whose name eludes me), looked nice, I say looked nice because I never got to play it. It had a bug where it couldn't handle your CD-Rom drive being anything besides D. I had two Hard-Drives in the machine. They offered to let me send it in and they would replace the media for a nominal cost (realise I just spent $20 on the game).

At that point I wrote off Sierra for good and have actually been excited about a product, and have forced myself to put it back on the shelf and walk away when I see the Sierra logo on the side.

Which brings us back to the present. They are acting as publishers for a rather intersting new game thats due out in about two weeks Arcanum [arcanum1.com] The music they have on-line is wonderful. The demo I downloaded is intreging enough that I just might buy it even though it has a kiss of death from them. It also looks like it is designed to have other games plug into it to expand the universe (ala modules in D&D). I would recomend any fan of games like Baldur's Gate or Septera Core to take a look at it.

Dynamix are screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

They had their funding pulled *ages* ago.

I know someone who works there and apparently, they owe a *lot* of money - they havn't been paying their employees or bills for the last three months.

They had also just started work on a new killer game (working title: Black Night, Moon in the Sky). It had the best 3D engine I've ever seen, just like final fantasy but IN A GAME !
It'll be a shame to see all that go to waste.

Also, I heard from my friend that the staff have taken their revenge and stolen nearly *all* of the equipment that Dynamix had. Nice :-)

Resurrection

[havachu]

Quest games (Sierra oldschool) are gone, but they need to be resurrected - both for first time gamers (ages 10+) to develop lateral thinking skills and the idea of following a storyline, but also for us veterans who just miss the genre.

This could happen. There is already an opensource Sierra On-Line Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) in development at sarien.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net] . It would not be too much of a stretch to develop new AGI titles based on sarien.
Any wannabe game developers out there? :)

Re:Eulogy for Dynamix

[grahams]

Man... Everyone talks about "remembering" Stellar 7 on the PC... How sad.. :) In truth, the PC version of Stellar 7 was really a remake of the original that was released in 1983!! I played this version on the Commodore 64, but it might have also been available for other machines of that vintage. Here [retrogames.com] are some screenshots of the original c64 version... Irregardless of the pointless information above, Dynamix will be missed (even though I never liked Tribes).. :)

Re:Seems typical of the industry to me.

[Glytch]

Friend, you're dead-on accurate.

There's a small community college in Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada that offers a two year program in "Electronic Game Design". Basically, it's two years of learning the entire development process of a typical software business. Documentation, project management, overall design, game theory, application programming, 3D modelling, 2D graphics, and a little bit of artifical intelligence.

The intent of the program is to have people learn to make modern PC video games. It's a nice place: very up-to-date hardware and software (industry standard stuff like Lightwave, Photoshop, Maya, etc), smart instructors, not too expensive to attend, either. The overall goal for the two years is to form a team of roughly 4 to 6 people from the various graphics and programming streams, and develop a commercial-quality PC game. It doesn't have to be on the level of Quake 3 or Mechwarrior 4, but should be at an appropriate level for a B-title. Demos are acceptable, as these are intended for portfolio pieces for the team's members.

But the *stress*, my god! If working in an academic environment, without the pressure of having to generate revenue was bad, then I can't imagine what it's like in the real industry! I'm amazed that any PC video games turn out as well as they do.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever done a study on the suicide rate of game developers? :)