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Programming Businesses Software Entertainment Games Apple IT Linux Technology

Warzone 2100 Source Liberated 67

Posted by Zonk from the gaming-goes-gnu dept.
jvm writes "The former game developer Pumpkin Studios has released the source for their 3D real-time strategy game Warzone 2100 under the GNU General Public License. (Direct link to the source archive.) Previously released just for Microsoft Windows and Sony PlayStation, this source release permits this 1999 game to be ported to other platforms, such at GNU/Linux and MacOS. You can join in the developer discussion at the RealTimeStrategies Warzone 2100 Redevelopment Project forum. Note that only the source has been released; an original copy of the game is required to obtain the other parts of the game (graphics, sounds, etc.)"
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Warzone 2100 Source Liberated More

Warzone 2100 Source Liberated

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  • Very Underrated Game (Score:5, Informative)

    by TychoCelchuuu ( 835690 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @12:35PM (#11032913) Journal
    This was an amazing game that didn't get enough attention. It was one of the first full 3d real time strategy games; you could control the camera to any degree you wanted. You could make your own units, balancing against what threats you wished to. I was sorry to see it didn't get a bigger following; maybe this will help it.
    • Completely agree. I loved this game, it had tonnes of features that modern RTS games copied, yet Eidos marketed it so poorly it hardly sold at all. Shocking.
    • It had a sweet tech tree too... incredibly deep; even after playing the game many times I still didn't remember how to get those sweet uber powerful laser cannons, whatever they were called. :)

      As soon as this gets ported to Mac OS X I'm gonna try and dig out my old CD and see if I can play. I'm excited...
    • I love this game - it rocks - it still rocks!! I even own more than one copy just in case I need to give it to someone or the house burns down. I have -wasted- hours playing this networked and I am yet to find a match for it's playability. You cant play it on late PCs, so I'm keeping the PII around just for this game. Go N.E.W.S.T!
    • 1999 also saw the release of Homeworld, also one of the first fully 3d real time strategy games, which was also (fairly) recently released as source although not under gpl. There's now a working port at http://www.thereisnospork.com/projects/homeworld/ [thereisnospork.com]. It's really very very good, and the game's available for £5 most places. If you haven't played it, do.

  • Should have included this in the original post (Score:5, Informative)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @12:35PM (#11032920) Homepage
    I'm the submitter, and I left this out. Sorry:

    List of mirrors, please don't link to individual archives! [directgames.net]

    Also, I should have clarified that the source and some game assets are included, but music and FMV are missing. Whether the game would work without these, I don't know yet. Sorry.

  • Slightly offtopic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quill_28 ( 553921 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @12:51PM (#11033101) Journal
    Are there any rts games that put intelligence in the units?

    I know certain ones have improved using auto exploring or workers that find work to do, but so many units in thee games would be great except they need hand holding.

    For instance the spy in RON, you should be able to tell it find city and spy on the buildings, or patrol this area when a units move through convert on of them and then run away!

    Or the queen in starcraft, you should be able to tell the queen to fly around looking for the enemy and parasite them or use the brooding attack, go to home base when energy gets low.

    In one player you can constanly pause, but this kind of takes away the real-time, and you can't pause in multiplayer.

    Are there any rts games that allow scripts for each unit?

    • Do it all yourself :D Dark Reign had stuff vaguely similar to this, although nothing in depth like you are talking about.
      • Do it all yourself

        A friend of mine and I are designing an RTS that has all the features we want. It's a hell of an undertaking but I hope that we at least get the basic ideas coded.
        • That's a great idea.

          If I had time and could program well maybe I would.

          Or you could just let me have some input in your game? :)
        • Anybody have any idea how modular this code is? In other words, is the graphics engine code cleanly separate from the game code? If so, why not look at using this graphics engine to implement your ideas?

          • If so, why not look at using this graphics engine to implement your ideas?

            Becuase I'm going to use this project as an opportunity to learn OpenGL as well. :)

      • Re:Slightly offtopic (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lando ( 9348 )
        Not really the same thing they are talking about. The units in Dark Reign did not automatically do things other than trying to run from being underfire and shooting at things that came into their range.

        However, that said, Dark Reign had one of the best opposing AI's in any game that I have seen so far. It tracked where enemy forces were and allocated it's defense based on that information.

        It was also highly configurable. Easy to write scripts and change variables for each unit. Unfortunately Activi
        • I thought Total Annihlation was a 3D game, it may not have required a fancy videocard but I am pretty sure it was 3D.

          Could be wrong.
          It was still a great game, I think I have my copy still.

          • I thought Total Annihlation was a 3D game, it may not have required a fancy videocard but I am pretty sure it was 3D.

            Total Annihilation is basically a 2D game. While there was implementation of altitude, and that the unit models were 3D models, the map was a 2D enviroment with tiles contiaining picutres and height information. IIRC, there was also either limited no perspective done in the rendering.

            The same applied to TA:K, even though it allowed support for a 3D-Accellerator for better graphic quali

    • Total Annihilation was pretty good for that - thought the units were a little stupider than you'd like, they made up for it by being simple (no worrying about spells) and having long graphical itineraries (you could see their patrol route onscreen). By default, any unit on patrol would do intelligent things while out there, and any unit guarding another unit would automatically do intelligent things for its target (aid in construction, repair target, attack target's foes, etc).

    • Re:Slightly offtopic (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @01:45PM (#11033724) Homepage
      The units in Total Annihilation were pretty smart on their own. They weren't foolproof, but you could set their movement style to roam, put them on patrol, and they would happily cruise around the map obliterating anything they could find. They had no concept of formation or cover, unfortunately, but flying units damaged on patrol would at least seek out a repair pad to fix themselved before returning to their patrol routes.

      A lot of the 'intelligence' had to do with giving them simple automatic behaviors that would've required intense micromanagement for a player to do. For example, Solar Collectors would automatically close their panels to prevent damage if an enemy started firing on them. If a defensive battery was fired upon, it could back-calculate the trajectory and return fire automatically, even if the enemy was outside of visual range (provided it was within firing range, obviously). A construction unit on patrol would focus on repairing other units, unless you were very low on metal or energy, in which case it would instead try to recover the metal or energy left over in wreckage or rocks or trees or whatever is available.

      Like you suggest, the units and buildings did each have an individual script, but I don't think it's quite the same as what you're asking for, as it was only accessible by editing the data files. Besides, the process of writing one is arcane and not very well understood.

      But TA was still a fantastic game.
      • If a defensive battery was fired upon, it could back-calculate the trajectory and return fire automatically, even if the enemy was outside of visual range (provided it was within firing range, obviously).

        I was very heavily into TA. Back when Kali and TEN were the only two real TA communities, I occasionally held #1 on the ladder. My "real" rank would be more like 3-5.

        The thing you are talking about, firing back at the unit, was a hole in TA's "ai". It didn't "backtrack" and hit the spot at which the a
    • Earth 2150 had alot of automation options. You could even write your own scripts for your units, but I never tried to.

    • Are there any rts games that put intelligence in the units?

      Honestly, I doubt it. The prerequisites for even basic intellegence aren't met in most games.

      Total Annihilation got it right a bit by having engagement orders and movement tolerance orders. TA had problems with this - for example, if you had a boat try to attack an underwater metal extrator, it wouldn't fire at all (unless you typed "+shootall"). In addition, the TA units are relativly simple - if you start including spells in auto-cast or a

    • Warzone scripting (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kevin_010 ( 838663 )
      Warzone DOES have a user-modifiable scripting language that, although normally used for the AI and campaign events (yes, you can change the AI :)), can be used to do pretty much anything, including I suppose control your own units. --Kevin, realtimestrategies.net member
    • In Warzone 2100, as units gained experience they would fight better. You could set them to return for repairs when damaged. You could also recycle the intelligent veteran units into upgraded units. Awesome game.
    • Total Annihilation had something similar. By holding down the shift key, you could queue up a bunch of commands for a unit to do, and the unit would do them until they were done or it was destroyed. You could even make one of those commands a patrol command (complete with waypoints), and it would run the patrol. I used it extensively. Autmated sweeps of the map to wipe out raiding parties, explore terrain, build units and structures, etc. It was great. If I had the skills, I would clone TA for Linux s
    • Total Annihilation allowed you to put builders on a patrol route & they would complete buildings, scavenge metal & repar units automagically. The unit AI was pretty good as I recall.

      Dark Reign IIRC (it's been a few years since I played it) had programmable options for each unit.

      What I'd like is an RTS where you could write short programs for each unit's AI. The programs could be modified in between games and would persist in each machine.

      That way the game would be a double challenge. Writ

  • Getting in tuch with the community. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Karmazilla ( 838589 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @03:10PM (#11034797) Homepage
    Hi folks,
    I'm a member on RTS.net, the gaming community that fought and hoped so long for this moment.
    I have just one thing to say: If you wan't to work with this source in a serious project, then join RTS.net - old NEWST folks are around at this site if you wonder where they went.
    You can go to the forum with this handy link:
    http://www.realtimestrategies.net/forums/index.php [realtimestrategies.net]

    You can also get an overview of just about all webpages in warzone context by following this link:
    http://wzlinkturret.1go.dk/ [1go.dk]
  • Here's a 3d engine with a decent camera system. I propose that someone remove the tanks, jeeps, cannons, etc., and retrofit the game with the world of one of the old pre-graphical RPGs--Moria, Dungeonhack, etc.

    Have that on my desk by Wednesday, please. ;-)

  • Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @06:12AM (#11040523) Homepage Journal

    Some of the levels for this game was brilliant. I particularly like the one where the computer program had found the second base in the urban levels. You had to EVAC the base while at the same time defend it in order to get every last troop out of there. I remember stashing the highest ranking troops in the Airships first and leaving the newbs to defend the base. But the problem was, the newbs were the most advanced troops (if you hadn't already recycled the higher ranking ones). I love playing that level over and over again.
    Amazingly, nobody on Slashdot thought it was even worthy of a mention back early this year when Slashdot featured the greatest RTS of all time. Of course TA was mentioned and Warzone 2100 never was.Those 2 games were simply the best for game playing and sheer fun.
    Lets not forget the small expansion packs for Warzone 2100, they offered even more units, super troops and those huge Red Dragon Tanks which you knew you had won if you had built them. Then there was the small downloadable campaigns which featured even more unique units. Tanks with 2 gun turrets and such, so powerful they took out nearly everything with one or two shots.
    It pissed me right off when I switched to the mac and this game wasn't available. I'd play it again in a heartbeat.
  • How does the camera system compare to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, or the Myth line? I love DoW, but sometimes the camera control can be a little clunky. I usually end up ignoring the option is there, and just zooming in after I've already told my units to destroy something, so I can just watch them take their target to task. I've never seen an effective way to use the camera to any type of advantage in any RTS with a 3D camera.

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