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Real Time Strategy (Games)

Darwinia Demo Released 54

Posted by Zonk from the this-one's-worth-looking-at dept.
Nuskrad writes "A demo of the long awaited Darwinia by indie game developers Introversion has been released. At the moment there is only a Win32 demo avaliable, but Mac OSX and Linux demos should be coming soon. You can grab the demo from the torrent."
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Darwinia Demo Released More

Darwinia Demo Released

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  • Demo Guide (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dave2 Wickham ( 600202 ) * on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:48PM (#11442978) Journal
    For those of you who have no idea WTF's going on in the game, TheNextGame [thenextgame.co.uk] has a useful guide [thenextgame.co.uk] about how to play it. It's based on an older beta, but the basics are the same with the demo, most changes are just aesthetic.

  • HTTP Mirror (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nuskrad ( 740518 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:51PM (#11443001)
    There is a HTTP download here [3dgamers.com] if the Darwinia site is too slow and you can't torrent.
  • Server is really slow already.

  • Mirror Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by nijk ( 781345 ) *
    Mirrors available here: http://www.3dgamers.com/games/darwinia/downloads/
    The official site is pretty much impossible to access at the moment.

  • --verbose (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:59PM (#11443063)
    Even as a regular reader of the games section I have no idea what hides itself behind the name "Darwinia". Other products have to appear a few times before you can omit the description (by now everyone knows what a DS or a Phantom is) but in the last few months this ... uh ... Is that a game? hasn't been mentioned once. I mean, hell this is an indy program, it's not in everybody's mouth as some other things trolls might want descriptions for.
    First guess was MMORPG but the site doesn't seem to uphold this. Unfortunately the /. effect makes it unfeasible to find out.

    Besides, does this qualify as interesting news? Why not give us weekly or monthly summaries of all the games (even indy ones) released in that timeframe instead of having to be selective about what you post and having some articles read like advertisements?

    • Re:--verbose (Score:3, Funny)

      by Pluvius ( 734915 )
      The reason why this is news is because it was made by the developers of Uplink, which, as you should know, is the best independent game ever in the history of ever. Ever.

      Rob
      • Please stop telling lies. Ambrosia Software has nothing to do with Darwinia.
      • For a work by such a "great developer" the demo is pretty boring. It's probably just the first level or something but it could have used some more challenge or something because currently it's "make squad, run to enemy, blow everything up or get blown up, repeat". Strategy isn't necessary because everything dies easily from your lasers and grenades before it can touch you and any form of strategy would fail because you need to manually aim your squads' weapons anyway. At least that's the impression the demo

    • hasn't been mentioned once.

      *cough* [slashdot.org]

      Anyway, you can see the magazine and web coverage they've been getting - which includes info on the game - at their site [darwinia.co.uk] (well, you will be able to when everyone stops downloading the demo - it's been hammered since yesterday when it was released).

    • funk the corporate entertainment pushers which are sulling in the their ever stagnent pool of re-releases and genre blending, who depend soley on huge pr and advertising budgets to move their mediocre and sub standard, so called games. bring back origionality and daring new ideas! bring back the bedroom programming gods!

  • I can say... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Film11 ( 736010 )
    from being a beta tester of the full game, that it totally rocks. Storyline, graphics, gameplay are all excellent. Download the demo now and then pre-order it! For those who are wondering: it is a unique RTS, hard to explain, download the demo and you'll find out ;)

  • Beat the demo (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 )
    I just beat the demo.

    This is the greatest RTS ever made.

    Sorry Total Annihilation, it's over.
  • Well, the guys must be extremely busy, since the official mac development page for darwinia [ambrosiasw.com] was last updated on november 12th ;-)
    does anyone know if the linux port is done inhouse or by an outsider too? (i.e. any interesting devel logs about this game out there?)

  • Refreshing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pat_trick ( 218868 )
    Better than all of the fantasy RTS type games that have been coming out recently. Breath of fresh air to the genre.

    Only thing I could see becoming a little bit annoying is the gestures.

    I enjoyed the demo; can't wait to try the full game!

  • Oh god, another great waste of my time... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Thumper_SVX ( 239525 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @08:20PM (#11444957) Homepage
    OK... there's not a lot of detail out there about this game... this was the first I'd ever heard about it... so let me fill everyone in;

    Imagine a cross between Populous and Black & White (not so hard... they're related by parentage anyway) set in the world of Tron... that about sums it up.

    OK... so after reading the story I grabbed the demo and played it for a few minutes. I admit it... I'd still be playing it if it weren't for my lovely wife making me tea. Bloody hell, I think I'm going to have to buy this one now I've played GTA to death

    Seriously, it's a matter of taste though. It's not for everyone... but if you appreciate retro styling, nicely integrated sound and graphics in your games... and at least potentially addictive gameplay then you'll like it. If you're into FPS shooters or MMORPG's then this ain't for you... this is an old-fashioned "god game" using more recent advances in hardware to make the game I think we all THOUGHT we were playing when we played populous many many moons ago.

    Hope this helps!

  • Wow Cool (Score:3, Informative)

    by ikkonoishi ( 674762 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @08:38PM (#11451688) Journal
    This game is fun and the data files are moddable.

    The main.dat file is actually a renamed .rar file.

    So fix the extension and you can decompress it into the base game data which is written in plain text.

    • Holy crap you're right.

      I tried to edit the unit stats in data/stats.txt but none of my changes to the squad took. Then I tried editting the CurrentResearch value in game_data.txt and it worked. This could be an extremely fun little demo to write stuff for.

      strangely, I see no mention of this on any of their forums. Can so many people NOT have figured this out already?
      • There's quite a bit on the forums about modding. In the beta, the data.dat was encrypted and only a few clever sods managed to crack it, but now more of us are starting to do little bits of mods.

        Some sad geek is even translating it into Klingon >_>

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