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First Person Shooters (Games) Entertainment Games

Tribes 1 Returns In-Browser At GDC Next Week 55

An anonymous reader writes "GarageGames purchased the IP rights to the entire Starsiege Tribes universe, and next week at GDC they'll be showing off their updated version of Tribes 1 running in a browser, using all the original artwork. Afterwards, it will be available to play standalone or via the Instant Action website. While you wait, you can play Fallen Empire Legions in your browser, which is based on the Tribes 2 engine. Their blog entry about the Tribes 1 preview at GDC has further details."
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Tribes 1 Returns In-Browser At GDC Next Week

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  • Great game as is T2 true multiplayer only game which has used far too many hours of my life.
  • I have Tribes 2 for Linux and I loved playing it.

    Unfortunately I can't really play it anymore, there seems to be no one to play with, bots are boring, and it is a total pain in the arse to install on a modern linux system (yes I know about icculus.org)
  • Mac support? yes! (Score:4, Informative)

    by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <taiki.cox@net> on Friday March 20, 2009 @03:59AM (#27265753)

    IA supports Mac, so hopefully I'll be able to get my Shazbot on when it goes live.

    • Tribe 1 is a free download (it was released for free to promote one of the sequels). It runs quite nicely in Crossover, and may even work in the main branch of WINE if you can persuade it to build with 3D support. If you grabbed the free Crossover Games release from a few months ago, then you can already run the free Tribes 1 release on a Mac.
      • That free download thing mostly killed Legends: the game (http://www.legendsthegame.net/) which was sort of someone trying to make an open source Tribes-like game, with some graphical updates and a few fixes like auto-ski, etc.

        Was a decent game for a while.

        • by dannay ( 955031 )
          I don't believe Legends was open source
        • Legends wasn't Open Source. It was a re-write of Tribes 2 with licensed Tribes 2 code, with the mechanics of Tribes so you know, it was fun. I know this because my Debian box was used by a friend to test build it during college (yes, Linux support was a goal). I've looked to see if the source tree was still in my backups, but I think I lost it. Oh well, shouldn't really have had it anyway.

  • by MrBandersnatch ( 544818 ) on Friday March 20, 2009 @05:08AM (#27265959)

    T1 gets my vote as one of the best games of all time. PERFECT game-play for the most part. If they had just updated the graphics engine and maps but touched no other code for a T2 and T3 version I would have been happy; while T2 was good it was lacking a certain....something.

    • by ndavis ( 1499237 )

      T1 gets my vote as one of the best games of all time. PERFECT game-play for the most part. If they had just updated the graphics engine and maps but touched no other code for a T2 and T3 version I would have been happy; while T2 was good it was lacking a certain....something.

      I played T1 all the time and T2 seemed to miss the same mods that people came out with. Then again T1 mods seemed to go too far in some cases which caused me to stop playing it as often.

      I hope this browser version is like the original

  • not sure who came up with the idea first, but it looks like id is trailblazing again, this time with quake live. of course, kudos for the tribes guys for following suit.
    • The difference is that Quake sucks, and Tribes is good. :)

      Nah, I'm mostly kidding, different gameplay for different types of players. If you like any of the Battlefield games (especially Battlefield: 2142), remember: they ripped-off all their ideas from Tribes. Although they stopped short at Tribes' best feature, the jet-pack.

  • by wildstoo ( 835450 ) on Friday March 20, 2009 @07:52AM (#27266581)

    Starsiege: Tribes was one of my favourite online FPS games.

    At the time it was a breath of fresh air to the FPS genre. Quake II and Unreal were fighting for the FPS market share, but were ultimately very similar games. Tribes was different; suddenly Unreal and Q2 seemed very slow and static.

    Tribes features jetpacks, vehicles with interesting physics, new gametypes and huge maps. It was an instant classic. I have nothing but awesome memories of Tribes matches.

    Kamikaze scout runs into enemy flag rooms, disc-launcher jumping with jetpack to get insane height and speed, across the map in seconds rather than the minutes it would take on foot. :)

    Suffice to say, if this revitalizes the Tribes community, it might be one of the best things to happen to online gaming this year.

    The fact that the new IP owners are also (some of) the original creators of Tribes is just icing on the cake. I really hope they exceed their own expectations.

    Have to tip my hat to id for leading the way with browser-based FPS games. If this kind of thing is the result maybe the future of PC gaming isn't as bleak as some have predicted.

    • Indeed, I have yet to find anything as original and fun since I first played a decade ago. Only the decline of servers running interesting maps and rulesets has caused my playtime to decrease, hopefully this move will cause a new generation to discover the game and bring their own creative energy to the game. Thank God I finished college before they did this!
    • Kamikaze scout runs into enemy flag rooms, disc-launcher jumping with jetpack to get insane height and speed, across the map in seconds rather than the minutes it would take on foot. :)

      Oh those were the days. I remember, using the scout to run people over in a mad fireball of glory.

      Of course, I also remember how people would take the transport and drive team mates to their doom ;)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )

      If they add the Shifter v.1 MOD, I'll fly over there and buy them all a steak. Best MOD in the best team FPS game ever.

    • by skeeto ( 1138903 )

      I also loved Tribes. I spend hundreds of hours in that game. Once you mastered the jetpack, you could do some amazing things. Some of my favorite memories come from playing on the (Team Aerial Assault) TAC mod.

      In TAC, you died instantly if you touched the dirt ground (structure floors were safe), the home bases were placed very far apart, and the action was all in the middle on an island (an island in a sea of deadly dirt) of some sort. This forced teamwork because the only way to the action was on transpor

      • by Adriax ( 746043 )

        Actually the bug was in the ground collision mechanics. There was a small delay between collision with a surface and the engine changing the player object's state from falling/flying to standing/walking. If you did tiny jumps or used your jetpack while in that transition period (after collision but before being rooted to the ground), the engine would reset the delay and you would keep using falling physics on the ground, allowing you to ski.

        The same bug caused some weird vehicle physics. Like if you tried l

  • I've played all versions of Tribes and without a doubt these games are best games of all time. There is a bit of a learning curve to them but once you get it the fun is endless especially if you play with group of friends or a good team. If you like FPS and you have not played them you have not lived.

  • What about Fallen Empire: Legions?
    The unofficial Tribes 4 (they couldn't get the name from Sierra) made by the same people. It ALSO plays in a browser with somewhat modern graphics.
    http://www.instantaction.com/ [instantaction.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by LingNoi ( 1066278 )

      Says my OS is unsupported. I wish companies wouldn't (like Google) just block off your access all together like the IE only websites used to do.

      Yeah, I could probably edit my browser's user agent for this one game however I've already lost interest.

    • Damnit, hit Submit instead of Preview.

      What's the point of acquiring Tribes when they already have a modernized, almost direct port of it with better graphics?
      I guess they just wanted the recognizable name associated with it, but then why not just rename Fallen Empire?

      • All successors to the original Tribes have failed at capturing the feel. Anyone who spent any time with Tribes knows this.
    • I was actually playing this earlier today with a few people who had never played Tribes. It's a lot of fun (even they thought so) and I realize it's still in beta, but I wouldn't call it the unofficial Tribes 4 quite yet. As it stands it's kind of a dumbed down version without a lot of the things Tribes had. If they add a lot of it back such as proper classes, inventory stations, vehicles, packs, deployables, mines, etc... then I'll consider it a true successor. They don't have to clone the first game, in f
  • Tribes 1 with Chivalry mod v2 with addons. (No clientside install required.)

    Lets get some parabolic disk jumps going!

  • I only know about this game from reading the Penny-arcade.com collection books. Looks like they loved it back in the day. Looking forward to seeing what the deal is. :-)
  • Tribes did effortlessly in 1998 what games are struggling to do today. 128 person games, massive landscapes (albeit primitive) destroyable buildings, deployable buildings. an integrated command and control system that was sorely underused. it also had great netcode for the time iirc. no game in the last 10 years has come close to the epic feeling i got when playing tribes 1 and to a lesser extent tribes 2 (too many issues)
  • Apart from playing in matches on the OGL or TWL, I miss listening to shoucasts of matches while hanging out in irc chatting.
  • Not to interject, but is it only the Tribes Era of the Starsiege Universe? Or does it include the rest of it including the Fire Era (EarthSiege, ES2, Starsiege, etc.?)

One man's constant is another man's variable. -- A.J. Perlis

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