Hello everyone!

[Tammo_Korsai]

Greetings fellow Warzone 2100 players,

I recently discovered that one could get Warzone for the PC, as well as Playstation, which I play on at the moment, but once I complete it for the first time (no spoilers please) I'll shift over to just playing it on the PC. I haven't had much experience of it on the PC, as it kept crashing, but I found an updated version on Wikipedia and the change log says it now has those all important mission briefings.  Once I get around to installing it I'm sure it'll be just as good, or even better than the PS1 version.

Even with the few stable moments of play on the PC I noticed much better graphics and it was much easier to play and generally do stuff thanks to the mouse, the PS1 obiously uses a joystick, that can make things a touch difficult somtimes.

One significant difference is the lack of Unit Orders section on the wheel thing; the PS1 version had it and you could set units to return fire (which was kinda pointless really) and all that... one of its most useful features was the retreat at heavy damage setting, meaning units in the red on their health bars return to an LZ or the nearest repair facility and get patched up. But hopefully the my nimbless with the mouse will allow me to quickly select units in the red and evacuate them.
Also, I don't know if you can do this in the PC version, but on the PS1, you can press triangle to deactivate battle view and manually drive a unit, when a group is selected, you get to drive one unit and the rest follow, good for if your units are getting stuck or the retreat route is frought with too much peril.

Once I get well into the PC version, I'd like to have a go at making maps and scenarios. 

I'll hopefully come to the forums on a regular basis too.

[Kamaze]

One significant difference is the lack of Unit Orders section on the wheel thing; the PS1 version had it and you could set units to return fire (which was kinda pointless really) and all that... one of its most useful features was the retreat at heavy damage setting, meaning units in the red on their health bars return to an LZ or the nearest repair facility and get patched up.

You can do the same with a unit/group by right-click over the selected unit(s).

Also, I don't know if you can do this in the PC version, but on the PS1, you can press triangle to deactivate battle view and manually drive a unit, when a group is selected, you get to drive one unit and the rest follow, good for if your units are getting stuck or the retreat route is frought with too much peril.

Yes, this is only in the PSone version available (yet?), but i think this isn't needed in the PC version.

Once I get well into the PC version, I'd like to have a go at making maps and scenarios. 
I'll hopefully come to the forums on a regular basis too.

We'll hope so
Welcome to the wz2100 world.

[DevUrandom]

Also, I don't know if you can do this in the PC version, but on the PS1, you can press triangle to deactivate battle view and manually drive a unit, when a group is selected, you get to drive one unit and the rest follow, good for if your units are getting stuck or the retreat route is frought with too much peril.

Yes, this is only in the PSone version available (yet?), but i think this isn't needed in the PC version.

No! You can do that in the PC version as well: Press space while you have selected a unit. The camera now moves low over / behind the unit and if you click somewhere (order the unit to move) the camera will follow.

[Watermelon]

Also, I don't know if you can do this in the PC version, but on the PS1, you can press triangle to deactivate battle view and manually drive a unit, when a group is selected, you get to drive one unit and the rest follow, good for if your units are getting stuck or the retreat route is frought with too much peril.

No! You can do that in the PC version as well: Press space while you have selected a unit. The camera now moves low over / behind the unit and if you click somewhere (order the unit to move) the camera will follow.

I dont think 'drive a unit and the rest follow' and 'camera track' is the same thing  though I dont know how you move units/camera around with gamepad or joystick,maybe 'drive a unit' was referring to 'order a unit to goto some position'

[sicanjal]

You seriously can't drive a unit with camera tracking on; not only is using the mouse too imprecise, you couldn't turn around or sometimes turn at all dependant on where the camera was. Plus, the camera insists on circling around the unit in question.

On the PS1, the driving mode worked beutifully; you could get a unit where you wanted, take full advantage of speed and manuverability and positioned units right where you wanted behind your assigned unit. Used well, the driving mode was so effective on the PS1 it made Commanders almost redundant! Plus, it was great fun (Machinegun Viper Hover racing, anyone?), I remember racing enemy units, dodging their fire and destroying them on-route to wherever they were trying to go.

Whilst multiplayer requires too much general management to make precise control of a group of units feasible, I would love to see the "full" driving mode reimplemented. Instead of having the numpad rotate the camera in this mode, 1, 2, 3 and 5 can be used to drive the unit (or the WASD or arrow keys). This made the campaign mode so much more fun on the PS1.

I dont think 'drive a unit and the rest follow' and 'camera track' is the same thing  though I dont know how you move units/camera around with gamepad or joystick,maybe 'drive a unit' was referring to 'order a unit to goto some position'

I believe that moving your unit reordered the units in the group to move to your position, and it would refire the order each time you moved. Units still continued to fire on their own choice of targets though, and repair droids continued to repair amongst the group whilst generally trying to stay near you. However, units stop firing on a target you designate as soon as you move, so this is why I believe it just fires off a "move to here" order everytime.

[Watermelon]

hmm can you fire weapon manually when 'driving' a vehicle in ps version?

I think it will require some changes to netcode to handle constant holding 'w','a','s','d' bits.

[sicanjal]

hmm can you fire weapon manually when 'driving' a vehicle in ps version?

No; you could hit X to designate a target, and then your unit and others in the group would automatically fire on it.

Is there anyway prehaps I can dump a video of the driving mode in action? I have the WZ2100 PS1 CD, but no access to a PS1/PS2 to record a video.

[Tammo_Korsai]

Thank you all for those useful posts.
I'm very glad to hear that unit orders is available on the PC version, as I hate treating my units as disposable as experienced units are so much stronger. I normally use the driving mode to manually drive damaged units through a safer route or drive a hovercraft squadron and scout out an area and pick off targets at range; hover artilley with a commander is very useful and their ability to sit on water often keeps them out of land based enemy fire.

Update: I'm enconturing a rather annoying problem, I get this error, of which I press 'ok' to and the game doesn't start up, follow this URL to see the exact message it gives me: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a336/ ... /Error.jpg

[DevUrandom]

What version of Windows is that? Do you have installed the MSVC runtime redist? (It needs Microsoft Installer 3.x to be properly installed on WinXP.)

You could also wait a week or 2 for the 2.0.5_rc2 which is crosscompiled on Linux, so no MSVC dingsbums needed. It also doesn't come with that many dlls, so you get a much cleaner directory.

[Tammo_Korsai]

I use Windows 2k, not sure what it has in the way of updates but I have more than enough in the way of system specs to run the game. And I don't think I have that redist thing....

[DevUrandom]

Then you should install it. It should be in the rc1 installer. If not you can get it from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

[Tammo_Korsai]

I tried to install it, but it turns out I need to update Windows 2k itself though for it to work, and I'm thinking about upgrading to Windows XP too.