* Pre-liberation to Liberation: An Honor Roll *

[Rman Virgil]

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This came about, in part, like so....

Well LA I have only one bone of contention and it's very simple. There are folks whose tangible work over the course of 6 years, across the full spectrum of what can be done (including the design and coding of progs) merit recognition as intrumental in keeping this game alive after Pumpkin went under and were absolutely central to the ultimate liberation of the source. Without them we absolutely would not be here. The source would never have been released without them and their concerted work efforts which is every bit the equal of all that's been done since '05. All done under the often frustrating constraints of not having the source and the nagging uncertainty that for all our efforts & abundant work there were no guarantees we would ever succeed in its liberation.

You mentioned some of those folks. There are a few more. Folks like yourself, 4nE, Stratadrake, Sab, Carver, Elric is Not Dead, SLONER, Speedy, Laws215, Maynard, BOTman, Radiosity, Karmazilla, Skorpian, Mistfalls, Shang, TotalWar, Spike, Kevin, RSgod, NiKer, Sputnick and a few more. It's reprehensible. It's digraceful. And I must take responsibility for that. It was one of my failures of leadership post liberation. I'm here to address it.

As well, there is an adjunct to this point - these same folks could have still been assets. They have the mature, 1st class talent, skill sets, determination and love of the game, to have been motivated to continue to make central contributions to this project.

This project has always had a chronic manpower shortage. These circumstances are related.

That's it.

As for myself, I just wanna continue to honor my word, the explicit and public covenant I made originally back '99 with Pumpkin Studios (WZ Creators), the original fan base of 50,000+ strong and, most poignantly for me, my teamates from the get go who busted their a$$es working clear through to liberation.

That done, I just wanna retreat to focus on cinematic work which is where my current WZ interest and pure joy reside.

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Pre-liberation to Liberation: An Honor Roll

I will begin the list but it will be open to additions because of any inadvertant oversights on my part.

It will be open to additions by any of the 50,000 + of the original community (1998 - 2004) who may still be around and wanna weigh-in. This would include former liberation team members, supporting communities and WZ Creators themselves, of course.

There you have it.

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The following list reflects no ranking order, it's just the way the names came to me. I will simply alphabetize as we proceed to account for any inadvertant oversights.

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Troman

Bones0

Lord Apocalypse

Lord Gwala

Cowboy

Prometheus

BLACKSABBATH

Willis

RBL-4NiK8r

Papa Lazarou

Flame Boy

ChainsawMonkey aka Dancing Moogle aka Radiosity

Stratadrake aka Draconus aka (he prefers his 1st WZ nick not be used)

Carver

Elric is Not Dead

SLONER

Speedy

Laws215

Maynard

BOTman

Karmazilla

Skorpian

Mistfalls

Shang

TotalWar

Spike

Kevin

RSgod

NiKer

Sputnick

Chojun

Coyote

Goth Zagog-Thou

Bronco

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[Rman Virgil]

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There was also expressed a virulent objection to this debt of aknoledgment to which I responded -

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The Petition was but one aspect of many that went into Liberating the source. Much preceeded it and much took place in the interim between it and actual liberation. At most, it was a tipping point. A culmination of a very long journey that even then had many miles and tasks ahead to cinch the deal.

The Honor Roll is not a history or a catalog of those who signed the Petition.

The Honor Roll is but a fairly short text of nicks of those who contributed directly and actively over the course of 6 years to sustaining the game in so many ways towards its ultimate liberation.

I have not rested on my laurels in 13 years when it comes to WZ as anyone who truly knows me in the public proceedings, as well private interactions, and has been around with any active consistency over the years, can attest. This is not about me. As I already made clear. Alex Mclean already thanked me, in the the part of source distro that was conspicuously not quoted, by my RL name, which he did on his own, unbeknowest to me until I looked at the distro he sent me. Surely, at that point, in the winter of '04 I could have walked away and rested on my laurels. Fact is, I didn't.

The vehemence of this expressed objection is interesting but comes as no suprise really.

It's quite facsile and entirely bogus to say in hindesight that you are sure someone else would have eventually done what some one in fact did.... and thus dismiss the accomplishment of that individual as of no real consequence.

Truly, there is no competition here between the pre-liberation and post-liberation eras.

It is a simple ethical and moral imperative for me. And I have no doubt that Alex Mclean would approve. It's called "bearing witness", a term I would think familiar to any with more than cursory knowledge of unfolding, organized, goal driven events and the difference between primary, secondary & tertiary sources of information.

I will post the list. What is done thereafter, if anything, is not in my hands, obviously.

I will trust that it is not generally percieved in the manner of this vehement objection, which Arthur Koestler directly spoke to when he said:

"Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust. ~ Darkness at Noon"

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[Shadow Wolf TJC]

I'd like to thank everyone that made it happen. Like others have said, without their effort, Warzone 2100 would be dead already.

[Lord Apocalypse]

Well you are most welcome It was a lot of fun to push Warzone beyond its retail limits.

[aubergine]

Would it be possible to give some indication of what each person was known for or what they contributed?

[Lord Apocalypse]

Troman, Bones0, and Prometheous are best know for AI work.
Cowboy for DirectGames. Not sure if there was anything else he did.
Stratadrake did a lot of the software
4nik8r did a lot of maps map/mods
Rman was the group lead until he took a leave of absence (still not sure of all the details, Rman did you ever make that public knowledge within NEWST?)
Me.. well, attempted to run newst during Rman's absence, 1.11, Editworld Help file, webmaster for NEWST.
Maynard.. maps/scripting I think.
Totalwar.. not sure other than ideas and support.

Off the top of my head that's about all I can remember. I know Gwala helped me with some different site designs but not sure what else. Sputnick did something but can't recall what.. Someone made TMLink for adding new tilesets. Carver had a lot of ideas for things to add into an RTS. We spent a lot of time running over ideas for new RTS games beyond warzone.

A small historical sidenote. NEWST almost had the chance to work on Metal Fatigue. I was in contact with one of the lead developers going over a lot of different ideas and such on creating a map editor for them and possibly extend that into other areas. Sadly that idea was shot down by the publisher The people at Zono were all for it after looking over everything we had done for WZ but the publishers were unwilling to allow us access to any of the source code even under an NDA

Anyway... I'm getting sidetracked so I will leave it at that for now. I'm sure Rman and perhaps a few other old timers can fill in the gaps on who did what.

[aubergine]

DirectGames?

Also, where can I find infos on Edit World - I want to document it as part of map making section on wiki: https://warzone.atlassian.net/wiki/page ... Id=5406726

Finally, is there a decent write-up about NEWST? I hear the mention they get on WZ wikipedia page is somewhat lacking?

[Lord Apocalypse]

Very lacking. Rman can fill you in better but the highlights... Warzone Customiser Kit, Warzone Starter, PIE Slicer, WaterAI, TurtleAI, 1.11.. All those were developed during N.E.W.S.T. I think I'm missing a few but not sure. Several Tilesets were created during that time as well as several map/mods such as Citadel I believe. There is a lot more than that but much of it i cannot remember and have not had a chance to catalog everything I have.

Here is a copy of the old help file I created. I tried to put as much detail into it as possible.

[Rman Virgil]

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LA, also: "WdgExplorer", "A.I. Editor" and "CAM Editor".... some more I'll come back to l8r..

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Yea guys, I can fill in more of the gaps along the lines of what I did when I posted in Goth's CAM 4 thread recently:

I haven't played NTW lately so I don't know if it's still in there. But one of the many things it aggregated from pre-liberation was Stratadrake's (along 4nE) Patch v.1.12 Mines Tech. That merit's consideration IMHO.

As well worth considering, Speedy's pre-liberation work from his "A.I. Boost" mod.... in particular his "Stargates" implemented instead as "Tunnels".

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....The idea for Mine Tech first came up in Pumpkin Studios Official WZ bbs. We took it up as a goal in NEWST. It became a reality about 3 years later after NEWST morphed into Pumpkin-2 and due to the efforts over those years of the legendary Stratadrake (along with 4nE) and released as part of the Patch-Mod dubbed v.1.12. Stratadrake also designed and coded "PIEslicer" (with a little inside info from an ex-Pumpkinite) and also "WZ Customizer Kit" - --- aka, WZCK, which was started by Troman but he handed it over to Strata early on cause he got caught up in multiple AI personality dev and in further deving Sputnick's ModSwitcher (which Pumpkin's AI guru Alex Lee helped us define in an IRC chat in June '99) into "WZ Starter" Utility (aka, WZS) which was absolutely essential for managing incompatible mods and, running multiple AI Personalities simultaneously, and finding other MP players online!! BTW, "WZCK" made makeing very complex mods a breeze - you could go through many testing iterations in a snap... awesome editor.

BTW....

~ I thought of some more contributors which I'll post later.

~ Some of these folks are dead - literally. So they will never read this. Still, it is imporatant that they be remembered.

~ WZ is the gift that keeps on giving.

~ Some of these folks were kids when they got involved. Youngest was like 10 or12.

Over the years they grew up to splendid careers and I do believe their involvement experience contributed positively to their later lives which include: chief software engineers at MS and Google, CEOs of their own companies, a Professor of Mathematics at a prestigious Uni, a leader in VR Tech for the DOD, a Far East diplomat, a professional, commercial, A.I. developer, professional graphic designers and commercial software developers, commissioned officers in various branches of the US military, professional authors and musicians....and so on.

History, with respectfull acknowledgements, can repeat in so many good ways...if you know what I mean..


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[Rman Virgil]

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Those aforementioned additions:

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Grizzly

Copper

HB

Ender

RedFive aka Luke

Rasta

rush2049

Bubba khan

kage

zipper
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[aubergine]

@Rman - I updated the Mines page with the info you provided: https://warzone.atlassian.net/wiki/disp ... edia/Mines

I'd very much like to get some write-ups on Pumpkin, EIDOS, NEWST, WZ Resurrection Project (for which I found a logo?) and any other orgs that were pertinent in WZ history, and also the code/media liberation.

As you mentioned above, some of the contributors are now literally dead in RL. Thus, it would be good to get this information from the people who are still living as getting historic infos from dead people is decidedly non-trivial.

The more historic info that can be exposed the better IMHO. Even with my recent investigations in to wz timeline, and watching all videos, listening to all audio, seeking out rare screenshots and comics, etc., I've gained a much deeper understanding of the game which is helping me form ideas about future mods and even concepts for scripting libraries.

[Rman Virgil]

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* On the matter of EW history....


Pumpkin was absolutely adamant about NOT ever releasing it. And I thorughly underdstood why.

It took me 2 months of communicating with em that it was in the best interest of WZ's longevity to take the time to clean up the mess that was "World Edit" (that's what it was called as the in-house dev tool) and release it. When they did they changed the name to "Edit World".

Within 2 weeks of its release, amongst the chorus of bitching and mouning about how un-user friendly it was, I wrote the first tutorial in collaboration with Shang & Troman. After NEWST was formed in the summer of '99, LA took it upon himself to create an EW guide proper. LA - it was vastly superior to what we did.

Within 1 month of EWs release HB released his gorgeous "Ariza" map, custom tertile set and TM Linker proggy which would allow us to make custom tertiles and pack them into the. wdg files to run in game. We made several custom tertiles sets in NEWST. And we also used HB's technique of making structs out of tertile textures.

* As to the history of the Petition...

Contrary to the mythos perpetrated by one of several IRC channel sycophants in '05.... I proposed the strat (after running it by Alex McLean in one our email conversations) in the Pumpkin-2 bbs which are still resident on Cowboys biz server to attest to the veracity of how it came about. After some discussion the actual Petition was written by me in close collaboration with Troman and Chojun with 4nE doing the final revision and subsequent submission. Again, this how we did stuff.

* As to the source Liberation history itself...

After almost 6 year joint effort to convince Eidos we finally got the go ahead. Alex M. contacted me right off and asked HOW should we do it? Should we do a bit -torrent? I said no. How about we give it to you, Frank, and you take care of the distro? I said I would take a copy but that it would be best if we handled the distro this way. I would go to the community - by then centered at RTS.net - and ask them how THEY wanted to handle the very first Distro. Well they came up with multiple distribution via the resources provided and set-up by Radiosity, Grizzly, Cowboy and Speedy. Alex M. agreed and took care of the details on his end. When all was ready on the community side, I passed those details to Alex. The rest is history. That's just how we did things back then.

* As far as the official FOSS repository set-up.

Things were reaching a fever pitch with the clashing of conflicting ideologies the first couple months after liberation. Grizzly came to me during this troubled time and asked - "Rman, I wanna help. What can I do?"

I responded: "Grizzly, 2 things need to be done to move foward for the sake of the game's longevity. You do this. Set-up the first repository at Berlios and take responsibilty for its admin. The other we'll have to handle on the ground at RTS.net."

Grizzly: "I'll do it, Rman."

And I held up my end.

Never told this before. But there you have the non-mythos facts.

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[aubergine]

Who was HB? What is "TM" in "TM Linker"? What is a tertile -- terrain tile?

I would love some more detail about the 6 year effort to get the source released. As I understand, there was further effort to get the media released? Also, had any games been released as FOSS prior to that date, or was this something of an industry first?

As I wasn't in the WZ community back then (I only found this game a year or two ago) I have none of this info hence my desire to learn more and share what I learn with others.

[Rman Virgil]

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As you mentioned above, some of the contributors are now literally dead in RL. Thus, it would be good to get this information from the people who are still living as getting historic infos from dead people is decidedly non-trivial.

Aubergine, those that are still living are still around... they just don't post. It is my hope that they will weigh in here in this thread and speak to such details. For many obvious reasons it would be better if they took a few moments and recounted for themselves.

Btw.... I'm envious of your wellspring of energy and knowhow all around.... as well as deeply appreciative of all your efforts.

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[Rman Virgil]

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Who was HB? What is "TM" in "TM Linker"? What is a tertile -- terrain tile?

I would love some more detail about the 6 year effort to get the source released. As I understand, there was further effort to get the media released? Also, had any games been released as FOSS prior to that date, or was this something of an industry first?

As I wasn't in the WZ community back then (I only found this game a year or two ago) I have none of this info hence my desire to learn more and share what I learn with others.

Promise I'll come back and answer those questions. I've been up for over 24 hours and am fading fast and need to at least get a nappy in.

This too (as always LA you step into breach with gusto & a robust contribution - much appreciated and never taken for granted.):

Troman, Bones0, and Prometheous are best know for AI work.

Cowboy for DirectGames. Not sure if there was anything else he did.

Stratadrake did a lot of the software

4nik8r did a lot of maps map/mods

Rman was the group lead until he took a leave of absence (still not sure of all the details, Rman did you ever make that public knowledge within NEWST?)

Me.. well, attempted to run newst during Rman's absence, 1.11, Editworld Help file, webmaster for NEWST.

Maynard.. maps/scripting I think.

Totalwar.. not sure other than ideas and support.

Off the top of my head that's about all I can remember. I know Gwala helped me with some different site designs but not sure what else. Sputnick did something but can't recall what.. Someone made TMLink for adding new tilesets. Carver had a lot of ideas for things to add into an RTS. We spent a lot of time running over ideas for new RTS games beyond warzone.

A small historical sidenote. NEWST almost had the chance to work on Metal Fatigue. I was in contact with one of the lead developers going over a lot of different ideas and such on creating a map editor for them and possibly extend that into other areas. Sadly that idea was shot down by the publisher The people at Zono were all for it after looking over everything we had done for WZ but the publishers were unwilling to allow us access to any of the source code even under an NDA

Anyway... I'm getting sidetracked so I will leave it at that for now. I'm sure Rman and perhaps a few other old timers can fill in the gaps on who did what.

.