Warzone 2100 Forums

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* I'm glad you brought up Coop-MP, Watermelon. It is indeed transformative in the sense that it is an occassion to socialize and those experiences can be affecting.

* Coop-up Mp has also had its hand in keeping WZ alive all those years it took to liberate the source.

* In short, coop-mp is a mighty powerful mode of gaming and has a long history that you can trace to so-called "parlor games".

* MMOLGs, esp in the RPG flavor, are on this continuum. Gamers create personas or avatars and interact in a virtual world whose bedrock & trappings are the product of developers but the gamers are free to create their own "story-lines" or drama within those broad & flexible parameters. Quite a powerful, affecting and even addictive  construct.

* But there is a difference in the foregoing and the gaming continuum I'm exploring. For the sake of brevity let me express the difference this way:  what you get out of experiencing a Tom Clancy novel is very different than say a Jane Austen novel. Personally I enjoy both. However, if you ask me about a Tom Clancy I read 10 years ago I couldn't tell you much besides that I liked it. Now if you ask me about a Jane Austen I read 20 years ago, I can tell you precisely the profound affect it had on altering my core sensibilities, I can make a similar analogy using movies instead of novels.

* So it is that difference that is my facination. In game design circles a word has been coined to express this pursuit in creating a game world and that word "emotioneering".

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* Yes it is true that this BB is tightly focused on the technical & that is reflective of the developers predisposition which is just fine.

* And yes, rts.net ranged outside the code technical as did Pumpkin-2, NEWST and the original Pumpkin WZ bbs.

* Actually NEWST, Pumpkin-2 and Rts.net were all modeled on WZ Creators own eXtreme MPlayer bbs.

* Those orginal WZ bbs had plenty of coders and deep technical discussions but they also had the gamut of exchanges and contributions that ranged over the whole of the Liberal Arts and Humanities. The diversity of the members was mind-boggling: from peeps who worked for MS, to diplomats, musicians, scientists, kid gamers, tenured professors, artists, other game developers & designers, comedians, published authors, and on and on...plus all open to communicating for fun and learning - totally inspiring. Wish it could have been preserved because I've never seen its like since anywhere. 8 years later & I'm still in contact with many I first met therein. I'm sure a great part of my affection for the game that is WZ has lot to do with those positive and inspiring experiences with like-minded fans over the years.

* As far as all that creative stuff at Rts.net - I can't think of anyone who would be reluctant to release it under the Creative Commons License. However, I'm not sure there is anyone interested in doing the leg-work (emailing the creators for the releases) to make it a reality - then compiling as a CHM or whatever.

Cheers, RV

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* Some elaborations:

* In condensing my thoughts on IF (Interactive Fiction) and "Emotioneering" I haven't done them justice.

* If interested the following links will fill in the gaps:

* On IF Game Theory


* On Emotioneering Game Design Concepts

* In order to fully actualize this in the WZ game world a fundamental pre-requisite is a modular / scriptable GUI. (I understand a member of the community is working on that - I hope they stick to it and succeed.)

* As far as the best showcase (and the explanation that follows involves a lot of compression of previously detailed material) - it would have to be the Campaign Mode, IMO. And that structure would be built on mission branching concepts, multiple, randomized CAM AI personalities tied to branching, and a player avatar that can evolve in rank and ability thru successful game world experience.

Cheers, RV.

I like your map, though i highly prefer natural looking landscapes.

Also, do you use edge brushes? Edge brushes are very useful. Saves alot of time, and you won't need a height map, if you just keep changing elevations on the slider where desired, to avoid totally flat terrain.

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* Tanks, Serman.

* Edge-brushes - I should use them more than I do. One thing I do is adjust the vertices in say a 20 square tile area, copy it, paste it, flip the x & y axis. More needless work, for sure.

* Natural landscaping aka asymetry I'm also very fond of. It touches the "Adventure" gamer in me. Exloring a gameworld can be fun in and of itself: some of my favs being "The Lighthouse", "The Longest Journey", "Morrowind", "Far Cry", the "Halo" series.

* All my Cam Mission Mapping or level design is asymetrical.

* When it comes to MP Maps, I do tend to symetry for the sake of balance in player start positions. However in the past I've tried to disguise or imbed that symetry within asymetry - I mad no such attempt with the "Trinity" maps.

* With the "Trinity" maps I very deliberatly went for a hyper-symetry that actually took into account the stats of ranged weeps, LOS and sensors to shape the GPMs of combat decision-making through positioning. (I also tried to  account for the constraints of WZ's pathing & turned them into assets.)

* Hence, the man-made look of the landscaping as a war-games training grounds is justified as compressing all the different maneuvering situations you'd encounter in a long-campaign into a more bounded real-time space.

* (One thing I do wish is that WZ's map "features" GFX were of better quality and had more variety... they are guite useful not only as "window dressing" but since they are "destructable" and player assignable in EW... well, you can imagine their strategic maneuver uses in manipulating BOT behavior.)

* Or, at least, that's how I've been rationalizing all of it to myself, heh.

l8rs, /V\I/R\G/I\L/ 

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* I mentioned "Game Balance" as an underlying reason for symetry in WZ MP maps but that hardly exhausts the topic.

* More than any component, IMO, game balance is what distinguishes a classic, endlesslly replayable game, from one that is soon forgotten.

* As far as WZ, the original Campaign achieved a marvelous (even brilliant)  balance that remained just a promise to be fullfilled in MP. It is in this central area that WZ began life as an unfinished game with its retail release and when Pumpkin ended its development in 9/99, unfinished is where it was left.

* Beyond giving WZ a 21st century GFX facelift, moving the game's MP balance foward from its "official" unfinished state is as worthy as it is a great challenge.

* In my journeying thru the gameing landscape I've not come across a better explanation of what is involved in game balancing than the following:

* If  You've Ever Wondered About Game Balance - A comprehensive breakdown


* l8rs, /V\I/R\G/I\L/

EDIT: To my knowledge there are available 2 major attempts at a Total Re-balancing of WZ.

* The 1st was by 4Nk8r in '99-00 and is called Vtol Fun

* The 2nd built on the 1st in '04 plus added a bunch of kwel stuff like mines... it was also worked on by 4nE as well as Strata (who created PIE slicer), others as well whose names I can't recall, & was called Mod-Patch v. 1.12....

* Those who are into the whole rebalancing of WZ might find these 2 previous efforts worth a look-see.

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* I just corrected a couple of inconsistencies & continuity issues in the concluding section of the Trinity short story "The Meeting of Leaders"....

* One of those things few would have noticed but to me when I came across it stood-out like a sore thumb.

* Which brings to my mind something a poet once said (I think T.S. Elliot, but I'm not sure) - "Poems are never finished, just abandoned.." Which is to say you do your best at a given time and then let go. Same can be said of any creative effort. To paraphrase the historian Will Durant - "Were I to await perfection I would never finish anything..." Something like this I think went through Da Vinci's soul as he carried around the "Mona Lisa" canvas with him for decades, across nations, polishing it till he could no longer hold a steady brush and was found close by his bedside when he died.

- /V\I/R\G/I\L/

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* I'm currently working on re-making the "Trinity Machinima".

* As I mentioned earlier, it started out because I was very unhappy with the RM tertiles (GrimMoroe's recent GFX art has inspired me to take heart and carry-on...graciously granting me permission to use when ready).

* However, once I decided to go with a redo, fresh ideas came a-flooding my brain. So much so that I thought it best to first work-out stuff in "Frame Forge 3D" as storyboards.

* Once I hit on combining WZ machinima (incorporating GrimMoroe's art) with machinima created in "MovieStorm", I began to use "The Movies" moviemaker to get a quick, toil-free, feel for the set-pieces & characters I would use from the Trinity back-story and Warzone stories I'd written (the final form being constructed in "Moviestorm").

* Recently, it occured to me see what machinima had been done within WZ. So I went to "You Tube", did a search, and was pleasantly suprised to find quite a few pieces. My favorite being Speedy's WZ Machinima trailer for his "A.I. Boost" Coop-MP Mod check it out here  (I'll probably release a short "Trinity" trailer 1st as well.....)

* The underlying reason for the research being I wanted to do something unlike what has been done already within the WZ game-verse.

* 'Course I've been inspired by the machinima of others outside of WZ. My favs being quite a few totally mesmerizing machinima movie-shorts shot in the MMOG "Second Life" HERE and the 2 grandest machinima Epics: "Borg War" HERE and "BloodSpell" HERE (if you have a broadband IP these are highly recommended - they are as entertaining as creative works as they are mind-boggling technical achievements.)

* A couple posts back I stated that my GPM aesthetic goals were based in "IF" (Interactive Fiction) and "Emotioneering Game Design" (I also provided links in that post for deeper treatments of those conceptual frameworks)......

* The natural question arises- "Why is the MMOG Second Life not a perfect example of that sorta construct ?

* My answer: "SL" is really durn close in many ways but it is mostly free-form emergent (as in complexity/chaos theory)...... whereas my GPM PoV is more embedded in a rule-based, telos-driven, construct. Some would say more a difference of degree than of kind. To which I would respond - could be and as the adage goes: "God is in the details - so is the Devil."

* Back to tasking-creating.............


- Cheers, /R\m/a\n/ \V/i\r/g\i/l\ 

GrimMoroe wrote: RV: Since I am working on new content I was wondering...do you have any requests for your mod?

* Wow, Grim... I dunno... I'm just happy to be able to use your art, whatever you choose to create because from what I've seen your aesthetics fundamentally resonate with my sensibilities.

* 'Course, I won't deny I've had moments of wishful thinking - especially when trying to work-out tight close-ups of Borgs (without extensive post-processing, which is like cheating to me, look like crap) or a 3/4 profile, mid-range shot of a squad of Troop-Transports in delta formation (the original looks fine, but maybe they could be super-kwel looking) or the low-poly map features (rocks, shacks, cookie-cutter trees) .... same with Baba structs (which play a key role in "Trinity")...

* But, in the end, I'm just grateful for what I've already seen.... and the thought of asking for more... feels too like greed to me...(and heck, I should leave it there before I go off on a tangent-ramble-polemic about "greeds" pure malignancy from my PoV).  ::)

- Cheers, /R\m/a\n/ \V/i\r/g\i/l\ 

GrimMoroe wrote: Could you take some screen caps of the stuff you mention and maybe post some internet links to the look you want?
It is only greed when I give you something and you ask for more....on the other hand if I offer then it can not be greed.

* Alrighty then, Grim. Still a little hesitant even though your point is well taken. But I'll go ahead and post some screens of current WZ funky stuff plus some alternate conceptual stuff - more than likely some will be based within 4G Warfare Doctrine like what General Dynamics has been working on the last few years, for example or the Army's "Future Force Commander" training sim.... & other sources.

Cheers, RV

* EDIT: I'm flying outta SFO Fri AM so I'll probably wait till I get settled back into my Salt Lake digs and do the above over Sat and Sun.

Salt Lake?  I work downtown, would you like to go to lunch?

Chojun wrote: Salt Lake?  I work downtown, would you like to go to lunch?

* Yup.... that would be kwel.

* I know I'll be finishing up a job next week outta the Qwest Central Office @ 70E / State - when ?, I'll find out on Monday... so I'll get back to you when I know exactly.

* After next week it looks like I'm gonna have to moth-ball the SL project till Jan '08 - when I'll come back to finish it up (in the the interim, i'll be working outta my actual home-base in Denver & prob picking-up slack in other cities like Seattle, Portland, Houston & Santa Monica..)

* Be in touch in a couple days.

- Cheers RV

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Borgs and Troop Transport



* Borgs look funky:



* Borgs are not robots - though they seem to have been inspired by Robbie from the 1950's SciFi movie "Forbidden Planet":



* The "Troop Transport" was not part of the original WZ. In fact it was suggested by a fan whose handle was Toricat and who happened to be a female soldier in RL and beta-tester for MS. She put it out there and Pumpkin implemented in a patch about 4 weeks later. It seemed to be inspired by stealth and hover tech. If you look closely some of the textures recycled from structs and the prop on the top middle of the fuselage makes no avionics sense.



* Here are some genuine cyborg tech concepts for "Future Force Warriors":





* Here are some interesting (IMHO) stealth aircraft geometries:










* For VTOL there's the Osprey:



- Cheers, RV