Warzone 2100 Forums

  Yeah. And don't get my "slideshow" term as some powerpoint slideshow. I mean slideshows with zooming maps, sound effects and a voice giving the briefing. Because I believe that making full animations like Nexus's head and tanks in battle would take too long and need very good skills. And I know that even some voice only briefing would already better. With graphics would be even better. But I think that making full 3D animations would be about waste of time. I think we really should make animated slideshows with sounds and voice while we don't get the original FMVs (I could help by getting all the maps into image files, I have the PSX version and could use it not to miss any map).
  That's my vote

Chojun wrote: I think the dev-team completely removed support (and capability) for FMV playback.

If this is the case, then I think they need to seriously consider reinstating it.  Removing it for the users that have retail copies (like me) who enjoy the movies is unfair

Especially for me, cause since I have 1.0 (no cheats)
I only managed to get to the second to last mission in Alpha Campaign, so I never got to see the other FMV's.  :-[ :-\

Which reminds me, is there a place where the FMV's are compiled, and uploaded?

J.Vaughan wrote: Now forgive me for taking a back step here... I know the topic has moved on but didn't we push for the WZ Source Code? Is there anyway that we can push for the FMV's? I know Pumpkin isn't around anymore and although I don't believe Edios, itself, is around anymore but merged or was bought out by some British company. Those group developers and artists are still around aren't they?

I don't think that we should completely give up because don't copyrights expire? I'm not to familiar with the subject but removing support completely right now might be too quick. Even if the RPLs aren't released. Anyways I guess nothing like a petition would work would it? This is "art" were talking about...

I know my questions have already been both asked and answered before but I don't like the feeling of being helpless (I'm too optimistic .)  I remember when the source code was being pushed and it was either N.E.W.E.S.T. or some people from here who actually spoke to a representative or game artists and I'm sure they got very annoyed, Seems like they've run out of time but I don't get why they would be so stubborn on something they don't care about anymore. What did they say about the FMV's?

I believe that there are quite a few people finding WZ2100.net completely new to WZ and downloading the source and finding that the single player version has nothing interesting, no eye candy, no story line. I think it really does a dis-service to the game not having the movies integrated. It kills me the people I know who can't watch the movies, they're missing so much. I came from the PSX version... There was no single player skirmish, I lived on the story line!

As a solution though, I agree with Olrox... I've seen full blown RPG war games that use nothing but pretty much sideshows (pictures and maps) and voice to explain storylines.

Thats my $0.02

I'm out of time tonight so I'll keep my answers quick:

1)  Yes we pushed the source release pretty hard.  Unofficial support began with NEWST, but even earlier than that it started with folks like Bones0 and VTOL (and many others..) who were getting under the hood of the game as much as they can.  I was screwing around with it a little myself as early as August of 1999, this is when I first really noticed the other groups out there who were doing the same.  I stayed aloof until about Februrary of 2002, but when the demise of Pumpkin Studios was announced, I came across NEWST.  I didn't join NEWST until around March or April of 2002 though.  Unofficial support continued through the sinking of NEWST (for certain reasons NEWST during it's demise was like a ship with autopilot on, with its rudder stuck).  Pumpkin-2 formed promptly afterwards (NEWST.net was bought by a domain name harvester so we had to come up with a new name) and that's when we made a major push for the source release.

I was the one who actually wrote up the petition, RBL-4nik8r submitted it online and did a major advertizing push with other open-source communities, and the highly enigmatic Rman Jack aka Virgil Glyph aka 100 other names was our direct contact with the head developers at the former Pumpkin Studios (Rman Jack's contributions were essential, and I believe he met with some regional Eidos reps to negotiate the source release).  Anyway long story short, the source was freed after Alex at Pumkin looked through their CVS server and found what he could.  We asked him for EVERYTHING but he just couldn't find everything, and there was some licensing issues with some of the PSX stuff so he had to look through it and remove all that stuff.

We also at the time had to absolutely SCRAMBLE for server space since we were given extremely short notice for the source release (like 1 or 2 days).  We had very limited server space and Alex had limited bandwidth, so THATS WHY THE DAMN FMVS WERE NOT INCLUDED WITH THE SOURCE CODE.  Radiosity had 100MB to spare on his web server so the file was uploaded there.  WF-Cowboy also hosted the file on DG and if I remember, others eventually hosted the files as well.  The D/L was slow at first but...  If I remember correctly I was 6th to get the files   I think it was Cowboy and possibly Troman that had the source compiled by the next day (well done!).  This even impressed some of the former pumpkin Studios guys who said they thought the source would never compile.

Anyway the source release announcement was posted on Slashdot on the linux section.  THAT's why we had so many linux folks descend upon us all at once.  This caused the (then) realtimestrategies.net crowd to largely break up and now the torch bearers are everyone here at wz2100.net.  A lot of us didn't like the direction that the linux people were taking the game, so that caused a lot of people both new and old to part ways.  Anyway Coyote has been with the process all along the way and he's done a great job tying the two groups together, contributing to what we see today.  Also Per and DevURandom have been with the source development for a while.

...  I thought I was gonna make this post short.  Anyway, to answer your question, the reason why the FMVs weren't included with the source release is because it simply was not feasable to upload 600+ MB of stuff when we only had just enough to fit the source.  Also from what Radiosity (Dancing Moogle) said, the source upload was very slow.  It would've taken FOREVER and Alex at Pivotal was gracious enough to take time out of his busy day trying to get Conflict:  Desert Storm published and find the source from the archive servers and strip everything out and upload it.

2)  I don't think that Pumpkin Studios was ever annoyed with us.  I also don't think that they will ever lose a place in their hearts for Warzone2100.  They worked on warzone for a number of years and I think it will always be their baby at heart, even though it has absolutely no market potential now.  Eidos' push for warzone to go to the PSX was the dagger to warzone's heart, IMO.  Because it has no market potential, it would be a complete waste of their money to chase after some non-profit open-source community (ours) with lawyers to get us to take down some FMVs that TECHNICALLY, TO THE ABSOLUTE LETTER OF THE LAW, aren't covered by the open source license because they weren't distributed with the source.  That's why they will ABSOLUTELY NEVER PURSUE US IF WE DISTRIBUTE THE FMVS WITH THE SOURCE CODE!  That would be pure insanity!

I think the people in charge of this joint ought to have a change in philosophy.  Quit being so stubborn and do what's best for warzone2100.  I bought the game because of its rich storyline.  The graphics have always been sub-standard, even by 1999's standards.  People downloading the source and playing the Campaign will never get hooked to the game like I did for so many years, because they don't have the thing that defines warzone and makes it what it is.

Chojun, I had heard all this before (and think I spoke to you before), and this Is what I wanted to hear come out onto the floor. Sorry to waste your time but I thank you for explaining to a lot of people what was really going on at the time. Getting the source was great! Now we have it, some people don't understand why we don't have the FMV's some people do, but at any rate your explanation was extremely helpful. I hope us asking for more didn't upset anyone here in the forums... We've just accomplished one task and we're trying to push harder. I know lav and a few have been around for a while and I believe that the actual place I spoke to you (possibly lav or one of the others you mentioned) or read this was from the war zone forums on game spy i believe.

It just seemed too strange that someone would be prosecuted over something that would cost the artist nothing. It's not like music where they are loosing sales.

So what do some of the devs here at wz2100.net think? I understand that bandwidth is one of the biggest issues...

bandwidth??? lol whoever manages to finish setting up a nice way to plug in fmv's whether old or new ones...im sure enough of us could recieve a copy to go the p2p route.

i for one would run emule 24/7 for ppl to download from me...we could just post here to exact file names, size and crc e.t.c

im sure a file called fmvforopenwarzone80247KB.zip isnt gonna be confused with anything else on a p2p network.
plus im sure a few of us would open gocities sites e.t.c and post links here.
if we cant have an uber band, we can have many small ones.
shouldnt take too long to reach saturation point, how many die hard wz fans are there?

GiGaBaNE wrote: ...how many die hard wz fans are there?

Apparently more than we think

Can we sticky Chojun's post, add it to the wiki, readme or whereever else it might fit?
According to what I know it is a quite extensive and correct summary of that time and the reasons.
Maybe http://wz2100.net/wiki/history for the time being?

I was actually going to ask the same thing.... but didn't want to step out of place  :-\

i second that motion ( or third in this case ). that is exactly the kind of info that brings this site and its common userbase together in understanding...sticky!!

GiGaBaNE wrote: ... how many die hard wz fans are there?

Guilty as charged, my friend. 

I thought my post was going to cause people to start belching flames   I wasn't trying to write the memoirs of Warzone and the source release, but I agree, it might be a good idea to put one up somewhere just so that people know where the game has come and where it is going.

As I was pouring my cereal this morning, I realized that I had forgotten to mention the strategy extreme message boards in the early to mid 1999.  This is where Pumpkin Studios had set up an official message board to get feedback on the game and get suggestions on its improvement.  IMO the game was very lacking in its first release.  Pumpkin interacted directly with all of us and took our suggestions, and ended up releasing a new patch every month until november of 99.

This interaction is how Rman Jack came to association with Alex at Pumpkin Studios.

I've never seen a game company so directly involved and dedicated to its fans and customers.  If warzone hadn't made it past patch 1.0, the game would've been dead in the water from the get-go.  I'm not sure if any of the people who came on board with the source release have played version 1.0, but the skirmish play was terrible.  The AI was a push-over, and you started with T1 tech and research ended at the end of T1 tech.  Also, there were only like 4 levels, if I remember correctly, and a lot of the right-click context menus didn't exist, so gameplay wasn't as intuitive as it is now.

I'm actually a proud owner of two copies of wz2100, and I have the original box and all of its contents for one copy of the game.  Maybe I should take some high-quality pictures so that people can see it, if they've never seen it before. 

Unless we don't have a written permission to rip/distribute the original FMVs, i wont put a link to them (if they would be shared) on the whole wz2100.net website nor tolerate links to them. Even if the chances are low that a lawsouit from company X will sue us, I'm still the one who has to carry the can for this website and it legal stance.

But dont get me wrong, i would like to let other people enjoy the game with the original FMVs but this is at the momment it is not possible to distribute them without moving into a black law area. I can't back off the post from Chojun because i can't proof them.

So, because the original FMVs aren't that complicated, compared to todays possibility's, i prefer to redo them. But we need some artist for that work and some voice actors. Even small game mods find people for this, why wz2100 should find no one?

Thats completely understandable, not to mention of even the small chance we wouldn't want to jeopardize the whole resurrection project not to mention kamaze having to pay $$$ if by any chance something did go wrong. As it is turning out now, It just seems that we need to go through the correct order of things. Now I don't think that we would be able to use an e-mail as a legal document? We can go through the process of getting the actual things as not to bother the original developers of war zone but if we had written legal documentation that gave us explicit permission would it then be possible? What has been the problem with getting the artists permission? It has been stated time and time again in these forums that thats all we need so whats the problem in just getting the permission. Chojun do you still have contact with the original head of development?

Like I said, I don't want to take up any of their time because they were generous enough in getting us the source code we just need something that says were allowed to distribute the fmv's... We can handle getting them!

So what are the factors in limiting us to do this?

geez where to start... :-\


ok maybe the best way to start is at the begining.

for that you will have to go to the rts.net site and read the appropriate posts...and i believe some posts are here as well. 

much has been said - and done.  and we are still at the beginning.


many people have emailed the originators.  as far as i have been able to see - none has ever received a reply.