Is The Red Odyssey a big disappointment?

[bigbadbogie]

Forgotten Enemies is the most fun I have ever had with a computer game... and it had nothing to do with money.

It was a huge community MOD!!!

A few inconsistancies are common in a project of that scale with that many people working on it.

Lizard told me that it was anarchy trying to keep everybody on track with its original development.

[Avatar]

MacMillan acted on behalf of Activision to handle Battlegrounds, mostly I think because that was the era of people publishing collections of game levels that were found free on that new fangled thingy "The Internet".  This caused a LOT of outcry from the fans that made the levels for free that found their work on a published CD making money at a game store.  Doom and Quake were really hit hard by such things...  MacMillan made it clear from the beginning that they were going to pay for the levels, and that it was a contest.  This made it head over heels above most of the level collection efforts of the time.  I have to admit I was actually surprised when I got a real check out of it...

I think Battlegrounds did well enough that MacMillan wanted to strike again while the interest ($$$) was still there, so they pushed for a full Campaign and we got TRO.  Yeah!!!

***

Battlezone II was part of the conditions Activision imposed on the upstart group that wanted to split off and call themselves Pandemic... they had to give Activision two full games in return for their startup money.  Rather than come up with two totally new games they played it safe and made sequels to two previously semi-successful games, Battlezone and Dark Reign.

And we got Battlezone II.  Yeah!!!



-Av-

[Avatar]

They're on the net now, but weren't then.  One of the provisions was that your submission wasn't already out on the net and they DID have people checking.  As part of reviewing the maps they recruited from the Community which is how Toni and Mick ended up working for them.

Battlegrounds must have sold enough copies to support TRO, or they simply wouldn't have done it.  The number one rule is nobody does anything for free, they always feel there's profit there or they don't do it.  That doesn't mean they'll make money, just that they think they will. 

I find it hard to believe TRO sold only 400 copies considering I saw a dozen copies on the shelves locally.  Multiply that by hundreds of Electronic Boutiques across the country and that's a lot of $5 games in bargain bins the next year.    I DO know Evolve had a few boxes of them as part of their deal and Hulka was selling them out of his garage many years later, since a lot of people never had a chance to get it in the UK.

The bottom line is what I said earlier.  The money does the talking, makes the decisions, and calls the shots.   The game developer is often powerless to control their own product, including design issues and time limits.  If you say you need a year, and the Publisher gives you a year, then most of the time you're done in a year whether the game is or not.

The real question is does that sometimes make for a better game or not?  If BZ had taken five years to make and came out all slick and polished and totally bug free would we still all love it? 

Maybe not...

-Av-

[TheJamsh]

BZ2 is rubbish compared to BZ1.
BZ2s various mods are about 100x better than BZ2 itself.
Forgotten Enemies, Fleshstorm, QF, and about 20 others all dwarf what BZ2 was originally capable of.

lets be more forgiving about that. i never played BZ1 but ive seen in-game stuff and im not that impressed. i prefer BZ2's, shell, HUD, gameplay etc, and its easier to mod in my opinion.

BZ2 V1.0 was  a bug-full program but it was freaking good for its time in terms or graphics and things. BZ2 V1.2 was better, added a couple of nice things.

the public betas quite frankly make BZ2 the best game ive played. youre right in saying that the mods dwarfed the original game, but surely thats the idea of a mod really?

all the battlezone games suffered poor marketing if you ask me. they would have become far more popular if advertising was done like it was for lets say, COD4/5, GOW.

In my opinion, BZ2 was then what COD4/5 is to the gaming world now. Unfortunately, only a handful of people knew about it...

[Grendel]

You need to play Bz1 to see why it's better than Bz2...
It has some things that Bz2 doesn't have.

[Avatar]

Some people find it easy to judge a book by it's cover.

Amen...

Kids these days... give them pretty graphics and they think it's a good game.   

BZ1 had it all, and I hate to keep adding 'for it's time' because it holds up well even by today's standards as long as fancy shmancy graphics are not your only way of judging the game.  I personally have yet to run into a game that had as much going for it as BZ1, or is as easy to mod as BZ2 1.3.  Keep in mind that BZ1 ran decently on my P120 with Voodoo2, and BZ2 flies on the same system that I can't get most modern games to run on (my AMD 1.2 with GF6200), let alone look as good as BZ1 did or as good as BZ2 can.

The main thing BZ1 suffered from is that it took brains to play, and a soul to appreciate.  Most gamers of it's time were either frenetic, mountain-dew hyped, trigger-fingering, twitch gamers addicted to Quake or top-down Warcraft strategy types...  BZ1 required thinking, and planning, and a lot of patience with lag...   

Lots and lots of patience.

-Av-

[Grendel]

Right! Graphics aren't everything.
I even still enjoy playing FreeSpace 1 (for some reason I've always thought of it as a deep space counterpart of Bz 1).
A soul (like the one Bz 1 has) makes a game, not soulless graphics (Bz 2)!

[Nielk1]

I've played BZ1, TRO, RotBD, AND BZ2, personally I like BZ2 better, but I am one who looks at how receptive the engine is to my additions rather than looking at the game itself. BZ1 has more depth to its story than BZ2, so, if you ignore the game engine completely, and the quality of the graphics, BZ1 is best of all.

I got mift with BZ1 with the various errors and crashes I was getting, and I found the community was extremely childish (though it seems all games are that way). Lots of little fights going on include the recent one about ARF (which I found difficult as no one on the other side would give me any information (they just ranted BS and said some truly disturbing things), though I have found it seems the other side is the winner of that dispute (although they never did tell me ANYTHING, i had to dig myself, and they scoffed me for taking sides when I didn't)).

Really for me, it is the stability, modability, and community that make me like BZ2 better.

This is why I like BZC so much.

[TheJamsh]

bah, im no kid i know its not all down to graphics.

admitedly, BZ2 could have been so much more than what it was.

[Grendel]

What do you mean exactly?
Although I prefer Bz1, I still think Bz2 is a worthy sequel... It doesn't have the same gloomy/mysterious atmosphere (among other things that make Bz1 so great), but I loooved playing it just the same.

[Nielk1]

What was planned for BZII


What was planned for BZ Expansion before it got sent to Evolve (I doubt the concept art went over there)

[Grendel]

Gracias, Nielk1!

[Wraith]

I like the design of some of those models, i see they was going to make aircraft. I think i would have loved that. I plan on trying to write a aircraftclass.

"I got mift with BZ1 with the various errors and crashes I was getting, and I found the community was extremely childish".

Yes you're right, there are some things you need to know to stop the crashes or you'll be stuck. Bz has had a small group of players that seem to exsist to try and control and harass players for the past 2 to 3 years, currently most players are banning that group which was long over due. Unfortuneitly the game is dying off now because of it.

Yeah I hardly play it now or ever unless it may or may not grow back. What bugged me the most the first Chinese mission always crashed on me. As soon as i buily my first gt or power supply it crashed. I have no idea why it just did. So I had to save the game before i knew it would quit and then load it back up and then it wouldnt crash or quit. Kind of a hassle if you ask me. 

[Nielk1]

BTW DX, your BzE ZFS files... I might have figured out how to get the files inside in a form I can open them. If I do find out I will PM and tell you just for the sake of it. My guess is the fact you cant just unzfs them and look at them was intentional! (I may be wrong, my method has only worked so far for the first two abetty waves.)

Yes, BZ1 was my first Battlezone and really is great. Then I got BZ2, years later TRO (a copy from a friend, should buy up some TROs, BZ1s, and BZ2s so I have a few), and finally, RotBD!

If BZ1 had support like GSH has given BZ2 earlier (since I think BzE is like the 1.3 of BZ1) then it would be a lot better off. DX, you just got access a bit to late so the community has suffered to much. You will notice the massive surge of BZ2 videos on YouTube lately, greatly supported by the 1.3 patch. You even see some BzE ones.

[Grendel]

I feel that if they added aircraft, submarines and superweapons, they would have killed battlezone's uniqueness. It would just be another strategy game - like a FPS of any game from the C&C serial...