Messages

News has made slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/11/20/0440236/EA-Shuts-Down-Pandemic-Studios-Cuts-200-Jobs .

As usual, some BZ2 love and hate in that thread.

-- GSH

Better use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget or similar to back up anything.

-- GSH

On the flip side, the value of my two autographed BZII cds has quadrupled at least!

That and $3.99 will get you some starbucks coffee.

-- GSH

Now that Pandemic has been closed, who's up for convincing EA to make a BZ3?

They did say that they wished to continue Pandemic's legacy...

Battlezone is still associated w/ Activision. EA didn't buy Pandemic until Jan 2008.

Problem is, neither publisher wants to make games that don't sell well enough to make back the development costs. BZ isn't dead. Just unprofitable. Wildly unprofitable.

-- GSH

@GSH,

Which company are you working for now?

As above, I don't start my new job until early December. So, I'm technically unemployed at the moment.

-- GSH

I posted some thoughts here: http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,10188.0.html . Long story short: like most arguments, both sides are probably at least a bit at fault.

-- GSH

On Vista/Win7, it's probably under MyDocs/My Games/Battlezone II.

Remember: BZ2 can't write to ProgramFiles any time it wants to anymore.

-- GSH

[The Saboteur]

It looks like the news of Pandemic's closure seems to be official: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26120/EA_Memo_Confirms_Pandemic_Consolidation_Van_Caneghem_Hire.php and http://kotaku.com/5406830/confirmed-ea-closes-pandemic-studios-says-brand-will-live-on . I'm just pinging people I know from Pandemic to see what their side of the story is.

Comments above are right in that Ken was cut from Pandemic October 30th 2008, and has been in Austin since this January, working at Armature Studios. I've been working on getting The Saboteur finished up. I've kept things quiet for now, but I feel that it's a good time as any to announce this: I'm not at Pandemic anymore. But, by choice. (Trust me, I wanted to get some severance.) I've accepted a job in Austin, starting in early December, and am in the process of moving my family and everything here. I've had that job offer in hand for weeks, and gave notice at Pandemic a week ago (Mov Nov 9th). Friday Nov 13th was my last day. I'm not going to say what company I'll be working for quite yet; I want to see what their policy on side projects (read: BZ2) is. I'll just say that it's listed on http://www.gamedevmap.com/index.php?tool=location&query=Austin .

I know it'll be easy to blame EA for this closure. I'm going to say that some of the blame probably lies on both sides.

-- GSH

Given current game development team sizes, a remake would take a team of 60-80, and a budget of $20-35 mil. (BZ2 was a dozen, maybe 18 people, and a budget of 1-2mil.) And a remake would still not sell any better.

-- GSH (bitter. And realistic.)

One texture per polygon. I've seen some XSIs w/ multiple textures on a polygon. BZ2 was NOT happy loading them.

-- GSH

Also, ensure there is 1 texture, and 1 texture only. And that it's XSI 1.1 format.

-- GSH

[ancient]

Where did you check your graphics card driver version? Microsoft? ATI's website?

DIAG|                 vid:609  |20:37:40|1400   | Driver:                ati2dvaa.dll
DIAG|                 vid:610  |20:37:40|1400   | Description:           RAGE 128 PRO Ultra GL AGP (Microsoft Corporation)

My gut feeling on this: that is ancient. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units#Rage_series, that chip debuted in August 1999 -- before BZ2 launched. In December 1999.

Latest drivers for it are at http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/legacy-xp.aspx , though those were posted in October 2001. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Rage says the Rage 128 Pro ought to support DXT texture formats, but you can try disabling that by editing the render.cfg/render_editor.cfg file in the same directory as bzone.exe. Find the line that says:

UseDXT = -1

And change it so that it = 0. If that fixes this, great (and let us know, so I can tweak things). Though, as the comments above that say, please try and use a video card made this century.

-- GSH

[not]

1) Do get latest drivers for your hardware. If you know the system specs, post them here, and we can help. Otherwise, let us know that you don't have the system specs, and post that.

Heck, one thing that'd be useful is to post the battlezone.log file. Start up BZ2, get to the login screen (i.e. where you create/select a pilot), then exit out. If you're running Win2000/XP, battlezone.log will be in the same directory you installed BZ2 into. (And, it'll probably be named just 'battlezone' unless you tweaked the Windows defaults to show file extensions). If you're running Vista/Win7, then battlezone.log will be in MyDocuments/My Games/Battlezone II. Battlezone.log should be a text file that opens w/ notepad. Post its contents on this thread.

2) Do not bother w/ trying to turn off dxt textures for now.

-- GSH

By default, Vista/Win7 should put the screenshots under MyDocs/My Games/Battlezone II/Screenshots .

-- GSH

Current copyright law has expiration due to (1) time, or (2) author's choice.

-- GSH