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This is reminiscent of the Tribes 2 development, when the developers revealed they lost the original Tribes source code, and thus the physics calculations. Bet
by stephengillie 9y ago
This is reminiscent of the Tribes 2 development, when the developers revealed they lost the original Tribes source code, and thus the physics calculations.
Beta testers constantly complained that falling didn't feel right, jetting and skiing (the game's main movement) was slow and soupy. Players were leaking videos and photos showing the differences in motion.
At one point, Dynamix hired a top player to playtest, as he "remembered the best" how it felt. All to reclaim the physics calculations of some game from the Leisure Suit Larry company.
- endgame 9y agoI'm not surprised, because get things lost to history all the time, but do you have a source?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drawkbox 9y agoYeah I could see using this to match physics and gameplay feel for games. Their example uses MegaMan physics and is quite close. It might be a good analysis tool as well to make sure gameplay tweaks to physics, lighting, etc between versions or when comparing changes almost like a gameplay diff.
- ramses0 9y agoAs a matter of fact, there is still a regular group of Tribes2 players online. This past Memorial Day weekend, I booted up a VM, d/l'd the ISO's, etc. and played a capture the flag match for a few hours... eventually with 16+ on the same server. The game is 16 years old... old enough to drive a car and it's still being played!
- archagon 9y agoKiller soundtrack, too!
- 52-6F-62 9y agoREALLY?? I wonder if there's a Tribes 1 revival group... Tribes 1 was an absolute favourite in my household growing up. It was the first real viable, extendable MMO fighter I'd played. I don't know if I've had as much fun in a similar format (and I enjoy [like the odd ice cream treat] some modern ones like BF1). Maybe it's just sentimentalism. It was the first game I got my younger siblings into, and they became obsessed. More than me... haha... SHAZBOT!
- solotronics 9y agoTribes 1 was open sourced a number of years ago and is free to play. Tons of mod servers and vanilla still exist and of course SHAZBOT!
- khedoros1 9y agoYou got me excited for a few minutes, but...no, Tribes 1 was not open sourced. The game was released as freeware though, along with a lot of the other Earthsiege and Tribes games. They can be downloaded here as iso files: https://www.tribesuniverse.com/ https://www.tribesuniverse.com/
- 52-6F-62 9y agoWell... there goes my night.
- ramses0 9y agoGet it up and running / working. Snap Crackle Pub is the 'main' server nowadays it seems. You're in luck, as it seems tonight 8pm EST there's gonna be a special event going on? ----- https://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/comments/6vmsqu/tribes_2_smackdown_in_tribestown_pug_824/dm1f2k3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/comments/6vmsqu/tribes_2_sma... Smackdown in Tribestown happening Tomorrow at 8pm EST on SNAP LAK Server. 67.222.138.13:28000 Midair guys are coming over to Tribes2 to play a few games and warm up for the Closed Beta Release of Midair. Should be a good time. If you need a copy of the game preconfigured check out my Tribes 2 Config here. Join us in Discord for more info. ------ ...and download the map pack here => put in prog files / dynamix / tribes / maps / etc. => http://t2.branzone.com/ http://t2.branzone.com/
- michaelcampbell 9y agoWasn't the mountain surfing/skiing a physics bug, that they liked so much they just kept in the game?
- croon 9y agoSame thing with bunny hopping in Quake, Half-Life and subsequently Counter-Strike. For an even deeper cut there are at least for older CS-games a sub-genre of surf maps specifically about navigating large areas with lots of pitfalls through that feature (previously bug).
- talmand 9y agoI believe they took pains to prevent the bunny hopping in Quake 3.
- croon 9y agoIndeed they did try that with a patch, but it had unintended consequences with "regular" movement feeling clunky, so they reverted it. It seems bunny hopping is a tightly linked side-effect of the set of physics rules that make those games "feel" good.
- okreallywtf 9y agoLove T2, I'm not affiliated directly (aside from being an KS backer) but if you liked the tribes franchise, take a look at Midair, a game being developed by a lot of former T2 players (although from what I understand, it has more of a T1 feel or a blend of the two): https://www.playmidair.com/ https://www.playmidair.com/
- wnevets 9y agoNever expected to see tribes mentioned on hackernews!
- kilceem 9y agoNext up evercrack er Everquest.
- oh_sigh 9y agoWhy wouldn't they just sample the game repeatedly to reverse engineer the physics? Tribes original certainly remained in play while tribes 2 dwv was happening.
- raverbashing 9y agoOr they could just have disassembled the original to try and recover the original calculations
- stephengillie 9y agoIf only they hadn't lost the source. It's apparently since been found at GarageGames, a game dev company started when Dynamix/Sierra fired all the devs after T2 was released.
- shanev 9y agoThe Leisure Suit Larry company was Sierra. Loved playing those games! Hero’s Quest, later renamed to Quest for Glory was probably my favorite. The physics in those games were amazing for the time, so I’m not surprised.
- stephengillie 9y agoSierra were the producers, Dynamix were the developers. Of course, things seemed muddled when both Sierra salesmen and Dynamix developers were hanging out on the internet forums with us players. I think Sierra bought Dyanmix at one point.
- shanev 9y agoSierra was both a publisher and a developer led by husband and wife team Ken and Roberta Williams. The first Leisure Suit Larry came out in 1987. Sierra didn’t acquire Dynamix until 1990, and they had nothing to do with Larry. Dynamix was known more for flight simulator games like Red Barron. The only forums around then were on Usenet and BBS’s. I used to run one of those BBS's. Fun times!