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Monday 30 August 2004

Tribes:v [Slim]

The beta's multiplayer only, so not played the oft talked about offlinecomponent, with only two maps. One indoor, one outdoor.
Lets get it out of the way, tribes:v has skiing, something I wasdefinately not a fan of in previous games. But this time there's adifference: skiing has been legitemised and therefore integrated properlyinto the game. As a result it's a bit easier to pull off, so everyonesdoing it, but crucially it means the maps are balanced and designed forit. This makes skiing routes more like choke points, you can plan for itand expect it, and it's a more level playing field. Kinda. The result inthe maps I've played is that both teams end up skiing past each other inthe mid field and the concentration is therefore on defence, butstill.....
Talking about defence, this is quite different too. The flags are nolonger holed away in some keep, they're now proudly out on display. Makingthem tougher to defend, but also tougher to attack.
Standard tribes things are still in place, the jetpacks here, as is thedisk launcher. Both might be a bit quicker, but that could be myimagination. The game overall does seem to play a lot faster though.
Visuals are a bit of a let down, not really dont seem to be up to UT2004's standards despite being based on that engine, but a definateimprovement over tribes 2.
It's not bad though, the fixes could make it actually enjoyable and meanthe old tribes players wont take it over and make it unaccessable.

13 comments:

  1. It's not terrible but then neither is it particularly good. I note it say's its based on the UT engine but it doesn't say which one. I would find it easier to believe it's on the UT2k3 than k4 engine which, right or wrong, might give you a feel for the quality of what we're talking about here.
    This won't blow any lightbulbs and it won't have you staying up til the wee hours smashed out your heid on adrenaline. We've had Planetside, BF1942, UT2k4 showing the way in recent times. I'm afraid this one feels like a once glorified Premiership player whose name still conjures up some magic but has lost five yards of pace and a lot reliability to some younger talent. And I'm not talking in the enjoyable wine bar area neither.

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  2. Actually just found this which seems to point to old UT engine technology. You wouldn't be doing the following to the UT2k4 engine now would you :)
    GD: Talk to us about the game’s graphics engine—what types of enhancements have been made to the Unreal Engine for this title?
    Rowan Wyborn: We have essentially re-written the renderer for this game. Enhancements include:- bump mapped characters and scenery and bump light mapping- a full screen HDR glow effect- pixel shaded water- improved terrain texturing and lightmapping- highly optimized terrain detail mesh renderer (lots of grass etc)
    We also take advantage of floating point pixel shaders and some other high end stuff. Finally we've just been doing alot of optimization... Tribes places some very big demands on the renderer because you can get up real high in these big levels, and see quite a long way. We found that the original Unreal engine was not really optimized particularly well for these cases.

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  3. Actually just found this which seems to point to old UT engine technology. You wouldn't be doing the following to the UT2k4 engine now would you :)
    GD: Talk to us about the game’s graphics engine—what types of enhancements have been made to the Unreal Engine for this title?
    Rowan Wyborn: We have essentially re-written the renderer for this game. Enhancements include:- bump mapped characters and scenery and bump light mapping- a full screen HDR glow effect- pixel shaded water- improved terrain texturing and lightmapping- highly optimized terrain detail mesh renderer (lots of grass etc)
    We also take advantage of floating point pixel shaders and some other high end stuff. Finally we've just been doing alot of optimization... Tribes places some very big demands on the renderer because you can get up real high in these big levels, and see quite a long way. We found that the original Unreal engine was not really optimized particularly well for these cases.
    ++ So there you have it readers. Engine with a bus pass.

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  4. Not really sure what you're talking about there. Unreal 2004 is basically Unreall 2003 with more maps and game modes. The only engine additions were things like voice comms and whatnot. The unreal engine is the unreal engine.

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  5. Ahhh Slim points out that UT2K4 is only a buff of the UT2k3 engine. I'd say the moral of the story is re-writing the renderer weren't terribly successful then! :)

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  6. By which I mean the independent re-write this lot did of it. UT2k4 looks a lot betterer indeed.

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  7. I really thing you're being overly harsh on it. For one thing it's a pre release beta. For another, the maps in Tribes have very different requirements. For a start the maps are a lot bigger, and have more sht running around on them. The vehicles are brill in this, with loads of detail on em, far nicer than the ut2004 ones. The bases are a long way removed from Tribes 2, with lots more detail and variety. Did you try all the maps in the beta?

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  8. Well I don't think I being harsh per se. I was a tremendous fan of T2 and was a bit gutted that the scale of the game seemed to be the biggest prob to getting a decent game on with the crosshatch. In BF1942 the scale is umm scaleable with say 4 a side whereas T2 was often basically impossible without more people. In some ways I say T2 as the obvious precursor to MMFPS games which are, essentially, still to come. And for that I'm a massive fan. When it gets done right and combines story with frenetic action on a large scale (after bandwidth upgrades etc) then we are finally going to have a perpetual world of serious addiction. For those of us who live long enough, retirement looks pretty fucking cool if you ask me.
    With T:V what you've basically got is a competent multiplayer game and not a lot else. It's not supposed to be the future of gaming and that would be unfair. However it's certainly not even a top drawer advancement of what was, once upon a time, one of the premier franchises in FPS stuff full-stop. So that's really where I'm coming from. If you look at Quake, UT and Tribes, this is probably the most underwhelming Alpha / Beta upgrade I've played of these famous names. That's not to say it's bad, it just hasn't come on anything like the others have / will have.

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  9. I still don't get this. You site UT as something that's advanced greatly, yet UT 2004 was basically identical to UT 2003 with a few new maps and a single new mod. Tribes:V at least changes the gameplay mechanics.

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  10. Slim, what I'm saying is, in my subjective opinion, the UT2k4 visuals are very much superior to that shown it T:V. Not just superior, a lot better.
    Whether what was done by the original UT2k4 coders' upgrade within the UT crew of their engine viz bump mapping / shaders etc etc versus that that was done by this independent lot... OR whether it was down to the quality of the mapping / textures and design of the UT2K4 crew versus this lot my basic point is that it is hard to credit that UT2k4 came out before this game. This looks worse. It also plays worse. End of subjective view.

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  11. For this sort of game, graphics are a pretty distant consideration over all the other things that can go wrong like netcode and gameplay.

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  12. At least the surfaces of the walls don't move and pulse and the grass and bushes dont talk to you :)

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  13. Pffff, you all know what will happen. The Lonely Hero Cap community will ruin this game in weeks. Just wait for the update, it will come. They should just make every level like a merrygoround with a couple of flags. Would save them the patch.

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