![]() A greater emphasis on sensors and radar: Basic sensors detect units and can co-ordinate ground attacks.A unit design system that lets players choose bodies, propulsions, and weapons.Essentially, Warzone 2100 plays much like Earth 2150 with 3D units and terrain, customizable vehicles, a lack of traditional infantry, use of "research" to acquire new technologies, and the differentiation of vehicles types.Ĭompared to other RTS's, Warzone 2100 has: This limits some of the variety that can be expected from real-time strategy games, although the single faction is very complex. Outside of the story, Warzone 2100 only has a single faction. However, during a routine maintenance check, something went terribly wrong. In the late 21st century, NASDA (the North American Strategic Defense Agency) developed and deployed a massive missile defense system, including a network of nuclear-equipped satellites and ground-based launch sites. Compared to other real-time strategy games, it has a greater focus on artillery, radar, and counter-battery technologies, more frequent in-game cinematic updates as game play progresses, a massive research tree, as well as a vehicle design system. More tantalising still are the recent blog updates on the Resurrection site, promising new terrain renderers and sky boxes of cloudy delight.Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game, originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive, now developed by the Warzone 2100 Project. There's lots of gaps where excellent GUI design and player feedback fill in for modern games, but it's still challenging, playable, and instantly comprehensible. It really does make you think: visually we've come a long way, but Warzone 2100 does so much that RTS games still struggle to get right today. I've played through a few levels, and fought a skirmish match against AI. There's even a Linux version coded up by the Resurrection folks, so there's a good chance that this will run on my mk1 EEE. I had to put Windows 95 compatibility mode to get it to boot on my Vista machine, and still had a couple of crashes. ![]() Happily their finest hour remains alive, and is being slowly built upon by that excellent fan community. Pivotal shut up shop in August last year, thanks to SCi's horrible internal mess, and sad faces were seen. Warzone 2100 was created by the only major developer local to me, Pivotal Games, though when they were still called Pumpkin. Such splendour was unheard of at the time, and it still seems rather bold today. So stuffed with ideas was this throne-coveting pretender that even let you "design" your own units, by piecing together turret, chassis, and locomotion. It's escalates beautifully through the campaign too, gifting me those arcing rocket salvos at just the right time. Tank rushes, turtling, designing a hovering flamer-tank - it's all here. It's packed with research and vehicle design, and leans heavily on the base-building, resource-thieving mechanisms that have made the RTS so popular over the years. ![]() Warzone 2100 was, however, rather more of a game than the pretties that were to follow. Such things had not been seen before, and it wasn't until Ground Control a couple of years later that such visions would be repeated. Big rocket-toting artillery types could get up to the top of hills and rain fiery ordnance down on their enemies. My clearest memory of Warzone 2100 was that it included proper elevation in 3D for the first time. I've been playing Warzone again in 2009, and I've posted some thoughts and impressions after the jump. The game has been freeware for some time, but is now supported by the Warzone 2100 Resurrection project, which is doing its best to provide for, and improve on, the original game. The finest of these was known as Warzone 2100, and its base-building prowess was practically unparalleled. Back in the slower, happier year of 1999 there were a number of contenders for victory in the first round of "proper-3D" real time strategies.
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