The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#41

Post by drops » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:53 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #37

blakeyrat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, ShifterV1 was the best mod ever. My friends and I used to say that Tribes 2 would be an easy ptoject: just grab the features from ShifterV1 and put on a fresh coat of graphics paint. Too bad the real Tribes 2 turned out to be such a disappointment.

But in retrospect, even Tribes 2 wasn't that much of a disappointment. The hard-core types that frequented Tribalwar complained incessantly about it, and I grant you that the weeks following its release were bumpy, but there were a lot of people who enjoyed the game considerably. Now Tribes:Vengeance and the free-to-play nonsense that is Tribes Ascend? Those have brought the franchise to a near-standstill.

Tribes Ascend wasn't that bad during its early beta stages, though. I think that was late 2011 / early 2012. It went downhill with the consecutive patches following the game's release in April 2012.

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#42

Post by raisedbyninjas » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:53 PM UTC

sleepybrett wrote: post #20

stevebmark wrote: post #10

Part of why Tribes was such an incredible experience was it had 64 player servers. The maps were constant chaos. Haven't quite experienced anything like that since.

The battlefield series tends to support a large number of players on very large maps. No jetpack assisted skiing though.

Battlefield 1942 came out 4 years later. Although it was incredible fun too. Its network code was infamous. Unloading entire magazines at point blank range was certainly no guarantee that you'd even scratch your target.

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#43

Post by gherkin0 » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #33

caconym_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually thought about Tribes a lot recently, what with the kerfuffle over hitboxes/tickrate in Overwatch, the architectural issues with The Division (bad game), and general netcode angst these days. I remember the Tribes experience being buttery smooth and precise, even with the high speeds, long distances, and general reliance on physical projectiles rather than hitscan weapons.

And even on relatively slow internet connections, like four players in one room on a 1.5Mbps DSL connection!

That may be part of the reason why it was so good. In 1998, they had to make it playable on 56k modems, and a lot of those optimizations probably transferred over to smooth play over better connections.

Now there are fewer incentives to optimize to that degree...

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#44

Post by blakeyrat » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 11:07 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #37

blakeyrat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, ShifterV1 was the best mod ever. My friends and I used to say that Tribes 2 would be an easy ptoject: just grab the features from ShifterV1 and put on a fresh coat of graphics paint. Too bad the real Tribes 2 turned out to be such a disappointment.

But in retrospect, even Tribes 2 wasn't that much of a disappointment. The hard-core types that frequented Tribalwar complained incessantly about it, and I grant you that the weeks following its release were bumpy, but there were a lot of people who enjoyed the game considerably. Now Tribes:Vengeance and the free-to-play nonsense that is Tribes Ascend? Those have brought the franchise to a near-standstill.

You're joking, right? It took something like 3 months of near-constant patches before Tribes 2 would even run on my machine. It was the buggiest game I've ever bought, and I was shocked that they'd chosen to release it in that broken state.

By the time they'd patched it well-enough that it actually ran somewhat reliably, my friends and I had completely lost interest in it. Tribes 2 was a franchise-killer. I never even tried Tribes: Vengeance after that debacle.

(Tribes Ascend started out great, then became a textbook case of how pay-to-win makes good games terrible.)

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#45

Post by munchbunny » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 11:44 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #37

blakeyrat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, ShifterV1 was the best mod ever. My friends and I used to say that Tribes 2 would be an easy ptoject: just grab the features from ShifterV1 and put on a fresh coat of graphics paint. Too bad the real Tribes 2 turned out to be such a disappointment.

But in retrospect, even Tribes 2 wasn't that much of a disappointment. The hard-core types that frequented Tribalwar complained incessantly about it, and I grant you that the weeks following its release were bumpy, but there were a lot of people who enjoyed the game considerably. Now Tribes:Vengeance and the free-to-play nonsense that is Tribes Ascend? Those have brought the franchise to a near-standstill.

Tribes: Ascend was also fine, even with the free-to-play parts, until they pushed the monetization just a little too far. I think I have something like 200 hours in it playing the basic classes with most of the essential unlocks, and it was a great game. And then they released way too much paid DLC and things got a bit too ridiculous for me.

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#46

Post by STRML » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 11:48 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #36

aaron-lebo wrote: post #6

It still blows my mind that Tribes came out in 1998. That was a game with vehicles, easy modding (Tribes Football, RPG, Shifter, Renegades, anyone?), incredible mechanics (skiing), massive maps, recordable gameplay, a very active competitive community (OGL, 5150, players like Natural), And it was very playable on a 56k with some servers supporting 64+ players. Frankly, it puts a lot of titles with massive budgets, de…

Skiing was a bug - friction didn't apply to players while the jump animation was playing, but gravity equations did, so players slid downhill a bit. During beta, players learned to hammer their spacebar to maintain this frictionless state, skiing incredibly fast. Eventually, a script was released to automate this, repeating the jump when spacebar was held down; other games might consider this a cheat, but the communi…

Skiing was a bug in Starsiege:Tribes - it was a feature in Tribes 2 and arguably made the whole series into what it is.

The community eagerly awaits a reboot that can even come close to challenging the technical & operational superiority of T1 & T2. What masterpieces they were.

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#47

Post by ChoGGi » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 11:50 PM UTC

ShroudedNight wrote: post #38

buzzybee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is substantial: There are books describing some standard practices now, third-party engines will at least include some basic networking functionality, and every worthwhile book on engines will at least mention what you need to do to reasonably support multiplayer. At the time that Tribes was developed, none of that reference material existed yet - you had to do your engineering from scratch, and there…

>Today it's more common for multiplayer to only be broken in a limited set of ways, instead of "we are hacking away at a fundamentally wrong architecture for this problem". While true generally, that doesn't preclude us from some epic failures. My understanding is that The Division implemented client-authoritative simulation and is now in a hopeless battle against those that would modify their client for an advantage…

No, it seems relativity free of cheaters. Once they brought out the ban hammer (as well as perma bans), the amount of cheaters seems to have dropped quite a lot.

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#48

Post by Buttons840 » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 12:04 AM UTC

munchbunny wrote: post #45

MrZongle2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in retrospect, even Tribes 2 wasn't that much of a disappointment. The hard-core types that frequented Tribalwar complained incessantly about it, and I grant you that the weeks following its release were bumpy, but there were a lot of people who enjoyed the game considerably. Now Tribes:Vengeance and the free-to-play nonsense that is Tribes Ascend? Those have brought the franchise to a near-standstill.

Tribes: Ascend was also fine, even with the free-to-play parts, until they pushed the monetization just a little too far. I think I have something like 200 hours in it playing the basic classes with most of the essential unlocks, and it was a great game. And then they released way too much paid DLC and things got a bit too ridiculous for me.

Ascend now gives all unlocks for a fixed price. The game has received some support recently, mainly changes to make it more like classic Tribes games.

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#49

Post by davesque » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 12:14 AM UTC

Definitely played the crap out of Tribes 2. I remember at the time it came out, I was so astounded by the smoothness of the gameplay and the sheer variety of tactics and options that I almost didn't believe it was possible. To support as many players as it did and deliver that level of experience over the internet technologies of the day was incredible. Also, for me, the game basically came out of nowhere. I missed out on Starsiege: Tribes and had never heard of the developer before Tribes 2.

"Get the enemy--shazbot."

Re: The TRIBES Engine Networking Model (2009) [pdf]

#50

Post by orware » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 12:24 AM UTC

Slightly off topic, but still related to Tribes...I remember purchasing Starsiege back during this time (if I remember correctly it and the original Tribes were released around the same time, along with Half-Life).

I never played the original Earthsiege I and II titles, but Starsiege was super cool for me as a kid, and it wasn't even really because I got to pass the game (it was kind of difficult for me at that age so it probably wasn't until ten years later that I actually played it again from the beginning and passed it).

The main thing I loved about the game was the big backstory book that was included with the game that really outlined the whole thing for you and gave you a pretty cool connection with the characters (looking back it was like a mix between The Matrix and the Terminator franchises in terms of story).

I'm not a movie director but occasionally I still find myself thinking about what a cool movie it would make and wish a new game for it would be released (since the last attempt got *nixed).

Tribes was cool too, don't get me wrong, and I played a fair amount of it too (though by 26.4 kbps connection kind of hurt my online play, lol), but compared to the more story driven Starsiege, I never got into it nearly as much.