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30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

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Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#101

Post by Cruncharoo »

seattle_spring wrote: post #64
arscan wrote: post #41

The Kali TCP/IP IPX bridge allowed you to play this multiplayer over the internet, and the style of game was tolerant to low bandwidth and high pings. Which made this one of the first games that really provided a glimpse of the future of gaming (for better or worse, much of gaming has moved away from single person campaigns to multiplayer). I have so many great memories of this era in gaming because of this game and…

Kali ruled. I played a modified version of Hellfire (unofficial Diablo expansion that technically didn't support multiplayer) on Kali for the longest time. GTX_Rage, if you're here, I want to talk to you!

Oh no way I didn’t know Hellfire was unofficial. I don’t even remember where I got it back in the day but I still remember the CD..

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#103

Post by Lapsa »

capitainenemo wrote: post #63
guerby wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now Beyond All Reason keeps it alive and free software

Huh. I'm familiar with the Spring RTS FOSS project ( https://springrts.com ) which started as a reimplementation of TA, and of course Planetary Annihilation, but not "Beyond All Reason" - do you have an authoritative link?

BAR is a great RTS

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#104

Post by publicdebates »

MobileVet wrote: post #72

If you still want to experience the joys of RTS... but struggle to play after so many years away, I highly recommend catching a few streams from Grubby. He plays WC3 and a few other games and is quite entertaining to watch. He is also crazy good... His typical APM during a game hovers between 200 and 250. He is an absolute beast at leveraging his items and maximizing his heroes' hp. https://youtu.be/qaaWsRfbsls?si=EJ…

I miss the low res aesthetic of WC2. It's so sad that everything has to be high res nowadays. I never really liked WC3, maybe for that reason.

And although SC1/2 brought genuine improvements in the genre in many ways, there's something so much purer about the high fantasy tone of WC over the scifi tone of SC. Maybe it's just pure nostalgia, but it feels like something deeper, something more real.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#106

Post by bombcar »

publicdebates wrote: post #104
MobileVet wrote: post #72

If you still want to experience the joys of RTS... but struggle to play after so many years away, I highly recommend catching a few streams from Grubby. He plays WC3 and a few other games and is quite entertaining to watch. He is also crazy good... His typical APM during a game hovers between 200 and 250. He is an absolute beast at leveraging his items and maximizing his heroes' hp. https://youtu.be/qaaWsRfbsls?si=EJ…

I miss the low res aesthetic of WC2. It's so sad that everything has to be high res nowadays. I never really liked WC3, maybe for that reason. And although SC1/2 brought genuine improvements in the genre in many ways, there's something so much purer about the high fantasy tone of WC over the scifi tone of SC. Maybe it's just pure nostalgia, but it feels like something deeper, something more real.

WC2, SC1, and things like Heroes III (and somewhat today with Factorio) perfected that 2D art-style. It might not have as many pixels as WC3, but every single one of them was thought about and considered by someone with artistic merit.

It wasn't until nearly 20 years after WC2 that a 3D game got "graphics that look almost 2D in quality (SC3)".

I think it's also very telling that World of Warcraft made infinity money, but World of Starcraft never happened. High fantasy always lends itself to the "I can make a difference as a mortal man" but sci-fi seems to always trend toward "too big for human consumption."

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#107

Post by black3r »

> Development stared in the first months of 1995, and the game was released in North America and Australia on December 9, 1995.

This feels absolutely insane for today's standards. And not just in the gaming world. Somehow with all the advancement of libraries, frameworks, coding tools, and even AI these days, development speeds seem so much slower and it seems like too much time is spent on eye candy, monetization and dark patterns and too few times on things people actually like to see - that's what made us buy games and software in the old days.

(But also in the gaming world, especially the past few years when almost no game studio develops its own engine, assets don't look more detailed than what was used 3 years ago, stories seem hastily written and it feels like 80% of developer's time is spent on making cosmetic items for purchase which often cost more than the base game price)

Also somehow we spend lots of times researching UX and developing tutorials (remember when software had the "?" button next to the close button and no software "tutorials" were needed?) and yet all the games and software are harder to learn than what we had in the 90s and 00s.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#108

Post by pa7ch »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #25
boringg wrote: post #4

The apex of RTS games -- what a great gaming era RIP. Since then graphics are way better but business models have just deteriorated and mass appeal has driven games.

I consider WCIII TFT the apex but that is because i really like the hero mechanic and it spawned so many amazing custom games, including the moba genre. I know AoS was first but dota really made it.

I feel like wc3 is undersung. To me it achieved the perfect balance of allowing potentially mechanically worse players to win with brilliant tactics or strategy. It put the emphasis on strategy in rts more then anything else.

As a kid I was shit at it and played customs maps and goofed with the editor. Now I've gone back to find grubby streaming and revealing the depths of the meta evolution, and counters.

I like that even when a strong meta develops people can potentially counter with strategies that aren't as well rounded for long term use but upset the current meta.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#109

Post by myth_drannon »

black3r wrote: post #107

> Development stared in the first months of 1995, and the game was released in North America and Australia on December 9, 1995. This feels absolutely insane for today's standards. And not just in the gaming world. Somehow with all the advancement of libraries, frameworks, coding tools, and even AI these days, development speeds seem so much slower and it seems like too much time is spent on eye candy, monetization an…

Additionally, the product was completed and released on CD, so no hundreds of bug fixes after the release.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#110

Post by wredcoll »

bombcar wrote: post #106
publicdebates wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the low res aesthetic of WC2. It's so sad that everything has to be high res nowadays. I never really liked WC3, maybe for that reason. And although SC1/2 brought genuine improvements in the genre in many ways, there's something so much purer about the high fantasy tone of WC over the scifi tone of SC. Maybe it's just pure nostalgia, but it feels like something deeper, something more real.

WC2, SC1, and things like Heroes III (and somewhat today with Factorio) perfected that 2D art-style. It might not have as many pixels as WC3, but every single one of them was thought about and considered by someone with artistic merit. It wasn't until nearly 20 years after WC2 that a 3D game got "graphics that look almost 2D in quality (SC3)". I think it's also very telling that World of Warcraft made infinity money,…

> I can make a difference as a mortal man"

Thinking of popular fantasy sci-fi, this seems like the exact opposite of what actually happens! With the notable exception of lotr (and how many early readers really focused on frodo's struggle anyways?) most fantasy has some kind of superhuman main character that can singlehandedly change the world.

Scifi tends to be a lot more about people like Picard, important and respected but ultimately limited to influencing others to achieve major changes.

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