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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

#111

Post by wredcoll »

baq wrote: post #39
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started modern esports. There were gaming competitions in the 80s, but there weren't team houses, coaches, analysts, big money sponsors, regular huge events, dedicated TV channels, players in prime time commercials and dating actresses and pop stars, etc... Brood War hit in Korea like nothing before or after it . There were literally three full time, 24/7 TV channels showing Starcraft content at it's peak. No othe…

the parallel world of FPS esports started with quake and was going strong for a good decade or so, before being ripped apart by mumorpegers, dotas, counterstrikes and, primarily, consoles (which I believe also ultimately killed starcraft and RTS in general, too).

There is, I think, a reasonable distinction between the semi-annual "tournament with prize money" situation that existed in america with quake and friends, and the constant, episodic nature of the broodwar scene in korea. Players being salaried is a pretty major shift in how the culture works.

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

#112

Post by olavgg »

guerby wrote: post #58
capitainenemo wrote: post #38

WarCraft was a huge part of our LAN parties, but mechanics wise, Total Annihilation was a much bigger leap forward in terms of use of 3D terrain and ballistics and commands, so we played that a lot more. Warcraft had more differentiable units and a better story though.

And now Beyond All Reason keeps it alive and free software

BAR is a really great RTS game. By far the best one today. It is very balanced and has a lot of depth. Highly recommended for any RTS enthusiast.

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

#113

Post by icegreentea2 »

myth_drannon wrote: post #109
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.

They did have downloadable patches for WC2 though.

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

#114

Post by icegreentea2 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #84

I worked backwards from Starcraft, and to my mind WC2 still feels a bit archaic, insofar as the two races feel nearly identical. WC3 did a better job of differentiating the Human and Orc units, and then of course added Dark Elves and the Undead to the mix, too. But I will say that WC2 is the last major RTS I can think of with naval combat. After Starcraft streamlined it to be land and air only, it seems the entire in…

C&C RA (1996) and RA2 (2000) both had significant naval units. RA3 (2008) went.. maybe a little overboard with naval units as well. That said, all other C&C games (Tiberium and Generals) both avoided naval units.

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

#115

Post by sjoblomj »

barfoure wrote: post #24

Some additional stuff: 1) you can find the War 2 for PSX source on Archive. It has all the Windows stuff commented out. It might be possible to uncomment and compile with something like Borland C or Watcom C or whatever they used. 2) the modding scene was phenomenal. Not mentioned is StarDraft for obvious reasons but a counterpart to WarDraft. This is where our story takes a turn and the name Camelot Systems emerges,…

1. Wow, I did not know that. Thanks for sharing!

2. Indeed - I'm happy to hear someone know their Blizzard modding community history. To my knowledge, King Arthur never finished his studies as he got offered a job at Blizzard. He worked at Blizzard from around 2000 to 2020. He's now at Dreamhaven it seems, along with former Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. And indeed - Jorsys is very much inspired by Camsys =)

3. I think my abuse of overplaying Diablo I on our old 56k modem is what made my parents invest in broadband. I'm happy they didn't make me pay the bills back then.

My long term goal with Jorsys is to put tutorials and mods and make the whole thing accessible for people today and tomorrow. It's all pretty arcane, with tools, mods and instructions barely accessible anymore. Time is limited though.

I don't anticipate creating a community, but if you have anecdotes or stories to share, or want to help out in any way, don't hesitate to get in touch. My email is on Jorsys.

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

#116

Post by ericmcer »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #93

This is a really good and I think sadly under played and discussed game. It was very popular in the mid 1990s on release but it seems like it was immediately forgotten about once Starcraft arrived. It's unfortunate because yes it's a simpler and more straight forward game, and not as balanced, but it is very fun and pure. Warcraft 1 is maybe too slow paced and basic to be enjoyable, but Warcraft 2 remains very playab…

All the RTS games are underplayed nowadays. Starcraft 2 is maybe the most active still and has been all but abandoned by Blizzard.

A good RTS has an extremely harsh learning curve and is not super monetizable. Someone would have to rethink the genre: make it easier for casual players and figure out how to get the addicting money making patterns in. Otherwise big companies are gonna have no interest.

Sucks, I love Starcraft 2, but it is legitimately the most mentally demanding game I have ever played. Sometimes I procrastinate getting into a match because 1v1 is so stressful. I totally get why it has limited appeal.

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

#117

Post by ericmcer »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #10
iammjm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brood War IS the absolute apex. This is the game that started e-sports. It is what defined the modern RTS games. It is also the most difficult game. Flash, the best Brood War player, is arguably the best e-sports player of all time.

Oh goodness, Brood War most certainly is not the game that started e-sports, tho I of course appreciate your enthusiasm for the game.

Of course it wasnt the first time someone watched people playing video games against eachother.

The Korean Brood war scene was an entirely different level from anything that came before it though. The idea of announcers and gamers getting rich & famous from playing a video game live was unheard of before that.

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

#118

Post by ericmcer »

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #36

I still remember the 3 level demo CD they made. Awesome demo levels that made me buy the game, which is still one of my favorite games of all time.

My parents never bought me the full game so I probably played those demo levels 100s of times. Thanks for the memory trigger haha.

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

#119

Post by NortySpock »

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?

The Spring RTS FOSS engine is an engine, but does not provide the game assets or game-specific code.

Recoil is a fork of the Spring engine (background: Spring made backward incompatible changes; Recoil forked to retain backward compatibility). Beyond All Reason uses the Recoil engine and supplies its own game code, shaders, and assets.

https://recoilengine.org/articles/choose-recoil/

https://recoilengine.org/ (list of games powered by Recoil)

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason

Source: been in the BAR Discord for about a year, have contributed tiny bits of server code to the project, and read a few pull request comments.

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

#120

Post by toast0 »

Cruncharoo wrote: post #101
seattle_spring wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Hellfire was a released commercial product.... But it was released by Sierra On-Line, not Blizzard.

Both companies were owned by the same conglomorate (at the time?), and cooperation was limited.

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