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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

#201

Post by Torzelan »

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…

> The map editor was revolutionary at the time, and it was trivially easy to be making usable maps within minutes.

And within a year or two there were so. Many. Maps. Spread through gloriously fun CDs (quite a few in big boxes with cool artwork)! I have a collection of over 40 releases so far; it's a wild rabbit hole.

As I recall, WarCraft II was the first big box game I bought for my own money, ordered through paper catalogue. Amazing memories of the campaign, and online duels over dial-up - often interrupted because someone picked up the phone. Still have (somehow surviving) floppies with a few silly little maps made in early 1997. It's the ultimate feel-good nostalgia game for me. Just seeing the winter sprite of the Church with the green and red LED(?!) lights fills me with pure joy, every time. (It hits me, just now, that those single pixels might just be representing ball ornaments or something. ...I'm sticking with my headcanon of LEDs!)

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

#202

Post by Razengan »

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…

> and your peons would be impossible to remove from mining.

It simply reflects modern orc capitalism: a lifetime of servitude.

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

#203

Post by Razengan »

taurath wrote: post #156
Fnoord wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype), Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but... only single player (at various difficulties). That is just how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember using…

I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base building part. Having them both together was just straight up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot wane for a single moment. The better I got at competitive RTS's the less in…

Non-DotA style RTSes fell to the same trap that all long-established/entrenched products/franchises/entities/collectives do:

Thinking that only their way is always right and there's no room for change.

Until somebody comes and builds something different that fucks their world upside down.

Suggestions for improvement and ease of use on their forums got shot down on their forums by the resident shitters like on every other community.

Now nobody cares about that genre, except those of us who grew up on it.

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

#204

Post by barfoure »

sjoblomj wrote: post #183
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,…

I guess the Archive copy of the War 2 PSX source would be this[1] link which seems dead. I don't suppose you are aware of any live links to it? [1]: https://archive.org/details/warcraftIIsourcecodePSX

This one works: https://archive.thedatadungeon.com/warcraft_ii_the_dark_saga...

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

#205

Post by taurath »

Razengan wrote: post #203
taurath wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base building part. Having them both together was just straight up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot wane for a single moment. The better I got at competitive RTS's the less in…

Non-DotA style RTSes fell to the same trap that all long-established/entrenched products/franchises/entities/collectives do: Thinking that only their way is always right and there's no room for change. Until somebody comes and builds something different that fucks their world upside down. Suggestions for improvement and ease of use on their forums got shot down on their forums by the resident shitters like on every o…

It had its time, but its just not accessible to people - shooters which require as much attention, mechanical skill and perseverance but at least matches are relatively quick and there's a team element. Starcraft can be just grind grind grind all of your openers and don't stop, don't sleep, don't eat, just queue

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

#206

Post by Razengan »

taurath wrote: post #205
Razengan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-DotA style RTSes fell to the same trap that all long-established/entrenched products/franchises/entities/collectives do: Thinking that only their way is always right and there's no room for change. Until somebody comes and builds something different that fucks their world upside down. Suggestions for improvement and ease of use on their forums got shot down on their forums by the resident shitters like on every o…

It had its time, but its just not accessible to people - shooters which require as much attention, mechanical skill and perseverance but at least matches are relatively quick and there's a team element. Starcraft can be just grind grind grind all of your openers and don't stop, don't sleep, don't eat, just queue

With a few UI conveniences StarCraft 2 could have been just as accessible to newer players as League of Legends.

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

#207

Post by boneitis »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #186
boneitis wrote: post #134

This is probably the best time as any I'll ever get to mention that Patrick Wyatt's[0] blog[1] is a gold mine of frontline, boots-on-the-ground accounts of making WarCraft II and other games. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Wyatt [1]: https://www.codeofhonor.com/

I used to read this one but they stopped updating it, looks like they had a 10 year gap and started posting again in 2024 though!

I wish!

The two posts since then look more to be some brief thanksgivings and a trivial correction/footnote to a work that mentions him :)

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

#208

Post by stumptownkiwi »

We used to run a map website called Pudland, which was a pretty busy WC2 community. I also wrote a map utility called Puddle that randomised maps, rotated them, etc to make them a bit more interesting; I remember reverse-engineering the map format to do it, which was a fun exercise. What great times they were.

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

#209

Post by sjoblomj »

barfoure wrote: post #204
sjoblomj wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the Archive copy of the War 2 PSX source would be this[1] link which seems dead. I don't suppose you are aware of any live links to it? [1]: https://archive.org/details/warcraftIIsourcecodePSX

This one works: https://archive.thedatadungeon.com/warcraft_ii_the_dark_saga...

Thank you very much for that link!

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

#210

Post by sjoblomj »

stumptownkiwi wrote: post #208

We used to run a map website called Pudland, which was a pretty busy WC2 community. I also wrote a map utility called Puddle that randomised maps, rotated them, etc to make them a bit more interesting; I remember reverse-engineering the map format to do it, which was a fun exercise. What great times they were.

Nice! I still have Puddle on my hard-drive along with a whole other pile of old tools. I don't suppose you still have the source code for Puddle and would be willing to publish it as open source?

While I didn't intend Jorsys to be so much about Puds, it could be fun to host some there anyway, if you still have any good ones that you would be interested in sharing.

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