26 replies to this topic

[Pahrias]

would you like a remake?

Namely earthsiege, an old battletech game from around 1994. id love to see a remake of this game.

[Black Ivan]

Would like to see it again. The dynamic campaign was interesting and well done

[Jonathan8883]

I vaguely remember playing it at a friend's house.
Later, I was on the high school newspaper staff, and decided to write a game review article about it. Blockbuster (?) didn't have it, but they did have this game called MechWarrior 2 that looked similar, so I rented it instead.

And so here I am, 20-something years later....

[NextGame]

Pahrias, on 09 January 2019 - 10:35 AM, said:

would you like a remake?

Namely earthsiege, an old battletech game from around 1994. id love to see a remake of this game.

Different IP but similar theme. Became Starsiege then morphed into Tribes (which I played for a very long time), then died a couple of times due to crappy sales. I believe the IP is currently with Hi-Rez studios who are another grubby lot like PGI, so you would have to go ask them about it

Edited by NextGame, 09 January 2019 - 11:08 AM.

[RickySpanish]

Earthsiege wasn't Battletech, it begun with Battledrome - a truly unfortunate and bug laden gladiator game where the key to victory was moving torward your target in a straight line. ES2 was pretty good though.

[CanadianCyrus]

What was that game the guys from Mechwarrior: Living Legends went on to make? IIRC It went into early access and died off from low player base.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Earthsiege 1 and 2... still the only PC 'Mechsims with proper interactive cockpits. Damn but I wish GoG or somebody would do a rerelease of them already- they're a total nightmare to get working. Pretty much the only reason I still keep my older-than-dirt Win98 tower around. EMCON-based stealth mechanics, damage-induced malfunctions, salvage based on damage to defeated enemies to reward precise aim... oh, and fully-functional TV-guided missiles using the in-cockpit displays. if only Dynamix had kept the Mechwarrior license, we could've had all that and a bag of chips for MW2. Marry ES2's superior mechanics with MW2's story and you'd have had hands-down the best Mechsim ever.

I also still think that Starsiege did most of what MWO does better than MWO does it all the way back in 1998. Same driving and aiming mechanics for the most part, but a way more in-depth damage system (down to leg damage affecting steering, rather than just speed), customizable HUD, and a bunch of other goodies... that mostly got overlooked because of poor balance and lack of developer support as Tribes (released almost simultaneously, but clearly the far more successful product) pretty much took over the universe from that point until Sierra/Vivendi finally brought the axe down on Dynamix.

Edited by WrathOfDeadguy, 09 January 2019 - 12:29 PM.

[Prototelis]

I played THE **** out of Tribes. I want a remake of Tribes.

[Pahrias]

ahh the good old days. *misty nostalgia eyes*

[MW Waldorf Statler]

or the Good Old Heavy Gear Titlesand the first front Missions up to FM3 ...good old Times

[VonBruinwald]

Funzo, on 09 January 2019 - 11:12 AM, said:

What was that game the guys from Mechwarrior: Living Legends went on to make? IIRC It went into early access and died off from low player base.

You might be thinking of Heavy Gear Assault which was being made by the MW4:MekTek crew.

[Jackal Noble]

I'll take it one step further... anyone remember Battledrome?(I see Ricky already mentioned it) I loved that game

VonBruinwald, on 09 January 2019 - 01:42 PM, said:

You might be thinking of Heavy Gear Assault which was being made by the MW4:MekTek crew.

In everyone's defense, that game was terrible. First game I refunded.

Edited by Jackal Noble, 09 January 2019 - 02:06 PM.

[Pahrias]

WrathOfDeadguy, on 09 January 2019 - 12:27 PM, said:

Earthsiege 1 and 2... still the only PC 'Mechsims with proper interactive cockpits. Damn but I wish GoG or somebody would do a rerelease of them already- they're a total nightmare to get working. Pretty much the only reason I still keep my older-than-dirt Win98 tower around. EMCON-based stealth mechanics, damage-induced malfunctions, salvage based on damage to defeated enemies to reward precise aim... oh, and fully-functional TV-guided missiles using the in-cockpit displays. if only Dynamix had kept the Mechwarrior license, we could've had all that and a bag of chips for MW2. Marry ES2's superior mechanics with MW2's story and you'd have had hands-down the best Mechsim ever.

I also still think that Starsiege did most of what MWO does better than MWO does it all the way back in 1998. Same driving and aiming mechanics for the most part, but a way more in-depth damage system (down to leg damage affecting steering, rather than just speed), customizable HUD, and a bunch of other goodies... that mostly got overlooked because of poor balance and lack of developer support as Tribes (released almost simultaneously, but clearly the far more successful product) pretty much took over the universe from that point until Sierra/Vivendi finally brought the axe down on Dynamix.

could you imagine this with the VR headsets?!?! now that'd be EPIC!

[Koniving]

Pahrias, on 09 January 2019 - 10:35 AM, said:

would you like a remake?

Namely earthsiege, an old battletech game from around 1994. id love to see a remake of this game.

To be technical Eathsiege was originally MechWarrior 2 before FASA chose a different company (Activision) to make it.

The game was rough and heavily simulator like in comparison to the new MechWarrior 2 which would be more action oriented to get a broader audience.

From that point mechwarrior went from role playing mech simulator to action-sim. No longer would the mechwarrior series have scenes akin to Wing Commander years before Chris Roberts even made the first one.

From there dynamic/Sierra made their own ip as they already nearly finished the original mechwarrior 2. Thus Earthsiege was born.

If I am not mistaken.... Star siege was a pitch to try and get the Mechwarrior brand again. From there since they failed as the rights were sold, they shifted to tribes and found big success there.

Also.

It was remade.

Look up Starsiege 20??
Basically MW living legends but Starsiege some 5+ years before mw-ll

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Koniving, on 09 January 2019 - 04:41 PM, said:

Look up Starsiege 20??
Basically MW living legends but Starsiege some 5+ years before mw-ll

You're likely thinking of Starsiege:2845. It would have been a combined-arms (infantry, light vehicles, armored vehicles, and aircraft) sequel to Starsiege, bridging the gameplay gap between the sim-heavy "Siege" end of the timeline and the FPS-based Tribes games. Unfortunately, the dev team came off the rails just after the first alpha build and it fizzled. The art and story work done for it was amazing, but they never really had enough people on the coding side... and then tried to switch engines. Twice.

The ATR is still floating around out there, somewhere. It was glitchy as hell and pretty clunky to play, but just seeing some of the vehicles running around was cool while it lasted. I think it's hanging out on one of my external drives from... I dunno, four or five computers ago? It'd have been ~2006-ish when things really came unglued for the project, I think, although they kept their internal troubles secret for a while after that before trying to reboot the whole project as an original property and ultimately just vanishing off the face of the Earth.

I think that was one of my biggest gaming letdowns of the decade... up there with Starcraft:Ghost and Half-Life 3 in terms of anticipation vs. result. Shame, really. If 2845 hadn't folded, the series might've seen another sim at some point instead of a clusterfrack of a Tribes prequel and then a Tribes F2P (IMO, that end of the series peaked at Tribes 2). Maybe MWO would have had some actual competition to drive ongoing improvements.

[Prototelis]

Dude Tribes:Vengeance was pretty awesome.

Fond memories of killing people while they were jetting and watching them ragdoll through the air out of control.

I really just want to play another game with the skiing mechanic, it was the dopest thing in the world when you finally got it down in Tribes.

[Novakaine]

Built win3 and xp boxes just for those games.

[Koniving]

By the same company that made Earthsiege.
MW1.
Made one year before Wing Commander 1.


Now PGI has said that the very first mechwarrior is the largest influence on MW5: Mercs.
We will see. Though from what I seen you could leave the ship on foot in some small peaceful areas. It stands to reason you could use these visits in a similar way.

[Shadowomega1]

VonBruinwald, on 09 January 2019 - 01:42 PM, said:

You might be thinking of Heavy Gear Assault which was being made by the MW4:MekTek crew.

Dang it, now I want to find and rewatch the Heavy Gear TV series from the 90s. Also I bet that team could make an excellent looking Full Metal Panic game.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Prototelis, on 09 January 2019 - 06:18 PM, said:

Dude Tribes:Vengeance was pretty awesome.

Fond memories of killing people while they were jetting and watching them ragdoll through the air out of control.

I really just want to play another game with the skiing mechanic, it was the dopest thing in the world when you finally got it down in Tribes.

Vengeance committed what I consider to be a cardinal sin in interactive storytelling: deliberately breaking the fourth wall in a non-comedy setting. Specifically, spoken dialogue and play mechanics during the arena levels references "respawning" by name, without any attempt at a lore dodge (for example, the "spirit world" mechanic used in Prey 2003- or the QBRM booths in Irrational's own System Shock 2). While the rest of the story was more or less acceptable on its own merits, it also trampled all over established series lore. It'd take a dedicated wall of text and then some just to hit the major highlights of the retcons.

It downscaled just about everything about the game- SS:Tribes and Tribes 2 both had boundary-less tesselating maps which supported massive play areas, LOS-based sensor mechanics, a full-featured command interface for emplaced and deployable equipment, a wider variety and deeper mechanics for packs and other equipment (multiple grenade types, flares, cameras, mines, etc) and quite a few other features I'm sure I'm forgetting. Both of the Dynamix Tribes games also supported a still-incredible 128x128 server size. If you had a good enough connection, and a good enough computer, you very much could drop triple-digit player counts (and the playerbase was, at times, big enough to fill those servers- especially the RP community for Tribes 1). T:V had ragdoll effects... T1 and T2 had better projectile and jetpack physics.

T:V had precisely none of that. Granted, it was a fun game. It just wasn't a Tribes game, approaching it as a dedicated fan of the entire series up to that point- really, the only thing I can honestly say felt right about it was the Spinfusor. Combine that with being a major fanboy of earlier and later Irrational (and before that, LGS) games, from System Shock 1&2 to the Thief games and the Bioshock series and... well, Tribes:Vengeance is clearly the ugly duckling of the bunch, clearly a lower-effort, lower-quality game from a studio that was easily capable of doing so much better with the material they were given.

No hate... everybody enjoys what they enjoy, and that's fine. But... that game felt like a massive kick in the nads to a lot of folks who were expecting something completely different.


...and skiing was a frelling exploit in Tribes 1. I might still be the teensiest little bit completely and totally brine-crusted pickled ham salty about that physics bug becoming a core gameplay mechanic of the series instead of being patched the hell out like it should've been immediately after it was discovered. >_<