OK. Maybe no one cares - I dunno. But I went to Dynamix the week before last , and I got so jazzed up, I decided to write up my visit and inflict the long-winded (and rather over-blown) result on anyone foolish enough to read it. You have been warned...
I live near Eugene, Oregon, home of Dynamix and Tribes 2. In fact, I work less than two miles from Dynamix and my wife works accross the street from them. So I see the building every day. Being the insecure, attention-starved poor-excuse-for-an-adult that I am (ask my wife), I decided that it was time to get off my chicken-s#!t butt and actually go there.
In all honesty, I was concerned that I might not be considered 'cool' enough to automatically make the beta list. See? Insecure. Since there was a strong indication that bringing beer would guarantee a spot on the list, I felt I would just have to force myself. I picked up two twelve-pack boxes of Widmer BrewFest (there's three bottles each of four different beer type in each box) and other miscellaneous stuff, and headed over.
When I got there, the entire Dynamix staff (except the receptionist) was in a company meeting. The receptionist was nice enough to let me know when they should be out and suggested I return then (about an hour later). So I left and spent an hour waiting.
Upon returning, I found they were still in the meeting, so I decided to just wait. I asked the receptionist how many people had brought beer. She said that as far as she knew I was the first (turns out that is not the case, but I didn't know that yet). So there I sat thinking "wow... first?" and in walks another guy with a box of Henry Weinhards Ale. Seemed quite the coincidence. Of course it may just be that such a meeting is much more likely the week before beta signups <grin>. In any case, we exchanged greetings and names (his name is Phil 'Borodimer' Schultz, in case posterity is curious) and he left.
And I waited with my shameless bribe, my sacrificial offering to the gods of game.
Finally someone came by to bring up to the holy-of-holies, where the game is being made. I was greeted with some enthusiasm, doubtless due to the beer. I was introduced to Dave 'Qix' Georgeson and we disappeared into his office. I'll try to keep the miserable prose to a minimum now and simply relate what I saw and heard as Dave demonstrated the game. And keep in mind, as Dave told me, much of what I saw and heard is either placeholder stuff that will be replaced later, or is unpolished and may appear different in the final release.
First, the graphics are every bit as georgous as the screen shots imply - and even more so in motion. The terrain is beautiful, and I didn't notice any of the 'morphing' that you see terrain in T1 do as you approach from a distance. The buildings are beautiful. Complex, detailed, and much larger in scope. The weapons are better looking too. I noticed that the disk waiting to be fired from the disklauncher appears to be spinning at the back end of the gun. The explosions and sound effects are very beautiful - well rendered and rich - and Dave said that much of that was still in a preliminary state. Most of it seemed pretty polished to me, so the end result should be phenomenal. There were even some dynamic lighting effects from the the disks and so forth as they flew along over the terrain.
Most of what I saw was on Riverdance and there were no other players, real or AI, so I didn't see any combat. I also, unfortunately, didn't see any vehicles in-game. Grrr.
The terrain was steep, but not outrageously so. I mean we weren't walking around between mesas and Matterhorns, but there was real slope there, maybe like Snowblind. And the maps are huge - much larger than T1 on average. Dave said there was so much room, they weren't quite sure what to do with it all. But they have some ideas. You'll probably HAVE to use a vehicle for some travel.
There is weather. Clouds, rain, lightning. And it is not static. He described a plan for weather to change during the game. Start the map with blue skies and sunshine, but pretty soon the clouds start rolling in. As time passes and the clouds gather, it gets darker. Then the rain starts, followed soon by lightning. Pretty soon you are fighting in a full-on storm. Talk about adding a climax atmosphere to the end of a battle!
How about flaming lava? Big splashes? This thing is gonna be beautiful when it is done. Hell, it's beautiful already! You will want to upgrade that video card, less for performance and more for the immersion effect that the high detail level will give you. That's purely a personal opinion there - you shouldn't need a $500 dollar card to play, but I went straight home and talked my wife into it anyway.
There will be wind and air resistance. And Dave said it could very well be variable in direction and/or strength. I also saw water and we went for a swim. Not much to see under there, but who knows what will come. I asked if the water was going to be single level for the entire map and he said it can vary - low seas and high altitude lakes on the same map, for example.
Contrary to rumor, skiing is in there. Lights ski really well. Dave said medium and heavy are limited to respectively slower speeds, but skiing is not gone.
I saw the shocklance, whick looked rather like a many-pointed staff of power or something. Dave said there will be bonus damage for attacks from behind with that weapon.
The mortar had a white smoke trail, and get this: when the mortar is incoming, you will hear it approaching. It was kind of a whistle-whine sound. Very cool. Imagine hearing them and just knowing you are about to be toasted. Cover Me!
The static outdoor turrets were very mean, maybe too mean. Same goes for the indoor turrets. Dave tried to get to the flag at one point where there was an indoor turret on either side. He got chewed up good. He did mention that there was still balancing to be done.
Inventory station
The inventory stations are fantastic. It has a fast favorites style functionality - pick your loadout in advance and buy it fast. I'm sure you have seen the screenshots. There is a pad with two posts to the side. When you step on the pad, the posts rotate around you (in opposite directions if I remember correctly) trailing a force-field. Then they unwrap you again and you are done. It reminded me of walking through a revolving door. I'm sure that image brings home the greatness of it: imagine you are in line - no waiting at a distance - walk on one side, whoosh-whoosh, walk off the other side (I can't remember if you really could 'walk-thru' like that, but that was the impression I got).
The huds are cool. Translucent and informative. I saw objectives information as well as the usual stuff. Waypointing is intuitive and geared toward speed. Commanding is more controllable - you can add, remove, and change waypoints for one or many players easily. Waypoints are marked in the 3D view as beacon lines. Also, objective have beacon lines too, color coded to indicate which team currently controls them. And the objectives themselves will have holographic (and rotating, I believe) banners above them visible from a distance, also indicating ownership.
I wanted to see the new script, but what I saw looked very similar to Tribes 1 script. Dave said that Skeet had improved the scripting considerably. Not sure what to make of that. He also implied that script would be able to control more than before, at least server-side. We also talked about add-ons, like client scripts, maps, skins, etc. Dave said they plan to offer a central repository, to make it easy for anyone to pick and choose what they want. Many game elements will simply be downloaded automatically on connection with the server or start of the map.
After that, Dave took me around to meet the team. I got to meet all of them except Mitch 'Skeet' Shaw (head script guy - a bit of a dissappointment there). They were all friendly and a few even referred to me as "Zear, the Evil Scripter" in jest (or maybe only semi-jest). Yeesh. I was given a Tribes pocketwatch, which I will now of course reverently keep as if it were a holy amulet of healing.
I saw much of the conceptual art that was and is being done, including the now-cancelled grav tank. Dave said they wend with wheels instead, but this thing looked like one of those forked jet boats, only huge and armed for Armageddon. The deployable turret drawings I saw depicted a cool unfolding deployment sequence. A screw-like piece comes from the bottom, boring into the ground, the sides unfold like flower petals, and the actual gun swivels up, ready to fire. The indoor turrets are concealed under an armadillo-carapace-like shield.
Finally Dave told me he had work to do, and walked me to the elevator. We had a short discussion there that included Shiva, and the good news is that it sounds like Shiva will be unusable in Tribes 2. Woohoo! Best news I heard the whole time I was there. Well, that and the fact that he was putting me in for the beta for sure... now I can quit being paranoid about it.
So there it is. I can't believe you put up with my poor writing, etc. for this long. Please remember that things I saw may be changed, and obviously I may have misconstrued some of my experience. Hopefully I haven't relayed a lot of info that everyone already knew, or at least I hope I put a new spin or clearer picture in your mind. So, I will leave it at that and say...
