The Long-Awaited MOO!

Number13 writes "Quicksilver's Master of Orion 3, declared vaporware by Wired magazine, has gone gold! Set to hit the streets on Feb. 25, MOO3 is the the successor to what many consider the best space strategy game series."

Comments

The best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you must have never played Trade Wars 2002.

Re:The best?

[TerryAtWork]

Wow - a first post that isn't completely moronic!

You're right about TW by the way - and L.O.R.D. - THAT was a BBS door!

Re:The best?

[Ardeaem]

Indeed. And you can still play TW2002 on BBSs via telnet over the internet. It is still a great game, with new additions, like multiple people are able to play at once, and more than 1000 sectors. Who needs graphics to have fun? I remember Food Fight, too. THAT was a great door.

Re:The best?

[sweetooth]

They have, it's called the Internet... only this time it's real!

Re:The best?

[Dave_B93]

In case you haven't played it, you should try Steve Jacksons' Hacker!

It's a card game though. The thought of that with a combination of the old BBS Hacker just makes me drool.

Will it live up to the hype?

[rblancarte]

That is the biggest question. I mean, as long as people have waited for it, will it be all that? So far I don't think any game that has been awaited THIS LONG has ever really lived up to it all.

RonB

Re:Will it live up to the hype?

[cokane2]

Starcraft

With a little luck...

[aengblom]

With a little luck maybe it's finished too! ;-)

Re:With a little luck...

[Steveftoth]

This comment is modded funny, but this is a serious concern. I personally will take a wait and see attitude with this game and WAIT until the actual reviews of the hard core people are posted on the internet.

Also one HOPES that all the crashes are gone for good. I always like to wait for the first patch to come out until I buy a product :).

I still play MOO2 sometimes. The ironic thing is that it actually plays better (to me) in linux in wine then under win2k. In linux it doesn't have sound, but in windows the screen goes wonky and I can't click anymore (the cursor dissapears).

But all negativity aside, I will eventuatly buy this game. How soon depends on wether or not the first version is playable. That and I don't NEED to lose a month of my life just yet.

Re:With a little luck...

[sweetooth]

Not only do we have to hope that it's finished (Sim City 4 shipped WITHOUT online support WTF!) but we have to worry about them shipping with copy protection that makes it unplayable (Never Winter Nights, UT2003). I've personally about had it with Game publishers. If you can't ship a finished product in a playable form then maybe it's time to get into a differant business. Then again, maybe I'm just bitter.

Re:With a little luck...

[JahToasted]

With a little luck maybe it's finished too! ;-)

Couldn't have said it better myself. I love MOO2, but it was sooo incomplete. I remember before the 1.3 patch came out you could build invincible ships. not a hack or a cheat, just a creative ship design.

The Phase cloak made your ship impossible to hit while cloaked. You uncloaked when you fired and you'd recloak if you didn't fire any weapons for an entire turn.

The time warp facilitator gave your ship two turns in combat.

With both the time warp facilitator and phase cloak you could fire (and decloack) on your first turn then do nothing (and recloak) on the second. The enemy ships could never hit you even though you kept nailing them every turn... Kinda dirty, but technically not a cheat.

Anyways they fixed it so that wouldn't work in 1.3 (while breaking a lot of other things). 1.31 was the last patch, I believe, even though there were still a lot of bugs and a lot of badly needed features (autobuild queue would've been nice).

Re:With a little luck...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

It DID interfere with legit copies. Because of the nature of the protection system used, it conflicted with widely popular CD drives (you know, the kind that also BURN CDs) It also seeks out virtual drive software and other software used by developers, and "accidentally" crashes if such is found.

I bought TWO copies legitimately the day it came out, to be able to play with friends on my LAN. My main machine was unable to run the game. It wouldn't recognize either ORIGINAL disc. only this particular sceme (Safedisk 2 I think) causes this problem. Both copies went back. I had to threaten a lawsuit in order to get a refund. Against the clerk who had assured me that there would be no such problems. Obviously the store wouldn't care, but threaten to sue an individual, well, things happen much more quickly ;)

It was suggested that I replace my brand new (and perfectly compliant with all standards) 40x burner drive with a NEW CD drive to resolve this. I suggested the PUBLISHER not expect me to replace perfectly legal and properly functional hardware (I use this drive to back up my network, incremental backups) that cost more than their GAME did.

Eventually, I believe they either fixed the game or the bug in their implementation. I'll never know, because I wrote that game off permanently.

Publishers need to remember it is NOT the responsibility of people with CD drives, new ones, to worry about a game being compatible. It's the publishers' responsibility to make sure their copy protection doesn't BREAK on current hardware. Nothing less is acceptable. Unless they want to put "WARNING, THIS PRODUCT IS PROTECTED BY (Insert protection scheme here) AND THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT CHANCE THAT IT WILL NOT WORK WITH YOUR CD DRIVE", coupled with an easy to read list of known incompatible drives, in readable text, on the box (NOT IN IT).

Re:With a little luck...

[sweetooth]

Yes, they did remove it with one of the patches. The problem is it shouldn't have shipped with that copy protection scheme in the first place. I don't blame Bioware for the problem as it was the publishers decision, but it unfortunatly reflects badly on Bioware.

Re:With a little luck...

[Nathanbp]

This may have been intended to be funny, but in all seriousness, MOO3 should be ready. It has been in final regession testing for the past couple of months and the beta testers report that it has gone from unplayable to nearly perfact. In an hours long 8-player online MP game near the end of December they only encountered one bug, which had already been fixed. (The most recent build had not reached some of the beta testers.) So the game should be ready to play as soon as its in stores!

Re:With a little luck...

[ZorbaTHut]

Personally, I just crack the game at that point. Hey, I bought it, I own it, I want to play it.

In fact, most of the games on my computer (most of which are legal - yes, I have a few that aren't, I'll admit it) are cracked. Why? Because I don't want to dig out the CD every time I want to play the game, because I don't want to deal with the occasional odd compatibility problem, because I don't want to have to remember which drive I installed it from. (I have two CD drives - one burner, one DVD - and I've found that many copy-protected game expect the right CD to be in the right drive. It's just too annoying.)

Re:With a little luck...

[Pfhreakaz0id]

ditto. Personally, my son is hard on disks (recently freaking Microsoft wanted $23.95! to replace his ages of empires 2 cd.. what a stupid policy. All cd's, from a $2000 sql server entrprise cd to this lowly game, have the same replacement media cost. The phone support guy cheerfully admitted this was stupid, and I could probably find the game for less if I looked).

Best series

[wednesdaywar]

The article said "best space strategy game SERIES". Methinks your little Trade Wars is a but a speck compared to the glory that was MOO and MOO II. Bring it on, we can't wait any longer...

From the requirments;

[jericho4.0]

# 300 MHz Pentium II or better

This game has been in development a _long_ time.

Re:From the requirments;

[aengblom]

You insensitive clod, that IS my machine!

Re:From the requirments;

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Just because a game doesn't require a 1GHz+ cpu doesn't mean it's old or low tech. Maybe they just know how to give you more bang per cycle than the latest greatest blockbuster developers do.

Carmack, I'm looking in your direction...

Re:From the requirments;

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Just because a game doesn't require a 1GHz+ cpu doesn't mean it's old or low tech. Maybe they just know how to give you more bang per cycle than the latest greatest blockbuster developers do."

Or maybe they got a good deal of development done back when 300mhz was the shit. That's probably why people found his comment funny as opposed to getting defensive because they think he's picking on the game.

Re:From the requirments;

[andcal]

I am no business wiz, but if it turns out that the reviews for this game are good, then the lower the requirements, the more people who can buy & play the game without having to buy new hardware, right? So maybe it will be a best-seller.

please...let it be worthy of the series

[captainfugacity]

My fingers are crossed that it is not the type of sequel that MythIII was. They've had a lot of time...hopefully they played the first two to get an idea of what worked...

Unprecedented

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Now all we need is Duke Nukem Forever and some flying cars.

Check out *nix.org , a dynamic, informative, and fun portal for fans of BSD, Linux, OS X, & Solaris!

Technology trap

[vlad_petric]

I hope the game hasn't fallen in the "technology trap" as its predecessor - in MOO2 it wasn't really worth playing anything but Psilons, as the quick research advancements very easily overweighed the intrinsic advantages of other races (e.g. growth, flying skills).

That said, I can hardly wait to get my hands on it!

Re:Technology trap

[JahToasted]

I guess we're opposites, since I always liked to build super spies. Max spying bonus (+20 I think), telepathic (adds spying too), and uncreative. Don't bother with research, just steal all your tech from the Psilons, and frame the other races for it. I'm not sure how well this would work in multi player, but it made for some fun games in single player.

I'm one of those players who took uncreative a lot, since it gave you a lot of points for other things, and it made the game interesting, since it meant you always had to use different tech almost every game.

And of course take the Elerians... that Elerian spy was fsckin hot, man. Another excellent reason for spying...

Re:Technology trap

[amuro98]

Creative was mostly a waste of time. Since you had a choice of which tech to research (unless you took uncreative - which I would, just to make things interesting again) you could pick the same old tech over and over again...

Sure, there were a few sucky choices, and sometimes I'd have to forego my normal choice in favor of something I needed *right now* (eg. better weapons because I got into a war)

But overall, I'd plow the points I would have put into creative and chose +'s to production and farming.

Offensive spying never worked for me - even when playing with all the +'s, so I just take the maximum penalty, and build a large number of defensive spies.

Problem is, this same old same old strategy got boring... At least in Moo1, the choices would be randomized, with each race having various advantages in certain areas, like the Psilons would tend to get more engine choices, and a larger overall tree. The randomness made things more interesting... I once played a game where no one got anything faster than warp-2 engines. And in a huge galaxy, that meant it took years to get anywhere. I managed to take Orion, and was given warp-4 engines, which allowed me to more quickly decimate my opponents.

Hmm...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Man, it really has been a long time. They should have researched Automated Factories or something.

Yeesh...

[NanoGator]

I hope this game's released before my Colony Ship is finished.

Re:Yeesh...

[NanoGator]

"Doubtful, the game's being developed by Silicoids."

They should have sent some Darlok spies over to Blizzard to steal some research then.

That explains it.

[Bodrius]

On other news:

3DRealms has announced that in order to meet the expectations of fans for Duke Nukem Forever, and to give them a better idea of WHEN it will be ready, it will stick to its promise to deliver a flying car with every box of the game.

"Actually, the game has been almost ready for some time..." said an anonymous insider source, "we've just been trying to bring down the costs of this flying car thing for the last couple of years."

Some useful links

[Anonymous Coward]

...for those of you who haven't been following MOO3's development so closely.

• IRC logs from the developers
• Apolyton
• OrionSector
• Infogrames MOO3 forums

Development...

[Orne]

Thanks Slashdot for killing the site :) But you can still get to the communities to hear from the dev's themselves...

Anyways, I saw an incredulous comment above that the system requirements are Pentium II @ 300 MHz... the game has been in development for so long, that the game engine is not based on modern 3D-accellerated engines. Instead, the engine is voxel-based, which has angered some in the past because the game's "smoothness" is software speed based, not add-on hardware or slickness of video card.

The game supports 8 human players, with up to a total of 16 (assuming the other 8 are computer AIs). Human players can drop connections and re-connect without reloading from a saved state (like Moo2 makes you do). Battles between players are executed in real-time, and multiple battles between two exclusive sets of players will happen simultaneously. Between turns, when battles are resolved, non-battling players are forced to wait.

Re:Development...

[markh1967]

Anyways, I saw an incredulous comment above that the system requirements are Pentium II @ 300 MHz... the game has been in development for so long, that the game engine is not based on modern 3D-accellerated engines. Instead, the engine is voxel-based, which has angered some in the past because the game's "smoothness" is software speed based, not add-on hardware or slickness of video card.

I don't know where you get the idea that the reason this game isn't using a modern 3D accelerated engine is because it's been in development for so long. The reason this game isn't using a modern 3D engine is because it's a strategy game, not a 3D shooter. I will be very surprised if this game has a single 3D element to the graphics anywhere and is anything other than sprite-based. This game's appeal is in the complex mechanics and strategic depth - the graphics are nice but functional.

As for the game running on a 300MHz Pentium II; what's so bad about this? It's not as if frame-rate is going to be an issue here. The only limiting factor to the game's playability is the time it takes the AI to make its moves. I would bet that some patience would be required to play the largest galaxy sizes on a minimum spec machine but it would probably be playable on lower systems than the minimum spec with a small map.

Re:Development...

[Anonymous Coward]

It uses voxels because space batteles originaly had the possibility to be huge:
64 ships max per task force
12 task forces max per side
hundreds of fighters
plus orbital bases, 3 max per planet or moon.
-PER SIDE-

This could create a VERY high polygon count that prohibit all but the high end systems from playing what is primairly a turn based strat game.

Voxels solved that problem, and at the same time, allowed the game to be run on a system with suprisingly low specs.

Anyway, somewhere along the line the lowered the max values to 18 max ships per task force. This still could put space battles in the hundreds of ships, plus fighters, etc.

Now you can drag that old outdated computer, or two, out of the closet and have a LAN party.

Re:Development...

[paganizer]

As a longtime Tradewars, MOO, MOO II player, when I heard that there was a MOO III Alpha out, I had to go Spelunking in the dark recesses of the web.

Eventually, I stumbled across the Austrailian Alpha Release.

People, I love complicated; I used to buy up Every Traveller book and spend hours designing Spacecraft that were never used, just because it was neat; I wasn't even bothered by the bugs in MOO II, because the game was just so freacking cool.

The Alpha is from the pre-dumbed down version of the game; apparently, they decided the general public wouldn't appreciate it; I heartily agree.

If the Gold Version is 50% as complicated and in-depth as the Alpha, then this is going to be the cause of Many, Many, MANY divorces.

PC game.

[ziggles]

Sorry, maybe it's just me.. but I find it hard to get excited about any newly relesed PC game. It's pretty much a guaruntee that it will have at least one major bug, and many minor ones. I'll get excited when the first patch is released.
Especially with a game that has been in development a long time. That generally means they want to get it out as soon as every major feature is in, and don't have too much time for bug testing and the smaller things.
It's a pity.

Re:PC game.

[Wraithlyn]

"It's pretty much a guaruntee that it will have at least one major bug, and many minor ones. [...] Especially with a game that has been in development a long time. That generally means they want to get it out as soon as every major feature is in, and don't have too much time for bug testing and the smaller things."

Your logic completely escapes me. How does longer overall development time equate to less time for bug testing? How does a very long development time mean they are putting it "out as soon as every major feature is in"?? Wouldn't that be something you'd expect from something with a SHORT development time?

Re:PC game.

[Alsee]

So when they finally did get close to having a finished product, instead of going into the usual bug testing, they rushed it through to get it out as soon as possible.

I've been following MOO3 off and on in the forums. Either they put a lot of effort into being deceptive or the final delays were all dedicated to thurough bugtesting and squashing. It sounded like they were pretty dedicated to shipping the game with zero "major" bugs. Several of the beta-testers said that the game was in good enough shape to ship weeks ago.

I have no doubt that the game will get patches for minor bug-fixes and balances issues, but it is supposedly going to be crash-free with no major flaws in either single player or multiplayer.

-

Re:Master of Orion???

[Wraithlyn]

The original Master of Orion came out about a decade ago, and has always been referred to as "MOO". It (along with the sequel) are probably the best selling turn based strategy games of all time.

MUDs were in their barest infancy back then, I don't think the Object Oriented sort even existed yet.

But anyway, who cares? Acronyms can stand for more than one thing. Unless you're the WWF. Nice shamless plug for your site though.

Re:I'm not going to get it. And you shouldn't eith

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Isn't Windows that MS OS? And isn't MS the company that does really bad and illegal stuff, undermining yours and my rights, bribing it's way around every law that apears in sight?"

Well it is ironic that the point of the game is to be like Microsoft.

Oh no...

[Anonvmous Coward]

... another 2 years worth of weekends in front of my computer. *sigh*

Moo?

[Archangel Michael]

Knock Knock?
Who's there?
Interupting Cow.
Interupt .....

MOOOOOOOO

Re:So if it's in stores Feb 25th...

[AKnightCowboy]

And the first patches to fix critical game-limiting bugs should start rolling out in June. ;-) Just because it's gold doesn't mean it's finished anymore in the gaming industry. That's what 100 meg patches are for. Nothing pisses me off more than opening a brand new game and having to download a bunch of updates before I can play it.

Re:MOO?

[Lumpish Scholar]

Holy cow!

(Sorry, sorry, I just had to milk this topic for a pun!)

To joke is human; to pun, bovine.

MOO3 has gone gold, as in....

[SurturZ]

...my preciousssss.......!

If it's released in late February, I'm betting the NASDAQ will be down in March.

Sell shares! Buy MOO3!

-SurturZ

Harvesters anyone?

[Valdrax]

Good! Maybe those of us who've been following the game's development can finally find out what exactly the Harvesters are. The Harvesters have been kept under complete wraps throughout the development process, and no one outside Quicksilver and Infogrames knows anything about what they are. All we know is that they like cold planets, that they have "the Need" as one of their traits, that they can't join the Orion Senate, that they don't strongly cling to belief systems, that they can't have a representative government, and that they communicate "wetly" according to a cryptic reply by the art designer on the message boards.

I'm going to be hitting the message boards for the next few weeks occasionally to see if they finally give in and let people know what they are.

Re:Harvesters anyone?

[Artifex]

The Harvesters have been kept under complete wraps throughout the development process, and no one outside Quicksilver and Infogrames knows anything about what they are

Don't you know?

They're the Justified Ancients of MooMoo!

Furthermore known as the JAMMs!

("let me ask you a question... what time is love?")

Re:Harvesters anyone?

[Orne]

Back in December one of the review publishers screwed up (violating an NDA), and for about 1.5 hours they had posted what the Harvesters were. QS made them remove it, and they didn't get any more business from Infogrames..

But, if you were lucky to hit it at the right time... Harvesters are a "race" of nanomachines, that infect the existing populations of planets. Basically, your team is composed of a mix of other races, except like the Borg, they are super strong, great at research, spying (because you can't tell who's infected), and can live practically anywhere. The article indicated for drawbacks that either the population growth rate is either extremely low, or even zero... something about consuming their own population as food/upkeep, Soylent Green style...

Re:Master of Orion???

[ZorinLynx]

10 years ago.. 1993... MUDs were already out of infancy by then.

Lambdamoo had already been around for a few years, and so had FurryMUCK. Both of them started in 1989-1990 or so, and quickly became popular. There were many other systems around too, and some people consider this to be the "good old days" of MUDs, IE, before everyone and their mother could get on the Internet.

Heck, when I first read the headline I thought a new version of MOO had come out.

Amazon Reviews

[forand]

There are some reviews on amazon that may be of interest(one who claims to be a beta tester) and many useless reviews.

but will it be as good as VGAP?

[Technik~]

Remember that? I'm not the only one who forked over $14 to Tim Wisseman for that game just to play on a BBS. It was one of the best I've ever played, addictive as all heck.

Just about every turn-based, galactic conquest game has been a pale shadow of that one. I had a brief email discussion with the author when he decided to do the Windows version (I was among those who wanted a new DOS version or a port to *Nix) and found him to be a really cool guy.
VGA Planets Home

Maybe I should dig out that floppy disk and load up freedos.

- technik

Re:but will it be as good as VGAP?

[NicM]

VGAP is still alive and well... There are many hosts still out there. Among the best:

http://www.robomaster.ca
http://www.echocluster .com

There is an almost-complete Java client, suitable for both Windows and Linux:

http://home2.inet.tele.dk/larsdam/jvc.html

Anyone needing any VGA Planets help is always welcome on IRC, #vgaplanets on EFnet.

Preview on Gamespot

[ggwood]

Preview can be found here:
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/previe ws/0,10 869,2902095,00.html

Enjoy

Re:Preview on Gamespot

[ggwood]

Sorry here is a proper link:
Master of Orion III Preview
phew.

bling bling

[pizza_milkshake]

are you sure that they mean "gold" as in "the code is done"?... that alien's jewelry puts Mr. T to shame.

Another golden oldie space game renewed

[Weasel Boy]

For those of you who have Macs (and consider Masters of Orion only the second best space game), the classic Spaceward Ho! version 5.0 shipped recently. Think of it as the core essential fun gameplay elements of MOO without all the extra complicated junk. Main attractions of the new version are TCP/IP Internet play, and it's now MacOS X native. This is my second-favorite computer game of all time.

Re:Another golden oldie space game renewed

[Alsee]

Think of it as the core essential fun gameplay elements of MOO without all the extra complicated junk.

Dude! Real strategy players consider the "extra complicated junk" to BE the "core essential fun gameplay"!

:)

-

Re:Another golden oldie space game renewed

[cei]

"Spaceward Ho!"??? Sounds like another sequel to "The Leather Goddesses of Phobos"...

Uplink

[DaBj]

Now if they made THAT game playable over the net.. woah... /DaBj

You think you've been waiting long?

[DudemanX]

Sure MOO and MOO2 are fun games and hopefully this one will even better, but I always prefered Master of Magic to Master of Orion(1 or 2). It's going on about 9 years now that I've been waiting for a sequel to MOM. Hopefully now that Quicksilver has finished MOO3 they can start on one of the most requested sequels ever. If you think I'm exagerating just search Google for "Master of Magic 2" and you'll get a whole slew of petitions and editorials saying we need this game. If nothing else I'd like just a port to a modern OS with perhaps some graphical updates and possibly some multiplayer support.

Dragonball Z?

[lexarius]

Dragon Ball Z and all logos, character names and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of TOEI ANIMATION.

While I've never played any other MOO game, I doubt that it has anything to do with Dragonball Z. So why does the Yahoo article say this?

I went to moo3.com

[Lethyos]

And I was agast to find this pimpin' gangsta alien with the big ass chains. I couldn't help to think to myself "sO-k'mu talata!" (translated to english as "whaddup mah niggaz!?")

News of the Mac Version

[Nova Express]

From Mac Gamer's Ledge:

"Production on the Mac version of MOO3 has been proceeding closely with the PC version, so the game should make it to shelves for Mac users very soon via distributor MacSoft."

Damn ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

I worked so hard to get a life, only to hear that it will be shortly taken away.

Re:When will we see a Linux version?

[TrixX]

From the "Official Master of Orion III FAQ":

Will there be a Linux version?

• No, but you may be able to use Wine/WineX if you are lucky.

I hope to e lucky.

Surprising.

[Inoshiro]

They should all follow the same code of ethics. Any place where they're serious about selling, they should be talking to people and helping them. Unhappy customers aren't customers anymore.

Granted, he was just following the letter of the return policy, but the spirit of it is a little different. I learned that doing sales for a while. Maybe this guy just hadn't learned yet. Getting extra angry at them won't help, it only makes them defensive. You should just ask to speak to a manager, the know how to handle such situations.