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Tribes 1 Returns In-Browser At GDC Next Week

Posted by Soulskill on from the a-fad-has-begun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "GarageGames purchased the IP rights to the entire Starsiege Tribes universe, and next week at GDC they'll be showing off their updated version of Tribes 1 running in a browser, using all the original artwork. Afterwards, it will be available to play standalone or via the Instant Action website. While you wait, you can play Fallen Empire Legions in your browser, which is based on the Tribes 2 engine. Their blog entry about the Tribes 1 preview at GDC has further details."

31 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Tribes 1 Returns In-Browser At GDC Next Week by Jabaruk1 · · Score: 1

    Great game as is T2 true multiplayer only game which has used far too many hours of my life.

  2. Shazbot! by Trevelyan · · Score: 1

    I have Tribes 2 for Linux and I loved playing it.

    Unfortunately I can't really play it anymore, there seems to be no one to play with, bots are boring, and it is a total pain in the arse to install on a modern linux system (yes I know about icculus.org)

    1. Re:Shazbot! by Jabaruk1 · · Score: 1

      Try this for PC T2 (not sure about Linux version) http://www.tribesnext.com/ Tribes2 has upto 60 players on a night.

    2. Re:Shazbot! by kriebz · · Score: 1

      Are you like the one guy in the whole world that thought T2 was better that Tribes? Or did they fix a lot in the last 7 years?

  3. Mac support? yes! by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Informative

    IA supports Mac, so hopefully I'll be able to get my Shazbot on when it goes live.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  4. Top 10 all time game. by MrBandersnatch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    T1 gets my vote as one of the best games of all time. PERFECT game-play for the most part. If they had just updated the graphics engine and maps but touched no other code for a T2 and T3 version I would have been happy; while T2 was good it was lacking a certain....something.

    1. Re:Top 10 all time game. by ndavis · · Score: 1

      T1 gets my vote as one of the best games of all time. PERFECT game-play for the most part. If they had just updated the graphics engine and maps but touched no other code for a T2 and T3 version I would have been happy; while T2 was good it was lacking a certain....something.

      I played T1 all the time and T2 seemed to miss the same mods that people came out with. Then again T1 mods seemed to go too far in some cases which caused me to stop playing it as often.

      I hope this browser version is like the original as I thought it was an amazing game that caused me to stay up till the sun came up without realizing it.

  5. All hail id Software by imbaczek · · Score: 1

    not sure who came up with the idea first, but it looks like id is trailblazing again, this time with quake live. of course, kudos for the tribes guys for following suit.

    1. Re:All hail id Software by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1

      The difference is that Quake sucks, and Tribes is good. :)

      Nah, I'm mostly kidding, different gameplay for different types of players. If you like any of the Battlefield games (especially Battlefield: 2142), remember: they ripped-off all their ideas from Tribes. Although they stopped short at Tribes' best feature, the jet-pack.

      --
      Comment of the year
  6. YES! Can't wait for this! by wildstoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Starsiege: Tribes was one of my favourite online FPS games.

    At the time it was a breath of fresh air to the FPS genre. Quake II and Unreal were fighting for the FPS market share, but were ultimately very similar games. Tribes was different; suddenly Unreal and Q2 seemed very slow and static.

    Tribes features jetpacks, vehicles with interesting physics, new gametypes and huge maps. It was an instant classic. I have nothing but awesome memories of Tribes matches.

    Kamikaze scout runs into enemy flag rooms, disc-launcher jumping with jetpack to get insane height and speed, across the map in seconds rather than the minutes it would take on foot. :)

    Suffice to say, if this revitalizes the Tribes community, it might be one of the best things to happen to online gaming this year.

    The fact that the new IP owners are also (some of) the original creators of Tribes is just icing on the cake. I really hope they exceed their own expectations.

    Have to tip my hat to id for leading the way with browser-based FPS games. If this kind of thing is the result maybe the future of PC gaming isn't as bleak as some have predicted.

    1. Re:YES! Can't wait for this! by Interl0per · · Score: 1

      Indeed, I have yet to find anything as original and fun since I first played a decade ago. Only the decline of servers running interesting maps and rulesets has caused my playtime to decrease, hopefully this move will cause a new generation to discover the game and bring their own creative energy to the game. Thank God I finished college before they did this!

    2. Re:YES! Can't wait for this! by vertinox · · Score: 1

      Kamikaze scout runs into enemy flag rooms, disc-launcher jumping with jetpack to get insane height and speed, across the map in seconds rather than the minutes it would take on foot. :)

      Oh those were the days. I remember, using the scout to run people over in a mad fireball of glory.

      Of course, I also remember how people would take the transport and drive team mates to their doom ;)

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    3. Re:YES! Can't wait for this! by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If they add the Shifter v.1 MOD, I'll fly over there and buy them all a steak. Best MOD in the best team FPS game ever.

      --
      Comment of the year
    4. Re:YES! Can't wait for this! by skeeto · · Score: 1

      I also loved Tribes. I spend hundreds of hours in that game. Once you mastered the jetpack, you could do some amazing things. Some of my favorite memories come from playing on the (Team Aerial Assault) TAC mod.

      In TAC, you died instantly if you touched the dirt ground (structure floors were safe), the home bases were placed very far apart, and the action was all in the middle on an island (an island in a sea of deadly dirt) of some sort. This forced teamwork because the only way to the action was on transports, and only light armor could fly transports. So someone became the designated pilot and the rest would gear up in various types of heavy armor.

      I found a video on YouTube of some action.

      Sometimes these transports would even fight it out in the air: two transports, each has 1 pilot and 4 heavy armors, and the heavy armor players are launching mortars, disks, etc., at each other while the transports take evasive action. For those unfamiliar with Tribes, the transports are very open, so the passengers can easily shoot just about anywhere (see the video, which shows the smaller transports). That was amazing fun right there.

      In the modless world, base raping was a lot of fun. Have several people from your team enter the enemy base in heavy armor. Destroy everything, especially their generator so they can't make ships, get weapons, and use their turrets. Then make camp with some portable inventory stations and keep your mortar gun pointed at the entrance. You own their base, and while the enemy is trying to remove you and fix their stuff, your other teammates concentrate on capping their flag.

      Oh, and remember skiing? There was a bug in the game mechanics with how applying a jetpack while going downhill worked, which made the player glide very fast. This was dubbed skiing, and people liked it so much this "bug" turned into a feature. When they made the not-very-good Tribes 2, the had to write in the ski mechanism.

      Tribes was the best FPS I ever played online.

    5. Re:YES! Can't wait for this! by Adriax · · Score: 1

      Actually the bug was in the ground collision mechanics. There was a small delay between collision with a surface and the engine changing the player object's state from falling/flying to standing/walking. If you did tiny jumps or used your jetpack while in that transition period (after collision but before being rooted to the ground), the engine would reset the delay and you would keep using falling physics on the ground, allowing you to ski.

      The same bug caused some weird vehicle physics. Like if you tried landing a flyer on a deployable item (like a deployable wall or vehicle spawn pad some mods had), it would never transition to the resting state, and would collide 32 times per second for tiny amounts of damage to both.

      --
      I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
    6. Re:YES! Can't wait for this! by wildstoo · · Score: 1

      Admittedly, I didn't check the chronology of InstantAction compared to QuakeLive. Thanks for clearing that up, Mr AC!

      I tried out Legions this weekend. It's very good for what it is, (a cut-down Tribes) but I'm looking forward to the original Tribes more.

      I wasn't comparing Tribes to QuakeLive in terms of gameplay. As I said, Tribes was clearly different to its predecessors in the genre. I was talking about the nascent browser-based FPS phenomenon in general.

      Also, I wouldn't say that QuakeLive has no real depth. It's a more traditional arena-style FPS, but that doesn't mean it has no depth, it just means it exposes its depth in different ways.

      Given the choice between the two games, rest assured I'd choose Tribes every time. :)

  7. Awesome by ZeroZenith · · Score: 1

    I've played all versions of Tribes and without a doubt these games are best games of all time. There is a bit of a learning curve to them but once you get it the fun is endless especially if you play with group of friends or a good team. If you like FPS and you have not played them you have not lived.

    --
    -- ZeroZenith
  8. Re:Mac support? yes! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    Tribe 1 is a free download (it was released for free to promote one of the sequels). It runs quite nicely in Crossover, and may even work in the main branch of WINE if you can persuade it to build with 3D support. If you grabbed the free Crossover Games release from a few months ago, then you can already run the free Tribes 1 release on a Mac.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  9. Re:Mac support? yes! by zerocool^ · · Score: 1

    That free download thing mostly killed Legends: the game (http://www.legendsthegame.net/) which was sort of someone trying to make an open source Tribes-like game, with some graphical updates and a few fixes like auto-ski, etc.

    Was a decent game for a while.

    --
    sig?
  10. Fallen Empire: Legions by Muffinmasher · · Score: 1

    What about Fallen Empire: Legions?
    The unofficial Tribes 4 (they couldn't get the name from Sierra) made by the same people. It ALSO plays in a browser with somewhat modern graphics.
    http://www.instantaction.com/

    --
    Schrödinger's download is slow.
    1. Re:Fallen Empire: Legions by LingNoi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Says my OS is unsupported. I wish companies wouldn't (like Google) just block off your access all together like the IE only websites used to do.

      Yeah, I could probably edit my browser's user agent for this one game however I've already lost interest.

    2. Re:Fallen Empire: Legions by Muffinmasher · · Score: 1

      Damnit, hit Submit instead of Preview.

      What's the point of acquiring Tribes when they already have a modernized, almost direct port of it with better graphics?
      I guess they just wanted the recognizable name associated with it, but then why not just rename Fallen Empire?

      --
      Schrödinger's download is slow.
    3. Re:Fallen Empire: Legions by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 1

      I was actually playing this earlier today with a few people who had never played Tribes. It's a lot of fun (even they thought so) and I realize it's still in beta, but I wouldn't call it the unofficial Tribes 4 quite yet. As it stands it's kind of a dumbed down version without a lot of the things Tribes had. If they add a lot of it back such as proper classes, inventory stations, vehicles, packs, deployables, mines, etc... then I'll consider it a true successor. They don't have to clone the first game, in fact I'd prefer they mix it up (I quite like to overdrive function), but right now it's just a simple FPS with a jet pack and skiing. Definitely hope it turns out good though.

    4. Re:Fallen Empire: Legions by JuSTCHiLLiN · · Score: 1

      All successors to the original Tribes have failed at capturing the feel. Anyone who spent any time with Tribes knows this.

      --
      What's a Sig?
  11. Time to fire up my old server again! by WyrdOne · · Score: 1

    Tribes 1 with Chivalry mod v2 with addons. (No clientside install required.)

    Lets get some parabolic disk jumps going!

  12. Re:Mac support? yes! by dannay · · Score: 1

    I don't believe Legends was open source

  13. Interesting by olddotter · · Score: 1

    I only know about this game from reading the Penny-arcade.com collection books. Looks like they loved it back in the day. Looking forward to seeing what the deal is. :-)

    --
    Think Deeply. ...
  14. Tribes 1 a forgotten innovator by jaggeh · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tribes did effortlessly in 1998 what games are struggling to do today. 128 person games, massive landscapes (albeit primitive) destroyable buildings, deployable buildings. an integrated command and control system that was sorely underused. it also had great netcode for the time iirc. no game in the last 10 years has come close to the epic feeling i got when playing tribes 1 and to a lesser extent tribes 2 (too many issues)

    --
    I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
  15. Legends by kriebz · · Score: 1

    Legends wasn't Open Source. It was a re-write of Tribes 2 with licensed Tribes 2 code, with the mechanics of Tribes so you know, it was fun. I know this because my Debian box was used by a friend to test build it during college (yes, Linux support was a goal). I've looked to see if the source tree was still in my backups, but I think I lost it. Oh well, shouldn't really have had it anyway.

  16. What I miss most about Tribes 1 (and 2) by JuSTCHiLLiN · · Score: 1

    Apart from playing in matches on the OGL or TWL, I miss listening to shoucasts of matches while hanging out in irc chatting.

    --
    What's a Sig?
  17. But what about 'Starsiege' by Veretax · · Score: 1

    Not to interject, but is it only the Tribes Era of the Starsiege Universe? Or does it include the rest of it including the Fire Era (EarthSiege, ES2, Starsiege, etc.?)