The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I don't know how many people have heard of it, but a new Wing Commander game is looming for the xbox 360: "Wing Commander Arena."

I'm actually pretty excited at the idea. It's sort of a fake 3D in that the graphics are 3D and you can move up/down, but you're also locked on a 2D plane for movement. I'm a little jealous of it, actually. I kind of wish I'd thought of that style for Xeno Versus. I think Star Control could be re-done in a similar fashion.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/23/gasp-what-has-ea-done-to-wing-commander/ (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/23/gasp-what-has-ea-done-to-wing-commander/)

http://gamevideos.com/video/id/11405 (http://gamevideos.com/video/id/11405)

It would have been better if it wasn't Wing Commander.

This is blasphemy, this is madness! . . .


Introducing Cliche Commander Arena. In, Cliche Commander Arena, you attack online opponents with tired intertrends for Massive Damage. Cliche Commander Arena will retail for 599 US dollars.

Its Cliche Commander! Cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiche Commander !!!

I'm actually surprised by a lot of the negativity on the web for it. It seems like a fun space game to me. Is it all just because of the use of the WC label? I think XBLA could use a fun game like this.

Usually. EA loves to use well known titles and then release crappy games over it, plus several dozen expansion packs to milk it dry. Wing Commander was always a 3D space sim game with cheesy cutscenes featuring Mark Hamill in some way or another as the great Terran Confederation hero Blair which defined our childhoods because we all loved em. Then comes in EA after taking over Origin and then releases this, which just doesn't feel like Wing Commander, I mean picking up powerups? bashing into gigantic space stations?

This game could have been done right, but it needs to feel epic and to get rid of all of those powerups. I want to see Kilrathi battleships going toe to toe with Terran battleships, and I want to see say the TCS Midway in all its glory, with hundreds upon hundreds of fighters all going at it and in these giant battles you are thrown in all this chaos trying to complete a said objective whilst trying not to screw up as it will have repercussions later on, Mark Hamill, and well, you get the idea.

I'd find such a game fun and entertaining yes, but by all means this is no Wing Commander, just an attempt to milk us for suckers, because that's EA's marketing ploys, just like they dropped more or less 75% of the C&C canon when making Tiberium Wars (such changes being going with a mineral rather than an organic lifeform for the tiberium, dropping GDI mecha and Nod subterra (plus loads of technology dropped simply because they invested more in space (not really, EA just likes tanks and 20th century weapons and going back to C&C1), and reducing Nod to a jihadist terror group) and so forth. Mike Verdu also was a big part of Legend Entertainment who made SC3, and look how that turned out.

I'm curious as to how well a console controller lends itself to space dogfighters like Wing Commander, TIE Fighter or Freespace. If the thing took off well enough I might get an Xbox 360 for it because I'm a sucker for those games. On the other hand, it's EA we're talking about. :barf:

You pretty much summed up all my feelings exactly.

You know, I used to wonder that about FPS games as well. But Halo really was the first one to show you can have fun gameplay in an FPS with a gamepad. I got a 360 about a half year ago. I've really enjoyed it. My laptop isn't powerful to run high-end games, so it was cheaper to get a 360 than upgrade to a better desktop. The arcade download service is turning out to be the most addictive. I've got Worms and Mad Tracks in their full versions and a slew of demos. Unless all the reviews pan it, I don't think I'll be able to pass up WC.

Well to be fair, TS really sucked from most player reports that I have heard (not played it yet myself) and it really did not stay true to its predecessor at all.

Also, are you sure Tiberium wasn't actually a crystal to start with, and it just mutated carbon based life into serving it? Sort of like how Lichens are actually a fusion of fungus and protist algae. Otherwise, not sure why it would make crystals on the surface.

Tanks > Mechs ;D

Suicide Nod are kind of dumb, have to agree there.

Besides these things though, did the game play and feel like a C&C game or no?


On a similar not, I hope StarCraft II doesn't end up as a Warcraft 4, it looks more like War than Star at this point. Square siege tanks, damn someone needs to be fired.

TS sucked because it was rushed by EA which meant that Westwood couldn't get TS to its maximum potential, instead relying on the common tactic by EA (which they used again with TW) to overhype it, still it was developed by Westwood and it did give off some enjoyment for its time so still it should be seen as canon.

Tiberium was not a crystal to start with, it does make crystalline structures to reproduce, but it has organic pods at the bottom which contain various resources plus a crucial unknown element. This also allowed it to spread from trees to more trees and to bind itself to animals and human civilians who would then become mutants in a few years or so.

We also had Tiberium lifeforms from the giant veinhole monster which would entangle towns and cities, huge Tiberium flora and goo, Tiberium Floaters (giant electric hovering jellyfish), Visceroids (giant living human tiberium tumors), Fiends (tiberium dogs) and Tiberium itself took over the oceans though aquatic mutations and algae. EA however simply said 'right this is a crystal like Starcraft..' and dropped all of the lifeforms to fit this as well as introducing GDI aircraft carriers when it was explicitly stated that the seas were hazardous to travel through anymore.

Tiberium Wars was roughly 14 years after TS, so why would they go back to tanks of all things. Mechs were also needed to traverse the Tiberium coated landscape, while Nod used Tick Tanks which we can gather plows through the terrain (knowing they use subterra). They even dropped Hover Tanks from GDI because 'it attracted Ion Storms', did it hell, whenever I had Ion Storms in TS my MLRS wouldn't get fragged by lightning as bad as the other units.

The game played like a Red Alert 2 clone, coupled with loads of well known names to glamorize it (and to maximise the hype), as well as saying 'zomg kane is teh back!11' despite the ignorance of recognizing previous characters in the other games such as the fate of Commander McNeil, Nod leader Slavik and Verdu explicitly stated the kill off of one of the main villains who survived in TS, the cybernetic leader CABAL because of poor sales which to me seems like a lame explanation, who cares about sales? The Scrin looked like a rip off the Covenant from Halo, the Protoss (Planetary Assault Carrier anyone?) and spliced with the Starship Troopers aliens. They also blew up GDI's space station (why couldn't they have done this anyway in TS instead of it being a final mission goal?), and also contrasted Kane's goal to fire a Tiberium terraforming missile in TS to go to another planet in TW. The Scrin also looked like lame Cthulhu ripoffs and hardly had an 'alien' interface, rather the same boring female EVA.

Couldn't care less for Starcraft, I hate it. Micromanagement is not strategy I keep saying, yet everyone says it is.

I hate to be Mr. Nitpicky, but NO. Westwood wasn't bought out by EA until quite a few years later, and had no impact on TS at all. According to the wiki (and I have no doubt it's correct, considering I remember hearing about TS's development cycle soon after the original), TS spent over 4 years in development. I would hardly call that a rushed game.

Check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Tiberian_Sun
And more generally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_series

However, I have no doubt that the folks at EA had little compunction about raping C&C continuity (haven't played TW yet). Nobody said that TS is or should be non-canon, and in the grand scheme of things, ignoring it is pretty silly, considering it was basically about the entire world being engulfed by the Tiberium apocolypse. But that's typical EA; do the absolute minimum background research possible for the new installment of the continuing series, and then whip the slaves until they get into a nice annual sequel pace, regardless of actual quality. After all, plenty of suckers are going to buy, no matter how crappy it is.

EA Games: Challenge Mediocrity  ::)

How about game balance, how does TW do against its predecessors on this? (After the recent patches of course.) How was its balance vs Generals?

EA bought Westwood while they were working on TS, and it only took years because of delays, but still EA rushed the job by releasing it early. Warcraft 3 took even longer, and still it looked cruddy.


Generals had really stupid balance, and many bugs which EA refused to fix because EA are like that, one being a superweapon for the GLA could be fired again and again without the 10 minute wait. TW I've heard has a bad balance in that infantry are next to useless, so you might as well just make tanks instead. If the Scrin get to Tier 3, well you lose basically due to superior firepower and armament although the Scrin's earlier units are mediocre at best. GDI is your normal Tank flush army with the big guns provided you flatten the enemy to a stage where you can finish the rest, Nod is your jihadists relying on fanatics, cheap tanks and batman lookalikes while the Scrin are your stereotypical aliens which get motherships. One thing about this game is super units can't be killed once they enter battle, rather they become 'corpses' which you can 'capture' using an engineer to give you that super unit.

So back on topic, a while back I had a similar idea, inspired by a game I played on my PDA.

My thought was this could be taken a step further by plaing on the surface of a sphere a fixed distance above the surface of a planet. You can still gravity whip with orbiting planetoids, and you get the "keep going in a straight line and eventually you'll run into your enemy" aspect of melee.

Part of the problem of using this in a StarControl setting is what happens with rear facing weapons like the Spathi? Perhaps a persepctive can be worked up that would allow it to work, maybe fixing the camera rotation so the ship rotates, not the whole view.

Unfortunately, until someone in the star control community starts programing wing commander gets the cool melee updates.

Interesting... about the "fake" 3D thingy, an idea would be to have only the ships move in a restricted plane of movement (the sphere), while being able to rotate freely (acceleration while facing a bit upwards/downwards would be slower, as if it were some friction with an invisible wall); the projectiles and the asteroids would move freely in 3D. So a Cruiser could shoot its nuke horizontally (so it remains, most of the time, in the plane of movement) or vertically (so it passes through the plane of movement in one position).

Why not have a rear-facing camera as a HUD element? Or view from a position perpendicular to the line joining the two ships (and opposite to the planet/sphere centre). Or keep a key pressed to look behind. I think I prefer the first variant, it's more stylish (and manages to give a lot of information, also). The second variant doesn't look so good, but it's very practical. It could also be an option to choose between the two solutions.

I think the problem with this is it's just soooo hard to get help. Everyone wants to be in charge, no one wants to work, and nobody keeps feature creep in check. So you end up with a plan for a massive game that no one will work on or organize, lol. It happens all the time.

I mean I'd have loved some help on Xeno Versus, which is a simpler project. But finding a person to help isn't easy. I'm hoping to convince my programmer friend to do the AI, since I'm plenty overwhelmed with all the other aspects.

I will say, speaking of Torque, that it'd be a perfect engine for a WC:A style game. :)

I think the main thing is that most people who want to help have non essential skills though. Everyone has a great idea, and a cool concept, and new wacky alien races. But they don't know how to code, or write an engine, or anything that would be useful in actually bringing the vision to life.

On a different note, I do have some great ideas, so if anyone wants to program and organize my game, I'll be happy to tell you what it should be about.

Exactly. But I wonder what it is about some (http://forums.bobandgeorge.com/viewforum.php?f=15&sid=9310c64ddef818784a40b0a408e4692d) games (http://www.dan-dare.org/sonicandmario/) that attract exactly the opposite crowd, that is to say, people that actually get things done (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7TSHA&q=mario+clones).

WC Arena?!?! EA has hit an all time low as this looks like pure crap.. At least call it somthing different than soiling the fairly good Wing Commander name. Prediction, this game will either flop or have a marginal break-even "success". I don't see this being top dog at E3.

I doubt they'll show it much at E3. It's not a big budget title. It's just an XBLA download.

I doubt they'll show it much at E3. It's not a big budget title. It's just an XBLA download.
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Very true, but one might think reviving the classic Wing Commander in any capacity *should* be huge.

Oh I totally agree with you on that one. But WC as a brand has fallen and fallen hard. Remember the horrendous movie? I hope WC:Arena is a testing of the waters, so to speak. There are so many old franchises that could be revived, and many would be good for Xbox in general. It needs familiar brands to bring people in. I think a modern Duke Nukem or Commander Keen would do a lot in appealing to old PC gamers who haven't got a 360. Maybe the same in this case, I dunno.

Like StarControl.

Although personally I think Star Control would be more at home on gametap (http://www.gametap.com).

With no offence to those involved, there's a slight difference there. Remaking Megaman, Sonic or Mario neither requires a brand new story of epic level, nor a completely new engine. But maybe that's the way to go? Making some simpler games first, and then proceeding to the big thing.

Here are some pointers to keep your indy/free/open game out of many common and fatal mistakes:

Do not even bother starting a game project or working on one if you do not both love games in general and love theone in particular that you are getting involved with (either as contributor or as the one-man-band).

Have a core team of a few talented and very devoted and motivated people. For better or worse, successful small games are made by a few heroes, not an army of grunts. (No offence.) That said, the talented started out as grunts. Motivation and enjoying the work are ultimately what decides whether or not one makes the transformation.

Design the game out ahead of time, with prototyping where helpful. You can make adjustments as you go on (and will need to) but you need at least a superstructure to build off of.

Do not build the whole game at once. Concentrate on specific areas so that you do not get overwhelmed and can see and show solid progress and make adjustments and learn lessons that could spill over into other areas of the game when you get to them.

If a feature is fun and intricate, reuse it in as many ways and areas as possible. If it took a lot of time to build, don't just sample its abilities, make full use of them.

Do not go for complex features that do not get reused in many parts of the game or do not significantly add to the feel or gameplay. Distactions like these can bog down development and eventually kill a project. Remember, you can also add this stuff when everything else is finished.

Wow, DS, that's great advice. I didn't know you made indy games. Can you link us examples from your own experience?

Ouch. Now this I suppose could be called artistic.

Guesst

I am just a 3D artist for them right now as my skill job (non-technical design and plot don't count in this category, imo). I will probably have to look into coding at some point though, that really is the heart of the matter. So far Starflight 3 is all I can point to, though there are about half a dozen projects in total I am very interested in contributing to. I just figure it is better to concentrate on one thing and get it done first, than spread yourself so thin over every desire that comes to you.

So is that why we see so very little of you nowadays?

Not really, I have been involved in these interests since long before I registered on this forum. I just don't show up here alot anymore because uqm is still a long way from the mod-ability changes I find interesting and most of the sequel/side projects are dead or dormant. At the same time, things are looking brighter in the starflight projects and hopefully vega strike will come around soon and launch a new version with some of the massive changes since the last ancient version.

And coincidentally, if you want some free time-eaters, check out the opensource fps Nexuiz and Tremulous projects.

Don't look now, but Sierra Online is doing a melee game in the Battlestar Galactica universe. Looks kinda similar to WCA. I hope the market isn't saturated in melee games by the time mine is available!

http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/2017/PreE3-2007-Sierra-Online-XBLA-Blowout/p3/ (http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/2017/PreE3-2007-Sierra-Online-XBLA-Blowout/p3/)