the Battlezone Franchise was sold to Rebellion Interactive

[Ded10c]

Well, sort of. If you want to use the name or arena-tank-shooter property, you need Rebellion. If you want living metals and space opera, you need Activision.

[Nielk1]

You know if anyone made a BZ3 they would probably just **** all over it.

[MrTwosheds]

Given the advances in game tech, any bz3 would inevitably be a very different game now anyway.

[Roscoe]

I don't see why. It would be prettier, but there's no reason to toss out all those satisfying game mechanics. The hover vehicles may have been a design decision to save on resources, but they turned out to be incredibly fun to drive.

[GSH]

As I said here, the BZ1/2 community has been so amazingly intolerant of any changes. It would be better for a new hovertank FPS+RTS game to be made withOUT the 'Battlezone' name attached, so that people would leave their baggage out of future titles. Passion is good, but when it becomes so exclusionary as to attack anything that's not exactly what you want, it becomes toxic.

-- GSH

[Roscoe]

I never raised hell about it, but I also thought the changes to the physics (removal of hovering and addition of thrust vector normalization) took away a lot of the fun in flying those ships. Those bugs accidentally uncovered some incredibly fun gameplay. It was wonky, but extremely satisfying.

You had angry people on one side wanting that pilot experience, and angry people on the other side wanting the RTS aspect to not be broken by the ship bugs.

I think maybe this kind of high-stress game just attracts people that are prone to getting angry about things.

[MrTwosheds]

I don't see why.

Removing the many limitations imposed by the Bz2 engine would effect gameplay greatly.
eg 32 players = nervous breakdown time for a bz2 commander, Command structures would have to be changed.
3d pathing, Realistic flying vehicles become possible, a total game changer. Proper 3d buildings and props, a much wider range of environments and environmental effects.
Everything would be different. Nobody these days is going to make a game with a box head of a Pilot quite like bz1/2, at the least it would have to be of UT quality or better and that opens up even more possibilities. It could be great! but it would be very far removed from both bz1 and 2. They are of their time. Nobody is going back there.
See the thread about reverse engineering BZ physics...into the Unreal engine? WTF?...Dude you just have to go and break a lot of the stuff that makes that engine worth using. Its like trying to "fix" a Ferrari so it drives like a Morris minor.

[Red Devil]

reading in the Brady Games "Battlezone Official Strategy Guide" that Acti was coming off the success of Mechwarrior II and ten Command and Conquer hit them like a tidal wave, so they were wondering if they could combine the FPS elements of MW II and the RTS elements of C&C, so they combined the AI from Dark Reign and the graphics from I-76 and saw it was do-able, then the CEO of Acti told Goldman they could get the rights to the original arcade Battlezone, so they built the new Battlezone engine from the 'ground, up' using bits and pieces from I-76, Dark Reign, Mechwarrior II, etc., like GSH said.

so, the idea for the game type came first, then they called it Battlezone.

i think what's important is that the FPS+RTS game type be preserved, even if it is not called Battlezone.

[GSH]

From what I've seen of the source code -- BZ2's codebase started with the BZ1 engine, but this was 15 years ago now and my memory is a little cloudy -- calling BZ1 "ground up" from I76 is a vast overstatement. BZ1 is I76 with a year or two of tweaks, not something new plus some extracted useful pieces of I76.

-- GSH

[Red Devil]

that's what i was trying to say, but failing again

[Zero Angel]

I think maybe this kind of high-stress game just attracts people that are prone to getting angry about things.

That sounds about right. Though PvPers in-general tend to be more passionate about meta-game issues like balance, physics and 'feel'. That said, 'more passionate' sometimes equates to obnoxious, or the few who do tend to be persistent and unreasonable tend to be more attracted to PvP as well. Unfortunately you kind of have to be a bit of a dev in order to empathize with a dev and be able to explain things on his own wavelength (technical nitty-gritty, how x affects metagame in y and how y affects z, why it's a bad idea from a more neutral objective perspective, etc), most non-techs/non-geeks will have a hard time empathizing with a dev who has a systematic vision of how he wants to see the game, nor be able to trace his own motivations and leverage those to negotiate an outcome that pleases both the dev and the player.

[Apollo]

Ken can correct me if i'm wrong but i see very little MW2 code and most of it is disabled, the I76 code is more of the engine with the renderer, sound code, part of the loader, game related code and network replaced. This is not complete but as for I76 it's mostly engine code, and not much of the game code. (i76building, bridge, vehicle roll code etc...)

[Nielk1]

Side note ZA: There is a fundamental difference between passion about balance and physics and backward claims that the only right way was the way it was. People like that kill games.

Take any thriving MP competitive game, well aside from CoD, and you see constant updates and changes and an ever shifting meta-game. Take BZ2 and you see ppl flipping **** 'cause a scout rolls lower.

[Red Devil]

thinking the MW2 code was used for the walkers, or at least used as a foundation.

and, yes, it's all about whose ox is being gored: in BF2, players complaining that wall glitchers are killing people with impunity, then wall-glitchers complaining that they can't kill with impunity when the devs fixed that. same with BZ2, et al.

apollo, how/why do you have access to the code?