dynamix posts

This weekend's out of the blue announcement of a new game in the Tribes series of sci-fi shooters by developer Hi-Rez Studios likely has the attention of some old school gamers who remember where they were when the original game in the franchise was first released. However it's also likely that many people reading this web site have never played, or even worse, never heard of the Tribes series.

So we decided to whip a quick history of the Tribes franchise for those of you who have yet to play any of the games in the series. The franchise was a massive influence of the first person shooter genre, particularly in its multiplayer features. In many ways the first game in the series was years ahead of its time but its successors never achieved the audience that the first game did.

The GoG.com DRM-free PC gaming download site returns back to their pool of titles to choose from that are owned by Activision. Today they have added Betrayal at Krondor, the fantasy turn-based RPG that was originally released back in 1993 by Sierra Online.

The game was developed by Dynamix who later went on to make the first two games in the Tribes series of titles. The game, based on the Riftwar series of novels by Raymond E. Feist, would later get a sequel, Return to Krondor, that is already available at GOG.com. You can get Betrayal at Krondor now for $5.99.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Tribes is a classic of the multiplayer FPS genre, and has influenced many games since its entry into the market. Games like Battlefield or MAG owe a debt to Tribes, as Tribes was the first truly massive first-person multiplayer experience. The level of detail and scale on the maps and gameplay was awesome, and almost every modern team-based shooter can trace its lineage to Tribes. However, the success of Tribes didn't stop with the first game. It extended into a franchise that has received two sequels. The latest, Tribes Vengeance, was not all that good, but the immediate sequel Tribes 2 was absolutely fantastic. Released for free a while ago to commemorate the launch of Vengeance, the authorization servers went down in 2008, with the community releasing their own in 2009. It's now completely freeware, and anyone who wants to enjoy this updated classic can do so once again.

Yet another classic game franchise that was consumed by the Activision Blizzard merger has found a new home. This time its the Red Baron flying action game series that has been bought by indie game developer Mad Otter Games. The studio was founded by Damon Slye, who co-founded Dynamix and helped to create the Red Baron series while at that now defunct developer. He got out of game development for a while but just recently got back into making games with Mad Otter.

Mad Otter has not yet announced any plans for new games in the series but is giving $1,500 to the first person who can turn in the original source code for Red Baron, Red Baron II, and Red Baron 3D.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Online multiplayer games owe a debt to a brave few that took the classic, minimalized gameplay and elevated it beyond tiny arenas and small teams. Games like the Battlefield series or Freelancer would not exist without some of these incredible, genre-busting, landscape-changing experiences. Starsiege: Tribes is one of these games, and thanks to the machinations of those behind the intellectual property, it is available for free to anybody wanting to give it a try. And try it you should, because its massive multiplayer mayhem philosophy exudes influence on designers even in the modern day.

A couple of the folks behind two well known game developers are striking out again on their own. This week it was revealed that Jeff Tunnell and Rick Overman, who helped to found Dynamix and GarageGames have launched PushButton Labs. This new game developer is concentrating its efforts on making Flash-based browser games.

The company is developing their own Flash-based game engine (the PushButton Engine, natch) that they will use to not only create their own games but have created their game engine as an open-source tool. And even more interesting is the fact that Gamasutra is reporting the team is looking to relaunch "a classic game property [rescued] from the nether world of a PC game publisher collapse." Hmmmm...

Fans of the original massive outdoor multiplayer shooter Starsiege: Tribes just got some good news today. A port of the 1998 released game from the now defunct Dynamix is coming to the InstantAction.com browser game web site later this year.

InstantAction.com was created by indie game developer GarageGames which was founded by a number of ex-Dynamix folks. When InstantAction.com was launched in 2008 they included a Tribes-like game called Fallen Empire: Legions. However it appears that they now have the rights to the genuine article. According to Kotaku a playable version of the InstantAction.com port of Tribes will be shown next week at GDC. It will reportedly have improved graphics and better mod support

Last November, Activision Blizzard shut down the online master servers of many of the older games they had acquired the rights to in their purchase of Vivendi Games. One of those games was Tribes 2, the sci-fi multiplayer shooter from the now defunct developer Dynamix. The game was first released back in 2001 and three years later was re-released as a free download. However the shutdown of the online master server a few months ago meant that the game was unplayable online.

Now some enterprizing fans of Tribes 2 are attempting to relaunch the game online with TribesNext. It's basically a third party patch that allows online play via a new multiplayer server. Since all of this is basically off the books it's currently unknown if Activision Blizzard has an issue with this game. Still if you have a copy of the free download you might want to check this out.

[Via Kotaku]

The Man. He's the faceless corporate hegemony that controls every aspect of your daily existence, dictating your actions. And you don't even know it. Or, alternatively (and more realistically), The Man is just a dramatization of the large corporations that are neither good nor evil, merely turning a profit. Jeff Tunnell of Dynamix and subsequently GarageGames fame has penned an excellent opinion piece on the nature of working for those large corporations. The gist of it is that they do not care for you, be ready to deal with internal politics that are typical to a large company, and be prepared to be burned out by managers overworking and grinding you for no real reason at all. For the full article, which contains at least 120% more insight than the leading competitor's article, check out Gamasutra.