why not put the old classic version up on GOG?

I owned the gold box 3 times now, would really rather see the old original rather than a bloated up graphical update..

I wish that battlezone had gone opensource like freespace 2 did, Imagine if the modders had figured out how to mesh the two of them..

even by itself if it were given the treatment of freespace 2 by a similar community it would look 10 times better than the redux does..

it's a shame what greed does, it stifles that which it protects.

I would however pay again to have the full original gold box included with the redux, like homeworld did, but I just can't bring myself to paying again (It would be the 5th time total on this title) without that, and after 18 years the expansion should be included in the base redux as well to be honest.

The Battlezone community is a mess, and an open source release would have divided it further. It's extremely likely that that's not why no open source release was ever made, but it's certainly a reason for us to be glad it wasn't. We don't need seven different variations of BZE going on, all incompatible with each other.

do you know what descent freespace went through?
is really quite a story behind it.

the bzone community a mess?!?!
you head it..

too bad you lack the faith in your own community that opensource will never be an option..

behind the fact that opensource is not profitable, and instead is sincere.

maybe you should actually try freespace and then the opensource version of it, see what i mean, you might be amazed, possibly even inspired.

but then.. i have read your posts to someone for even posting an old bz map on the steam workshop so i know about your little control trip.. back to the root of the problem...

go try descent freespace opensource and then come tell me that you think the team has done as well with battlezone 98 redux, if your honest about it you wont be able to do that.

freespace 2 is $9.99 = https://www.gog.com/game/freespace_2
then install and then go to http://www.fsoinstaller.com/ and run the installer..

try it before it goes open real quick though, so you can see before and after.

when you can say BZR is as good as THAT then i will buy a copy, again..

ps, i loved it back then (bz '98), so don't take me wrong.
both games are alike in many many ways, the main difference being Freespace has no ground.

the GOG version is hampered with lack of space for "mods" and lets face it, they will never do them on an individual basis, should be something on the bzredux site, so it is easily maintained and accessed as well.

Lan support for gog non galaxy users would have been sweet, if not a way to create simple tcp/ip games, at least that, this was a good Lan game before the redux.

should include the original, so people can compare and contrast, without it is of little historical value, and as old as it is, in it's entity, meaning all that was on the gold cds, aside from the bz2 demo anyways.

this is the only redux i can think of that this is not the case.
can you name another that doesn't include the original?

look at this freespace opensource vid, it is seriously just like that.. compare.. same release timeframe approx.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ

or this playtime, just open and mediavps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMVDkwDb7kg
really beautiful, holds up to tomorrows game, well, except that tomorrows game will have more vertices.

Your hostility is neither required nor appreciated. I am porting the Battlezone: Battle Grounds map pack at its owners' request and, where reasonably possible, have contacted the maps' original creators and sought their blessing. This is a logical progression of a project I started work on four years ago.

It is not difficult to obtain the original version of the game. I have at least eight copies sat on the shelves in my office.

I will investigate FSO and compare it to BZR later, when I'm not snowed under with work. For now, consider that the Battlezone community was divided long before BZR came along. I've played Freespace but not been involved in its community so I cannot compare, but from my experience in other communities this seems to be an extreme example:

- BZ1 players and BZ2 players largely did not interact
- BZ1 players were split between those who played 1.4 and those who played an unofficial fork named BZE.
- When 1.5 was released, this split was briefly three ways, between 1.4, 1.5 and BZE.
- BZ2 players were until recently split between 1.2 and 1.3. Now they are split between the "players" (who use an old, more stable 1.3) and the "developers" who use the current version. Scare quotes because those are loose terms.

Bear in mind that these weren't just groups that didn't interact; in most cases there was outright hostility between them, attempting to undermine or halt development of the "other side"'s version of the game. When BZR was released, the BZ1 players divided even further between 1.5, BZE and BZR. That has harmed activity in all three versions.

have you considered that possibly (as i told you at the start) that my words were actually meant to help you?
but this is the attitude i was mentioning earlier as well.. point proven..

you really should take some time to go play a game yourself i think.

your gonna give yourself a heart attack someday.

learn to let go, you will live longer for it.
you will ultimately be happier too..

and this is what you call hostility?
you are the problem your fighting..

if you really considered my words you would be thinking in another line.

you know, i'll bet it could be modded in freespace open to play bz98 through it, that would make a great mod, we could call it "Hadleyzone 98 redux", in your honor, wouldn't take too much i doubt, i should propose a new mod.. i'll bet they would love the idea, it would be fantastic, after all it would just be a matter of adding the rts elements and a ground, but the rts stuff would just replace the ship commands.. simple translation, very simple. the maps would have to be converted somehow, or redrawn in fred.

what say yee?

freespace on the ground.. would be awesome..

try descent 2, you will LOVE it, no joke. look at its reveiws, and how many of those mention opensource? alot..
gotta try it, you owe it to yourself, seriously.

6416 votes, 5 stars.. umm..

compared to 76 votes and 4 1/2 stars?

probably would be alot more if they were realistic about it, include red oddysee in the base, include the original as well for historic purposes..

you can hate me if you feel you need to, after all i am american indian, i am used to it.
everyone else does the same.

"Hostility" refers to you suggesting I'm on a power trip. I'm not. I'm continuing auxiliary development work that was part of my responsibilities as a beta tester at the publisher's request. The rest of my posts are designed to be informative, as many of the players who have been brought back into the community as a result of the Redux are not privy to the extent to which its community has degraded over the past decade or so. Please don't make the mistake of thinking that disagreeing with you means I "hate" you. There is no hostility intended by my posts, and I would greatly appreciate the sentiment being returned.

My point is that open source is not inherently better - projects becoming open source can lead to great things, like with Freespace and Descent, but it can also lead to bad. Open source projects with a small audience can easily fork so much that there are too few users to provide any with a viable audience, which is what I fear would happen with Battlezone; the community is particularly passionate and everybody has their own idea of what Battlezone should be, and those ideas are not always compatible.

Regards combining the work on Freespace and Battlezone... ultimately I suspect that would not work out. Battlezone is built on a 2.5D engine; visually it is 3D, but its logic works almost exclusively in top-down. So far as the AI is concerned, verticality does not exist. That's a pretty fundamental incompatibility with a full three-axis game like Freespace. Freespace's engine might be able to cope with it - Battlezone is, comparatively, quite simple and I'm not acquainted enough with it to say it wouldn't be possible - but Battlezone's would most certainly not be able to.

I play games when I have the chance, which is unfortunately not often as my university work (studying games design) means I spend a great deal more time creating content than I get to spend playing it. The Descent series is on the list of games to play when I have time to, but it's not exactly near the top.

like i would actually bother taking the time to mod it myself..

nah, i just like to plant seeds and watch what grows.

i still don't see how you say i am hostile, my words aren't meant to be that, just honest.

you should bump descent way up on your list then, the numbers can't be wrong can they?
it will only help you in the long run.. this is sincere.

if i were actually gonna take the time to merge them, i would do something even greater, but alas, we only have about 10 months till revelations 12 occurs (on september 23rd 2017), and only 1335 days from that day, not too much time left.

I'm gonna look at steam, I might still have to pick it up if it is reasonably priced, for nostalgia, but I am not really happy with it as it is, for the record, you can say i haven't tried it yet to know, but i have played many hours of this in the late 90's, is 4 campains and instant action maps, very limited really, and i would seriously like a copy of the vintage, would prefer it to the redux personally, just without DRM.

its $12.50.. that's reasonable, too bad it's steam.. oh well..
too bad they aren't using steam-connect from gog with it, or you could actually probably get help putting it up for GOG users, just another example of earlier statements in action.

I might be misunderstanding you but it seems to me that suggesting someone is on a power trip seems to come across pretty hostile to me. If that's not the case, then please disregard that.

Descent is as low down as it is because it lacks relevance to my studies and work - I study game design at university.

The redux does also incorporate multiplayer, which is done via Gog's matchmaking, and maps and mods (though so far none have been released for the Gog version). The redux has every map and gamemode included in the original game, including the ones introduced by patch 1.3. The only official content it does not include are the Instant Action Demo and Battlegrounds, both of which are on the workshop, and the exclusive content from the N64 version, which the Heracles Brigade is working on porting. It might show up on Gog Connect in future, I don't know.

the university can't teach you success..
if they could, they wouldn't allow you there..

but, with your work in Battlezone 98 it is extremely relevant, and that's the simple point, same game, a few differences but the only real one being the surface and misc control schemes.

look what happened to a dead title.. 523 pages of users in the database (15686 total members) at http://www.hard-light.net/forums/ , those are just the forum members.. which forum isn't required to access the stuff there, so how many use it that aren't forum members?

you just aren't realizing how relevant it really is.

i really am not kidding about how hard it would be to port the one into the other, which wouldn't be legal, BUT.. it could be done, if you saw how descent freespace worked you would know it was true, you might be amazed at the similarity, you would probably be a natural in 15 minutes or less with all your BZ time.

if you do try that, get a hold of me after and let me know what you think, and then we'll talk about the future rather than past.

this game, and now i can tell you firsthand, feels LAGGY, the visual difference is nothing to write home about, feels worse than the original, i'm not impressed. the second jump in training was my stopping point, after 4 attempts, feels terrible compared to memories of the original, i think it is partly from an optical mouse in contrast to the old style mouse with a ball, you know the ones you had to take the ball out of every now and again and scrape grime off the inner peices that rubbed against the ball, maybe i need to set my dpi down some, unsure, but it doesn't feel the same, tbh.

I'm skipping training, i remember the game anyways..
i'll try a couple IA's and tell you more of my thoughts, but really, it feels kind of laggy.

i should have been able to make the second jump, don't understand why i couldn't (and yes i know to hold jump down).

ugghh.. can't change DPI without installing Razer's software.. (I am using a Naga).

made the jump finally but had to hold the jump button down all the way to the ground and beyond to get across, same with the next few as well, don't remember it feeling like that. I do remember it being close each time but not that close.

Nobody with any sense goes to university to learn success. They go to learn the skills required by their industry and gain experience. It'd be difficult to elaborate on that further without explaining the content of the course, so I'll leave it at that.

Even with access to both source codes, combining both games would be a massive task and would take years to attempt. I'm not convinced it would be entirely worth the effort even if it were possible. It's certainly not an effort I'm about to engage in.

Regarding the last paragraph, I was one of about a dozen players who tested the Redux concurrently with the original game for about five months. Of the points you have made two are the result of your own hardware, two are entirely subjective and one is either subjective or objectively wrong depending on how you mean it. I would encourage you to play the original again.

well, I did pay to try it, and I did try it, rather than just type without knowing firsthand and only judging by what i could see in videos from youtube.

this PC is less than 3 weeks old.. should a game from 98 lag?

freespace open doesn't lag for me, and it is graphically more intense and as far as floating math points it has a higher count as it is a full 3d game, that's inevitable.

the mouse bit i must concur with you, and i will not install the razer software, i dislike it and it does little, besides, most games don't do this to me, don't know why BZ 98 is, I Play Skyrim with it the way it is, without the software, no problem, all 12 side buttons even function without the software.

can you imagine a machine that can run Skyrim and chokes up with battlezone 98?

i have a AMD A10-9600P Radeon R5 (4C + 6G) 2.4 Ghz with 6 GB Ram (5.59 Usable), 64 bit OS, x64 based processor and i purchased it on the 6th day of November 2016 from Bestbuy, 17 days ago.

In all seriousness, the game feels laggy, and in truth it made me wish to play Freespace 2, no joke.

if they had included the original i would, but the redux doesn't feel good, would actually rather play the original..
isn't that what the thread was about to start with?

Ok, the main thing to clear up here is that this is not a game from 1998 any more. The redux uses a modern rendering engine, high poly models and high resolution textures. The net code was gutted and completely rewritten. The shell is completely new. There are likely other components that are completely new as well, but I'm not one of the programmers so beyond that I can't comment.

Second I should point out that the type of maths used by the physics engine in either game shouldn't matter much as in both cases it's pretty cheap stuff. The AI could be one of the culprits here, but this is difficult to establish a cause for without the cooperation of affected users.

Interestingly, our hardware specifications seem relatively similar. You have more memory and a more powerful graphics card - and I can run BZR smoothly. That suggests there is something else at play.

When did you last play the original, if I might ask?

oh its been a long while, probably 2002 or so, I am 45 today for the record.

the first time i played it it was in 1998 on a PB 610. (Packard Bell), it ran better on that machine than the redux does on this machine actually, pretty sad..

if it is any consolation I had to install QEMM 8 to make it work back then, do you remember quarterdeck?

in my experience here today the first drone in training caused this machine to basically hickup, but still, can get through that, but the first tank approaching in the campaign has the same effect, which i can't get through that, i am dead before i can move every time. i died that way for over 20 minutes, this game don't work as intended on my end, Descent Freespace however does, fluidly, Skyrim does, Fallout 4 does.. this game chokes when the first enemy approaches in my experience, on steam of course, but irregardless, your right, it really isn't Battlezone 98, thats why I don't understand why it is called Battlezone 98 Redux.

it actually used to be fun.

the new graphics, seriously it looks like Ronald McDonald vandalised Battlezone 98, the old gunship grey looked better.

The ground textures were nicer looking sure, and the sky too, but everything else, looked better the way it was.

You should come play Freespace, thats what I took to after shutting down Battlezone, no joke.
almost identical games, except descent has no ground.. and ship controls rather than Rts stuff.. the grounds the only real difference, runs better, images are much sharper, more content available, you'll get alot more hours out of it than you will battlezone, guaranteed.

I'm not even gonna bother with it, i put in (steam says) 59 minutes today, that was enough for me, seriously, i'm gonna go play freespace, this redux isn't for me, had the original been included i doubt i would say that, but that's not the case.

When I was younger i worked in IT myself, till Bill Clinton sold my job to India at the afta (Asian Free trade Agreement) ordeal there in Spokane.

I worked for Metricomm as a subcontractor through Verso Tech, the original wireless internet, and when the plane hit the WTC I was one of the first persons they called, no joke, but who cares anyways, i am just a random person floating through cyberspace.

you wanna know the funniest part?
http://epithany.org/70th_week.jpg << do you know the bible? (Revelations 12)

we ain't got much time, really, lets go play a game. less than 5 years, these games will be gone in about 10 months.. forever.

One last thing I did try, I put airplane mode on, and the lag wasn't as bad, but that's in offline mode..
I've had nothing else running in the background, besides steam anyways.

If you haven't played the original in nearly 15 years, then I can't stress enough how much you should. There have been a lot of people who have been in exactly your position, then replayed BZ1 and found that it's nowhere near as good as they remember. I can't comment because I've been playing it steadily since I was introduced to it.

Quarterdeck is a little before my time; I'm 23. I do still game on older versions of Windows, but that's only for games I already own that don't run under Windows 10 (Battlezone, Heavy Gear, MechWarrior and so on).

Hiccups caused when units first appear were dealt with a few months ago and shouldn't be happening now. Are you sure you're running the latest version of BZR? If not, please try running the game with /console and letting us know which map(s) have issues and which units cause it (you can use /edit to pause the game and get a look around for fresh spawns).

I am familiar with parts of the bible, but so far as I'm concerned it's just an elaborate work of fiction.

alright man, lets talk in circles.
this post contains HUMOR, if you don't have a sense of humor stop reading NOW!
though it is funny it is serious too, you figure out whats what if you continue reading this post, you do so at your own risk.
no offense intended but if it happens.. oh well..
one part that looks like humor is actually very serious..
i'll let you try to figure out which part, but if you have to ask I WILL tell, gleefully.

welcome to the cold war 1998.

look, i wrote a review there at steam, same thing i said here basically.
if you wanna know what version.
you can see who bought and reviewed easy enough.
0 out of 3 found it helpful, but 2 found it funny.
thats ok, was written in honesty.

You should call the NSDF commander and inform him that the vandalism Culprit is obviously Ronald McDonald, you'll know him by the big red shoes and the red nose and his long girlish curly red hair, he will have makeup on his face, commie faggot.. He will be carrying a ton of orange (it was free, he didn't have enough rupees to buy red) and yellow spray paint, might be huffing it as well. Probably thinks he is some kind of Space Cowboy, but he is just another corporate clown.

Where were you at the time of the fore-mentioned NSDF Lunar Property vandalism Mr. Hadley?
Do you currently or have you ever owned a pair of big red shoes?
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!

we have ways of making you talk Mr. Hadley.
Where is the Yellow jumpsuit Mr. Hadley?

but seriously..

this is the kind of stuff that happens when Russia calls the U.S. and says "We're hungry over here" and we give them a McDonalds..
we really did that btw.. Ronald "McDonald" Reagan himself, what a Muppet.

NSDF campaign is what hiccups, didn't try the others, first map, training mission did the same with the first drone as well.
I only spent an hour in the game, got tired of getting lagged out.

I really wanted to like it but i can't say the redux has done it justice.
the idea i gave you was alot better than what we were given.
couldn't have rated it without buying it.
the rating will tell you i played 1 hour as well, just as i said..

lying isn't one of my faults, honesty is though.

IF your people tried freespace 2 open, they would know how to fix this, or have an idea how to.
back to work..

Chop Chop.

(coding hint)?!?!

I would really love to see this work fluidly, really would.
original art was better though, i liked the gunship grey, personally.
maybe a unredux mod for the redux?

if you had a place i could upload them to i could get your steam stuff put up somewhere, you really need space at the rebellion site for that, rather than JUST the workshop. for their records too.

looks like your mods are ending up in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\301650

you know I was playing the original when you were 5 years old?