www.unseen64.net source www.feargalplant.com Rare’s two N64 first-person shooters, GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, received strong acclaim from critics and players, and demand for another title in the Perfect Dark franchise was high. Development of Perfect Dark Zero began on the Nintendo GameCube. At the time, Nintendo had a 49% stake in Rare, making Rare a Nintendo second-party developer. The game made a small appearance at Spaceworld 2000, an event exclusive to Nintendo. But apart from the confirmation that it was in development,[1] few official announcements were made. Perfect Dark Zero, along with several other Rare games, was intended to be finished in time for the Gamecube’s launch, but for unknown reasons did not. In September 2002, Rare Ltd was purchased by Microsoft.[2] Around the same time, Rare released several images of Joanna Dark, the protagonist of the Perfect Dark games. The “cartoony” style of these pictures incited speculation that the final game — then intended for the original Xbox — would employ a less realistic graphical style than the original game; possibly an anime like cel-shading technique, (RARE had hired UK Manga artist Wil Overton to work with them, after seeing an anime-like image of the Original Perfect Dark game he had created for the cover of N64 Magazine.) Development of the title was later transferred to the Xbox 360. Perfect Dark Zero’s senior designer Chris Tilston (also one of the project leads for the game) later revealed that the …

Stealth Gamers

Classic Game Room presents a CGR Undertow review of Battalion Wars 2 from Kuju Entertainment and Nintendo for the Nintendo Wii. This review features Battalion Wars 2 gameplay footage showing Nintendo Wii game play and commentary. Battalion Wars 2 is a real time strategy RTS game on the Nintendo Wii.

Stealth Gamers

Right, so for various dif. units, and groups different moves and tactics should be possible. For example, if I designate a group of cavalry, as cavalry, and then I should be able to order them to charge, through an opposing group, or to a point, and then either return or move on to the next position I want them.

The problem, for example with what happens right now, is that if you send your horse to charge, they’ll just charge through, and instead of mowing down some archers, for example, they’ll just run through them, being shot at from all angles.

That is one thing that needs to change, at least for the way most RTS use horse.

Another issue is something I’ve mentioned before, that pike men, when joined with archers do not adhere to the logical role they should play, that of protecting the archers, but they break formation very stupidly. Instead, it should at the very least be possible to designate a group of archers/pikemen, to fight together.

The other thing is artillery, while they aren’t as bad as usual, setting units to guard them is impossible, and they too, quite naturally break formation, when they aren’t supposed to. It can get on your nerves, very lieterally.

The guard feature needs therefore to be worked out for units too, not just buildins etc.

Actually, even if just this feature, and none of the others I’ve talked about is worked out, and we can then set aside troops to do something specific, in terms of strategy, we’ll have much more fun, though the unreality of having to deal with war/ peace simultaneously could also be removed.

So basically what happens is, you either have one or multiple cities. Each of them will have a garrison. Now, the point of having a city and a garrison, is that you can use the city structure as a part of the war fare tactic. For example things like city walls, embattlements etc. can be brought into play. Multiple gates, and their positions, and other stuff….

Basically, you can design your city… or at least its defenses. So you can place cities against mountains, or near rivers, etc. and use the terrain tactically as well. You can design the city to provide for things like emergency get aways, and trap doors to attack beseiging armies etc.

In actual battle, you will have a slight advantage, in that you can set up various buildings like hospitals etc. which will be more efficeint than theif field equivalents, which is obvioulsy what the opponents will have to use. But you wont be able to call on reinforcements, or will have some other disadavantage.

In battle itself you will have many more options, that of hiding behind your walls, that of going out to meet the army. That of abandoning the city. Or of cutting losses, by leaving only a small force behind, and sending the others of to anotehr settlement, or the next best thing.

Battles itself willl be handles along similar lines to a regular field engagement, except you will have walls, and the rest of the city to work with…

Now first of all, we must realise, than an army, or a standing army, does not really come into existence till pretty late in human history. So for civilizations, or players in the  earlier stages of human development, a percent of the population itself would have to be the army, and be conscripted much like militia might be. So they’ll be for some time, no really specialized warriors, meaning that focused, and well trained sorts of companies will not exist, and in truth, aggressive warfare will be rather pointless.

Anyway, if the ‘quota’ of a player is limited to this level of under-development, then his army will consist of peasant, badly trained and weak.

But then there is a point when the army becomes a specialized group in society. Now these people are fun… the army will contain of trained soldiers, and research will allow you to increase the variety of units  you have, and their abilities etc. pretty much like standard RTS armies today.

But the army will be divided into two sets of fighters, the first will be the garrison, a group of defensive warriors for your city. And the second will be the standing army. The garrison becomes important, because if you have multiple cities.

They are basically for defensive tactics… though they can be sent out with the standing army in time. But having a set of garrisoned soldiers and specific defensive tactics can be very interesting.

The second kind of army, will the field, or aggressive army, these will naturally work differently, with different units, and requiring much else. Plus when you choose to fight with the field army, you will have a very different battle scenario, and different tactics to follow.

The way I see it, a target, in terms of what Caesar 3 sets down should be given us, in the beginning of the game. Now either we can be given a fixed amount of time to achieve this target, or we should be racing both to fulfill our quotas. If we are racing each other to fill the quota, then it might be interesting to allow players to choose their own quotas.

The quota might be like a status in the game, like industrial age, 6 level military, 8 science… etc. and so much capital… or liquid assets for army building. This will make things interesting, because if a players set themselves different targets of civ, and compete with each other, when setting the target itself, players will have to think.

A player might set a really low quota for himself, in the hope of catching his opponent early, unaware, but if the other opponent plays faster, even if he does not complete his quota at the end of the session of resource collection, he might still have the advantage. And if one sets himself a really high quota, he might suddenly find himself having to fight, without really preparing for it.

The quota might also be a steady ‘income’ for the city or state, from what ever it does to collect resources. So then the quota would have to be three things… first would be the level of research, then the amount of resource collected, and then the ‘income.’

So anyway, once one of the players attains his quota, the next step is the battle. Now if you have the resources you’re supposed, it will mean that you can support a particular size and kind of army. Like if you haven’t done any maritime research, you cant have a navy. So then you set about choosing an army.

The ‘income’ has been included because an army when on campaign will still need some sort of an economic resource. Plundering of course counts. And also an army would treat economics very differently, it wouldn’t build ‘town centres’ to start with.

Anyway the army, and how it works will be dealt with later.

Lets see, I begin to see why its not been done yet. Basically, the idea is to create the illusion of comprehensive control of the city, or state, or whatever it is.

Plus it becomes too easy, using any of the existing gaming systems to actually build a game in any way.

I will therefore make a suggestion, MARRY CAESAR 3 WITH CHESS. That would be a good RTS game. Caesar 3 itself has a mockery of battle for battle, I mean all it asks you to do is create a steady stream of soldiers, and in fact, even that is limited, and you have to depend on wall towers! but what the game has managed to do, and done very well, is set up a challenging urban development puzzle. The whole trade bit, where resource collection is based, very really, on collection of capital, be it from trade, or human capital, or infrastructure, and you are judged, or have to achieve certain amounts of all of the above, to get to the next level.

I’ve already suggest SIM CITY 4 in the past, and that too would fit the bill perfectly. So then, assuming you have a good city in place, what about the army? And defence and the rest of that?

First I’d like to qualify my statement. Okay, now I know there are games that let you make some very significant choices. As an RTS fan, I cannot but acknowledge that, of course the choice between training horsemen, pikemen or bowmen is very important, as is the choice between collecting gold, wood or food, or gems, or whatever it is the game requires you to do.

Even FPS games give you a choice, you can either go through the front door, or the sewers or the back door… or I don’t know, the roof maybe. Sports games give you choice too, the team you want to play with, how you want to play with it. I mean you can make someone like yourself become the star of the NBA. The only thing that you cant choose, and this is common to all games…

Is to loose. There is no game, at least none that I know of where if you pursue a strategy with any goal other than winning in mind that you can be successful. I mean I know what I’m arguing for is kind of stupid… to say that you want to play a game to loose it, is not exactly intelligent…

What I’m complaining about is the simple, singlemindedness with which we are required to pursue this goal. There are no hasty beatings of the retreat… no changes in strategy… to use analogy from the economic world, as a gamer the only goal you are allowed to have is that of profit maximization… even in economics one can try risk minimization, or underselling etc.

So I’m not saying I want to loose… just that sometimes we should be allowed to choose what it means to win. In Racing games a third place should be acceptable… the insistence on a win before the game allows us to proceed is kind of irritating.

What about the ideal RTS. Well, like I said, it should have the elements of an actual battle, and we should get to be part of it, not some kind of removed chappy, with nothing to really do in the bloody overall plans of the world, with out any immediate agency.

That’s sad, imagine the immense amount of fun you could have, manipulating a character, Never Winter Nights Style, outfitting it before a battle, designing battle plans around it etc. and then choosing the mode of battle, setting out reinforcements and all that. And finally attacking.

I mean each unit has a definite strength in a game, and you use it for a definite reason. The whole period before, when you’re collecting resources and the like, WHY? It serves little or not purpose at all, in the sense that I don’t really enjoy it, it slows down things tremendously and really, really, provides no entertainment, nor is it particularly nerve racking. You’re in a particular surrounding, go collect as much of everything you can. What else is there to do?

I  really hate the whole collecting bit… researching techs, well may be, but even that, I think should just be normal when you increase an age, you should get to choose how you want civilization to go, and what kind of researches you want to do, and then proceed.

In fact I think this is a worthy theme. An alternative to the stupidly stereotypical method of building up a stupid army, based on resource collection. There have to be other paradigms in which it can be achieved without the boring-ness of things.

And why should building armies be so slow too. You know that n number of units is the kind of army you want to have… why cant you just have it immediately, so that fighting involves a greater degree of actual in battle strategy so to speak, than just scrambling to have a steady stream of military units to fight?