LAN Parties. Who Wants To Join?
My favorite type of PC game, by far, is Real-Time Strategy. Many years ago when my only social outlet was an uninteresting church, I sat at home alone and played computer games incessantly. That ended abruptly three and a half years ago when I attended my first science fiction convention and started making a lot of friends, and I've hardly played any computer games since. One of my dreams, now that I have an active social life and many friends, has been to have LAN (Local Area Network) parties and include my friends in a social LAN gaming experience.
Friday night, that dream was reinspired. Gerald Gentry managed to set up a network over which to play my favorite game, titled Red Alert 2. It's an alternate history battle, in which Einstein has traveled back in time to assasinate Hitler and the World War takes place against Communism instead. It's fully of cleverly-designed vehicles, large-scale chaos, and characters who are funny-- although deliberately cartoony, reminiscent of G.I. Joe Vs. Cobra. Soviet troops complain through the computer speakers about having to carry around heavy rocket launchers, and console themselves that "at least I have job!"
Sadly, the previous attempts by me and overthesun to get Red Alert 2 to work in multiplayer had always failed, so when I saw it connect, I was overjoyed. It was a fantastic gaming session, since Gerald is experienced with Real-Time Strategy and kept me busy even though he was so new to the game and I know it inside and out. In retrospect, I should have given myself a handicap or put us into cooperative mode against an A.I., but I hurried right into the game as if it were a mirage that could vanish at the whims of the magic smoke inside the network.
Now, I'm replaying another favorite, Homeworld 2, another game which I never managed to get to connect over a LAN. It's a gorgeous fully-3D space combat RTS, with a spectacular story, wonderful voice acting, and some of the best award-winning use of music in any game.
Gerald is one of the many fans of Total Annihilation, the most promising candidate for future LAN parties. It's an older out-of-print classic with such a persistent fan base that it's being cloned as an improved Open Source project. This fully 3-D game engine, under the development name of "Total Annihilation: Spring", accepts all the maps, units, scenarios, music, A.I. scripts, and other content fans have created for the original over the years. One of the reasons Total Annihilation seems to have been the king of RTS is its infinite customizability and expandability. The "Spring" clone is currently not ready for general consumption, because when you start it it expects you to build everything from scratch or know where to get it on the internet. There's no competent documentation to speak of, so the learning curve is impassable. But someday, someday, this will be one of the greatest fan-created game adaptations since Counter-Strike. But this one is all Open Source.
Gerald's bringing over the original Total Annihilation disks next time, and has a record of perfect reliability getting it to run over a network. Who wants to join in?
Friday night, that dream was reinspired. Gerald Gentry managed to set up a network over which to play my favorite game, titled Red Alert 2. It's an alternate history battle, in which Einstein has traveled back in time to assasinate Hitler and the World War takes place against Communism instead. It's fully of cleverly-designed vehicles, large-scale chaos, and characters who are funny-- although deliberately cartoony, reminiscent of G.I. Joe Vs. Cobra. Soviet troops complain through the computer speakers about having to carry around heavy rocket launchers, and console themselves that "at least I have job!"
Sadly, the previous attempts by me and overthesun to get Red Alert 2 to work in multiplayer had always failed, so when I saw it connect, I was overjoyed. It was a fantastic gaming session, since Gerald is experienced with Real-Time Strategy and kept me busy even though he was so new to the game and I know it inside and out. In retrospect, I should have given myself a handicap or put us into cooperative mode against an A.I., but I hurried right into the game as if it were a mirage that could vanish at the whims of the magic smoke inside the network.
Now, I'm replaying another favorite, Homeworld 2, another game which I never managed to get to connect over a LAN. It's a gorgeous fully-3D space combat RTS, with a spectacular story, wonderful voice acting, and some of the best award-winning use of music in any game.
Gerald is one of the many fans of Total Annihilation, the most promising candidate for future LAN parties. It's an older out-of-print classic with such a persistent fan base that it's being cloned as an improved Open Source project. This fully 3-D game engine, under the development name of "Total Annihilation: Spring", accepts all the maps, units, scenarios, music, A.I. scripts, and other content fans have created for the original over the years. One of the reasons Total Annihilation seems to have been the king of RTS is its infinite customizability and expandability. The "Spring" clone is currently not ready for general consumption, because when you start it it expects you to build everything from scratch or know where to get it on the internet. There's no competent documentation to speak of, so the learning curve is impassable. But someday, someday, this will be one of the greatest fan-created game adaptations since Counter-Strike. But this one is all Open Source.
Gerald's bringing over the original Total Annihilation disks next time, and has a record of perfect reliability getting it to run over a network. Who wants to join in?