The XMEN Clan Forums

Ok.. So TV is an official flop, and you can find it in most any bargain bin for less than $30 bucks. Why would anyone want to play a POS game that has no real community? StarSiege 2845 is why. Asha Brought this TV mod up over at the =oV= boards, and it piqued my insterest, as I remember AB talking about this thing too, while T:V was in development. Well, here's some screens of some of the vehicles we can expect to see in this mod, and I have to say that they look pretty polished, IMO. Also, here's some weapon screens, and I think some of you old earthsiege and Starsiege jockeys will remember some of our old favorites, but see some new ones that could be a favorite as well.

From what I've gathered, SS2845 is not going to be solely mechanized combat, but has been expanded into infantry based combat as well. Here's a good thread on the clancore forums explaining more what SS2845 offers, and what it's all about. After reading a lot of this material, I think we may have a little better incentive to get out there and play this thing once it's released. I've seen a couple Dev posts on TRP about their release deadline being 2.5 months away as of Nov. 18th. That's not too long off, really, so we're looking at february, just Hope Sierra doesn't get uber greedy and treat this thing like they did with CS and start selling it in retail boxes as a standalone thing... But hey- check it out, and post comments here!

It looks cool.

But before I drop cash on T:V.. one of you guys can tell me if it's any good.

Lately, I've been trying to find games with a good and engaging story-line.

I enjoyed the singleplayer part of the game. I think I enjoyed that more than I did the multiplayer, at least Online Multi. Playing on a LAN is great fun tho.

Yeah, they did a good job on single-player. Multi isn't quite cerebral enough to feel like old-school Tribes, but it's not completely brain-dead.

This has now become a standalone game because of limitation of the engine used on T:V. They have been given an updated engine that was used on Tribes2. Along with that was two people to help them transfer the code over. This also grants them the ability to up the multiplayer to 64, instead of 32, and bring in things they would have otherwise been forced to cut out because of the limitations of the original engine.

That's OK.. this is still gonna be a cool product, and it's good to see VU games moving this thing forward.

Actually, they re wrote the entire rendering stuff (all the graphics goodness), using Torque Shader Engine (TSE) which uses routines based in part on Torque Game Engine (TGE). What this means is that the new graphics goodness will do what the SS devs want, without some funky workarounds that they were having to do using the unreal engine that T:V uses, AND it's a next generation graphics engine which will exploit what the latest (and next gen) video cards have to offer in terms of processing power.

And if you go to www.garagegames.com and look at the screenshots under the TSE part, you'll notice some really cool effects that are apparently done in real time. The TSE REALLY sped up some of the math that is used in a shader engine, and knowing garagegames, they've made it really easy to use.

Unreal sucks when it comes to rendering outdoor and indoor scenes when compared to torque. There's always the limited map size, the limited number of players that the server can handle, and the limited network code.

I still can't wait. I was poking around last night on the SS website reading Dev journals and stuff, and the overall response to the switch has been all positive, and they've been able to quickly port most everything over to Torque with few hiccups. I can't wait to play this one.

Has anyone seen or heard any rumors on how this is coming along? Can't wait to see the Alpha release version when they get it done.

The offical site is http://www.starsiege2845.com and I haven't seen much there for updates.. but there's no news of the project being cancelled.. Maybe this vaunted product is vaporware for VU to gauge interest? I dunno.. I hope there's some action soon.

Any new news about the game and when it comes out? Still looking forward to it but haven't been able to keep up with it.

It is still in the build process. PlanetTribes is supposed to be getting the ATR soon.