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UVALAN 7 ANNOUNCED FOR JUNE 2005
The Legendary Tribes Community LAN Party Continues!

CHANTILLY, VA (April 7, 2004) - UVALAN, the largest gathering of Tribes players on earth, continues the legacy of the Tribes community with its annual LAN party held in Chantilly, Virginia, USA. The party starts on Thursday, June 30, and concludes Sunday, July 3, 2005.

Competition remains the focal point of the gathering. Bryan "Yankee"Baumer returns this year as the competitive coordinator. Several games from the Tribes genre will be featured in this year�s competition for cash and/or sponsor prizes. Sanctioned Tribes and Tribes 2 tournaments are tentatively scheduled for this year, along with several other surprise activities for players.

"We�re going to be doing a lot of gaming," says Grand Poobah Tom "Cheater" Szabo. "This party has taken on a life of its own, and we�re going to make it into a grand time for everyone in the Tribes community." In 2004, Szabo�s "Tribal Wars" hosted nearly 600 people on two coasts simultaneously, and was sponsored by major gaming industry companies such as ATI, Sierra, Creative and Soyo.

Cheater goes on to say, "I�m thinking that it will be a grand Tribes revival this year. There are so many variations out there it�s going to be hard to choose between all the permutations. But I�ll be doing everything I can to provide plenty of excitement.

"Everyone is invited back this year," said sharp-dressed Mark "old_skul" Szabo. "We had such a great crowd last year that we had to do it again. We�ve got good people, good staff, great prizes, and a low-ping network by the legendary Mowat to shoot at your best friends on." More information will be released in the coming weeks on the official UVALAN site, http://www.uvalan.com.

UVALAN has traditionally been held during the summer months and has regularly attracted many hundreds of players, gamemakers and vendors. More information is available at http://www.uvalan.com. Tribes and Tribes 2 are registered trademarks of Sierra Entertainment, Inc. http://www.sierra.com for more information.

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The GTW team would like to announce a few things:

First, and most importantly, we have decided to move the mod to the game being developed by Renwerx.

Secondly, we have decided to change our name to Great Terra War. We intend to keep the GTW acronym and #gtwar, but we decided since the new game will not be a part of the Tribes universe, our name should be changed to accommodate that.

Thirdly, to answer any future questions, we will not be continuing the development of the Tribes: Vengeance version of the mod.

I would also like to note that it is more than likely the mod we will create for the new game will exceed the limits placed on it before. We are planning some very interesting and unique ideas that will bring GTW to a whole new level. We appriciate the fans who have stuck with us for this long, and we accept with open arms any newcomers.

Finally, as a warning, Random150 nor myself will answer any questions regarding why we did not choose Legends as our supported game. Our official statement for this is as follows: The GTW team did not recieve the access we felt that we needed from Legends. We will be getting the access we want from the Renwerx team. There is no animosity between our two parties, and I'm sure loop will say the same.

Please stop buy Our Website and our IRC channel (#gtwar on irc.dynamix.com) and show your support. Please donate to our PayPal account to help with the mod.

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RenWerX has announced they will not be working with the Legends team to produce a game (reasons) instead, they will be producing a complete game themselves. RenWerX does plan to make both a Base game and their Renegades mod for it, but needs everyone's help:

We want both Base and Renegades to be formed by the Tribes community, and to do so have put together a custom living design plan for both. If you are interested in making sure the next tribes-like game or Ren mod plays like you want it to, please see our design introduction page.

In addition we plan to keep the Renegades name for our Mod, however need a name for the Base/ the game overall. We have put together a voting / suggestion process on our forums in this thread, and would appreciate anyone interested in contributing doing so.

We still plan to release this game for free, but also we will now be able to release all of our scripts, models, maps etc. for other mods to use too. With our divergence from legends we plan to work with many mods to make sure anything they would like to see in the game engine is in there so they can bring their mods to new levels. If you are interested in more information for modders please see our modding page.

Finally, our team is rounding out nicely, we are at 46 people right now with some amazing talent. We do still have jobs open however, so please see our job listing page if you think you can help. As always for those who want to make a monetary donation we have a donations page and that page also explains how we use donations.

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After switching to Torque, we've had to renegotiate our legal contracts with VU Games, seeing as how we went from being a MOD to a full fledged stand alone game. We are now in the final stages of finishing this contract up so I feel I can let you know with some degree of certainty the following two things:

1. The multiplayer portion of the game will be released as a free download. It will be hosted and advertised by VU games, and mirroring on as many sites as possible will be encouraged. That means you can download it, burn it, and give it to everyone in your school/neighborhood/Shriners temple or put it on your website for download if you so desire.

VU Games reserves the right to charge a nominal fee for the campaign (which will be released sometime next year) and any other possible future expansion packs.

2. We have final say on the ship date for all releases and will be responsible for the initial follow up patches (if any are required). This will ensure that high quality is maintained and we are not rushed to release an unfinished product. In short, it's not done till we say it's done.

These agreements are the best possible outcome for this project and will ensure that the game is not marginalized or rushed to market full of bugs. It will still be a community led project, at least until it can stand on its own two feet. MODs and other third party projects will be heavily encouraged, and we are going to great lengths to make sure our code is as MOD friendly as possible without compromising security.

That is all.

8 Comments

guy.welch (Marketing) - 01:29pm Mar 23, 2005 PST Marketing

Development on the previously announced Tribes: Vengeance 1.1 update has been cancelled. No further updates to Tribes: Vengeance are planned.

Despite promises upon promises about a patch for Tribes: Vengeance, VUGames has decided to cancel the update, and slam the final nail into the coffin of Tribes: Vengeance.

The patch was originally promised to the community in the late months of last year to be released in January. January rolled around, no patch. February rolled around, no patch. March came, still not patch, but an announcement on March 21st, which really didn't give much hope to the community saying:

VUG-Greg (Interactive Marketing) - 09:15am Mar 21, 2005 PST

Sorry for the long delay on news about this patch. I am able to make the following annoucement:

The patch is in progress/test. It adds basic map fixes and punkbuster support. No ETA on release.

I will keep you posted on further updates.

Best regards,

Today, March 23rd, 2005, guy.welch made a post on the VUGames Forums saying that the patch has been cancelled. Currently there are no planned updates for this broken and flawed game. It looks as though the game has become abandonware.

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Sorry for the long delay on news about this patch. I am able to make the following annoucement:

The patch is in progress/test. It adds basic map fixes and punkbuster support. No ETA on release.

I will keep you posted on further updates.

Best regards,

1 Comments

RenWerX announced today that their popular Renegades mod will be switching from TV to the Torque engine. We will be working with the Legends team to establish an amazing base, virtually redoing all the graphics and models that are currently there (along with various other additions), and then expand upon that to form the Next Generation of Renegades. Renegades will be 100% free to download once completed!

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The GTW team is proud to announce the release of our Alpha release preview. This is small collection of videos that we have made. (Let the flaming of Random's kick ass video skills begin!) The video has three quality settings.
Download High Quality
Download Medium Quality
Download Low Quality
To view the video you will need the Lame MP3 codec and the xvid codec.
Download Lame MP3 Codec
Download Xvid Codec
GTW is now playable and features the majority of the GTW gameplay. We currently working on a release at the end of the week (minus any major problems).

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After some lively discussion amongst the crew, we came up with about 20 some suggestions for new gametypes. That list was refined and pared down to the following which will be joining our previously announced WAR and CTF gametypes in the final release of the multiplayer portion of the game.

Deathrace 2845
Players race to be first across the finish line, but it takes more than speed to win a race where every vehicle on the course is armed to the teeth. A grueling cross-country race to the finish - or at least to the next respawn checkpoint.

Supply Line
A classic battle over natural resources. Teams attempt to stockpile a quota of ore, which must be extracted from automated mines scattered across the map. Once a mine has been captured robotic ore haulers begin transferring ore to the controlling team's base. Supply Line challenges teams to coordinate their efforts to intercept the enemy's ore haulers and capture their mines, while simultaneously protecting their own lines of supply. Teams will have to be efficient as well as coordinated, since they pay for every respawn, including that of their ore haulers, out of their stockpiled ore.

King of the Hill
Whether played as a free-for-all or as a team battle, the goal remains the same: seize uncontested control of the map's single objective and hold it against all comers for as long as possible before time runs out. Victory points are accumulated for every second in control of the objective, but lost for every second somebody else holds it, ensuring an ongoing and vicious battle for control.

Convoy
An operation all too familiar to veterans of the Cybrid wars. One team forms a convoy of four vehicles and its escorts. At least half the convoy vehicles must make it across the map to win, while their escorts must ensure their safety in enemy-occupied territory. The other team is tasked with intercepting the convoy and destroying at least three of its critical vehicles before they can break through.

Assault
Another classic military operation: the big push against a known target. One team is given control of a prepared position and must defend a vital objective against waves of attackers. The other team must fight their way to the objective and destroy it before time runs out. If the attackers succeed, the teams switch roles and the defenders must perform the same feat faster than the attackers did.

Team Death Match
A pitched battle where the objective is not an installation or waypoint but the enemy force itself. Teams must coordinate their efforts to maximize enemy casualties while minimizing their own.

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There's good news and bad news. The bad news first:

After considering all the options and possibilities, we're putting the kabosh on releasing the ATR we were working on for T:V. Reasons for this are many, we very carefully weighed the pros and cons of the issue, listened to community feedback, and in the end we felt the negatives were far more numerous than the positives. Therefore as of yesterday we have put aside all work on that aspect of the project, archived it, and reassigned everyone to new tasks that pertain to our new engine and direction.

I realize this decision will probably anger some of you, however please understand that there are issues at work here that in our opinion require we do this, and that this was not in any way a casual decision on our part. In our opinion, releasing the ATR for T:V would end up causing platform identity issues, pull our most experienced coders away from helping us make the transferral to Torque, and in the end hurt the project much more than help it.

So, there it is...In the end the final call was mine, so if you need a target for your wrath feel free to use me. Don't blame the staff.

Now that we have that out of the way, time for the good news...

We believe that we can have a more functional, robust, and professional looking ATR done in Torque in a few months. If you have seen the pictures of the Badger and Emancipator I have posted in my journal on the main site this past week and read the accompanying text you'll understand where I'm coming from with the above statement. We also have gotten infantry in-game and partially working as well, though I haven't posted any pics in regards to that yet.

All this was done in a week. By way of comparison, it took us several months of wrangling with T:V's code to get us almost to the same level.

Therefore we have set a new release date of late April for an ATR using the TGE. This is the older version of the Torque engine so a lot of the graphical bells and whistles will be missing from what you will see in the final version, but I have a feeling most of you won't really care about that at this point. And no, you shouldn't need to buy anything.

In closing, I'd like to say we are very aware that a lot of you have been hanging on with this project for a long time. We apologize for the length of time and the twists and turns this project has taken. Believe me when I say most of these changes were unexpected by us as well and there have been situations over which we had no control that required us to do things we did not foresee. Thanks for hanging in there with us as we go through these changes, we think you'll feel the final product will more than fulfill your expectations and reward your loyalty.

2 Comments

It's taken me some time to figure out how to approach this thread and present the news it contains, because I know it is going to cause a bit of an uproar. In the end I decided to approach it in typical no-frills Trajan fashion and just cut to the chase up front. Unfortunately there is just too much info that needs to be conveyed to make this short, so read carefully.

In several key areas, Tribes:Vengeance has turned out to be unsuitable for the unique needs that our envisioned gametype requires. That's not to say T:V is a bad game in and of itself, just that the final product is structured in such a way as to make it unusable for our particular requirements. Believe me when I say we've tried approaching the situation from every angle, and it's just not tenable.

So I have discussed the situation with VU games at length, and they have graciously agreed to allow us great leeway in regards to what we can do to make sure this project reaches fruition and achieves success, and have given us their blessing for the following to occur:

It gives me great pleasure to announce that, going forward from today, Clancore will be joining the ranks of developers working with Garage Games and their upcoming Torque Shader Engine in making Starsiege:2845 a full fledged stand alone game project, and it will no longer be a MOD for Tribes:Vengeance.

Obviously we're very excited to be working with all the great guys at Garage Games, particularly in light of the fact that as some of you may remember they have just a little bit of history with the Starsiege and Tribes universe themselves.

To say the staff is extremely fired up about this switch is the understatement of the millenium. For those of you already familiar with the TSE, the advantages inherent in the engine are almost literally made to order for our particular situation. These advantages are in a word "huge", and will allow us to modify our original goals for the game upwards in many key areas.
Here are just a few:

• We will have access to actual source code, instead of having to work around things using scripts.
• The improved netcode will allow us to up the recommended max limit for multiplayer servers. This means 64 player servers and on up may easily be possible with higher end boxes and fat pipes, there's no hard cut off at 32 anymore. And it should allow people to run a decent sized game on home grown servers and standard broadband.
• The way terrain is handled by the engine will eliminate the OOB grid and offer the more free flowing endless style environments that were previously found in Starsiege and Tribes.
• Torque has a large, well established support community and third party support.
• People will also be able to again make their own skins and client side scripts. If you knew how to do these things in SS or Tribes, then you'll be able to do them in 2845 with minimal learning curve involved.

I know some of you are probably scratching your heads and going "Isn't Torque an old engine that they used in Tribes 2?" Well, this is not your daddy's Torque.

The new Torque Shader Engine (TSE) updates the look of Torque so that it has all the bells and whistles other modern game engines have and puts in all the latest goodies; normal mapping, updated lighting effects, shaders, incredible advances in viewable distance, etc.

Click here for some screenshots:

I could go on and on about the benefits, but I'm sure some of you have a few questions about what this means going forward, so here's the scoop on our new timeline:

1. We are still planning on releasing an ATR in March (patch or no patch) on the T:V engine. We've done quite a bit of work on it, we might as well do something instead of just let it drop, and we figure you guys that have been hanging out for the long haul should get something to piddle with while we make the switchover.

2. While the guys continue to work on the ATR, Tsa and myself will be launching a new website and a massive recruiting drive this weekend. The new people we pick up will be paired with some of our existing staff that are not directly involved at this stage with the ATR and assigned the tasks of starting to move things over to the new venue. Switching over to Torque should help us immensely in finding new staff for certain key areas that we've had trouble filling of late.

3. Initially there will of course be a time setback as we adjust and shift our methodologies, but once that's complete we expect the work to fly by compared to our previous pace due to everyones familiarity with the engine, having direct access to the source code, and the extensive support options that we did not have before.

So, that's it. We would have liked to continue working with T:V, but as time went on it became apparent that it just wasn't in the cards. Our only other options were drop the whole project, release it in crippled form on T:V, or try to move it to another engine that would accomodate our needs. I understand that there might be some consternation or confusion in various segments of our community, because people tend to not like drastic changes like this, but we are 100% certain that we made the right choice. And I'm sure that all of you, once you see the obvious advantages inherent in this move, will agree with that choice in time as well.

We'd sincerely like to thank VU Games for its continued support of this project and look forward to forging strong ties with Garage Games as we go forward from this point. Things can only get better. Thank you all for your continued support and understanding as we make this transition.

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If you�ve ever listened to a match cast, kept track of Tribes competition or even just browsed any Tribes forums, chances are that you�ve heard of WOFN. The widely recognized Tribes-based casting organization has finally gone independent.
After being declared �dead� and dropped by TribalWar, the remaining casters have decided to form Cyber-Sports Radio, a brand new casting group that�s also looking to expand into other games. If you would like to contact them to get your match cast or to join their growing team, you can catch up with them via #CSR on irc.dynamix.com or on their very own network, irc.cybersportsradio.net, in #CSR.

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As previously announced, the release of the ATR has been pushed back to late February. I'm just making it official here. We're almost on the last day of January and still no patch, so...as mentioned before we are for all intents and purposes holding for that release.

There's more though so continue reading.

It has come to our attention that a majority of people are of the mindset that what we are releasing is the equivalent of a beta. Our concern is no matter how many places and times we say "It's an Alpha" people are still going to be expecting a more polished product than the very basic sample we had originally intended to release. This is called "being a victim of ones own publicity".

In our opinion releasing the simplistic product we had originally invisioned would be severely detrimental to the popularity of this project, because 90% of the people simply won't bother to RTFM and understand the difference between an alpha and a beta. Therefore we have gone back to the woodshed and are working hard on adding more features than we originally intended and tightening things up to a more polished looking level. This may take even longer than the end of February, but for now we think we'll make it in time.

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The SS:2845 project has taken 3rd place in the "Best upcoming MOD" category of a "MOD of the Year" contest sponsored by www.moddb.com and co-sponsored by EA Games, Oktagone.net, and Gamepanel.com

"This mod has been a loooong time in the making but who cares when it looks so-damn-fine! Every little detail from the maps, to the models and guns are crafted with true care, which is why a mod like this on a game that has been out a while now and doesn't have the biggest following can still come through with the goods now and keep people on the edge of there seat until they do!"

2 Comments

Excessive TV is a mod that's all about craziness. If you have ever played Mr. Pant's excessive mods for Unreal Tournament, UT2003, UT2004, Elite Force and Quake 3 then you will know what to expect.

Excessive is not about adding new weapons and vehicles or drastically changing the gameplay. It is about taking what is already there and making it bigger, faster and far more devastating.

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This .zip file includes the templates, skins and meshes for Tribes�: Vengeance. Experienced artists and mod makers may use these files as a basis for creating original character, weapon and vehicle designs for use within the Tribes�: Vengeance Engine.