This took me by gentle surprise: ongoing fan patching of Pandemic’s seminal but rarely namedropped 1999 RTS/FPS/tank ‘em up Battlezone II. While it’s admittedly an acquired taste, it’s one of those games I regularly bust out whenever I feel a spot of joystick nostalgia, alongside Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior 4. The unofficial 1.3 patch for what was once an infamously buggy affair was originally created by two Pandemic chaps, and they’ve continued to update it even as they spend their day working on other games. Ten years on from the game’s release, patch 1.3 beta 5.1 (crivens) has just hit…
I’m not quite sure which frighteningly wobbly tower of CDs in my bedroom contains BZ2, so I can’t attest the efficacy of the changes myself, but the key points of 1.3 in general (beta 5.1 specifically brings performance improvements are bugfixes) an updated graphics engine that supports DIrectX9, hardware transform and lighting and anti-aliasing – in other words, a better-looking game and one that barely troubles CPUs.
Also, a shedload of new multiplayer maps and tweaks – which is an aspect of the game I confess I’ve never dabbled in. I’m too much of a coward to go up against guys who’ve been playing the game solidly for ten years.
Here’s what it looks like:
Apologies if BZ2’s continued support is old news to you, but I was surprised and pleased to hear the old man still has so much blood in him. There are more details about the unofficial patch here, but the main points are summarised below for your endless convenience:
* Updated graphics engine that uses (and requires) DirectX 9.0c for the best balance of compatibility and speed. Hardware transform & lighting is now supported, allowing a lot of work to be offloaded from your CPU and onto your graphics card. New DirectX features like fullscreen antialiasing (or multisample antialiasing) are supported to improve visual quality. DXT Textures are supported to more efficiently use graphics card memory.
* Music from the BZ2 CD is now distributed with this patch, in ogg vorbis format, allowing for better performance. You can also set up a random playlist of music to be played ingame, if you copy in .ogg files to the right place and the right name. (Note: other music needs to be user-supplied.)
* Much greater MOD (game modification) support, allowing up to 26 total races to be active at once. Many MODders have been among 1.3 beta testers, and have been working to take advantage of the new features. [Their participation or nonparticipation is their own business; no support for 1.3 is implied or MODs promised by us.]
* Developed/Tested on Windows 2000/XP/Vista, for much better compatibility out of the box. Should work on Vista without requiring Administrator access. Limited WINE testing has been done as well. For Vista/Win7, should fully support being installed to paths with unicode, has high-resolution icon for Windows Explorer
* Redone audio system that supports far more channels (up to 64) and DirectSound3D for a far more immersive experience. Note: not all sound cards on the market support that many channels; if the driver on your system notes a limit under 64, BZ2 will use that instead.
* Support for Ogg Vorbis compressed sounds – similar to mp3 files, but with higher quality.
* Various lagout bugs in network games should be drastically reduced. Resyncs should be reduced in general, units (human & AI) should warp less online
* Many crashes/freezes fixed.
* Enhancements to many parts of the game, including AI, craft handling, etc.
* Many more pregame options for IA, DM, Strat & MPI games (feature available to MODs to define custom options pages on a per-map basis)
* Bots in DM, and some additional DM gameplay modes.
* Strategy-CTF game mode — capture a goal, tug it back to your recycler to win, on 6 classic maps. Finally a good use for tugs in MP!
* Over 50 additional Instant Action & Multiplayer maps by several mapmakers within the BZ2 community, and tweaks to some existing maps to reduce bugs. As of 1.3TechAlpha5, there are 20 classic & additional IA maps, and over 100 classic & additional MP maps installed.
* Several additional security measures to make cheating in multiplayer much more difficult; deliberate remote crashing of games should be fixed.
* New BZ2 editor screen layout files contributed by testers to expose more functionality that was already there.
* Ability to rotate buildings (on 90-degree increments) for even more base-building fun
* Updates to the manual (located in the Extras folder where BZ2 is installed to) to give updated and more accurate information
* Includes over 1.1MB of text files listing changes made since 1.2. This changelog contains our (minimalist) notes as to what changed for each version, and isn’t guaranteed to be easily understood. But, it may be useful reading.
* More features, including weapon linking, thumpers, and variable gravity DM maps
* Many more modder features, such as 60-char ODF names, inheritance, tons of new tuning values, etc
* Easier to host games w/ automatic UPNP, Windows Firewall support(*)
Which leaves the question: is anyone here still playing BZ2? If so, please do sing its praises below.
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Note to developers: never, ever make a sequel to a cult classic. It’ll all end in tears. Unless you’re Valve.
Guys. It’s been a very, very long time – you can stop being bitter about how BZ2 isn’t about fighting russians in space. There’s a reason why it’s still being supported to this day, has several fan-made expansions, and still retains an active multiplayer community: It’s a better game. Moreso now than ever before.
It’s really sad that so many people turned their noses up the moment they saw any sort of change.
Wow, you name dropped 2 of my favorite nostalgia-listic games that I never could get running on this here new fangled Vista. Are there fan patches for Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior 4, too?
Crivens! Is this neh open source yet?
“BZ2 was ok, but compared to BZ 1 it was an abortion.”
YES! Indeed. Bring back the Cold War aspect that made the BattleZone 1 came realistic, even though highly sci-fi. Drop the ‘there are aliens now, so our machines look unreal too’ thing and do a remake of the Battlezone 1 game. That’s what I hope for.
There’s so much more they could have done with that. Alternate history, we went to the moon, but started a true space race… great story and excellent missions. Ahh, how I miss a good true Battlezone sequel! :(
( To bad the PSP Battlezone game isn’t quite the same as the original Battlezone from Activision. )
Also, I say yes to more Hardwar and Uprising games as well, another two classics.
@Dominic White: “Guys. It’s been a very, very long time – you can stop being bitter about how BZ2 isn’t about fighting russians in space. There’s a reason why it’s still being supported to this day, has several fan-made expansions, and still retains an active multiplayer community: It’s a better game.”
It’s not a better game, it’s a different game with a similar gameplay style. They changed so much when they changed the art style, that it was simply off putting many of the original fans!
I don’t think it’s unfair to complain about how they’ve changed basically the whole BZ universe with their sequel.
Battlezone, together with Quake 1, just to name yet another example, are good examples of how developers underestimate how good their original game’s universe was. It’s sad to see developers chose change over perfecting the original ideas.
Look at Halo, it has probably one of the most consistent game universes throughout the series. I totally love that.
“It’s really sad that so many people turned their noses up the moment they saw any sort of change.”
Actually, that’s the best evidence that the fans just didn’t agree. We don’t have to like BZ2 just because it’s different and should according to you be seen as such. o_O
I expect a similar mass of fans crying out for a better Diablo sequel soon. The art direction isn’t going to change and as such many of the original Diablo fans are going to be disappointed with the too bright and happy World of Warcraft-esque style. A shame really.
I loved BZ. Never played it MP, and i only found the demo on a lost CD of BZ2 a long time ago. Nice to see some people still play this.
This happens more and more to old games. Makes we wonder if a generation is now repairing/restoring old games like some people do with cars/planes etc.
Actually, I take my last comment back. The fans were outraged at L4D2. No-one can make a sequel to a cult classic and guarantee that the fans won’t find some slight at something, even if it’s just that it’s not as awesome as they remember it. I really do believe that most of the belief that BZ2 was significantly worse than BZ1 is entirely rose-tinted glasses and preconceptions. It’s beginning to make me question my vague dislike for Invisible War.
also similarish…: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Assault
For those of you wishing for ongoing fan made addons for BZ1, BZ-Enhanced 1.11 was released fairly recently. It has tons of new content – maps, ships, etc. they even pulled in most of the content from BZ2 as well. Unfortunately, their website seems to be down at the moment.
Some people seem a little confused here. At the risk of being accused of SPOILERdom please let me remind everyone that the plot of Battlezone 2 followed on directly from the Red Odyssey expansion pack to the original BZ.
Even though the aesthetic is completely different and I would agree, inferior, this merely reflected an overall redesign to a much gentler space opera RTS with a few good twists along the way.
Man, thanks for linking all that Freespace stuff! I am desperate to go dig out my CDs and try some of those campaigns at some point now!
All hail Battlezone and its successor Battlezone 2.
Commies – in SPAAAACE!
ah the battlezones.. one of my faves. Rave gun anyone?
I would love a new copy of BZ2. I had it when it first came out, but my PC could barely get above 20fps, and was generally much lower. As such, I never got to enjoy it — I think I only got about three missions in.
Just want to add me to the BZ1 fans. Never played BZ2, though. But BattleZone was great stuff! Maybe I liked it so much because I had read Tom Wolfe before.
BZ2 totally disappointed me. BZ1 was fantastic though
For those asking for this to be done to BZ1 -
There are two re-dos of BZ1, one with all the single player and Red Odyssey add-ons and a bunch of scenarios, and one which focuses on updating and fixing the multiplayer.
I cannot for the life of me remember where they are on the internets however, and have no time to search as I am in a library. :(
So what we need is a BZ1-BZ2 hybrid? Probably never happen. 8(
One of my fondest memories from BZ1 is sniping the enemy harvesters and using them as transport. BZ2’s unlimited scrap & pilots, and non snipe-able harvesters sounds rather weak.
BZ1 was the awesome. I never played BZ2 because I obtained a demo of it which didn’t feature joystick support and this irked me so much that I didn’t buy the full game for years and years despite knowing it would probably have stick support. I have the disk about here somewhere so I may give it another go and do something crazy like try and play it on my fightstick te.
I loved BZ in the arcade but I never bought BZ1 because I thought I didn’t like RTS games. All the resource collecting and research jacked me off and I just wanted to get into the action ala Ground Control. One day I saw BZ1 for a pound at a car boot sale so i gave it a try and was totally hooked.
I think if it wasn’t for the great 2D Hud pointing to 3D world objects tutorials I would never have taken the time to learn the game. Once I’d been eased into how things were done though I loved it and loved both BZ 1&2 to death.
I still don’t play RTS games (cept Rome TW) because I don’t buy the way one unit/s defeats anogher. I can just sense the math deciding everything so I’m not convinced. In BZ 1&2 i really got a sense of a real world with physics and balistics being an important factor. Also, the fact that I could pilot just about any vehicle, even sniping enemies and stealing there’s was great. On top of that I could build a satalite relay station and play it top down styly, that was good at least for more organized base building.
I’m in my 40’s now and find most games to be too much style over substance, japanified, consolized and shallow. I don’t want to grow out of games the same way I didn’t want to grow out of cartoons when i became a teen. It’s getting more rare to find a game that hooks me. I wish they would make a BZ3 game.