By Jim Rossignol on April 1st, 2010 at 10:33 am.
If you’re still enjoying the astonishing glimpse into the future that is last year’s Comanche: Maximum Overkill – which used three-dimensional pixels to produce never before seen undulating terrain – then you’ll likely be delighted to hear that there are even more “voxels” on the way, thanks to Comanche: Global Challenge, which will deliver three new campaigns – that’s thirty highly-detailed missions. The expansion also adds arctic and desert terrain, as well as a bunch of new Soviet hardware to destroy. Hopefully my local Home Computer World will be stocking this one!
01/04/2010 at 10:39 user@example.com says:
Comanche was awesome, and still is in dosbox on a netbook. Comanche 4 is p. good if you like WASD helo-shooters. It’s simple, but it’s still fun nipping around and popping up to blow things up.
Black Shark just isn’t the same.
01/04/2010 at 10:43 Jakkar says:
I have a sneaking suspicion these ‘voxels’ will be the future of all gaming! Polys are a fad!
01/04/2010 at 10:59 Rich says:
Yeah. Unless we all start buying graphics cards, but who the hell can afford that?
01/04/2010 at 16:26 Grunt says:
I saw a 4mb PCI card on sale for £50 the other day! And what do you get for that money? Coloured lighting? No thanks!
01/04/2010 at 20:05 cliffski says:
actually voxels were a pretty cool tech. Now that CPUs are multi core and a zillion tims faster, a well coded voxel game would probably kick ass
01/04/2010 at 10:51 Sobric says:
I have to say that Commanche really is the clincher for getting a PC guys. I shelved my C64 because I heard good things about Wolfenstein 3D, but it really is Comanche that takes my breath away!
01/04/2010 at 11:01 Risingson says:
Comanche was actually a fun game, though it was too much “on rails”. I remember, when I played with friends, that one said at the first screen, the menu screen: “now, the voxel graphics and all are good, but what would be even nicer is having *those* graphics during the entire game”.
What is a bit sad about Comanche is that, after all these years, is still the only Novalogic simulator that was accesible for the arcade crowd and fun at that. The rest of their games felt, I don’t know, a bit rushed. Except Tachyon, which is great.
01/04/2010 at 11:03 Dude says:
April’s fools? I guess so…
01/04/2010 at 11:07 Richard Clayton says:
Those are target renders. The game’s never going to look that good.
01/04/2010 at 11:12 JoeDuck says:
You are killing me with this batch of previews.
I see my youth in front of me and it’s… pixely.
But it’s also passionate and daring and varied and fun.
Now, imagine if someone took this crazy voxel engine technology and did a tank sim.
How cool would that be?
01/04/2010 at 11:33 Jakkar says:
I hope you’re aware of Voxelstein 3d. Google it, if not =)
01/04/2010 at 13:15 Christian says:
What’s a “Google”???
01/04/2010 at 13:29 JoeDuck says:
It’s “googles”, those red and blue lenses you put in your eyes to make the games even more realistic.
They are certainly the future of gaming.
01/04/2010 at 13:38 Rich says:
I think he means googol; 10^100.
What does that have to do with games?
Crazy future person.
01/04/2010 at 14:02 Clovis says:
Wait, are you talking about Topeka?
01/04/2010 at 15:23 Christian says:
And what does a Kansas town have to do with gaming then?
Well, I hope they make a demo available on my local BBS or else I have to wait for a floppy of the demo.
Now I only need to get a new PC, probably a 486 DX/2 with 66 mb and 4 MB ram.
What do you think, for how much HDD space should I go? do you think 120MB is enough?
01/04/2010 at 15:24 Christian says:
Sorry, I meant 66 Mhz. All those crazy newfangled abbreviations…
01/04/2010 at 18:59 drewski says:
I put this “Voxelstein” into Altavista and it came up with some awesome Geocities page with like a background and three colours and everything!
“Google” returned nothing, though.
01/04/2010 at 11:18 jsutcliffe says:
Oh RPS, you wags.
01/04/2010 at 11:31 Rinox says:
Man, if games start looking this good already, imagine what another 20 years will do for storytelling and game design!!
01/04/2010 at 11:33 Jakkar says:
That was too brutal. You bastard. You made me sad.
01/04/2010 at 11:41 phuzz says:
Ahh, voxels. Don’t forget Delta Force 2 while you’re on it!
01/04/2010 at 11:48 stahlwerk says:
I’m afraid it won’t run on my dad’s 486sx :( Guess I might have to convince him to buy one of those mathematical coprocessor-thingies.
01/04/2010 at 11:49 Pew says:
Oh dear, that screenshot ruined pretty much all memories I had of Comanche. It looked so great when I played it!
01/04/2010 at 11:52 mlaskus says:
Crysis uses voxels to render terrain
01/04/2010 at 12:26 Risingson says:
Right! You scored two points!
01/04/2010 at 12:46 RogB says:
im not sure it does use them in rendering. I think it uses them for editing differences to a basic heightmap (caves, overhangs?) but eventually turns them into polygons afterwards. thats the gist I got after looking at a editor video a while back, i wouldnt be surprised if i was way wrong.
01/04/2010 at 11:53 Sobric says:
Oh god yes. My first multiplayer experience… wow that was a long time ago.
01/04/2010 at 11:53 Sobric says:
that was @Phuzz dammit
01/04/2010 at 11:57 Matthew says:
“Voxel Pops”, is that, like, a riff on “Vox Populi”? Ha ha ha! Jim, you’re so funny!
If article titles are looking this good already, imagine what another 20 years will do for punning and clever wordplay!!
:-)
01/04/2010 at 16:30 Grunt says:
Talking of puns, have you read Pratchett’s latest, Small Gods?
02/04/2010 at 13:25 Matthew says:
@Grunt: Yeah, I read it. Didn’t like it though – Pratchett really got deep with this last one, it’s not proper Discworld. I mean, if he had stuck with the light comedy he could have gotten, like, 20 books out of it! I used to be a big fan, but I don’t think this new direction is gonna last.
01/04/2010 at 12:01 Stu says:
Typical nickel-and-diming, making us pay for missions that should’ve been included in the original release.
01/04/2010 at 12:42 robrob says:
I’ve heard the data for the new campaigns is already on the floppies, just encrypted. The expansion pack is only 24K.
01/04/2010 at 13:37 TheSombreroKid says:
24K you could fit a whole game in thier what the hell do you want from those guys!
01/04/2010 at 14:07 robrob says:
My rubbish joke spans chronologies.
01/04/2010 at 12:33 M says:
I was really hoping for a morning chock-full of VGA graphics and exclamation marks. Three was not enough flashback.
01/04/2010 at 12:33 Spacewalk says:
Shit, and here I thought that vectors were going to be the future.
01/04/2010 at 12:47 Hunam says:
Voxels! But I just bought a Voodoo card! /o\
01/04/2010 at 12:48 Hunam says:
(or not, as they came out a few years later)
01/04/2010 at 12:57 Red Avatar says:
You know you’re into retro gaming when you open RPS, see all those old games and don’t even notice it’s a joke. “Oh, an article on Comanche and Doom and Sam & Max”.
01/04/2010 at 13:23 Derek Smart says:
When I saw this headline, the first thing I did was look at today’s date. You bastards.
See if you can spot this relic.
http://www.dereksmart.com/pics/08-04-03/
01/04/2010 at 13:38 TheSombreroKid says:
the system requirements for this game are a joke you need a 486DX2 minimum!
01/04/2010 at 14:38 Grunt says:
Does anyone know if this will be Soundblaster Pro compatible?
01/04/2010 at 16:21 JoeDuck says:
It will be, but I can tell you that configuring the config.sys and autoexec.bat is going to be quite annoying. You see, this game uses only expanded memory and requires a LOT of base memory (more than 600Kb.!!!!), so you’ll have to boot with the bare minimum and no mouse driver of course.
However, as you’ll have to load the sounblaster driver, well… it’s going to be tight in those 640kb.
I’m curious, what IRQ and DMA are you using for your Soundblaster?
01/04/2010 at 16:13 Derek Smart says:
I’m not sure, but it works great on my Adlib though.
01/04/2010 at 16:47 the wiseass says:
Wow these graphics are intense, absolutely RAD!
02/04/2010 at 06:59 Scandalon says:
Tandy 3-voice is all you need!
(Man, I remember seeing the adds for these in ComputerWorld and such, and thinking how amazing they were and wishing I had a 486.)
02/04/2010 at 12:55 Matthew says:
Yeah, they are working on it.
02/04/2010 at 22:59 televizor says:
Wow, that was one of the wittyest commentes ever.