Starsiege: Tribes

[George]

This is a nostalgia thread about an old game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starsiege:_Tribes

The story thus far:



* Which reminds me, yesterday while waiting for the battery in the Range Rover to charge I jumped into the game and twelve year A old kept killing twelve year old B and talking a lot of smack. I don't know what happened, but B somehow got the upper hand and just started murdering A, and A's frustration came out in a string of cursing. B said something like, "You're an imbecile if you think you can just keep picking on people and not have them fight back." After some shuffling and mumbling a person who I can only assume is A's mom comes on and says, "What did you call him?" My girl and I were just sitting laughing quietly.

"I called him an imbecile."
"Do you even know what that word means little boy?"
"Yes, I do. But if you don't you're probably an imbecile too."
:awkward silence:
B resumes: "It's awfully quiet now. You couldn't shut up before but now you've nothing to say? Hopefully your mom is teaching you some manners."


That's awesome.

I used to play a game called Starsiege Tribes and trash-talk on public servers was a big part of the game. Lately I've been grabbing short sessions (like 10 minutes or less) in Open Arena on Ubuntu but it's so fast-paced that kills happen constantly so there's no room to read and write witty patois.


I played the CRAP out of Tribes. Loved that game.


I had no idea anyone at this forum had ever even heard of Tribes, much less played it. I always thought it was a pretty obscure game. I had never heard of it before my next-door neighbor hipped me to it, and I never heard anyone else talk about it, even though there were hundreds/dozens/handfulls/me and one other guy playing it. (dig my game-life timeline there)

I usually played Renegade Mod and had more fun with that game than just about anything else I can think of. I'm very much a one-game-at-a-time kind of guy and I played Tribes and nothing else (well, maybe Free Cell) for many, many years. This was all before having kids, of course. Tribes is the reason I went looking for FPS games when I installed Ubuntu recently. I hoped something would replace Tribes. Open Arena and another called Sauerbraten are okay for mindless, non-stop killing, but I miss the Tribes jetpack and the ability to "ski" down hills. I frequently find myself hitting the jetpack button and holding down the space bar while playing these games. I have figured out that I can rocket-jump in Sauerbraten, but I haven't found a good use for that, since I just land back down on the playing "field" and lose health. Someone needs to make an open source Tribes clone!


I remember there being mods, but I have no recollection as to what they were. I was in a clan, we played matches, and I didn't sleep for days at a time. So awesome. Played a LOT of CTF, and frequently took over the NOC at work so we could have all of us in one place to wreak havoc. A couple people in a bomber who could quickly communicate were devastating. and I remember more than one time three or four of us would heavy up and launch ski attacks. So much fun, I really miss that game. It was the last game I really played a LOT of too.


Tribes is the reason I stopped playing Gran Turismo after GT2 and never got into the next generation PlayStations and whatnot. PS1 and GT2 is as far as I went, once I discovered I could play against real human beings. The "whoosh" factor or whatever it's called that makes humans enjoy movement was just as good in Tribes as GT, also. You could go fast, turn, stop, fly, etc. It completely replaced GT for me, and almost immediately.

I still have a lot of Tribes screenshots in my Photobucket album from years back when I occasionally posted on Tribes forums. Would you be interested in seeing them, just for nostalgia? Maybe I should start a Tribes thread which you and I could read and everyone else could ignore.

Man, if I still had a WinXP machine, I'd set up a server for us. I don't know if it will run on my wife's Win8 laptop, and I really don't need to stick that needle back in my arm, anyway.

Let the thread continue here, if it will. If it dies, that won't be a surprise. The game has been dead for a while now.

Did anyone else play?

[thesameguy]

I am now trying to remember what our clan was called. I think we may have revived Ministry of Peace ("Peace through annihilation" and "We come in peace, you leave in pieces") but I'm not entirely sure. Man, I wish I had not let that domain go. It doesn't look nearly as fun now. I do have fond memories of people harvesting domain registration information from Network Solutions and getting phone calls and mail for MoP. Good times. Anywho....

I mostly played CTF as that's always where my heart is, but I remember a game mode where the goal was to collect and hold as many flags as possible for points. That was also a lot of fun...

The (unintentional) skiing "bug" was just such a cool element to the game, a side effect nobody could have anticipated. When you'd get really talented skiiers who could rocket across a map faster than anyone else it was a pleasure to watch - even if that meant them getting away from you. :lol:

Vengeance was not so good, and I never even tried Ascend. I am hesitantly interested in Universe, but we'll see. I feel like it's been such a boondoggle of a project even if it ever gets made it can't do anything but suck.

Edit: I just remembered the mine-and-disc thing. Also a beautiful random thing! Like rocket jumping in Quake!

[George]

Yes! And in the mod I played, some medium armors and heavy armor could get Rocket Launchers from the inventory station. You could come out on the front porch of "Broadside" or "Blastside", turn around, look down, jump, and then fire a rocket at where your feet had been. Done correctly, you could land on the other base by doing this, even in heavy armor!

[thesameguy]

The best part of those rocket jumps were the rare moments when you'd end up as a heavy in mid-air and MD some unfortunate light that got in your way. Or being that light and accidentally meeting a heavy! :)

I also really enjoyed the vehicles element - an HPC with couple heavies just floating over someone's base was barrels of fun. I always wished there was a little more variation in them though - like a more ground-based vehicle, or something that carried light guns or had a formal belly gunner. I dunno. Spilled milk?

Still to this date my friend will call up wanting to go out and say 'I need an APC pickup!" :lol:

[George]

I liked the APCs too. I loved to be in a crowded server at the map Scarabrae and just drive APCs all the time. Respawn, grab repair kit, fix vehicle pad if necessary, create APC, and then call out:

"APC ready to go. Waiting for passengers."

And then we'd head out with four fat boys doing the little animations that went along with "Over here!", "Come get some!", "Woo hoo!", "How'd that feel?", and so forth. :lol: We'd get shot and some guy would start repairing the APC in mid-air, and sometimes the APC would distinegrate under fire and bodies would fall from the sky. Great fun!

The Scout planes were a blast, too. I had a script in my autoexec.cs file that changed my mouse sensitivity to super-high, which would let one fly a Scout as very manuverable fighter/bomber rather than what the stock settings let you do. As I write this, I'm looking my old Photobucket pictures of Tribes that I never deleted when the Tribes forum I was a member of went down. Here's me at a bot map wiping out a bot with a rocket from a Scout. I remember it as I played it often in the later days when servers were mostly empty. I used the name Squeeze and was in a clan called MI6, like the British intelligence agency. Don't know who came up with that, but hey, it was fun.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/bots.jpg

Speaking of Scarabrae, here's a pic from underneath one of the bases with a targeting laser. I know TSG remembers this map. Heavies were forever getting stuck underneath that base - often after falling/jumping out of APCs - and were sitting ducks for defenders to come skiing down into that big bowl with mines, discs, and grenades.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/untitled-2.jpg

Random picture of a flag carrier, wearing a custom skin. I always downloaded all the skin packs and enjoyed the variety they brought to the game. The TXM clan were our frequent rivals.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Spliff.jpg

Here's a heavy in tigerskin!

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Tiger3.jpg

Tigerskin heavy has taken some damage here (notice feet and left elbow) but is better off than the corpse lying there. And some capper yells "Yeah!" after getting the job done. Ha. I loved all the audible taunts and challenges.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Tiger2.jpg

This was one of our clan's skins - all black with MI6 on the front. You can see me asking the guy, {MI6|CheapoDepo} was his name, to do the "Over here!" chat, which made the players arm come up and wave. The red wavy lines coming toward him from the left was from my repair pack, or maybe someone was standing to the left and repairing him.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Cheapo.jpg

Here's a custom skin that's normal on the top half and tightie-whities on the bottom. Nothin' like playing a difficult, intense, and fast-paced game and then seeing a guy go by in his shorts! :lol:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Walker2.jpg

Just fooling around here, I guess. Someone has dropped some grenades. Interesting picture.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Walker3.jpg

Last pic of underwear man, carrying the flag.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Walker.jpg

Action shot - flag carrier and opponent coming at each other and firing:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/pursuit.jpg

Flag in center of platform, attackers, defenders, dead and dying bodies. Come get some!

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/mayhem.jpg

The TXM clan wore custom skins that were mostly white. I used to tell those guys, "Nice long johns!"

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/rawr.jpg

MI6 and TXM setting up for a match:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/list.jpg

Cheapo flying away from base, with the ground littered with bodies and debris behind him. :lol:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/cheapo-1.jpg

More later...

[thesameguy]

Man, I had forgotten how poor the textures were in that game! :lol:

Of course it had nothing to do with the textures - it was the totally unique gameplay. Like, um, the Team Fortress mod for Quake.

I loved those busy servers where people knew what they were doing and you'd get these blitzkrieg attacks on the other team. So cool.

I wonder if Ascend would be worth picking up just to check out... Probably pretty cheap. :)

Edit: I guess the Steam version is FTP. Guess that does make it easy to check out!

[George]

Please let me know if you find anything interesting.

Yep, crowded servers rocked! Saturday mornings used to be my favorite time to play. Here's a public server at Broadside, or Blastside. Same exterior, but different flag locations inside.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/MI6.jpg

Final score at a crowded server:

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/B.jpg

I did a little better in this game. That guy Borg was amazing, and annoying, too. I have some screen shots of a 1 vs 1 game against him that I might post later.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/S1.jpg

More action - flag carrier behind and maybe below the platform. Two opponents are moving in and firing. It looks like the higher guy is dropping grenades, too.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/RAWR2.jpg

Neat high-altitude shot showing both bases. I think this map was called Canyon Crusade.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/bonq.jpg

TXM player at inventory station. Note Texas Longhorns logo on chest.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/TXM.jpg

Heavy flag carrier being fired at by opponent while flying.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/B2.jpg

Another crowded server from back in the day. I have just been wasted, which is why my screen is red. And there's that guy Borg again, near the top of the scoreboard as always. *shakes fist*

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/untitled-3.jpg

Flag carrier and dude on the ground about to exchange pleasantries. The chat window indicates someone just scored a mid-air hit ("MA") with a disc, which seemed utterly impossible when the game was new. Years later it was common.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a284/craigslistuser/Tribes/Stinky.jpg

[thesameguy]

I vaguely recall the TXM guys - I am pretty sure we played them more than once, but it was so long ago I can't be sure. It just sounds really familiar.

Those floating bases (like xside) were always fun for blasting heavies back onto the ground. One of our team strategies was to have a good MD guy hang around and just keep them from getting up the platforms - not actually killing them so they'd respawn and come back as a light, but just keep them occupied and useless. :lol: I think it was also those maps that were incredibly rewarding if you managed to get a fleet of heavies inside to just wreak havoc. A heavy escorted by a light with a repair who just spent most of the time hiding was pretty potent.

I literally just found out I have a weekend to myself in April - I think I am going to give Ascend a try. This conversation is making me incredibly nostalgic. It worries me that the synopsis is "the fastest shooter" rather than "awesome teamwork," but whatever. :D You should free up your April 12/13! :D

[George]

You know a game is good if you need/want and entire weekend to play it! :D

I just checked out the Tribes Ascend website. Wow. I didn't know anything about it. I remember when Tribes 2 came out and bombed. I bought it, hated it, and went right back to the original, as most seemed to do. I figured Tribes had just fizzled out - and that took a LONG time - and been replaced by the latest OMGWTFBBQ mobo.

I wonder if Ascend will run on my wife's Win8 machine. The site doens't mention 8 in the system requirements. It's the only Windows computer we have now. Of course I have a Win7 laptop from work, but I really shouldn't install other software on it. I...really...shouldn't. :twitch:

Let's see...April 12 and 13:

Kids have organized athletics in the moring and afternoon. My parents' birthdays are on April 9 and 17, so I'm sure we'll do something with them that weekend, such as having them over on Saturday afternoon for dinner and such. Sunday is church in the morning and then probably biking with the kids, going to a park, BMX track, or other family stuff in the afternoon. I'll probably also have to mow the lawn for the first time by that weekend, and do some other yardwork as spring slowly arrives here.

Part of me says I'd trade all that for one more really good game of Tribes. :devil:

Hopefully we can get online and toss some discs around at least, sometime.

I still have the original Tribes CD/DVD and an "unbranded" CD/DVD of WinXP, if that's the right term. It's a MS copy and doesn't say DELL or HP or Gateway 2000, etc. Someone once told me that was better to have than a branded version for some reason, but that was back when XP was current. I wonder what they'd bring on eBay.

[thesameguy]

The system requirements for Ascend don't seem terribly high, although the 3D accelerator spec is not tiny. I doubt the laptop has discrete graphics, but modern integrated stuff ain't bad compared to old discrete stuff, so you could be fine. Maybe have to run low detail, but not out of the running! :D

[George]

Once again I'm pulling quotes from a different thread to add commentary here to avoid the Off Topic Police. :angry: :D


For anyone here, but especially TSG, since we've discussed Tribes before: http://www.tribesascend.com/

I tried to install it through Steam and it wouldn't work with Win10. I uninstalled it from Steam and downloaded it directly from the website and it works great. It's missing some features and some of the wonder and amazement from the groundbreaking original Starseige Tribes, but it's good enough IMO, if you're feeling nostalgic and want a free game for your new PC.


A friend of mine is an old-school Tribes addict - like, he never stopped playing. It's the only game he plays! He also mentioned it's pretty cool, so I will have to check it out!

It was the only game I played from the late nineties until about ten years later. Maybe longer, but by then I was a father and didn't play games at all for a couple/few years. Some time later, before my last WinXP computer died and/or got reformatted to Ubuntu, I remember refreshing the server list and finding servers fewer than I remembered and no players around and that was the end of that (for me).

I'll be looking for a patch to run the old game on Win10. I still have the original CD, but I know it's available for free download now as well. I just checked one of my old Tribes haunts and they have a patch for Windows Vista and Windows 7, but nothing for 10 yet. But, the weekend is still early, so I may find a way to run it on 10.

The new version is okay, but I dislike two things immediately - granted, they're minor, but still annoying:

There is no longer an overhead map. We used to be able to press C to view the map from above, and to know where we and other things were on the map.

Some weapons and other things (speed boosters, I think, to make yourself fly faster for short bursts) require "gold" to unlock and use. Guess how you get gold in the game? Yep, real money. This is a gripe of mine with most video games these days. I'd rather pay $X to buy the game one time and then be able to play it for free forever.

Oh well, such is life, and I can't (well, shouldn't) complain much about a free game that provides the same fast-moving fun. Thankfully, skiing, jetpacking, and most of the weapons (disc launcher! :rawk:) are as fun as ever. I also like the ability to have a friend list and create parties. My son and I have had some fun with our new back-to-back gaming station in the basement with this and also a couple of Steam games - Rocket League and Team Fortress 2.

TF2 was...that is WAS...fun, until I got Tribes Ascend. TA is mo' bettah, at least for this nostalgic old fool who likes to go fast instead of lumbering along at a walking pace to get back in the fight.

At first I was dismayed at the lack of health packs, which would give you a one-time health boost by pressing H. You could pick up unused health packs from dead bodies, too. Those seem to be gone, but players now auto-heal, slowly, unless you're carrying the flag. Neat.

I have server filters set for North America East and North America West. There seem to be two servers with plenty of people in them when I check (evenings and weekends). There are also TONS of empty servers, in case TSG or anyone else wants to go throw some discs around with me without being continually crushed by high-level badasses. My user name is Squeeze->. That's a hyphen and a greater-than sign after the word, with no spaces, and it looks a lot better in the game font than here. Feel free to friend me, and maybe post or PM me so I know who you are, if it's not obvious.

Long live Tribes!

[thesameguy]

Once the weather turns shitty I will have more gaming time - while it's nice there are a million things to do outside. I preordered FH3, but the chances of me even touching it for the next month or two is about nil. :|