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Big Mac · May 30, 2002, 05:51 PM

Should I be excited about Galactic Battleground? Granted, the PC has had this game for quite sometime, but if it's good I don't care. Aspyr <a href="http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=5505" target="_blank">announced it went gold</a> on Wednesday. So is this a good pick? The system requirements sound great - they don't tax my aging desktop. Informed opinions are welcome.

[ 05-30-2002, 06:52 PM: Message edited by: Big Mac ]

SOLIDAge · May 30, 2002, 06:28 PM

i personally love the game
its basically Age of Empires II in the starwars universe, and it introduces air units

i'm excited

Brad Oliver · May 30, 2002, 07:11 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Big Mac:
Should I be excited about Galactic Battleground? Granted, the PC has had this game for quite sometime, but if it's good I don't care.<hr /></blockquote>First, a big caveat: I worked on the port, so I'm a little biased. I'm also a huge Star Wars fan.

Having said that, I _really_ enjoyed playing this game. I've worked on a few ports before for games that I didn't much care for, but this wasn't one of them. It's right up there with Centipede (don't laugh, I'm serious) in terms of ports I enjoyed the most.

There are a lot of similarities to Age of Empires 2: the menu structure and layout of the UI isn't altered much, and obviously it uses the same RTS engine. However, there are a number of things which I enjoyed in Battlegrounds over and above Age2 that altered the strategic elements quite a bit:

* Air units and anti-aircraft units.

* Shield generators and power cores. These two change the gameplay quite a bit. Each has a radius of influence that covers the units involved. Power generators cause building to perform at 100% while shield generators add a second layer of defense, effectively doubling hit points. It's kinda neat that if you take out any power cores around a shield generator, the generator itself dies without having to sack it directly.

* The 6 civs each have pretty varied looks and units. The Imperials are a real strong mech civ, the Rebels are good at air superiority, the Gungans (a favorite of mine, again don't laugh) have excellent water units, etc.

Additionally, there are 6 separate campaigns (one for each civ) of roughly 6-7 missions each for a solid single-player experience. I had a lot of fun playing through them all. It was pretty cool to play some "movie battles" like the Imperial assault on Hoth: don't let the AT-ATs sack the shield generator or kill Luke or Han and let your transports get away to win. There's a lot of fanboy-factor in the design, IMHO.

Brad

ambush · May 30, 2002, 08:04 PM

CAN HARDLY WAIT!! ARGHH
I hope it has nicer gfx than aoeii :o

Aragorn · May 30, 2002, 09:41 PM

I've played this game, I really liked it. I'm looking foward to playing it on my Mac. Brad how many times have you seen Star Wars? :-P

Brad Oliver · May 30, 2002, 11:15 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by ambush:
I hope it has nicer gfx than aoeii :o <hr /></blockquote>I think Aspyr's gonna release a demo that features netplay and the single-player Empire campaign so you can see for yourself. Obivously it's not miles above Age2 graphically since the engine is the same, but there are a lot of larger and more specialized graphics. Examples: the Rebel campaigns have large graphics for ion cannons, the shield generator and some large Endor trees and stuff, the Gungan scenarios contain large monument heads like you see Boss Nass talking on at the end of Ep. 1, etc. In terms of raw data, the 650MB CD is practically filled by the game data, whereas Age2 had a bit of space left over. Take that for what it's worth.

I guess a better comparison would be Warcraft II vs. Starcraft. On the surface, the latter looks like Warcraft II in space, but once you play it, the differences stand out a bit more.

Brad

Brad Oliver · May 30, 2002, 11:16 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Aragorn:
Brad how many times have you seen Star Wars? :-P<hr /></blockquote>Let's just say more than Phantom Menace and leave it at that. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Brad

juanvaldes · May 30, 2002, 11:21 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Aragorn:
Brad how many times have you seen Star Wars? :-P<hr /></blockquote>Let's just say more than Phantom Menace and leave it at that. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Brad<hr /></blockquote>well that's not hard who the hell would want to see it twice!

a2daj · May 31, 2002, 02:39 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by juanvaldes:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Aragorn:
Brad how many times have you seen Star Wars? :-P<hr /></blockquote>Let's just say more than Phantom Menace and leave it at that. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Brad<hr /></blockquote>well that's not hard who the hell would want to see it twice!

<hr /></blockquote>I watched Ep I a few times in the theater because, IMO, it has the best Jedi fight scene ever. Even a bunch of the stuff in Ep II looked like it was in slow motion compared to Ep I (of course you can't do much with a 80 year old actor).

Big Mac · May 31, 2002, 02:50 AM

The shots I've seen of SWGB are very evocative of Starcraft. However, I know that it's based on Age of Empires. I've never played that series. Could someone describe the game play elements of AoE so I can gain a better understanding of what SWGB is like?

Bubba Jones · May 31, 2002, 11:32 AM

Hey brad, any comment on the quality/speed on OS 9 vs. OS X. I'm buying this game either way and will have no problem booting into 9 just for this. Just a little curious.

Pismo 400
1 gig Ram

Kudos btw for porting this and for your prescence on the boards.

Brad Oliver · May 31, 2002, 03:22 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Bubba Jones:
Hey brad, any comment on the quality/speed on OS 9 vs. OS X. I'm buying this game either way and will have no problem booting into 9 just for this. Just a little curious.<hr /></blockquote>I don't think you'll have any perforamnce issues with playing it under OSX. I did some tweaking of our Age2 code for this to make it run a little faster under 10, so I'm pretty happy with the speed we're getting out of it. I think the plan is to release a demo, so if/when that happens, you can see for yourself.

Brad

juanvaldes · May 31, 2002, 11:14 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Bubba Jones:
Hey brad, any comment on the quality/speed on OS 9 vs. OS X. I'm buying this game either way and will have no problem booting into 9 just for this. Just a little curious.<hr /></blockquote>I don't think you'll have any perforamnce issues with playing it under OSX. I did some tweaking of our Age2 code for this to make it run a little faster under 10, so I'm pretty happy with the speed we're getting out of it. I think the plan is to release a demo, so if/when that happens, you can see for yourself.

Brad<hr /></blockquote><img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="eek.gif" /> a demo!?! I have almost forgotten what they were like!!

Just a general question for ya brad, what system do you do your development on?

AoE2 is like SC but a little slower passed, more units, needs bigger city's, and 4 types of resources. The AI that arranges your armies is great (best part of the game IMO) otherwise it is just another WarCraft knockoff. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Brad Oliver · May 31, 2002, 11:38 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by juanvaldes:
Just a general question for ya brad, what system do you do your development on?<hr /></blockquote>My main system is a DP/800 with a GeForce 3, Radeon PCI and 896M of RAM. I spend the bulk of my dev time in OSX, and I boot into 9 usually once before each beta period to make sure the game actually runs there, and when forced during beta testing.

I also do a fair amount of testing on a white iBook 500. It's got a Rage128 in it, so it makes for a good test case on low-end video cards. Up until sometime during the Age2 beta, I had a faithful ol' PowerBase 200 with a 300MHz G3 upgrade that ran 8.6, but the hard drive died (the CD drive was long dead), so I haven't bothered to resurrect it. It was my super-low-end testing Mac, and it served me well for many years. I'd like to kick it back to life so I can retire it with dignity one last time.

Brad

Big Mac · Jun 1, 2002, 05:38 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Bubba Jones:


[SNIP]

Kudos btw for porting this and for your prescence on the boards.<hr /></blockquote>Ditto, it's great that you're here, Brad. It's wonderful to have as many developers frequenting the forum as possible. Could you tell us what project you're working on right now, or is it still under NDA?

Aragorn · Jun 1, 2002, 05:46 PM

He's working on Jedi Knight 2 Outcast right now.

Big Mac · Jun 2, 2002, 04:16 AM

Okay, I just read the Aspyr page again, and I have two major questions that perhaps Brad could help me with:

1) It states minimum requirement of G3 333MHz or higher. Do you think my 8600/300 will possibly cut it, or will the game simply suck and/or not run?

2) Why is network play Mac only? Is this a rigid limitation or are there plans to patch it in the future so that we can frag some PC geeks?

Thanks!

SOLIDAge · Jun 2, 2002, 05:55 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Big Mac:
Okay, I just read the Aspyr page again, and I have two major questions that perhaps Brad could help me with:

1) It states minimum requirement of G3 333MHz or higher. Do you think my 8600/300 will possibly cut it, or will the game simply suck and/or not run?

2) Why is network play Mac only? Is this a rigid limitation or are there plans to patch it in the future so that we can frag some PC geeks?

Thanks!<hr /></blockquote>2) i would GUESS that maybe direct connection will work fine? like if you type in a friend's IP etc
but i think its bc the game uses THE ZONE which isn't Mac Compatible
i may be wrong, but just an idea

i also think its pretty stupid but whatever...

Brad Oliver · Jun 2, 2002, 06:17 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Big Mac:
1) It states minimum requirement of G3 333MHz or higher. Do you think my 8600/300 will possibly cut it, or will the game simply suck and/or not run?<hr /></blockquote>Is that a PowerPC 604/300? If so, I don't think it'll launch. I can definitely say it wasn't tested on a 604.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />2) Why is network play Mac only? Is this a rigid limitation or are there plans to patch it in the future so that we can frag some PC geeks?<hr /></blockquote>Rigid limitation. The original used Microsoft's DirectPlay, which we can't license for the Mac. It also used the MSN gaming zone to host and join online games, and there's no Mac client for that. We use GameRanger in the Mac port to compensate.

Brad

blizzard · Jun 2, 2002, 10:12 PM

That's interesting...I would have guessed that, as a result of using the Q3 engine, it might have taken Q3's net code too...didn't realize they were so easily separable. Thanks for the info.

P.S I really, really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to stuff like that - hope I didn't make you laugh too hard

Aragorn · Jun 2, 2002, 10:23 PM

We are talking about Star Wars Galactic Battle Grounds, hehe not JK 2. SWGB uses the Age of the Empires engine.

JK 2 will be Mac/PC comp.

blizzard · Jun 3, 2002, 05:07 PM

Hehe oopsie...my bad! Thanks for pointing that out and not mocking me

Aragorn · Jun 3, 2002, 07:42 PM

hehe, no problem. We all make mistakes.