Warzone 2100 is a real-time action and strategy game set on earth in the 21st century. Upon entering the postnuclear world of Warzone 2100, you establish your base. Here you conduct research, design and manufacture vehicles, build new structures, and prepare your plans of global conquest. Each campaign features a large campaign map and six or more sub-maps. As key objectives are reached on the campaign map, missions are activated on the sub-maps. These missions are varied and feature everything from hit-and-run attacks to holding territory. The combat is fast and frantic with amazing effects and a true 3-D world with rotatable and zoomable cameras. Weapons range from bullets and lasers to explosive weapons that blast large areas of the highly detailed 3-D battlefield.
The free and open source RTS Warzone 2100 has a new release out, bringing with it a new difficulty mode if you struggled through the campaign. Quite a success story this one. Originally a fully commercial game developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive that was eventually set free. I wish more developers did this eventually.
Warzone 2100 Maps
Warzone 2100 is an open-source real-time strategy and real-time tactics hybrid computer game, originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. It was originally released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, and is now also available for macOS, FreeBSD, AmigaOS 4[2], AROS, MorphOS, Linux, NetBSD[3] and OpenBSD.[4]
While Warzone 2100 was developed and released as a proprietary commercial video game, on December 6, 2004, the source code and most of its data was released under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later;[5] the rest of the data followed on June 10, 2008.
Warzone 2100 places an emphasis on sensors and radar to detect units and to coordinate ground attacks. Counter-battery sensors detect enemy artillery by sensing their projectiles and firing arcs and pinpointing their location to coordinate artillery strikes against enemy artillery. VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) sensors work like basic sensors, only they coordinate VTOL airstrikes. VTOL counter-battery sensors coordinate VTOLs to find and destroy enemy artillery batteries.
All of the terrain throughout the campaign is essentially composed of three areas, with different sectors for Away missions and other such levels; upon progression, previous maps simply expand and the player's original bases from past levels are maintained. Also, its resource system is quite different from mainstream RTS games; Oil Derricks are established over specific, scarce locations which constantly provide a slow, fixed rate of income. Combined with a mission time limit, this resource method makes it generally infeasible for players to utilize certain traditional RTS tactics such as "turtling" (fortifying one or more bases against enemy attack, while stockpiling resources with which to produce a massive army).
Warzone 2100 was originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. In 1999 it was originally released for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation. After having released patch 1.10 final in November 1999, Pumpkin Studios ended their support for Warzone 2100 at January 5, 2000.[6] On March 15, 2000, Pumpkin Studios was closed down by Eidos Interactive. Pumpkin Studios later reformed as Pivotal Games.
Following the release, the game's community started a revival project, based on the available source code and assets: originally called "Warzone Re-Development Project", it was later renamed to the "Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project", and then to the "Warzone 2100 Project". On June 11, 2005, version 0.1 of the "Warzone 2100 Project" was released, with all proprietary technology replaced by free and open-source alternatives. As of 2021 the community development continues, and has been officially released on the Microsoft Store,[12] Snap Store,[13] itch.io,[14] and others.[15]
On February 18, 2020 an unofficial version of Warzone 2100 was released on the Steam gaming platform.[16][17] Underdone Gaming[18] has published only a Windows version of the game, with questions about other platforms left unanswered. The reception of the community to this release is generally negative and it is unlikely that community developers will aid technical support for the Steam version.[19]
GameSpot gave the PlayStation version a 6.5, and the PC version a 7.6. GameSpot praised the game for its high level of customizability and concluded, "Warzone 2100's highly navigable 3D engine, unique campaign structure, and multiplayer gameplay should please most real-time strategy fans."[29][30]
IGN shared similar sentiments, rating the PC version 8.0, and the PlayStation version 7.5. IGN praised the PlayStation version for being one of the few RTS games on the system. IGN praised this aspect by saying "In the end the weird truth is that Warzone 2100 is one of the best RTS on the system."[33] In their PC review, the author expressed disappointment with the lack of innovation, but praised it nonetheless with the following comment, "Mostly it boils down to taking great ideas found in other RTS titles and combining them into one. Pumpkin Studios did a fantastic job with that task and this one is certainly worth playing all the way through."[32]
Warzone 2100 is a game, originally commercially developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos-Interactive. In 2004, Eidos decided to release the code under a freely distributable license (GPL), which enabled the Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project to continue development on the game.
Website: wz2100.netSupport: Wiki, FAQDeveloper: Rodolphe Suescun, Per I. Mathisen, Dennis Schridde, Roman and many othersLicense: GNU GPL
It has been 3 years since the last release of the free open source strategy game Warzone 2100 from 1999. Warzone 2100 has been free software since 2004 and it's small hardcore community has been making small incremental improvements ever since. Version 3.2 could not get into scaling which made it unusable on modern monitors. The latest version has a brand new "Display Scale" option which works well on modern 4K displays. There's also better and smoother graphics and the lagging which would sometimes be noticeable when a lot of things were going on is gone. The new version is available for GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS. There is no Android version.
Warzone 2100 has a "Campaign" mode where you follow a story of how humans were wiped out by a evil computer network by playing various campaigns which consist of many levels. There has been a lot of fixes to this game-mode since the last release.
There does not seem to be much related to multi-player gameplay in the new release in the official change-log. It wasn't broken and has always worked great as long as you have a UPnP supported firewall or manually open port 2100 to allow people to connect (if you are hosting the game, those who participate do not need to open the port). However, there are improvements in this area too - even though they are not indicated by the changelog. An anonymous Warzone 2100 community source told us that:
"There *are* actually a lot of fixes related to multiplayer. From improvements with UPnP, to fixes with downloaded maps, to reduced lag in multiplayer (part of broader performance improvements), etc."
Warzone 2100 can be acquired from SourceForge. It's homepage is at wz2100.net where not much is going on, most news like the 3.3.0 release announcement and mods and things like that are posted in the forums.
Warzone 2100 is worth a try if you never played it. It's quite fun for a 20 years old game. All GNU/Linux distributions have the old version in their repositories and they will all have the new version immediately or eventually depending on distribution. 2ff7e9595c
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