Warzone 2100

Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game developed by Pumpkin Studios and published in Spring 1999 by Eidos Interactive . It has been available as an open source game under the GPL since December 2004 and is still being developed.

description

Warzone 2100 is set fifteen years after the collapse, a nuclear inferno that was triggered in 2085 by an alleged flaw in a NASDA (North American Strategic Defense Agency) defense system. A group of survivors have found refuge in an abandoned military base in the Rocky Mountains . This group calls itself a "project" and in the year 2100 sets out to look for technologies from the time before the collapse.

A special feature of the game is the ability to design and produce your own units from individual components. Since there are no units except for a few default units and cyborgs , every player is dependent on constructing units consisting of a drive, hull and weapon or system tower. This leads to a variety of theoretically several hundred differently designed units.

Warzone 2100 is one of the first real-time strategy games with a freely rotatable and zoomable 3D environment . It is comparable to Earth 2150, which was published later . Another feature is the representation of the artillery, the realistic range of which offers further tactical options.

The single player mode offers a linear story campaign that is divided into three campaigns, each set in a different region of today's USA . The same commander of the "project" is embodied across all three campaigns. The multiplayer mode offers different game modes, some of which can only be played with human players.

Plot and course of the game

In the campaign, the player embodies a commander of the project. The primary goal of the project is to recover technologies from the time before the collapse.

Campaign 1 - Team Alpha

The first campaign leads into the Mojave Desert and primarily revolves around the procurement of the technology of the " synaptic connections", which enables the construction of cyborgs. Cyborgs are people who can communicate with their combat suit via an interface in the area of the cervical vertebra and are thus effective fighters.

Transport of armed forces in a VTOL unit to a sideshow

Once on the home map for the first campaign, a base must be built. After a short time you will meet the first enemies: the "Scavengers". These are marauding gangs that can be fought without major problems. A few missions later one encounters another armed force, the "New Paradigm", whose goal is the establishment of a military dictatorship. The New Paradigm asks the project to leave the area and, if it refuses, goes on to attack.

In the course of the campaign it turns out that the New Paradigm is not an independent armed force, but acts on the orders of "Nexus". It also turns out that the New Paradigm provided the Scavengers with technology and weapons.

The end of the first campaign marks the destruction of the New Paradigm, as a result of which the project finds that all computer systems of the New Paradigm have been infected with the Nexus intruder program. This makes it clear that the New Paradigm was controlled by Nexus and that this was the real adversary.

Campaign 2 - Team Beta

Team Beta was sent to the US state of Iowa , so the nuclear power plant featured in the campaign could be the Duane Arnold Energy Center . During the first campaign, Team Beta reported that it had encountered an unknown force, which, however, kept quiet. By defeating the New Paradigm, this force goes on to attack the beta base.

Team Beta aims to capture the VTOL technology. During the entire course of this campaign, the enemy is the collective also controlled by Nexus, but towards the end Nexus interferes more and more with its own weapons and fires in the last missions, all three are evacuation missions, two nuclear missiles: one on the alpha base, the other on the beta basis. Nexus approves of the fact that the collective is also destroyed.

Campaign 3 - Team Gamma

The aim of the third and final campaign is to destroy Nexus. According to the visual information of a briefing, this campaign takes place in the US state of Oregon and there presumably in the Cascade Range . In the game itself, however, the Rocky Mountains are mentioned, which is why it can be assumed that this campaign is more likely to take place in the US state of Idaho .

Although Team Gamma has built its own base, the last campaign begins only with evacuated units from the beta base. The reason for this is that Nexus has the Nexus Link Tower. It is a weapon that enables Nexus to force enemy units and buildings under its control and thus represents a weapon version of the Nexus intruder program. With the help of this weapon, Nexus has taken over the gamma base, so that the survivors are forced to build their own base.

Meanwhile, the project may learn that Nexus is a "computer version" of Dr. Reed, the inventor of synaptic connections, is. He went crazy when his research funds were withdrawn after a while without any significant progress. Nevertheless, he successfully continued his experiments, which presumably had the transfer of the human mind into computer systems as their topic. After transferring his mind to a computer system himself, it probably triggered the collapse out of revenge. Due to the electromagnetic radiation released by the atomic bomb explosions, parts of his memories and personality were lost. This led to Dr. Reed became Nexus.

In the further course of the campaign, Nexus manages to reactivate old laser satellites and use them for themselves. However, the project succeeds in destroying these satellites in time.

Whether Nexus is really defeated at the end of the third campaign is not 100% certain. On the one hand, the final text in the official game advisor reads “Congratulations, Commander! You have finally wiped out Nexus and its allies for good. ... finally? ”, On the other hand, Pumpkin Studios had been working on a sequel, Warzone 2120 .

Approval of the source code and further development

Warzone 2100 GPL
Studio	Warzone 2100 Project
platform	Windows , Linux , macOS
control	mouse and keyboard
system advantages preconditions	Windows XP (SP3) or newer, 1 GHz processor, 128 MB RAM, OpenGL , 100 MB storage space
medium	Download
language	German (optionally also other language)
Current version	3.3.0 (August 30, 2019)
information	Open source

After a long wait by the Warzone community, the source code of Warzone 2100 was released under the GPL on December 6, 2004, with major contributions from Alex McLean ( Pumpkin Studios ) and Jonathan Kemp ( Eidos Europe ) . A couple of developers were quickly found who ported the game to Linux and started a BerliOS project. Two of the developers also set up a SourceForge project to coordinate them . Both projects are now inactive after development stopped in mid-2005. At the end of 2005, the remaining developers founded the Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project , which is currently continuing development on SourceForge after problems with the SVN repository on Gna! came. On June 11, 2008, following an agreement between the community and Jason Walker ( Eidos Interactive ), the missing parts of Warzone 2100, including the music and full-motion video sequences, were fully approved. In addition, legal gray areas have been eliminated through more precise formulations, making development more legally secure. Around the middle of 2009, the project was renamed "Warzone 2100 Project", among other things on the grounds that the game can now be described as being revived and that "Resurrection" is therefore no longer needed.

Warzone 2100 GPL uses only open source technologies. The basis is the SDL library, OpenGL for graphics, OpenAL for sound output. This means that it can run on Windows as well as Linux and macOS , some FreeBSD users are known and porting to other systems should also be easy, provided the required libraries are available for them.

Differences from the commercial version

The software renderer was removed because there was no developer who wanted to maintain it.
The network protocol uses TCP instead of UDP, lobby server available.
64-bit capable, network games between users with little-endian and big-endian systems possible.
Internationalization via gettext ; in addition to English, German, French, Greek, Italian, Catalan, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Hungarian, among others.
The PlayStation is no longer supported.
macOS 10.6+ on 64-bit Intel platforms is supported.
New terrain renderer
New cards
Supports up to 10 players

Pictures (original)

Menu background
Draft menu
Image from Campaign 1, Mission 5
Base from campaign 1

Images (GPL version)

These images were created using a modification for Warzone 2100.

Heavily fortified (Gauss Cannon) fortress.
Ambush in the fortress.
Artillery attack.
Artillery target training.

Web links

Commons : Warzone 2100 - collection of images, videos and audio files

Warzone 2100 at MobyGames (English)
Warzone 2100 Project (English)
Warzone Gna.org project page of the Warzone 2100 project
warzone2100.de German-language website for Warzone 2100

Individual evidence

↑ Warzone 2100 petition; Posted by Saint_Proverbius . November 3, 2003. Retrieved August 29, 2010.

↑ Tal Blevins: Warzone 2100 - There's not a lot of innovation, but this RTS does prove that war isn't always hell. ( English ) IGN. April 16, 1999. Retrieved April 9, 2011.

↑ Warzone 2100 on SourceForge

↑ Per Inge Mathisen: Changing subversion hosting ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), developer mailing list archive (accessed November 11, 2009)

^ Dennis Schridde: Warzone 2100, I have the honor to release you from any license unclarities. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), archive of the developer mailing list (accessed on November 13, 2009)

↑ COPYING.README, revision 5241 ( memento from July 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), SVN repository at Gna! ( Memento from June 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed November 13, 2009)

↑ Zarel: Project rename, website changes ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), archive of the developer mailing list ( accessed on November 11, 2009)

↑ ^a ^b ^c Cyp: Warzone 2100 Forums , announcement for version 3.1 rc3 (accessed on February 24, 2013)

[pumpkin2-1] Warzone 2100 petition; Posted by Saint_Proverbius . November 3, 2003. Retrieved August 29, 2010.

[IGNreview-2] Tal Blevins: Warzone 2100 - There's not a lot of innovation, but this RTS does prove that war isn't always hell. ( English ) IGN. April 16, 1999. Retrieved April 9, 2011.

[3] Warzone 2100 on SourceForge

[4] Per Inge Mathisen: Changing subversion hosting ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), developer mailing list archive (accessed November 11, 2009)

[5] Dennis Schridde: Warzone 2100, I have the honor to release you from any license unclarities. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), archive of the developer mailing list (accessed on November 13, 2009)

[6] COPYING.README, revision 5241 ( memento from July 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), SVN repository at Gna! ( Memento from June 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed November 13, 2009)