One Must Fall: Battlegrounds

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One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is a fighting game for the PC. Developed by Diversions Entertainment and co-published in December 2003 by Diversions Publishing and Trisynergy Inc. following nearly 7 years of development, One Must Fall: Battlegrounds brought the One Must Fall series into a second installment released in an age where the gaming world expected graphics and gameplay in three dimensions with internet gameplay an integral portion of the offering.

[edit] Background

Battlegrounds started development as a sequel to the popular shareware title 2097, playing in a side scrolling manner with two opponents facing each other. At the time, Rob Elam saw the opportunity in the Unreal Engine then in development by 2097 publisher Epic Megagames. At the time, Epic was not yet at a point where they were willing to examine licensing the engine or developing the Unreal Engine for third party use and so a joint decision was reached whereby Rob Elam left to start Diversions Entertainment.

In the new title, which concentrated on ultimately delivering a three dimensional multiplayer fighting title for the PC, five of the robots from 2097 have remained on, but their appearances took on necessary changes in the transition to three dimensions developed as full fledged models. Three new robot types were introduced as well as twelve 3D arenas for combat.

Unfortunately, the project was plagued by release delays, problems with insufficient development resources, and ultimately the game was released late December 2003, littered with bugs and relatively mediocre production values compared to the AAA titles of the time. Although, the game received good reviews by both professionals and the public.

However, a multitude of factors cascaded into a poor release and response. First and foremost, the budgetary availability was tight, at best. Fighting games were practically unheard of for the PC and so publishing arrangements were difficult to secure. Without major publisher support, the development team was privately funded at a relatively small scale (compared to development of the time period). The production staff was small, maxing out at around 7 full and part time staff at any given time. The lack of programming and artistic support led to optimistic release and milestone guidelines that were constantly missed by the team, a final release with significant bugs, gameplay balance issues, and little in the way of advertising.

Although the game's "mod tools" are not yet publicly available, one small modification, MultiplayerMod has been released to the public, which adds several pilots and a couple of new gametypes.

[edit] One Must Fall: Battlegrounds Tiers

Another problem (at least, a problem in the eyes of the pros) with OMF:BG is somewhat poor game balance. While most modern fighting games also suffer from this, the problem is much less apparent because of the much larger character rosters other games feature. OMF:BG only has eight playable robots, though there are over 50 selectable pilots in the game. Also, the pilots' four stats can sometimes not be very equal either, depending on individual gamer's playing stlyes. The four pilot stats are Power, Agility, Endurance, and Focus. The HAR balance, however, is still a subject of much debate on the OMF:BG forums.