Tribes (series)

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For the biological concept, see tribe (biology). For the social concept, see tribe.

Tribes is a series of science fiction first-person shooter computer games originally developed by Dynamix, a subsidiary of Sierra Entertainment. Set in the same universe as the game Starsiege, there are four games in the Tribes series:


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[edit] Fictional universe

The Tribes series is set in a distant future, spanning from 33rd to 40th century AD, while the back-story of the games begins in 2471, when a scientist Solomon Petresun invents the first "cybrid" - a bio-cybernetic hybrid artificial intelligence named Prometheus or IT. Based on ITS design, thousands of cybrids are mass-produced as slaves for the mankind, however, by 2602, Prometheus grows wary of humans and rallies all cybrids produced to date against humanity in a devastating slaughter later named The Fire. The events of The Fire are depicted in Earthsiege (1994), the precursor of the Tribes series, although several important points (such as the appearance of Petresun and Prometheus as the factions' leaders) were retconned later in Starsiege.

In Starsiege continuity, the Terran resistance manages to drive Prometheus' initially victorious forces out of Earth and onto the Moon where they are consequentially decapitated by General Ambrose Gierling and his squad's suicide attack on the cybrid base in 2627. Prometheus, however, survives the explosion and to counter this threat, Petresun (having technically achieved immortality through his studies) proclaims himself the Emperor of Mankind in 2652 and succeeds in unifying and rebuilding the Terran civilization. Pursuing his goal of fortifying the Earth against the inevitable cybrid retaliation, Petresun ruthlessly exploits Martian and Venusian colonies, spawning massive resistance movements among the colonists by 2802. The Martian rebellion led by the former Imperial Knight Harabec Weathers and the consequent Cybrid Wars are described in Starsiege (1999).

The chronologically first game in the Tribes series is Tribes: Vengeance (2004). Set some time between 33rd and 40th century, it shows the Great Human Empire, now ruled by "Imperial King" Tiberius, having hunted down (almost) all remaining cybrids and expanded beyond the boundaries of the Solar system through the so-called Interstellar Transfer Conduit. While the Empire itself is prosperous, there are outcasts, known as "the Children of Phoenix" (after Harabec "Phoenix" Weathers, whom they consider their progenitor) or simply Tribals. Their insubordination has made the Empire dispatch a great force of elite Imperial Knights, the Blood Eagles, against them, however, by the time of Tribes: Vengeance, the Eagles have fully embraced the Tribal way of life, considering themselves Tribesmen despite still having ties to the Empire.

The next (chronologically) game in the series, Starsiege: Tribes (1998) sees the conflict between the Blood Eagles, the Children of Phoenix, and other tribes formed by the renegades of these two (such as the Star Wolf and the Diamond Sword) escalating into countless blood feuds before finally culminating in the devastating Tribal Wars about 3940. The sequel, entitled Tribes 2 (2001), deals with the insurgent uprising of BioDerms, a new race of warriors/workers created by the Empire to replace the cybrids, and their assault on the Wilderzone, the space frontier where the Tribes mostly reside. The Tribes Aerial Assault (2002) does not significantly contribute to the fictional setting of the series.

[edit] Features

Several notable features distinguished the Tribes games from other first-person shooters:

  • Battles primarily take place outdoors amid hills and valleys which can constitute a vast area. The terrain is actually mapped to a virtual sphere far too large to be traversed during a game, though the landscape can be seen to repeat itself if a player explores far enough in a single direction. Some worlds are lush and green with lakes; some are frozen and snowy; others are black and charred with lava pools.
  • All players are equipped with jetpacks, allowing limited short-duration flight and requiring vertical attacks and defense. Jetpacks are powered by the player's armor; the armor recharges its energy at a slower rate than the jetpack uses it, requiring some recharge time between uses. The practice of leaping down a slope to pick up speed then jetpacking up the next slope is known as skiing, and can allow even a heavily-armored player to move rapidly across the terrain. (The idea of jetpacks in this game may have been derived from the book Starship Troopers.) While some considered skiing to be a bug it was in fact a simple, though unexpected, byproduct of the physics engine. When a player lands while moving forward at a high speed they skid a short distance. If they jump into the air just as they hit, they can limit the effect of friction on their movement, and "ski" down a hill. Skiing has become an intrinsic element of the Tribes series due to its popularity.
  • The Tribes games emphasize, and even require, teamwork and strategy. Games can involve two teams of sixteen players each. Instead of attacking the enemy directly, a player can decide to erect defenses such as turret emplacements and sensor networks, and can repair them when they become damaged. A player can also attack the enemy's resources, for example by destroying power generators so as to cripple the enemy's ability to resupply. Someone can earn a great deal of points, and serve a useful purpose in helping his team to victory, without ever having seen or fought the enemy.
  • Several different kinds of land and air vehicles play an important role in the games. Transports allow someone to fly heavily-armed teammates into enemy territory. Mobile point bases (introduced in Tribes 2) are heavily armored large trucks which provide sensors, a rearming station, and a missile turret wherever they are deployed. Fighter craft, bombers, tanks, and all-terrain vehicles are also included in the games.
  • At a resupply station, a player can choose between three kinds of armor: light armor can move and fly quickly, heavy armor is slow and can take a lot of hits and can carry larger resupplies such as missile turret refits, and medium armor is a tradeoff between the two. A player can further prepare for a specific role in the game through his choice of backpack: a repair pack allows him to repair damaged teammates and equipment, an energy pack allows longer flight and can power the sniper rifle, a cloak pack provides limited invisibility, a jammer pack shields him from enemy sensors and turrets, and so forth.
  • There are several game variants available in addition to the conventional capture the flag. "Siege" puts one side in charge of defending a switch and the other side's goal is to touch it; if successful, the teams switch sides to see if the other team can reach it quicker. "Rabbit" places one flag on the field, and the first person to pick it up becomes the rabbit and is hunted by everyone else; upon dying he drops the flag for someone else to pick up and be hunted, and when the round is over the person who has carried the flag the longest is the winner. Defend and Destroy, or D&D, tasked the players with destroying the enemy's power generators while defending their own.
  • A detailed set of voice bindings allowed players to send vocal commands or information to each other by pressing short sequences of keys. The sound clips used were pre-recorded, and each player could choose from several different kinds of voices for his character. This method of communication between players would go on to be imitated in many later games of the genre.
  • Any player can initiate a vote to boot another player off (for example, if someone is a teamkiller) or to start a new game on a different map.
  • The Windows versions of the games feature a detailed scripting language, allowing for a wide range of customizations and mods.

Weapons in the games include conventional blasters, chainguns, sniper rifles, and grenades. Also available are mines, disc launchers (here called "spinfusors"; their projectiles follow a straight trajectory and can be deadly when used by a skilled player in motion through the air), and mortar cannons (whose projectiles can hit targets hundreds of meters away). A targeting laser itself does no damage, but can be used to "paint" a target and provide teammates with an aiming reticle at which to fire; this is especially useful in letting teammates use mortars and missiles to hit targets even on the other side of a mountain ridge.

[edit] Versions

Starsiege: Tribes still retains a large community of players. It pioneered many elements ubiquitous in many multiplayer first person shooters today (e.g. Unreal Tournament 2004, Battlefield 1942 etc.). It is available as a free download from Fileplanet. [1] (The downloadable version is lacking the v1.11 patch which can be found at FilePlanet, though registration is required to obtain it. [2] The game can also be updated with the unofficial "1.30 LastHope" patch, which will make it fully compatible with all v1.11 servers in addition to "LastHope" servers. [3]) Starsiege: Tribes sold a total of 210,000 copies, but due to its small size and complete lack of copy protection was frequently copied and distributed over the Internet. Actual users at the peak of popularity were over one million users.

A single player version called Tribes Extreme began development shortly after the release of Starsiege: Tribes, but was abandoned before completion [4].

Tribes 2 added additional vehicles (such as a two-person tank and a three-person bomber with a belly turret), weapons, and items. A few details of game play were changed; for instance, the original game made a player choose his load out while he was at a supply station (sometimes resulting in long lines to use the station), while the sequel required the player to choose his load out before he used the station. Tribes 2 also included many features to help its community of players: it included user profiles, interactive chat areas, and message boards. The initial release of Tribes 2 was plagued by bugs and slow performance; several patches were released over the following year (first by Sierra, later by GarageGames) to address these issues. The message boards were eventually removed by a patch when they came to require too much effort to maintain against objectionable content. Tribes 2 sold a total of 400,000 copies. [5]

A Mac port of Tribes 2 was almost completed, but scrapped before release.

The graphic engine used in Tribes 2 was named the Torque Game Engine and is available for licensing through GarageGames for fees starting at US$100.

Tribes Aerial Assault was a PlayStation 2 version of Tribes 2. Developed by Inevitable Entertainment and published by Sierra, it offered simplified but significantly faster game play (fewer maps and vehicles, and a subset of the original's voice commands) and network support for up to sixteen players at a time.

A PC packaging of Tribes Aerial Assault named Tribes: Fast Attack was designed but not released.

A PC & Console RTS named Tribes: Commander was designed but never given a green light for full development. It used the idea of the commander position from Starsiege: Tribes game and merged tradition Tribes game play , RTS game play, and ideas from console sports games to create a squad level RTS with very fast action. The player acted as the squad commander, giving high level orders to troops which used strong AI to implement those commands.

Tribes: Vengeance was a prequel to the other games. In addition to multiplayer support, it featured a full single-player game with a storyline. It was developed by Irrational Games using a heavily modified Unreal engine to bring the game's appearance up to par with other modern first-person shooters. This new Tribes largely de-emphasized the focus on massive maps and slower game play that was typical of Tribes 2 in favor of the faster action of the original Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes Aerial Assault. Battles were faster paced, and teamwork and vehicles were less necessary. Tribes: Vengeance was released with almost no marketing support in autumn 2004 shortly after the release of Doom 3 and Far Cry and just before the releases of Half-life 2 and Halo 2. Sales were predictably poor: after six months, only 47,000 copies of the game had been sold. In March of 2005, all support for Tribes: Vengeance was dropped, including a planned patch that would have addressed several bugs and added PunkBuster support. The game's weak performance leaves the future of the series in question.

March 2006 has seen gossip rife across the net as GarageGames "leaks" short videos of a tech demo which features "tribes like" game play on their new Torque Shader Engine or TSE. The demo made its debut at the 2006 GDC as "Legions", an obvious allusion to the Tribes series for which the team is famous.

[edit] Modifications

The original Starsiege Tribes was very friendly to modders (end-user modification designers), and as a result had many mods (end-user modifications) made of it. Many were as simple as weapon or armor characteristic changes, while others drastically changed gameplay to suit the style of the designer. ADMIN mod gave greater capability to the host of the game's server, while mods like Shifter and Annihilation altered armor, projectile, and weapon characteristics. RPG Mod converted the game into a role playing game, so well retooled it was almost unrecognizable as having been from Tribes. Mods such as Biowasteland introduced entire new facets of team and strategic play with its innovations such as satellite uplinks, chat interceptors and encryptors, portable holes, and traps.

[edit] Tribes Community Competition

There were a few organizations which sponsored organized competition, usually in the form of a Ladder. The competition started immediately after the release of the game and continues today.

The Online Gaming League (OGL)
This was the first ladder sponsoring a pure Tribes CTF ladder. The ladder had many iterations of Tribes gameplay, including the CTF ladder, the popular Arena ladder, and ladders for other game modes. Initially just a competition ladder, it also was the genesis of the Tribes community forum. In late 1999, OGL programmer and forum administrator Razorback angered many forum participants with excessive editing and a language filter. This move spawned the mass exodus from this forum to the TribalWar forum.
TeamPlay.Net
Teamplay was the "other" ladder for Tribes gameplay. Using an interesting point-value ranking based on the number of "planets" currently in that team's possession, the ladder mixed game modes (CTF, Defend and Destroy, etc.) for an exciting, but ultimately unsuccessul, mode of play.
TribesOne Community (TROC)
TribesOne.com - They pioneered the Tribes draft ladder and now host cash prize ladders. Popular home of Tribes Renegades gameplay, also known as the renladder.
Tribes World League (TWL)
This alternate ladder for Tribes play evolved as OGL interest died down. Now called TeamWarfare League, TWL was the home of popular Tribes 1 and Tribes 2 competition through the life of the game.
The Asylum Tribes Vengeance League (ATVL)
This was formed mostly by members of the European Tribes Vengeance community, after frustrations with other leagues and general lack of any organised games.

[edit] Tribes-Based LAN Parties

Many LAN parties involving the Tribes community took place while Starsiege: Tribes was popular. These were all user-created and company-sponsored events.

TribesCon
TribesCon was a west-coast based LAN party for Tribes fans which was well attended by Tribes people. It got started in 1999 and ran through four iterations until 2003, its final year. Attendance peaked in 2002 at about 250 people.
TribesCamp
Organized and sponsored by a particularly disliked member of the Tribes community, this one-year event took place in St. Louis and was poorly attended.
TribesGala 2000
Marketed as a LAN party, and manifesting as a press circus, this one-time LAN party was popularized by the presence of many community personalities and the attendance of the Tribes 2 development team. One notable event was an individual disconnecting and running off with one of the demo systems for the then-unfinished Tribes 2 game. The system was recovered and the thief caught.
UVALAN
Indisputably the most successful of the Tribes LAN parties, this is the primary gathering for the Tribes community. Beginning in February 2000, hosted by Tom Szabo "Cheater" and brother, Mark Szabo "old_skul", this event was held annually in Chantilly, Virginia, every summer. The event started at the Doubletree hotel in Charlottesville - the site of the first two events in 2000 - but due to rapid growth in attendance, moved to the more centrally located and larger venue of the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly. The series of events came to a close in August 2006 with UVALAN 8.
Tribal Wars
During the marketing push for the Tribes:Vengeance game, the UVALAN organizers put aside the UVALAN name for one year and held Tribal Wars 2004. The event replaced both UVALAN and TribesCon, the two largest LAN parties for Tribes players and Tribalwar denizens, and was attended by over 500 people split between an East Coast (Chantilly, VA) location and a West Coast (Los Angeles, CA) location. The event was a "who's-who" of both the competitive Tribes community and the Tribalwar forum.

[edit] External links

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Earthsiege and Tribes video games
Earthsiege series
Metaltech: Earthsiege · Metaltech: Battledrome · Earthsiege 2 · Starsiege
Tribes series
CyberStorm series
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