Posted January 11, 2012
Just a question any possibility of Heavy Gear 1 or 2 coming available?
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Antanaros
New User
Registered: Jan 2012
From United States
Sogi-Ya
<- OLD.
Registered: Jul 2009
From United States
Posted January 11, 2012
MobiusArcher
Bad at games
Registered: Dec 2008
From United States
Posted January 11, 2012
They were both really good games. I think licencing would have to be worked out all over again. Like Mechwarrior, Heavy Gear is based off of a table top strategy game.
http://dp9.com/
http://dp9.com/
Sogi-Ya
<- OLD.
Registered: Jul 2009
From United States
Posted January 11, 2012
I decided to get proactive while waiting for Precursors to finish re-downloading and wrote this to the marketing director for Dream Pod 9:
you probably get asked this somewhat often, and for that I apologize if you see this as a nuisance, but it keeps coming up without any kind of answer ...
what kind of walk through hell would it take to get the Heavy Gear video games onto Good Old Games?
if your not familiar Good Old Games (GOG for short) is a digital distribution service for older games. originally conceived to combat piracy of out of print video games, it specializes in DRM releases of games older than (something like) three years and at really reasonable price points ($5.99 & $9.99 at the moment, but they plan on adding more so as to appease publishers that have yet to sign on with them). the combination of being DRM free, with titles that hold little modern market value but much sentimental value, and at prices that are exceptional makes for a combination that has earned them a rather sizable cult following.
(if, in the really off chance, you are not familiar with GOG; here is their website: http://www.gog.com/)
I'm writing to you because these are highly requested titles (Heavy gear 1 & 2), by a publisher that has already signed on with GOG (Activision) ... so many fans of these games are kind of puzzled by why the games are not yet on GOG.
I personally don't think that the hold up is on Dream Pod's side, but Activision is not exactly the easiest entity to get an answer from on something like this ...
is it because the game is held up in licensing hell?
is it because the rights to the game were lost by Activision after the merger with Sierra / Blizzard (this happened with the FEAR series, but that loss was on Sierra's side)?
is it because of the DRM free stipulation on all GOG releases?
is it because the IP has fallen in value with you guys and their is a cost issue with it being re-released?
Is it because you actually hate us and want us to suffer in Heavy Gear depravation? *sniff*
All of those scenarios are possibilities that I can think of being plausible reasons for why these games have not been re-released (except for that last one), however I highly doubt that list even scratches the surface of what could go wrong with the License between two entities involved with a set of products over 10 years old (one of which has undergone massive restructuring and technically isn't even the same company as back then).
as I said: I'm sure this isn't a new topic to you, but for us PC gaming fans of Heavy Gear (old enough to remember just how great those games were): not having an answer as to why there hasen't been a re-release is hell.
by the way, I'm not any kind of representative for GOG outside of being a representative of the type of customer they have.
P.S. the people over at GOG are masters at getting outdated products to work on modern operating systems, usually through the use of DosBox, and they work all of their magic in house (not sure if there are any costs involved with porting technologically difficult titles, but I wouldn't think that there would be) so if Activision isn't involved and you guys are concerned with the cost of porting Win 95/98 titles I think that is one fear that can be alleviated ...
you probably get asked this somewhat often, and for that I apologize if you see this as a nuisance, but it keeps coming up without any kind of answer ...
what kind of walk through hell would it take to get the Heavy Gear video games onto Good Old Games?
if your not familiar Good Old Games (GOG for short) is a digital distribution service for older games. originally conceived to combat piracy of out of print video games, it specializes in DRM releases of games older than (something like) three years and at really reasonable price points ($5.99 & $9.99 at the moment, but they plan on adding more so as to appease publishers that have yet to sign on with them). the combination of being DRM free, with titles that hold little modern market value but much sentimental value, and at prices that are exceptional makes for a combination that has earned them a rather sizable cult following.
(if, in the really off chance, you are not familiar with GOG; here is their website: http://www.gog.com/)
I'm writing to you because these are highly requested titles (Heavy gear 1 & 2), by a publisher that has already signed on with GOG (Activision) ... so many fans of these games are kind of puzzled by why the games are not yet on GOG.
I personally don't think that the hold up is on Dream Pod's side, but Activision is not exactly the easiest entity to get an answer from on something like this ...
is it because the game is held up in licensing hell?
is it because the rights to the game were lost by Activision after the merger with Sierra / Blizzard (this happened with the FEAR series, but that loss was on Sierra's side)?
is it because of the DRM free stipulation on all GOG releases?
is it because the IP has fallen in value with you guys and their is a cost issue with it being re-released?
Is it because you actually hate us and want us to suffer in Heavy Gear depravation? *sniff*
All of those scenarios are possibilities that I can think of being plausible reasons for why these games have not been re-released (except for that last one), however I highly doubt that list even scratches the surface of what could go wrong with the License between two entities involved with a set of products over 10 years old (one of which has undergone massive restructuring and technically isn't even the same company as back then).
as I said: I'm sure this isn't a new topic to you, but for us PC gaming fans of Heavy Gear (old enough to remember just how great those games were): not having an answer as to why there hasen't been a re-release is hell.
by the way, I'm not any kind of representative for GOG outside of being a representative of the type of customer they have.
P.S. the people over at GOG are masters at getting outdated products to work on modern operating systems, usually through the use of DosBox, and they work all of their magic in house (not sure if there are any costs involved with porting technologically difficult titles, but I wouldn't think that there would be) so if Activision isn't involved and you guys are concerned with the cost of porting Win 95/98 titles I think that is one fear that can be alleviated ...
Post edited January 11, 2012 by Sogi-Ya
Neobr10
what's a paladin
Registered: Jun 2011
From Brazil
Posted January 11, 2012
Oh yeah, i still have my Heavy Gear 2 disk somewhere. I would cerainly buy it if it was available on GOG, especially the first one, which ive never played.
Sogi-Ya
<- OLD.
Registered: Jul 2009
From United States
Posted January 11, 2012
the story in the SP side was kinda crap, but good training.
the multiplayer mode was bomb! there was this huge hex map with southern control at the bottom and northern at the top and each hex was an instanced zone.
players would declare which faction they were from, and which combat unit within that faction, and then proceed to wage a persistent war over control of the hexes (there were a lot of them).
it was a blast.
the multiplayer mode was bomb! there was this huge hex map with southern control at the bottom and northern at the top and each hex was an instanced zone.
players would declare which faction they were from, and which combat unit within that faction, and then proceed to wage a persistent war over control of the hexes (there were a lot of them).
it was a blast.
DreadMoth
🇦🇺
Registered: Oct 2008
From Australia
Posted January 12, 2012
Heavy Gear 2 is at the top of my GOG wishlist - getting it working properly on a modern GPU seems to be impossible.
Roman5
N'wah
Registered: Oct 2010
From Latvia
Posted January 12, 2012
Doc! COME ON DOC! I NEED MY DAILY DOSE!
Ahhh....much better....
Ahhh....much better....
grviper
Cat Confuser Lv6
Registered: Dec 2010
From Russian Federation
Posted January 12, 2012
HG1 used Mechwarrior 2 engine. You know what else used it? Interstate 76. I can see GOG reviving it alright :) *bitter sarcasm*
DreadMoth
🇦🇺
Registered: Oct 2008
From Australia
Posted January 12, 2012
Seeing this thread made me decide to try installing Heavy Gear 1 again.
Installed the game and both the 1.1 and 1.2 patches, the game shows a black screen or just displays the desktop when you try to start a mission.
Reinstalled, installed the 1.1 patch, the game gets into the missions but the graphics behave oddly (glitchy sky textures in Direct3D mode, extremely blurry textures and missing shadows in 3dfx mode).
Reinstalled again, now it runs, looks and sounds okay (so far), but there seems to be some issue with moving around - whenever I try to move my Gear the view bobs very quickly but my actual movement seems to be quite slow. Looking through the 3rd person camera shows my Gear running extremely fast but moving fairly slowly across the terrain.
This happens regardless of the graphics renderer chosen, but it's far worse in the software mode (insanely fast view bobbing / running animation and my gear doesn't move at all).
I've tried setting processor affinity to a single core, but it doesn't seem to help.
Any ideas?
EDIT: Just to be clear, that movement problem happened with the 1.1 patch installed as well.
Installed the game and both the 1.1 and 1.2 patches, the game shows a black screen or just displays the desktop when you try to start a mission.
Reinstalled, installed the 1.1 patch, the game gets into the missions but the graphics behave oddly (glitchy sky textures in Direct3D mode, extremely blurry textures and missing shadows in 3dfx mode).
Reinstalled again, now it runs, looks and sounds okay (so far), but there seems to be some issue with moving around - whenever I try to move my Gear the view bobs very quickly but my actual movement seems to be quite slow. Looking through the 3rd person camera shows my Gear running extremely fast but moving fairly slowly across the terrain.
This happens regardless of the graphics renderer chosen, but it's far worse in the software mode (insanely fast view bobbing / running animation and my gear doesn't move at all).
I've tried setting processor affinity to a single core, but it doesn't seem to help.
Any ideas?
EDIT: Just to be clear, that movement problem happened with the 1.1 patch installed as well.
Post edited January 12, 2012 by DreadMoth
Sogi-Ya
<- OLD.
Registered: Jul 2009
From United States
Posted January 12, 2012
sounds like problems with your system running faster than the game ever expected a system to run.
not sure if it would help but are you running it in win 95 compatibility mode?
(in wondows XP: right click the .exe -> properties -> click the box under "compatibility mode" that says "Run this program in ....." with a drop down menu under it and then select "windows 95".)
not sure if it would help but are you running it in win 95 compatibility mode?
(in wondows XP: right click the .exe -> properties -> click the box under "compatibility mode" that says "Run this program in ....." with a drop down menu under it and then select "windows 95".)
DreadMoth
🇦🇺
Registered: Oct 2008
From Australia
Posted January 12, 2012
Applying the win95 compatibilty mode to the Splash program / autorun thing helps to prevent it from crashing, but applying win95 or win98 compatibility to the game itself doesn't seem to have any effect (with the 1.1 patch installed I think it actually caused it to crash on start).
Sogi-Ya
<- OLD.
Registered: Jul 2009
From United States
Posted January 12, 2012
k, I'm out of ideas then.
Vagabond
echosector.com
Registered: Sep 2008
From United States
Posted January 12, 2012
I loved Heavy Gear 1!
timppu
Favorite race: Formula__One
Registered: Jun 2011
From Finland
Posted January 18, 2012
Any ideas?
...
EDIT: Just to be clear, that movement problem happened with the 1.1 patch installed as well.
At first I started playing with software rendering, and I apparently noticed the same problem as you, ie. the view bobbing is insanely fast, making it look quite comical. Also it had the same old colour problem as many other old Windows games in Win7.
But as soon I changed to Direct3D renderer, no problem, the movement seemed quite fine but then I don't know what exactly is the correct view bobbing speed in this game. In Direct3D the graphics looked fine otherwise as well, but I can't be fully sure how it is supposed to look, it's been a long time since I saw the game running before. I could try the 3Dfx option too, I have some Glide emulator installed already...
I didn't use any compatibility modes, didn't run as admin, didn't set CPU affinity or cores to any special values (frankly I don't even know how to do that) etc. So from my point of view, seemed to run surprisingly well.
Oh and I didn't even install either 1.1 or 1.2 patches yet either. I did download them from www.patches-scrolls.de and they came with absolutely no descriptions or readme files, so I have no idea what they are supposed to fix, whether I am supposed to install first 1.1 and then 1.2 (why else they are offering both patches?) etc.
With Heavy Gear 2 I've had a bit less luck. Seems to install fine, but running it on this same Win7/64bit PC causes the game to crash upon launch, no matter what compatibility settings or not I use.
With my older desktop PC which has ATI Radeon X800, HG2 seems to run quite fine though, even the graphics are fine without the earlier reported graphics culling problems on modern hardware. I tried to make HG2 work on this T400 as well just to see if I can reproduce the graphics problem on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MN7hESSgas
Well, I'm happy I at least seem to be able to run both games on some PCs, better to play them through while I'm at it...
Post edited January 18, 2012 by timppu