Original War - The True Story [DOCUMENTARY]

[ International News ]

Moderator: Newswriters

Post Reply
User avatar
zoNE
The Great Uniter & Site Administrator
The Great Uniter & Site Administrator
Posts: 2059
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2006 3:44 pm
Location: Poland
Contact:

Original War - The True Story [DOCUMENTARY]

Post by zoNE »

"After the Cold War had ended, Russia completely lost its weight on the international arena. Its chance to regain lost influence and power is a newly discovered mineral - Siberite. Its deposites are located only on frostbound areas of Siberia. This newly discovered element can be used as very cheap and extremely efficient source of energy.

The United States start to act. They use an experimental device to send commandos into distant past. A special forces unit is sent on a one-way trip with a mission to transport the Siberite to the territory of current Alaska..."

Quoted passage does not refer to a new book of Wolfgang Jeschke, who died in 2015, but introduces us to the world of real-time strategy game Original War, published on June 15, 2001. On the 2000 edition of E3 Expo, newest creation of Altar Interactive (later called Altar Games and previously known only from one title) is presented to the public.



English subtitled version.
Article: The game's release history [DOCUMENTARY]
Last edited by zoNE on Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:44 pm, edited 5 times in total.
User avatar
stucuk
OWSupport.com Owner
Posts: 438
Joined: Tue Apr 18, 2006 12:10 am
Location: UK, Scotland

Re: Original War - The True Story [DOCUMENTARY]

Post by stucuk »

You should have interviewed people if you wanted it to be as accurate as possible.

The match with Altar employees was arranged by me for example(Unfortunately future matches couldn't be arranged).
Hi,

I was wondering how possible it would be to one day in the future have Altar Employees playing OW against community members?

- Stu
Hi.

Yes, it would be possible. 3 or 4 mates from Altar could play against community members some evening, better after half of the May.
For more and arranging date contact Rumun


Izmi
Lukas Vesely
ALTAR games
OWS was actually online before OWN (December 2005, forum on Jan 5th 2006).

"Combination of 3D graphics and 3D simulated in 2D"
Original War is a 2D renderer which uses 3D sprites. Basically the height of each pixel is saved as well as its colour, which allows the 2D engine to order the pixels of units/buildings so that whichever has the highest height is the one whos colour is used It also is how units which go in rivers only have part of their legs covered by the water as the engine only covers pixels with a height below a certain value.

In 2005 i asked if i could get the source code to Original War's Editor, not the game. I But as Martin (CEO of Altar Interactive) stated, the engine is basicaly the game as both share the same source code. They agreed that i could maintain the game for them if i informed them of all changes, didn't get any money for work i did and never released the source code.

While you state that OWS is an unofficial support site, its been the official place to get support since its launch. Given that i have been maintaining the game and know far more about OW's engine than anyone else on the planet, who is going to give you better support? Altar at the time had already forgotten alot about OW, they couldn't give you support other than the basic "Turn the pc off and on again". OWN has only ever been able to give that kind of standard responce too, when someone posts about an Access Violation OWN can't do anything, only i can. So to label OWS as unofficial as if its just some random fansite is a bit stupid.

Original War was never tied to Gamespy Arcade. Original War had the ability to join a match via IP or to join a LAN game (It had a list of them in the multiplayer lobby). GameSpy Arcade just ran OW with certain parameters which either told the game to host a game or to join the IP of the host. There was also Hamachi which did the same. Both just got all players into an Original War game room (It didn't launch the game).

With the 1.09 patch(which was released no later than October 2007), i created a web based (as in PHP/Mysql) master server(Companies would make EXE's to have on a server, but going the web approach meant it didn't cost me anything as i already was paying for hosting) which meant that when a person hosted a game, the information would be sent to the master server, allowing anyone in the multiplayer lobby to see the game just like how they could see lan games. I can't remember if the Lobby had an IRC chat area with 1.09 or not. This however did not interfear with Gamespy or Hamachi. People were free to use both.

It did cause GameSpy Arcade's Original War room to become empty as people switched to just going into the game's lobby rather than running GameSpy. My recollection was that Gamespy Arcade was still doing fine when 1.09 was released. Games companies were turning more to implementing their own system for multiplayer games, or just using Steamworks, but the Gamespy Arcade client platform (rather than their Master Server side) seemed to still have alot of users. Interestingly Altar seemed to have at one stage looked into using Gamespy's Master Server's(source code doesn't seem complete) but instead choose just to have a room on the GameSpy Arcade client (Im guessing due to how much it would have cost).

Code: Select all

if RegisterToMaster then begin
    ResolveIP('www.altarinteractive.com', Addr, 27965);
//    ResolveIP('master.gamespy.com', Addr2, 27900);
  end;
I think it was sometime in 2014 that the OWS Master Server was turned back on and OW modified to use both OWS and OWN's master server. This was done for two reasons. The first is that OWN's master server was strict, if it didn't know of the OW version it would block it, meaning that if i released a patch and OWN never modified the master server, no one could do multiplayer. The 2nd reason is that the domain name of OWN has expired on multiple occasions meaning that no one can do multiplayer during those periods.

1.07.2 is when clanbase (Ranked Multiplayer Games) were added. It was a joint venture between me and Yuri. Me implementing everything needed to the game, and Yuri building the website side. Clanbase has been offline for a few years now (Last match in 2015).

When it came to marketing of Original War in the UK, i only saw it on a single Magazine's CD (I think it was PC Zone). Their was no marketing at all in the UK and the Box art was horrible(Why they didn't use the Czech cover that Altar made i don't know). 9 out of 10 people who play Original War seem to love the game, but 9.9 out of 10 people have never heard of Original War before. If OW had the marketing there would have been more in the series. It may have never gotten a fanbase the size of CNC, but it would have sold enough to have a sequel or two.

There is an interesting story about how i found out about Original War. I was at my hairdresser (barber) one day and randomly he handed me a bag with cd's from pc magazines which a client had randomly given him. One of the cd's had the Original War demo. A while later i spotted it in a shop and bought it. Without playing that demo i may have never have bought Original War, there would be no patches, modding would have never been viable (Other than 1 mod, i don't think there was ever any others which used altars original tools which overwrote your games OWP files).
- Stu
OWSupport
User avatar
Gelwe
Soldier level 7
Soldier level 7
Posts: 696
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 2:06 pm

Re: Original War - The True Story [DOCUMENTARY]

Post by Gelwe »

stucuk wrote: Wed Jul 12, 2017 3:23 pm I was wondering how possible it would be to one day in the future have Altar Employees playing OW against community
There is an interesting story about how i found out about Original War. I was at my hairdresser (barber) one day and randomly he handed me a bag with cd's from pc magazines which a client had randomly given him. One of the cd's had the Original War demo. A while later i spotted it in a shop and bought it. Without playing that demo i may have never have bought Original War, there would be no patches, modding would have never been viable (Other than 1 mod, i don't think there was ever any others which used altars original tools which overwrote your games OWP files).
Long live the barber :ruhello:
It is a great story. I look forward to hearing this (and much more) in the future episodes of OW Documentary.
Creative wrote:Image
Chodziło mi o to że sam przerabiam zrobione mapy. (budynki, ludki itd)
A co do saila to przecież sam muszę wklejać
.
Creative wrote: Jak chcesz mogę ci pomóc. Jestem doświadczonym modderem, zrobiłem 2 mody i 3 w drodze ;) Kontakt PW.
User avatar
Szymiew
Soldier level 7
Soldier level 7
Poland
Posts: 713
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:11 am
Location: Królestwo Polskie
Contact:

Re: Original War - The True Story [DOCUMENTARY]

Post by Szymiew »

"Last time on OW Stories:
Zone is accussed of distorting the history of Original War!
Stucuk's unbelievable past is revealed!
Blackmen returns to lead the original-war.net as High Administator!

In this dark hour Serpent the Modder rides to Minas Praga to seek the council of Rumun. What will he find there?..

And now, the conclusion..."
Last edited by Szymiew on Wed Jul 12, 2017 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
https://www.youtube.com/kvantovy --- mój kanał youtube.
https://www.facebook.com/Kvantovy --- strona u cukierberga.
Image
Post Reply