Graphics

From fugly to fly

Tribes was quite possibly the most primitive-looking first person shooter to come out in 1998. Nono, let me take that back - it was the most primitive shooter at the time. It featured - get this - 8 bit colored textures! Polygon counts most likely never exceeded 3000 screen, nevermind a model! Yet, despite all those drawbacks, it actually managed to look 'not bad'.

Great map

Or so I thought, then I found out it's a Siege map :(

The vast, open terrain was handled by heightmaps and had LOD (level of detail) algorithms to improve performance at long distance, and give detail up close. Cool weapons, and special effects like explosions, smoke trails and laser beams helped Tribes look decent, if not quite good. The spinfusor launched a bright, blue disc with a neat light trail behind it, while mortars and grenade launchers left funky smoke trails behind their projectiles. The end result was a game that didn't look that good, but ran great on low-end machines (especially those equipped with a Voodoo card.)

Tribes 2, on the other hand, goes out of its way to impress you with eye candy. Character, building and equipment models are highly detailed. Terrain is still made with heightmaps, but the level of detail bias is reduced, while the number of polygons making up the ground have been increased. What's more, terrain now has distinguishing marks like rock formations or trees to set it apart.

Possibly the worst siege map in existence

All you do is trade mortars and lasers all day

Made with MS Paint

What really sets T2 apart from the original, however, is the texturing. Textures in Tribes 2 are absolutely amazing. Even on about a 80% detail setting (which was used for screenshots), the textures are quite crisp and clear. Turn everything up, put on some anisoptric filtering and you've got one of the best looking shooters out there. The sky and ground, in particular, are fantastic. It's good that Dynamix paid so much attention to these two often neglected world features, as you spend most of your play time looking at them!

Told ya ;(

It's really depressing

To spice up the worlds, they have each been given character that goes beyond the color scheme. Lava planets suffer from meteor-like molten rock that falls out of the sky, while other terrains might have thunderstorms. Lightning and the meteorites can be and often are lethal to any objects they strike.

The addition of water to the game adds not just cosmetic flavor, but a whole new dimension of play. Players are invisible to sensors in water, and hard to see from the surface, but quite vulnerable if caught under there - many weapons, like grenade launchers and mortars - are very capable of striking underwater targets. What's more, water limits mobility in the extreme, making fights short and quick (assuming either player can aim.)

Of course, as a result, the game is nowhere near as performance-friendly as the original. In fact, Tribes 2 gets choppy on my GF2 GTS/Athlon 1G and 256MB of RAM if I turn the texture details all the way up, at a mere 800x600 resolution. Bad karma. It still looks great at lower detail levels, though (pictures were taken with textures at about 80% settings, and no anisoptric filtering.).