Team Rabbit 2 Continued

Maps maps maps

TR2 enjoys a number of custom maps, the original seven in the patch with a few more available by independent authors. These maps are decent, half of them are quite fun, the other half are either too large or too hostile to the player-base to be enjoyed by most pub players. Visibility on all these maps is through the roof, offering somewhere around 700 or more meters of long distance range.

This high visibility creates some problems for weaker machines however. Unlike some other games, the fog in Tribes 2 actually serves to improve FPS. For a low-end machine, Team Rabbit 2 might keep them at a crippled FPS, though on our 1.4 Gigahertz, GeForce 3 machine, it was entirely playable.

If the guy that was there hadn't moved I would have totally worked him.

Incoming baddie on the flag

Dropping a little spam

Physical

Codality experimented with a number of different gameplay variables to get the physics model they wanted for Team Rabbit 2. In fact, the size of models was doubled, and all landscape was thereby doubled, in order to get a more appropriate physics model.

Players have to get used to the changes to the physics engine in TR2 to properly do the high-flying aerial shenanigans. With the release of Classic and TR2, there’s nearly a half dozen major physics models to learn. We’re not talking entirely different games as these aren’t total conversions, but the subtleties and intricacies add up.

Pretty!

The flag goes for a swim

Note the disk right behind him?

This detail has partially fractured the player base of T2. There are so many mods, with so many followings all playing a comparable game, it seems any coder with a knowledge of derivative C languages has tried his hand at making a balanced mod for Tribes 2, and all it’s really done is reduce the overall competition on most servers.

Team Rabbit 2 for example enjoys a good 200 people playing it at one time at most, usually this number is far lower. Far too many people are not interested in learning yet another physics model to get into it. The same is true of most of these mods, with a good several hundred players all latching onto their Tribes tweak of choice.

This serves to not only make the games less competitive but it will also limit your server choices to one or two North American/Australian/European servers with people on it. Fortunately Team Rabbit 2 is entirely playable with only a few people per team, as we mentioned earlier, but it still lacks server choices if you wish to play another map or don’t like your team.

The results

I blow myself up constantly.

Lock on the tank

Team-play

Unlike Classic, where a single player can do quite a bit of damage on his own, Team Rabbit 2 is entirely team-based. If you are lightyears above your pubbing teammates, you’re going to feel it. Without at least a slightly skilled partner, even the most amazing player will either find it impossible or very difficult to shine. The reliance on passing, and teammates who can get themselves in the air to catch passes will limit even the finest player and his passing/receiving game.

Good players can still find themselves in the air intercepting opponent’s passes, but forget about setting up a one timer shot or a long series of passes amongst teammates if they lack the awareness you may have.

When TR2 is played with even just one talented teammate, it truly begins to shine. There are very few experiences comparable to lobbing a 700 meter pass to be caught by a reversed teammate. One of the design principals behind TR2 was achieving the fast pace and adrenaline of organized sports, and under ideal conditions they achieve it in spades. The game never stops and never slows down until the map timer runs out. Even when a player forces himself to respawn, he is back in action in literally seconds.

On top of some of the adrenaline inducing aspects of TR2, it’s also one of the first FPSes of its type, where grace, dynamism and intelligence are rewarded more than brutality. Most FPSes seem to center around blowing something or someone up, in TR2 if you just duel your opponents, you are doing your team a profound disservice. Learning when to get in the air, when to crash to the ground, when to race downfield or cluster the goal is as important in TR2 as shooting your disk-launcher accurately.