Once your tribe comes out on top it's time to move on to the Civilization phase of development, which I am sure we'll be hearing more about in the coming weeks. For now, check out these screens of tribes doing their thing.

The seven titles we owe it to: Doom, Quake, Tribes, Battlezone, Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike and Battlefield.

If nothing else, at least the past two or three years of FPSes, multi- and single-player, have combined to give us standardized controls, which makes picking up a new title infinitely easier to play — especially when it comes to free looking. It's now pretty much left stick = movement, right stick = head, with no fruity switching of camera angles or other unnecessary twists. Also, Y or triangle is use, B or circle is jump, etc. If you think that's a minor gamer assist, ask yourself the last time you used two different copiers or fax machines with the same set of commands.

Ed also argues that single-player FPSes are constantly delivering great new titles, but multiplayers have been "the same old for quite a few years now." I just can't see it that way. Maybe structurally they are the same, but characters, missions, game story, that's what gets me into an FPS now. True, a new gameplay innovation that's widely adopted will beat the best written game for sales, but I ask you, what else could a multiplayer FPS be doing right now?

How 7 Games Created the Modern Team Multiplayer FPS

[blog.instantaction.com]

This brief snippet of GarageGames' Fallen Empires: Legions really looks like Tribes to me, but of course I just have a passing interest in the game. I'm not obsessed like lots of fans are. Tim Aste, the game's project manager, told us that they definitely were taking the best of Tribes and trying to turn it into their own game:

"The approach we took when deciding what we would focus on when making this game was to attempt to find the core element that we all enjoyed about Tribes... after a bunch of discussion in which we attempted to break down 'what made Tribes so much fun'... we hit upon the core element of 'Freedom of Movement'.

Freedom of movement is what it is all about. Instead of trying to recapture the same game play, we wanted something that captured the same feel."

The video shows some of the experiments that the team has been doing to try and fine tune the player's experience. Aste said the game will allow players to move on the ground and in the air and that both need to feel intuitive for it to work.

"We think we have succeeded. When you move around in Legions, it provides you with a feeling of power.. you can go anywhere, and you can do it rather quickly.. once you 'get' how to move, you can eye a point on the map that is far off in the distance, and you can just 'get there'.. quickly. You need to learn how to do it, but learning how to do it is pretty intuitive. It is really empowering, as you quickly learn what you need to do to move fast, and then you start the long road of mastering it.. the uphill climb to mastering the movement model does not seem to peak, and we are still getting better at it."

They also looked at how to tweak the difficulty of taking down a small, moving target like the other players, something that was "way too hard" initially. Their answer was to add contrails which did several things:

It increased the size of the visual 'area' a target took up on screen, so you can see the opposition better.

It indicated, in an intuitive fashion, the speed at which an opponent is moving.. allowing for a player to make predictive assessments of what is going to happen next and quickly sort out threats.

It made it easier to lead and get a bead on opponents.

Of course, Aste adds, it also just looks neat.

"It is gratifying just to see all these little trails all over the place.. "

The video is really just about polishing up the core mechanic of movement and tracking, not a glimpse at the final product, but Aste promises that they're not really planning on burying the core mechanic under a ton of unnecessary dressing.

"We are taking that core and really pushing it to what we feel is the utmost expression of the play.

"When our studio manager gave us the project, he pretty much gave us the directive to not worry about bulking it up, but to explore deeply the core.. what makes this type of game.. high speed with large terrains.. fun.. and we took this loose directive to an almost insane level. We deeply explored the core mechanic of moving and shooting, and we think we came up with something that is very cool."

Instant Action's site should have more details on the upcoming game in the near future and they'll be showing stuff off at their GDC booth next month.

Instant Action

Shack News is reporting that they've discovered videos showing off GarageGames' unannounced Tribes-esque shooter for InstantAction.

The videos depict early alpha work on the game and were meant for internal use only, a source close to GarageGames told Shack News. Shack News edited the audio-free clips into a single video which you can check out on their site. The site also broke out a bunch of screens from the footage. It looks interesting, though not nearly as interesting as what we saw more than a year ago.

Tribes-like GarageGames Web Title Revealed by Alpha Video Leak [Shack News]

Joel is an inconsolable mess right now. He only had the energy to IM me about Sierra's announcement today before curling back up into a fetus position.

Starting August 16, Sierra Entertainment will be pulling the plug on mulitplayer support for 20 of the developer's older games. The list... yes, Starsiege: Tribes is on the list:

3-D Ultra Cool Pool
ARC (Attack Retrieve Capture)
Lords of Magic™
NASCAR® Legends
NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season
NASCAR® Racing 2003 Season
NASCAR® Racing 3
NASCAR® Racing 3 demo
NASCAR® Racing 3 Trucks
NASCAR® Racing 4
Professional Bull Rider 2
PGA Championship Golf 2000™
Starsiege: Tribes
SWAT® 3 demo
Throne of Darkness™
Field & Stream Trophy Bass 4
Field & Stream Trophy Bass 5
Field & Stream Trophy Hunting 4
Field & Stream Trophy Hunting 5
You Don't Know Jack®: 5th Dementia

Notice of Multiplayer Fuctionality Termination for 20 Sierra Entertainment Heritage Titles [Sierra]

"Scott is exactly the caliber of team member we're looking for at Red 5," said Mark Kern, president and CEO of Red 5 Studios. "We founded this company on passion and vision, two qualities that Scott has embodied throughout his career as a top-tier game designer. Scott's vision directly complements ours, and we're excited about having him join our growing team."

Scott Youngblood Joins The Red 5 Studios' Tribe

Designer of StarSiege: Tribes and Tribes 2 Accepts Undisclosed Position at Growing MMO Development Studio

ALISO VIEJO, CA - APRIL 10, 2007 - Red 5 Studios, a growing MMO development company founded by key members of the World of Warcraft team, announced today that Scott Youngblood, acclaimed lead designer of StarSiege: Tribes, Tribes 2, and alternate-reality game Majestic, has accepted an undisclosed position at the Aliso Viejo, California studio.

Before joining Red 5, Scott worked at Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) where he was the lead multiplayer designer on Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. Scott joins other well-known designers at Red 5 including Ed Stark, creative director for Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 and 3.5, and David Williams, lead designer of the hit collectible card games (CCG) Legend of the Five Rings, Doomtown, and City of Heroes CCG.

"Scott is exactly the caliber of team member we're looking for at Red 5," said Mark Kern, president and CEO of Red 5 Studios. "We founded this company on passion and vision, two qualities that Scott has embodied throughout his career as a top-tier game designer. Scott's vision directly complements ours, and we're excited about having him join our growing team."

"When Mark asked me to join Red 5, I was blown away by the vast and vibrant world they're creating and by the company they're building," said Youngblood. "It's a combination I couldn't refuse."

More information about the organization, including a company overview and a list of available positions, is available on the Red 5 website: www.red5studios.com.

We had a chance to talk to Garage Games' Tim Aste about Legions, the Tribesesque game they're using as a technology demo for Torque engine. We didn't beat much around the bush—we wanted to know about a Garage Games-designed Tribes title.

Aste said that Garage Games had actually been approached by Vivendi (current Tribes license holders) about doing a new Tribes game, but for some reason GG had to turn Vivendi down. Aste also said that Garage Games would make an announcement regarding a new game in the next month, provided they were going to make a game at all.

In the meantime, Garage Games intends to release the Legions work to the community, making it possible to build a Tribesesque game on the shoulders of those who made the first two Tribes titles.

Our impressions of the Legions game demo after the jump.

So, in short, it's freaking Tribes. Garage Games has no illusions about what they've created. Aste told us the demo was tossed together in just about four weeks before the show, mostly as an example to show developers the power of their engine.

But if you clicked that right mouse button, your jetpack activated; if you held down the space bar, you skied down hills. It felt more like Tribes 2 than Starsiege: Tribes, although we were getting some pretty decent speed down the hills (perhaps that's just because Tribes is in our fingers' blood).

It didn't feel totally ready for play. The triple grenade launcher felt strangely hard to control and it was too easy to crater (although the damage was light). But we're told network code is working. It wouldn't be a gargantuan amount of work to turn this into a multiplayer, community-developed Tribes sequel, even if Garage Games doesn't end up releasing a commercial successor of their own.

This is looking more and more official isn't it? As soon as Oregon sees the light of day, we'll get an official statement from Garage Games.

Watch the video: There's no mistaking that for anything other than a Tribes-inspired game, complete with Tribes' hallmark spinfuser. While Garage Games doesn't hold the Starsiege license from which the Tribes series draws its backstory (Vivendi still holds that, we believe), the core gameplay of Tribes could certainly be emulated in a new 'spiritual' successor, not unlike what Ken Levine's Irrational Games is doing with its upcoming System Shock-alike, Bioshock.

Update: This could be an official Tribes Universe game after all. Why (and the rest of our original post) after the jump.

Update 2: Yet another video has been discovered by Tribalwar. We've got a copy after the jump.

To describe us as rabid Tribes fans would be understatement. While the last title Tribes: Vengeance (coincidentally, produced by Irrational) was well-intentioned, it ultimately fell flat due to an ill-timed launch and a negligence to incorporate the broader strategic gameplay that was as much as part of the Tribes magic as the free-flowing movement of jetpacks and skiing—the same strategic gameplay that made the Battlefield games so gratifying as team-based shooters. Indeed, the Battlefield team has often given a nod to Tribes as a source of inspiration for their extremely successful gameplay model, going so far as to add a jetpack in one of the 1942 expansions.

A new Tribes game with the same attention to teamplay as Battlefield 2 would be the true sequel the series' fans deserve.

We'll be at GDC, so expect us to be all over this one, but in the meantime, we'll see what else we can dig up.

News: Garage Games - what exactly are they working on? [TribalWar]

Update: This post by 'ajaxprotection' says "MarkF is in France this week." Surely he means Mark Frohnmayer, President of Garage Games, who just happens to have also been lead programmer of Tribes and Tribes 2.

France happens to be the home of Vivendi Universal, holders of the Tribes license. Could Frohnmayer be working out the details of the next Tribes game even now?

We've also gathered that Garage Games' Marble Blast Ultra 2 Xbox 360 download game is selling very well, perhaps giving them enough fiduciary leeway to start development on a new, triple-A title like Tribes.

Update 2: We talked to Garage Games' Jay Moore, who told us, in essence, that they have no current plans to work on an update to Tribes and that the video and images are related to Torque engine upgrades (with 100 kilometer view distances, no less) and not a retail title. Our impressions are that a Tribes sequel is possible, but probably only in the initial discussion stages, if at all.

Nevertheless, we hope against hope. We'll find out more when Kotaku visits with Garage Games at the GDC.

Update 3: Another video!