Mechanized Assault & eXploration Reloaded

I stumbled upon this site a few days ago, and I must say: good job! I've been waiting for a M.A.X. remake for some years now. Here are my comments/questions on the game:

- Why not use M.A.X. 2 maps and user interface? It seems to me the 3d maps were more interesting. Also, M.A.X. 2 had an easier interface for building. Other features I miss from that game are rally points for factories, and alien animals. Otherwise, M.A.X. 1 is clearly the better game.
(The music from M.A.X. 2 was pretty good, though.)

- Please stick to original M.A.X. 1 gameplay (a better interface is fine), and put additional things as options: I was not too happy to see the "Alien units factory" and the "Deep Mine", even though their graphics were well done. I mean, they may be good idea, but I think most players would prefer have original gameplay as the base, and then a list of options: * Allow alien factory, * Allow Deep Mine, and so on.
Will you put back random placement of Alien units on the map?

- An interesting option to add would be to win by destroying all enemy mining stations (instead of points, or destroying all buildings). Did anybody like the way you win in M.A.X. ? I always thought the whole point-gathering thing was not very fun, the only weak point of the game actually, because it would reward the player who concentrates completely on defense and base-building (also known as porcing).

- Given that the game is so old and Interplay is defunct, I really think you should distribute the original game data, at least while a free package is not available. The game TA Spring (spring.clan-sy.com) does it for Total Annihilation, and they get away with it.

The best would probably to have the game automatically download the needed files to the user directory after install: this way, you can package it for linux distros because the install package itself contains only free software.
Eventually, you can give people the choice to use Free art or the original data: if you get challenged, just remove the original data from your site, and the game lives on with the Free data.

- Why are you not yet on the Linux Game Tome (http://www.happypenguin.org) ? Your project clearly deserves more advertising.

- I found a french M.A.X. remake called U.M.A.X.. It's incomplete and has some very basic form of AI. Development has stopped a few years ago. However, since it's also GPL (cross-platform, written in SDL/OpenGL) some code sharing would be possible; another interesting thing is that it uses it's own graphics for the map, buildings and vehicles, so that could be a base for a free graphics packages, until someone comes up with art that matches more the original style.

Thank you very much gabba and welcome to the bbs. Your feedback means a lot to us

I was until now against advertising since the source still sucks and TCP/IP doesn't work yet (we make great progess on this however and hope to release a new version having basic skirmish avaible). You're free to spread the word of course. But we'd need testers and hackers to help out, not players who would abaddon us frustrated soon since M.A.X.R. is not in a playable stat right now.

Quote:

- I found a french M.A.X. remake called U.M.A.X.. It's incomplete and has some very basic form of AI. Development has stopped a few years ago. However, since it's also GPL (cross-platform, written in SDL/OpenGL) some code sharing would be possible; another interesting thing is that it uses it's own graphics for the map, buildings and vehicles, so that could be a base for a free graphics packages, until someone comes up with art that matches more the original style.

Hey, I did not know about that. Probably because it's just on french. They are GPL and have alternate graphics? Now that are good news. Really good news. I'll dig into this project later. Perhaps we can use their graphics as alternate set bringing MAXR forward. Also their netcode could be interesting.
Please stick around

I do intend to stick around, and possibly hack into the code! Hopefully language won't be too much of a barrier.