With the upcoming release of Red orchestra : Heroes of Stalingrad, I was thinking about the time I first got to see the original mod, the high points, the low points and my thoughts on the future (for what they are worth). Please remember these are my thoughts and memories. Some of the facts may be wrong so I am all too happy to be corrected.
Roll back to 2000 and I am playing Jailbreak, a mod for the original Unreal Tournament, with friends. This is what started me interested in mods and I mention this as without knowing about modding in general, Red Orchestra could so easily have passed me by......
The first mod I ever played was for Quake I called "Killer Quake" which was basically the same as Quake MP, but piles of different weapons to choose from.
Then I moved into Half-Life and played piles of mods for that.... it was like buying one game and getting a dozen others.
Then after HL, I moved into UT2k4 after playing the free demo, and I was hooked. I loved the vehicles and Onslaught game mode..... and then the Unreal Contest came about and I heard a lot of hype about Red Orchestra: Combined Arms.... so I downloaded it and was hooked.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tQ0pxVALlc&feature=related" target="_blank">
Red Orchestra - Ingame Koitos ( 3.3 ) - YouTube
^ Gameplay I found last night on the map Koitos 1944..... seems to have been recorded near the end of ROCA's prime, as there was only a couple of people playing..... I still remember full servers loaded with people and constant battling.... and I loved taking the radio house cap area, going prone on the bed on the bottom floor and having my MG setup on the doorway mowing down the enemy as they came along. Then they'd try and nade spam me, but due to the bed blocking much of the grenades, I'd barely get a scratch and then they'd rush in and get mowed down, followed by players complaining that I was hacking.
I wasn't hacking, I was just prone on a bed..... don't blame me for the map design
I probably played ROCA just about every single day right up until Ostfront came along and turned the mod into a ghost town.
It took me a while to get Ostfront because I didn't have a credit card and was dumb in not figuring out how to get my paypal to pay for it, until I realized Paypal didn't just take the money out of my account, I had to put it into Paypal and then pay on Steam..... duh.
But by that time, I missed the prime of RO1 and only pop on from time to time now.
There was just so much to ROCA, it was revolutionary at the time, where most other FPS's still relied on crosshairs or iron sights made out of 2D textures on the screen...... not the actual sights on the weapon in your hand..... vehicles didn't have health bars, you had to hit them in the right spot at the right time to get a one shot kill or simply have the rounds deflect off the sloped armour.... I was a master of angling my tank and most times the only way to take me out was if I was flanked by another tank or arty was dropped on me.
It was simply amazing.... in other games you'd have to hit another tank 3-4 times anywhere before they blew up..... so if they hit you first, you already knew you weren't going to survive unless they missed a shot..... with RO, you'd take some damage and say "Ok, not quite the right angle" rotate your body a bit more and then you were safe, while they just pointed straight at you without an angle, one shot, boom.
And the IS2 was fun as hell.... on Barashka I had so many people complain I was hacking when they couldn't do anything to my tank due to angling and I'd hold a cap zone all by myself.... and while they raged, the rest of my team were grateful I knew what I was doing so they could focus on other objectives.
And then there was Karlovka......
Good times.
I do remember Air Buc's.... but never got into it and only played it for a very short time before I went back to RO