WWI Medic
 

It's highly addictive, nevertheless I must admit, that it's crappy. But hey that's what makes it charming! It's from the famous guys, that made Dwarf Fortress!

Give it a try ;)
WWI Medic

http://www.thetrench1916.com/ :D Nice game though.

^^ about time. I always wondered why there's no WWI counterpart to MoH/CoD.

Because sitting in trenches for years on end is kinda boring...as is charging over the trench wall into machine gun fire or artillery. Making WW1 into a fast paced game like CoD or MoH would be hard work, I could see a more stealth focused version similar to how MoH started.

Do you know Battlegrounds 2 for Half Life 2? Not exactly WW1 (not at all), but it's a civil war mod. Lousy guns and linebattles (2 groups facing each other in 2 rows, one kneeing, one standing, waiting for the commander to give the shoot command and if you're out of ammo: charge with a bayonet). Sounds lame, but it's fantastic. I think the gameplay of a WWI shooter could also be intense. You're fighting desperatly for every inch of land and once you get it, you won't be willing to give it away the easy way. I hope, they do it right (looks like they already did a lot right, after watching the trailer)!

I never said a game about it could not be good, just not as fast paced as CoD and MoH are now. The WW1 battles did move fast at times, but for a lot they were slow. And the trench warfare aspect would be a poor game I think. However a well thought out game could be made and it could be good, very very good.

A desperate commando unit, sneaking past enemy lines to plant bombs, mines to snipe at enemy generals. The slower pace would annoy many gamers I think, but I think it could blow my little mind. Off in the distance the artirrely bombardments hiding your movement into the enemy trenches, the sounds of theirs returning fire, the ground thumping and shaking, the desperate speed needed to do the job and return before you are caught. Oh yes it could be a great game...just not a CoD or MoH.

As I said it already on MobyGames forum in similar discussion: WW1 doesn't have to be only about trenches. Sure, most of it was trench warfare, but there were early skirmishes in 1914, the more mobile Eastern Front... and have you heard about the Lost Battalion?

Besides, even with today's graphic cards I still don't see hundreds of soldiers fighting at once in those FPS games? So it's still about small firefights.

Again, it takes somebody with a passion for the subject to think of those interesting episodes, somebody with imagination to turn stale situation into action scenario.

It isn't just the battles, it is also the weapons. Most of the guns at the time were all single action. The machine guns were mounted not mobile, leading to a much slower game style. Can't waste your shots when you only have one. Making WW1 into a CoD or MoH game would fail, that is why I suggested a better format for it one that takes into account the much slower (to people who play the very fast paced CoD/MoH) gameplay and makes it an advantage.

WW1 also has a less clear bad guy, Germany was attacking other countries but they weren't NAZI's this time around. The evil deeds of the NAZI party is well known and it adds to the WW2 games, the bad guys are BAD and you can enjoy killing them without the guilt of remembering they were just people. For a lazy story writer that presents a problem, or to one on a heavy time line to get a games story finished.

Not all of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauchat
There are other examples of BAR-like LMGs ...or even early SMGs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergmann_MP18
And are you trying to say we don't use bolt action rifles in MoH/CoD nearly all the time? Those Mausers 98k, Lee-Enfields, Springfields etc.? Guess what, they were the standard rifles of WW1.

While I agree that WW1 is less "marketable" than WW2, this doesn't mean you can't use it successfully as a background for an entertainment product. Surely all those American Civil War games should completely fail in sales outside US, right...?

Yes, Nazis are used like ...aliens or zombies - "safe" cannon fodder for game developers. A bit boring, don't you agree?

MoH/CoD are all set in modern day now, so no you don't use bolt action rifles at all. And as I remember it back in the day no one stuck with the bolt action rifles, you had a submachine gun thrown at you and you never looked back, or one of the first assault rifles. Those two guns you linked are actually known to me, the small submachine gun is a cool gun...but wasn't made till close it the end of the war in 1918. The other is a LMG, or light machine gun and takes two people to operate. It is also not meant to be fired while moving, if it even can be, the tripod is on the front for a reason. I should have said when I said mobile that I meant mobile firing not just movable. (The French gun also had a curving magazine with open sides, it was known for getting jammed almost nonstop since the dirt just moved on in.)

And yes I find NAZIs rather boring as game cannon fodder, they are good villains for people who can't work out who is bad and who is good. But as the newer CoD/MoH games have shown gamers have grown out of that and we can have bad guys that aren't just evil tropes. I think their storylines are crap but they still get across who is bad and who is good without needing baby eating antics to show it off.

Also I have never seen a FPS American Civil War game, could you throw me a link to one? That would be an interesting thing since their battles were even more static, bar the guerilla warfare.

Your comment about modern MoH/CoD spin-offs doesn't make sense - of course I was talking about first parts of the series set in WW2. Am I that hard to follow?

I recall using a bipod on LMG in one of CoD (WW2) games. Sharpshooting with a bolt-action rifle was the biggest fun for me. It's challenging to aim well in a firefight, as reloading takes time. So it wouldn't be a problem to repeat this in WW1 setting.

My comment about American Civil War was aimed to counter "it's not as cool as WW2" argument (used against WW1), I wasn't thinking about FPS games in ACW. By the way: the only one I found unfortunately mixes in some future time travel themes: http://www.mobygames.com/game/darkest-of-days/

I still don't know why are we still talking about major battles in all those wars - we are not discussing wargames, after all. Aren't we often sent on a special missions in those WW2 FPS games? In small teams or even alone? Scouting out, infiltrating?

These are things I already brought up in my posts, I literally said it would have to be like the original MoH and that it would need to be about stealthy infiltration of enemy lines. And a LMG and a Squad Based MG are different things, a LMG needs two people due to the weight of the weapon and ammo, one carries the ammo and maybe a baseplate and the other the gun. The rate of fire also means that someone has to be feeding ammo into it from a chain otherwise it would shoot a box full of ammo in seconds and be dry. A Squad Based MG is like a M60, it can be fired on the move or be sat down in a stable position for more accurate suppression fire. If they had you carting around LMGs and sitting them down for some suppression fire it could be a great bit of fun once or twice, but mowing down running people would be boring after awhile and using one in stealthy infiltration would be silly.

You brought up Civil War games so I assumed that you meant that they had succeeded in the FPS market, since I didn't know any I asked about them. Do you mean that because a non-FPS game can be popular or good that an FPS must be as well? Or are you just saying that a WW1 game could be of a different genre, that I would agree with as well.

Really I have only been saying that this could make a good game if done right, I am agreeing it would be a cool thing. Everyone of my points is a carefully thought out reason for why it could not be a fast paced FPS but rather why it would need to be a much slower stealth based one. This is a much more niche market and thus is a riskier move for a game company. And that is simply why you have not seen one and will never get one like the current CoD or MoH. Perhaps a smaller company willing to take a big risk could make such a old school MoH game, pushing ideas and concepts to their limit and I would snap that game up fast.

Oh yeah the original MOH was a great game! What I think is going to be cool in Trench 1916 ist the altering Landscape depending on artillery and so on. When I first played Red Faction I thought "Man that Geo Mod Enginge combined with a war game would be the coolest thing ever!" and here we are (well it's another engine though).

I apologize for sounding confusing, this is due to problems with translating military nomenclature, note that ręczny karabin maszynowy links to light machine gun in Wikipedia, some things were also renamed over the years (kontrtorpedowiec/ contre-torpilleur/torpedo boat destroyer is today's destroyer), not sure if squad automatic weapon was already used in the BAR era.

I also agree that WW1 FPS won't be as appealing to the masses as mowing down terrorists, zombies etc., yet when done right it could still gather own fanbase and be financially successful, such as more demanding (ie. for finer taste) tactical shooters.

The problem is you can make a wargame or adventure in a small company, FPS requires decent audiovisuals, thus bigger dev team and bigger budgets... that's why we keep seeing the same games over and over again (because big players won't take the risk).

I think a smaller company could pull of a FPS, but it would take a lot of money and skill to make it look and feel as good as current gen FPS games. However I think the real problem will come from the story, the stable games have a story already built up. People know zombies, people know NAZIs they don't need to be told, these things are bad and here is why they already know. For WW1 a lot of people just don't know that much about it, they only learned the very basics in school. So the games storyline would have to cover details about why you are at war, why this is all happening...why there are no tanks or assault rifles.

For a long time they said Western games were dead, that people didn't want to play them any more. Then Rockstar made Red Dead Redemption and Westerns weren't dead any more and it turned out they never had been, the players just didn't have anywhere to turn to play the game they wanted to play. I think WW1 could fall in the same boat, most companies think it wont sell but out there is a group of people thinking it just might and they could just walk into a gold mine if they pull it off right.

Call of Juarez was first.

Well Darth, your arguments against a WW1 FPS are just plain sad.

Some of them are:

- Trench warfare is boring, it would be better if it would be about stealth.
- The weapon were crude, slow, and there were few machine guns.
- No nazis! Holy fuck! Who will we kill?!!!! (The saddest of them...)
And the last one:

"Everyone of my points is a carefully thought out reason for why it could not be a fast paced FPS but rather why it would need to be a much slower stealth based one."

I'm not sure how many WW1 movies you have seen, but the Lost Battalion clearly shows us how much action they could get out of those shitty guns and shitty, boring, not perfectly evil or perfectly good people.
You forgot about bayonet charges, which were the core part of early 20th century warfare. If you think it is impossible to implement bayonet or sword fights in videogames, probably you've been living under a rock for the past ten years, which I doubt. Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault (2004), The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002), and Call of Duty (2003) with it's close-quarter combat all proved that WW1 bayonet and swordfights are perfectly possible.
Yesterday night I played some TF2 with TC on a melee weapon only map, and it was a lot of fun, and I had more adrenaline than on shooting maps.
Also WW1 battlefields featured a lot of experimental weapons, such as flamethrowers, tanks, and there were even shotguns, along with the aforementioned SMGs and Maxim mounted machine guns. What about gas attacks? Airplanes, anyone? ZEPPELINS?!!
How the damn fuck could that be any boring, there were as many battlefield as in WW2, the people behind The Trench 1916 could build up an entire franchise.
Also, not having a "clearly evil enemy" is good because now we could play as Germans, something I always missed from WW2 games. Your ignorance wouldn't let you play that though Darth, so I guess that isn't much of a feature for you. I wouldn't like to begin a fight over how evil those people were, because you'd never admit that most of the Wermacht contained people just like anyone, fighting for their families, and that only a very little part of the entire German army were involved in shameful actions.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, Darth:

You act like you haven't seen my link to the upcoming WW1 FPS with the promising screenshots and videos...

What the hell Tracker. Just going against like 3 guys would mean instant death, you wouldn't be able to shoot fast enough to actually kill them before they kill, you that means the gameplay would need to be slower then current gen CoD or MoH. Nothing wrong with that, in fact the original MoH was about the speed I am talking about and has many missions based on stealth. I have been talking about how good the game could be, not how bad it would be. The NAZI thing had nothing to do with them being the best enemies, just that lazy writers and writers on a fast timetable often use them as an easy enemy. As I said many people don't know a lot about WW1 so the writers would have to work hard to make a great story. I wasn't saying in real life they were all monsters, where the hell did you get that? Just that there is already a lot of story and history that players will know so you don't need to work hard on that part you can trust the player knows this already.

Bayonet charges could make for an epic moment, they could be cool as hell. But as in reality you would be gunned down by a MG nest. All the rest yeah they could be cool but they would be short lived. Wow a gas attack quick get the gas mask on...oh yeah they are doing it again...and again...and again. But done right it could make for some epic moments in a game. Which is what I have been saying, that a FPS in WW1 would need to be made well and then it would be great.

And no I haven't seen your link, nor do I care to after that tirade of insults. I don't know if you noticed but me and RRS didn't agree about everything but at no point did we call the other person ignorant or tell them what they thought. Personally I would like an apology for that post, at no point in it did you treat me and my opinions with respect. If you will notice at no point have I insulted you here, nor implied or out right stated what you think and have even agreed your ideas have merits.

Well played. I apologize for insulting you. Please forgive me.

All good man, you bring up some good points. Points I hadn't thought of, I still don't think the game could be as fast paced as current gen MoH/CoDs but maybe if done right it could pull it off. I think it would be a safer bet, in a already risky scenario to take a slower pace and follow more along the original MoHs lines.

Dark Messiah is more FPS than a bayonet fight.