M.A.X. (Mechanical Assault and Exploration)

[Selden]

Greetings, Codex.

I would want to heartily invite all the strategy fans here to keep an eye on modern port of this brilliant TBS gem that's in the making for some hefty time already, and showing great progress.

https://klei1984.github.io/max/

P.S. It's not my project, and I'm not payed for advertising. It's just for the sake of pure oldschool strategy gaming fun. Cheers.

 

[Malakal]

Wow I remember trying to play a LAN game in turn based mode of this and we could never finish it due to how long that took...

Then we played a real time game and it was over in few minutes.

Fun game tho. Great to see it getting some love.

 

[std::namespace]

I did not expect that some x86 instructions can be expressed in multiple ways. E.g. the opcode for mov ax, cx could be expressed as 668bc1h as well as 6689c8h

its always weird seeing people spend thousands of hours disassembling binaries and not know fairly common knowledge shit

Pathfinding in M.A.X. is outstanding.

According to the original author of the path finding algorithms, Gus Smedstad, he’s design is similar to Dijkstra’s Algorithm even though he only found out about Dijkstra’s work later.

kek
outstanding slow

https://klei1984.github.io/max/2022/04/29/Work-work.html
good lord, he is alt tabbing while decompiling the binary in ida free ...
the unlimited power of fucking autists... i swear
though probably just for the video

 

[std::namespace]

we can put to rest the myth that max has good ai lul:

These are the individual task and reminder object types in the game (actually there are a couple more as base and abstract classes are not listed): TaskAttackReserve TaskKillUnit TaskDefenseReserve TaskCheckAssaults TaskWaitToAttack TaskPlaceMines TaskAttack TaskSupportAttack TaskEscort TaskScavenge TaskRemoveRubble TaskRemoveMines TaskFrontalAttack TaskRadarAssistant TaskConnectionAssistant TaskHabitatAssistant TaskPowerAssistant TaskDefenseAssistant TaskCreateBuilding TaskCreateUnit TaskManageBuildings TaskAutoSurvey TaskSurvey TaskFindMines TaskExplore RemindTurnStart RemindTurnEnd RemindAvailable RemindMoveFinished RemindAttack TaskObtainUnits TaskClearZone TaskGetMaterials TaskSearchDestination TaskAssistMove TaskMoveHome TaskRendezvous TaskActivate TaskRetreat TaskTransport TaskDump TaskMove TaskFindPath TaskUpdateTerrain TaskFrontierAssistant TaskMineAssistant TaskUpgrade TaskReload TaskRepair.

 

[std::namespace]

There was a lot of back and forth on game balance. At one point, for example, I implemented “soft” vs “hard” targets, based largely on my experience with Panzer General. I wanted some weapons, such as missile launchers, to be much more effective against hard targets. That was eventually removed because Ali felt the results were not intuitive.

fuckin casuals

Ten years later I accidentally bumped into a presentation of the Syndicate Wars Port which gave me strength and zeal to start this project.

the internet is fucking small...

 

[Jeskis]

Man, what a blast from the past. I played M.A.X 2 extensively. I remember it being painfully slow, wonky, surreal and atmospheric. I also hardly understood anything (didn’t even know there was a turn based mode lol).

 

[PsihoKekec]

Got to love the game where you can win by turtling it all the way to the centre of the enemy base. And yes, my favorite clan was Seven Knights.

 

[Baron Dupek]

trying to play a game in turn based mode and we could never finish it due to how long that took...
Then we played a real time game and it was over in few minutes.

sounds like my experience with Fallout Tactics

 

[Galdred]

Wow I remember trying to play a LAN game in turn based mode of this and we could never finish it due to how long that took...

Then we played a real time game and it was over in few minutes.

Fun game tho. Great to see it getting some love.

I think only MAX 2 had RT? It is funny because MAX started as a try to turn classic RT gameplay into turn based mode, before reverting to RT with a TB option for MAX 2.
The pace was very slow indeed (with the game favoring the defender, as he would have first shot).

 

[PsihoKekec]

M.A.X. had simultaneous turns which was fun halfway solution between classic turns and real time, which lead to frentic first 20 seconds of the turn and then more calm building and logistics part, before starting next turn.

 

[Malakal]

Wow I remember trying to play a LAN game in turn based mode of this and we could never finish it due to how long that took...

Then we played a real time game and it was over in few minutes.

Fun game tho. Great to see it getting some love.

I think only MAX 2 had RT? It is funny because MAX started as a try to turn classic RT gameplay into turn based mode, before reverting to RT with a TB option for MAX 2.
The pace was very slow indeed (with the game favoring the defender, as he would have first shot).

I think it was M.A.X. 2 but not super sure as it was literal decades ago.