Hello everyone! The lads at Petroglyph Games have released their latest game, known as Grey Goo. This real time strategy game comes with 3 asymmetrical factions (Humans, Beta and Goo), focusing macro-management over micromanagement (likewise Command & Conquer games and unlike Starcraft series) and featuring a quite advanced interface that, in my honest opinion, it should be a sample for their competitors. And the best of all, the scores are from no one else than the genious Frank Klepacki that all Command & Conquer fans knows very well. The main problem is really the price... oh... the price. For americans, it seems to be $49.99 and it includes the soundtrack of the game from Mr. Klepacki. Brazilians seem to pay a bit less (R$90.99 which is slightly more than 40 dollars). Here's a random review of the game from Total Biscuit:
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And for those wondering.... will PPM do coverage of this game? The real question is... is it really moddable?
The game comes with a very limited map editor, just like any other game from Petroglyph. The developpers said that they'd love to see fans creating custom content for it, specially mods... but the main file for the modders (the famous config.meg) does have some nasty protection that hides the file contents and file names. We have started a research here to decode this file (guest posting allowed in that topic), but the community is not really enthusiastic about that at all. It is unclear if they developpers will launch better tools to customize the maps and the game itself.
But we are not willing to wait for them, as we have our weapons as well. You can now grab an updated Open Source .BIG Editor (Revision 78) that does open the .meg files from this game and newer games from Petroglyph, with the exception of config.meg from Grey Goo, End of Nations and perhaps another one or two of these games that they've launched few years ago and it went nowhere. It also saves .meg files with the Empire at War format, however, it is not clear if the games from Petroglyph do accept them (I could not test it yet). They seem to follow the standards of these games, calculates CRC correctly and order the file table based on CRCs, although the filename get ordered in a different way than Petroglyph does.
Anyway, help us and we will support this game. It's an interesting and fun game and it would be very interesting if it becomes moddable.
And for those wondering.... will PPM do coverage of this game? The real question is... is it really moddable?
The game comes with a very limited map editor, just like any other game from Petroglyph. The developpers said that they'd love to see fans creating custom content for it, specially mods... but the main file for the modders (the famous config.meg) does have some nasty protection that hides the file contents and file names. We have started a research here to decode this file (guest posting allowed in that topic), but the community is not really enthusiastic about that at all. It is unclear if they developpers will launch better tools to customize the maps and the game itself.
But we are not willing to wait for them, as we have our weapons as well. You can now grab an updated Open Source .BIG Editor (Revision 78) that does open the .meg files from this game and newer games from Petroglyph, with the exception of config.meg from Grey Goo, End of Nations and perhaps another one or two of these games that they've launched few years ago and it went nowhere. It also saves .meg files with the Empire at War format, however, it is not clear if the games from Petroglyph do accept them (I could not test it yet). They seem to follow the standards of these games, calculates CRC correctly and order the file table based on CRCs, although the filename get ordered in a different way than Petroglyph does.
Anyway, help us and we will support this game. It's an interesting and fun game and it would be very interesting if it becomes moddable.