I tried to create an account without using a VPN, but the game wouldn’t let me. Then I used a VPN, and it allowed me to create an account. Now I’m confused—does this mean my country is banned, or is it something else?

I can use the newly created account, but I can’t see any servers in the browser without a VPN. Is using a VPN mandatory, or am I missing something?

This is a story about pc gaming, game pc builds of yesteryear, building a retro pc game box today, and etc that might be of interest to you nerds... I mean geeks... I mean T2 players. You might want to get a snack and something to drink, this will take a while. Also pleas keep in mind I'm doing this from memory and thus mistaken on a lot of points.

When I first started building pcs (1998) there was a fair amount of pc parts to be found locally, especially of the oem/surplus variety as the hq of Gateway was only a hundred miles away from Omaha, where I lived at the time. When a pc oem is nearby, you might rationally expect the local area to be flooded with refurbs, seconds, and etc from that oem as just about anything the oem doesn't feel like storing it sells off. About once a month there was a huge pc fleamarket in the Sioux City area filled with Gateway surplus as Gateway was just across the border in South Dakota. Coincident with Gateway moving production and hence surplus around the country and even to Ireland, we had no place to get pc parts cheap like in the heyday of the Gateway surplus craze. We, the local pc building community, suffered pc fleamarket withdrawls. That is, until a pc fleamarket opened at the Omaha Nebraska National Guard armory - and you could find great deals there, from familiar "vendors" who previously had loads of Gateway surplus to private party local sellers both, sometimes even some random Gateway surplus. At the time, the slot cpu sockets were common and it was easy to find just about any core you wanted, from slot-1 Pii 233s up to 1ghz slot-A Athlons, and for much (and I can't emphasise this enough - much much much) cheaper than in the local pc retailers brick and mortar shops. Take for example a pc consisting of a Athlon 800 Slot A cpu, say 512 sdram, dvdrom, and a 20gb hdd as found at a local unnamed brick and mortar pc shop for around $800 or more. I noticed the same overpriced pcs sat in the same shop for weeks and months at a time, you figure the owner would eventually drop prices but no. With identical spec Gateway surplus parts from a fleamarket you could roll more or less the same pc for maybe $200 at most. I know a guys gatta make a living, but rape is rape no matter if you're in Omaha or Moscow where the police are stern but fair.

The amount of surplus was astounding at first, the vendors had literal pallets of mobos, cpus, cd/dvd roms, hdds, mem, etc, all from Gateway. Most of these surplus parts were returns to the oem for some fault or other reason such as quality control discoveries or merely obsolete, but many were perfectly serviceable.

It was common for the fleamarket vendors to "warranty" the part - if it was doa or failed they'd replace it next month at the next fleamarket or refund your money. I picked up a few Jabil - Kadoka mobos (Athlon Slot A Gateway OEM boards) dirt cheap, built a few pcs and gave a cpu and board to Rusty, my Tribes buddy/nephew. How about 2 mobos for a measly $25? A cdrom for $10? How about a pallet of Voodoo 3s? Or perhaps a pallet full of Aureal pci sound cards? One trick I recall from then was if you found a tiny colored paper triangle sticker on a Gateway surplus part, look at the point of the triangle, the circuit trace or part there might be severed/scraped or otherwise damaged. You looked over every part before you laid down your cash and walked away from that fleamarket table with your "new" part. Eventually the pc surplus dried up as Gateway lost sales, moved to Ireland, and got bought out, consequently the fleamarket in Sioux City stopped being worth the drive as parts dried up and prices rose.

How does any of this crap relate to Tribes?

Prior to all this happy surplus pc parts fleamarket stuff, Rusty, bless his little heart, got me into the pc game Tribes; he and Gizmo mercillessly spawnkilling me over and over till I learned to instantly press the w button after spawning and move the mouse to get out of his/their blaster spam.

WSAD uber alles, arrow key users be damned!

Didn't even know how to move or shoot, how pathetic.

Before that I'd never pc gamed before, well there was that Atari 800XL or whatever it was that had missile command, miner 2049er, and pole position in high school, but I digress as that was much more akin to console play than current day pc gaming.

Thru the magic of being simultaneously pissed off and exasperated by something taking place on a pc screen... I became hooked on game boutique Dynamix's loveingly hand crafted goodness... in a masochistic way.

It became an almost daily ritual to meet at the coffee shop after work and use their pcs - all had Tribes as well as other games - mostly demos, and spend an hour or two fragging away. I learned how to ski, use the jetpack, place turrets, etc to the point I was no longer dying within a few seconds of spawning.

It's also perfectly normal to kill everyone in Hitman Codename 47, drag their bodies into an intersection, and then stand in triumph atop the pyramid of dead.

Speaking of Tribes...

Rusty had provided me with the full game and updates on a cd he had burned at home from a legit copy of Tribes. We found out later the reason Sierra went with WON.net to authenticate Tribes 2 purchasers for online play was Dynamix/Sierra found there were more people playing Tribes than had purchased the game, something on the order of several times as many. Apparently Rusty and I weren't the only players sharing a legit disk.

Oops.

Anyway, when Rusticles and I were walking thru a mall in Omaha one fine day we stopped at the game shop. They had a single copy of Tribes, new in box, $14. Of course I bought it, and bought several copies of T2 later on when it came along. Perhaps some old vets recall emailing Sierra with pics of your T2 cd case with code so they would unlock your T2 game from forgotten pw or somesuch - this obviously from the time user authentication was still being performed.

From what I understand, Tribes 2 was originally to be a free update to Tribes, but Sierra said nope, new game, you gatta pay to play, so we did. When you think about how there were more people playing T1 than had bought the game you can't really blame them for going with authorisation.

Happymod came along subsequent to Tribes release. Hm spoofed memory locations the game would use in legit fashion - filling the fake locations with forbidden content the legit game denied to players - and then directed the game to use the fake mem locations. This relatively amazing hack for Tribes showed you where every player in the game was at all times even thru walls or terrain, and every emplaced turret. Happymod, or hm as it's called, had more or less ruined ultra mod play in Tribes because in ultra it is common to shoot across a map.

For ecample, one time in an aerial fight (ultra has unlimited flying and even boost) I had to lead the guy off screen as he was so far away, meaning he was off the screen to one side or the other for me to get him, guesstimating where he was going to be with my string of bullets. Hm also made the base players bitch even tho it had far less an effect on gameplay for base nerds than ultra nerds. Base weapons could hardly go 300m, some ultra weapons shoot across the map.

 So what did the devs do for T2 in spite of hm? They included perma iffs for the flags - with happymod in Tribes 1 the flags were 50 feet tall and could be seen across a map! Normally in Tribes there was no flag iff at all, if someone stole your flag you had no idear where he was unless he was in your view. Also there was one guy, "da jackal", that was literally hard coded into the Tribes game by Dynamix so he would be kick/ban from any server, lol, he must have been a real pain as the Tribes devs are great guys. I also heard they tried to or did hire HapPy to work on Tribes 2.

Following on his success in HM, HapPy rolled out HM2 for Tribes 2. This one did the same thing for T2 that HM did for T1, but added a new twist, an aimbot. Aimbots for T1 exist but only a few people have them, specifically L Spyro and nofix, each coding their own.

I had in-game recordings of Spyro and nofix running their aimbots in an ultra and base match respectively, it was fun to watch the realisation sink in on the players being slaughtered. And the accusations. Lol. It was always fun to obs nofix in matches as he was otherwise a good player. L Spyro only seemed interested in games to see if he could hack them, not play them.

Remember the first time you fired up T2? Today the image quality of T2 and especially T1 are laughable compared to pc games made in the last 15 years, but they were decent for their time. The owner of the coffee shop had preordered T2 and had Rusticles and I install and set it up when it showed up. We were amazed at the image quality improvement over Tribes, and T2 had water! If you ever saw water in Tribes you'd understand why we were so blown away with a puddle of water in T2.

And Derms. T1 did not have derms so that was new. And yes as mentioned by many the game was filled with glitches, it even had slightly different models and/or textures than those common to T2 today, but to say we were enthusiastic is an understatement. Also the master server lists for both T1 and T2 were filled with servers that were in turn maxed out in player count then. If you ever played at places like Houston or Miami Vehicles in T2 or any Homelan Federation Shifter mod server in T1 you know what I mean. Today T2 has like 20 servers and 20 players on a good nite mostly playing classic, T1 might have 40 servers and 30 players and the majority will be rpg mod players.

Prior to wasting time at the coffee shop with Rusticles and the game pcs, my only exposure to pcs was the lowly Cyrix 586 rig at home, it ran 95 and then 98 when it came along. Most of the pcs at the cafe were of the pii 350 to 400mhz class, all running 98 - this being 1998 era.

Before the Cyrix I had some dos running laptop type systems used for HAM radio but nothing major or expensive. Never gamed on any of them, just used for office type work and seeing what all it could do. Then after being exposed to Tribes, the urge to build a more powerful pc for home use hit. I wanted a pc at home that'd game at least as well as the ones at the cafe. All the people I played Tribes with had innernets at home cept for me, plus they all had pcs that would play Tribes.

I'm running on Linux Mint 24, using proton (launching from steam). I installed the linux patch for ruby, without which it would complain that I'm not running the patched version of the executable. I get the error just after logging in, and my player character is visible in the setup menu. I get this error:

Unhandled exception: C0000005

At address: 00559ce4

I installed the game, the latest version, taken from you, installed an additional patch, when creating an account this appears. Please help solve the problem

Thanks for the help

I have disabled my firewall completly, added everything to pass through anyways, checked logs around the windows etc. yet still cannot create account due to message that says the Account Creation server is offline or unreachable. Disabled VPN, checked outgoing traffic but couldnt find anything useful.

I am attempting to create an account on the Tribes Next Authentication server, however it appears to be offline.

I checked the status page on "https://turkeh.net/", and see the server is unavailable for account creation, and community features. Thank you for your time.

Doland

It's been a lot of years since I've played Tribes 2, and wanted to boot it up on my PC. I'm on Win 10, btw.

After installing the GS version and patching the game with the TribesNEXT patch, I've tried using the "Tribes 2 Online" shortcut, but got the following error:

"Tribes2.exe - Entry Point Not Found

The procedure entry point _except handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Windows\System32\SHLWAPI.dll.

The procedure entry point _except handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Windows\System32\ADVAPI32.dll

The procedure entry point _except handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Windows\System32\WINMM.dll

The procedure entry point _except handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Windows\System32\AVIFIL32.dll

The procedure entry point _except handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Windows\System32\WSOCK32.dll"

I've already tried following guides on Google that told me to use the "sfc scannow" command for fixing corrupt files, or to re-register files, but to no avail - nothing worked.

I've even tried going on the Tribes 2 Discord chat, but they promptly accused me of being a stupid hacker because they were sure that error meant I was installing hacks in my Tribes 2 game. I don't freakin' care about hacks, cheats, or winning, I just want to play a game that I've played when I was a teenager and worry-free, damn. They even banned and re-admitted me after I've plead my cause, but hell, sometimes they still warned me that if I get caught using aimbots they'll ban me again.

What do I need to do to let people believe me that I just want to make my Tribes 2 installation work?

Oh, btw, rant ended. The other thing is that the game works perfectly on my laptop with Win11, but I'd like to make it work on my desktop, so I'd want to fix this issue. On the web I didn't find anything relating this error to Tribes 2, so I don't really know what to do right now.

Thanks in advance!

OS: Windows 98 (4.10, Build 2222)

CPU: Pentium 3 @ 1.1 Ghz

GPU: Voodoo5 5500 AGP (Driver version 4.12.01.0666)

DirectX 9.0c installed

Tribes 2 prior to TeibesNEXT patch runs fine. Post patch, I get post-SierraUp prompt:

Unhandled exception: c0000005

At address: 00000015

I have tried disabling the intro movie, changed renderers in the prefs file, changed display modes on my desktop prior to launching, and even different drivers newer than the reference drivers. No difference. Is there any hope for me running TribesNEXT on my retro computer or is this just not gonna happen?

I've had Tribes 2 run on previous computers and current computer fine with no problems at max settings, min settings, fullscreen, windowed, and honestly anything in-between. I can't pinpoint whether it was a Windows Update (Win10), Driver Update, some gamefile update via Tribes Next, or a broken installation (which has been both uninstalled and reinstalled, as well as repaired) with no fixing of the issue. I was wondering if any of the system or graphics gurus of the forums would be able to assist me with finding a possible fix for this as it may be an unknown issue just popping up recently that others have come to deal with

I did also learn that I had 2 installations of Tribes 2 on my computer, both in separate drives and both uninstalled just to be sure one wasnt messing with another. I've also changed settings in my graphics card program (AMD/Adrenalin) relating to OpenGL, as D3D does fix the issue but the game runs at around 15 frames at any given moment.

Any help would be appreciated, especially for others who may be experiencing this but dont have an account to post about it.

Edit literally after posting because I just remembered: This only appears after a certain height is reached either in spectator mode or in character; below that specific threshold, everything is fine

All of these numbers are measured in "ticks". Tribes 2 runs at 31~ ticks per second, with a single tick measuring 32ms or 0.032 seconds. This information is based on old source code instead of assembly, so the descriptions may be inaccurate - corrections welcome!

My settings are "0 30 3 0".

maxLatencyTicks

Personal opinion: Leave at 0 and 'feel out' the latency.

Pros: Turning it up may reduce the need to lead your shots, may correct very simple player movements.

Cons: Unpredictable player movements warp more, higher inaccuracy at higher latency.

Description: Setting maxLatencyTicks higher than 0 enables client-side player position guessing. This guess is applied when you receive position data from the server. The guess is simple - move the new player position ahead relative to the new velocity delta (speed, direction difference). Your server roundtrip time is a factor in the guess, so maxLatencyTicks does little if your latency is very low. The upper limit is your latency, so setting this much higher than 10 doesn't seem to do much.

maxLatencyTicks for a given ping

50ms/64 = 0 - no correction applied

100ms/64 = 1 - one tick of correction

250ms/64 = 3 - three ticks

1000ms/64 =15 - a whole 15 ticks of correction - good luck hitting anyone!

maxPredictionTicks

Personal opinion: The default of 30 is about as high as you'd want.

Pros: Smoother looking player movement, less player freezing.

Cons: High latencies trade freezing for warping - laggy players may warp more but freeze less.

Description: Setting maxPredictionTicks higher than 0 enables client-side player position prediction. Unlike maxLatencyTicks, maxPredictionTicks is only used when server data is unavailable. This setting is self-descriptive. The other player's position will be predicted based on their current velocity delta until new data is received or the tick counter is exceeded. Setting this too low will result in players freezing until new player movement data is received. Setting this too high may make it harder to tell when you're experiencing severe packet loss.

maxWarpTicks

Personal opinion: 3 seems best, 2 functions, 1 is a bit jittery

Pros: Lower numbers = higher accuracy. Higher numbers = smoother player warping.

Cons: Lower numbers = corpse shaking due to floating point inaccuracy. Higher numbers = less accurate player vectors.

Description: Setting maxWarpTicks higher than 0.0 enables player warp smoothing. This setting determines how many ticks a position warp will be smoothed across when the client is behind the server. Visual jitter caused by engine issues (reduced floating point accuracy in network packets) is reduced by smoothing player position updates over a number of frames. Setting this number higher than 7 when minWarpTicks is small will cause players to start gliding between their movement inputs. Try setting it to 30 on a bot-only server with high ping, you'll see what I mean.

minWarpTicks

Personal opinion: 0 or the default of 0.5 look fine.

Pros: Higher numbers = delayed smoothing and more jitter. Lower numbers = faster warp smoothing.

Cons: Bigger numbers reduce the effectiveness of maxWarpTicks.

Setting minWarpTicks enables a threshold that must be passed to enable player warp smoothing. I don't see the point setting it above zero, but someone from Dynamix chose 0.5. There's probably a reason I'm unaware of.

Warning

Don't set both maxWarpTicks and minWarpTicks to 0.0! This seems to partially disable player position warping, resulting in frozen players glitching around the map.

Conclusion

Dynamix engineers struck a near perfect balance between hiding game engine inadequacies and keeping the game responsive. The networking model means that connections with packet loss experience warping as positions are corrected by the server to some degree. Kinda hard to escape that sort of thing anyway.

edit: whoops, I meant to post this in General Discussion... oh well, too late now, no delete functionality

This solution is commonly paired with IndirectSound 0.8 to enable 3D positional audio. Versions 0.9 and higher experience a game freezing deadlock.

While this works, it would be nice to let the process roam across cores. It would also be neat to optionally restore the EAX reverb settings.

dsoal seems to have solved this problem. dsoal, like IndirectSound, is a replacement for DirectSound DLLs.

Attached at the end of this post is the current version. Unpack this to your GameData/ directory and run the game.

Does this work for you? It would be great to know if it sounds great or like tinfoil being eaten by a screaming demon.

Audio settings

Miles audio works as usual but without the game deadlocks.

EAX and EAX 2 have environmental audio profiles, meaning different reverb underwater and indoors.

Example of EAX2 environment "Underwater": https://clips.twitch.tv/IcyStrongMinkAliens-lmJoFfwsgAjzcJ3x

Spinfusor shots with EAX2 have a reverb not present when the driver is set to Miles.

Environmental volumes probably need tweaking.

Linux users

Edit alsoft.ini so the drivers line reads: drivers="wasapi," (Linux doesn't get EAX, sorry!)

Failure to do so will result in empty audio drivers and a silent game

Links

http://vaporeon.io/hosted/dsoal-builds/dsoal-r444.7z

http://vaporeon.io/hosted/dsoal-builds/

https://github.com/kcat/dsoal

Extra details

I was tinkering with the audio update rate and disabling the AudioThread.

The audio update rate can be decreased far below the default of 126ms. I have tried it at 32ms and didn't notice much performance change beyond slightly more sounds playing.

The game runs an audio thread which seems to load buffers from disc in the background. Disabling the AudioThread::create calls and restarting the Audio system seems to have no performance impact either way.

Been a long time since i have played tribes but i wanted to relive the old days and play my favorite mod renegades.

I have tried several times with no success to load the mod up in lan mode. I dit it once before but now i cant figure out how.

any help would be appreciated.

https://github.com/greenseeker/t2server

I've been using it on Ubuntu 20.04 for a couple months now, and I've confirmed it also works on Debian 10.

RHEL/CentOS do not include wine32 in their repos anymore so it would have to be manually built from source or downloaded from another source. As such, I haven't pursued testing on these distros.

Until bringup is completed in the new location, those two services will be offline. I'm anticipating under 1 week of downtime.

While these services are offline: you will not be able to create new TribesNext accounts or retrieve an account to a new game installation, and no clan tags will be visible in-game. However, you will be able to log in and play with existing accounts in existing game installation even with the account server being offline.

I will provide another update with a more definitive schedule as that week approaches.