Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion

Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion
Release Date	2005
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux
Developed By	Max Gaming Technologies
Published By	GarageGames
Genre	First Person Shooter
Gameplay Modes	Single Player, Online Multiplayer
Series	Dark Horizons Lore
Engine	Torque Game Engine
Support Discontinued	November, 2008
Preceded By	Dark Horizons Lore
Followed By	Lore: Aftermath

Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion is the title of version 2.0 and all following versions, of Dark Horizons Lore, a first person shooter video game, developed by Max Gaming Technologies. Invasion was released in 2005. Invasion plays largely the same as the original Dark Horizons Lore, with most of the updates being in the game's visuals, with updated visual effects and models.

Official multiplayer support for Invasion was dropped in November 2008, in favor of the game's sequel - Lore: Aftermath, however since early fall of 2009, the Skunkworks team have been working on releasing their own build of Invasion, which is supported by Max Gaming Technologies.

In 2019, the game was modded to make multiplayer run smoothly by the player community. Community members created an informal player site and continue to set up multiplayer games.

GamePlay

Gameplay in Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion

The game most plays just like the original Dark Horizons Lore, with only a few key gameplay differences, such as new weapons and abilities: The Eastern Confederation MAVs were given Spider Homing Missles as a selectable secondary weapon, all Scout class MAVs were given the cloaking ability to hide from enemies, all MAVs (except Tank-class MAVs for obvious reasons) could now use a "Torso Twist" ability which lets the MAV move its' torso separately from the feet, allowing the player to walk in one direction, whilst aiming in another.

Other new additions included AI Bots for single player and multiplayer matches, Refit Stations, which allowed players to change their MAV selection, without having to kill themselves first and new game maps.

Multiplayer

The Multiplayer Lobby in Invasion

Like the original Lore, Invasion featured a multiplayer lobby where players would communicate and join multiplayer servers. New additions to the lobby included the ability for players to create and manage their own Squads, which took the same role as guilds or clans in other multiplayer games. Each Squad's statistics would also be recorded in multiplayer matches and made available to the public.

Game modes in Invasion are all the same as the ones in later versions of Lore, meaning there was no free-for-all mode. The Arena game mode was also now played in Teams, making it simply a variation of Team Deathmatch, played in arena-shaped maps.

After Max Gaming Technologies shut down multiplayer support in November 2008, both the dedicated servers and the IRC server were shut down. However, due to an unforseen problem, without any IRC server to connect to, players couldn't even join the lobby to host their own servers. This was fixed in a 2019 edit by the Skunkworks team, and players can now host their own servers.

In early fall of 2009, the Skunkworks team announced that they are working on releasing their own build of Invasion which will restore multiplayer support, and include many of their own custom maps, weapons and other new features. The team has been releasing new builds, frequently, since then.

In 2019, the game was modded to make multiplayer run smoothly by the player community. Community members created an informal player site and continue to set up multiplayer games.

Single Player

One addition to Invasion was the ability to play the game in single player. While early Beta versions of Lore did include a small single player campaign option, it was removed from all later versions of the game. Invasion added a new single player mode, called "Instant Action". While not a dedicated single player campaign, the feature simply allows players to set up a simple multiplayer match, with AI bots instead of actual players.

Appearences

Factions
Federated States Eastern Confederation

MAVs
Federated States: Hunter Scout Shaddrack Liberator Abolisher Eastern Confederation: Locust Mantis Predator Juggernaught

Maps
Coastal Flood Plains Crash Site Danger Pass Island Thunder King of The Hill MAV Arena Range River Fortress Sector 2

Weapons
Federated States: Eastern Confederation: Shared:

Equipment
Cloaking Device MAV Satelite Uplink

Locations
No Man's Land

Development

Invasion at GDC 2005

For version 2.0 of Dark Horizons Lore, Max Gaming Technologies decided to add many new features and dramatically updated visuals. During early stages, the development title the new version was "Lore Gold", later changed to Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion. The addition of the Synapse Lighting Pack allowed for better visuals, which lead Max Gaming Technologies to completely redesign the MAVs to work better with the new lighting system. Another new visual addition to the game were modular weapons for all the MAVs - each weapon would have its own model that would change on the MAV, instead of each MAV having the same model for all of its different weapons.

A build of Invasion was show off at 2005's Game Developer Conference (GDC). It even made it to the finals of IGF (Independant Games Festival).

On November, 2008, multiplayer support for Invasion was officially dropped in favor of MGT's new sequel to Lore - Lore: Aftermath.

On July, 2010, Adrian Wright announced his intention to port Invasion to the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade, though no word on this has been given since.

Skunkworks

Since early fall of 2009, The Skunkworks team have been working on their own build of Invasion that will add new features, maps and working multiplayer to the game. They have been releasing new updated builds frequently, with support from Max Gaming Technologies.

External Links

• LoreAftermath.com, the latest Skunkworks builds can be found here
• Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion on IGN.com
• Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion Player Site with link to latest version of the game including multiplayer capability