Heracles Brigade

For Olympian fighter squadron, see Hercules Brigade.

Heracles Brigade

Information
Name: Heracles Brigade
Status: Active
Formed: 2014-07-06

The Heracles Brigade is a group of community mapmakers and mod developers formed in July 2014 and dedicated to the improvement of Battlezone Series as a whole. It drew its members from across the communities of the series in a manner that had not been done before, and was the largest community group of its kind since the Battlezone 2 Community Project Development Team. While taking on larger projects like the Community Project team the Heracles Brigade bears more organisational similarities to Team Evolve or the Battlezone Cartographer's Guild, the latter of which it considers itself a successor to.

The group currently consists of eight core members, though these do not work on all of the group's projects. Other developers not considered part of the core team are often drafted in to contribute to individual projects.

History

Formation

The Heracles Brigade was founded in Summer 2014 by Anthony Hadley, Dee Rains, blue banana and Cothonian following a series of posts on Rains' battlezone1.org modelling thread. A brief discussion in private messaging discussed the idea of a Community Project similar in scope to that of Battlezone II: Combat Commander's Forgotten Enemies. An initial narrative was drafted by Rains that tied together elements from several of the group's own projects, and the discussion eventually moved to Skype. As discussion continued Cothonian left the group, citing real life commitment and the need to prioritise his own West German faction.

Expansion

John Klein's introduction to the group led to the idea of working on multiple projects, including the Rise of the Black Dogs Decompilation Project which was formed when Klein revealed he had been able to dump the contents of the game's cartridge and make some headway in understanding it. The decompilation project also tied into the larger community project, which led to the Heracles Brigade shifting focus.

With the idea of other projects being brought under the Heracles Brigade banner the team's members began distributing work on their own personal projects. The first of these was Battlezone: Insurrection in May, which Rains was already contributing to; and it was followed some time later by Battlezone: Battle Grounds, which the group agreed should be worked on by a team as it had been contributed to by many community members.

In November 2015 all six core members of the Heracles Brigade were involved in the beta testing of Battlezone 98 Redux, tying the group to the remaster's progress. Their focus on the remaster led to the slowing of other projects, but also to the creation of the Battlezone Field Report as a successor to the Battlezone Magazine.

Battlezone Classic joined the group's projects in the spring of 2016, and ScrapPool joined the group shortly afterwards in May. ssuser joined as a contributor a year later with the intention of working with the team to port his own work to Battlezone 98 Redux.

Members

Core Team

• Dee Rains ("Deus Ex Ceteri") (founder)
• Anthony Hadley ("Ded10c") (founder)
• “blue banana" (founder)
• John Klein ("Nielk1")
• Michael Grigor ("General BlackDragon")
• Zoë Blanco ("RoTaToR" / "Virtual_Laserdisk")
• "Hyperfighter" / "Codaro"
• "Mario" / "Aborysa"
• "ScrapPool" / "LordBeverage"
• "Seqan"
• "Welkin"

Contributors

• "Cothonian" (founder, inactive)
• Robert MacGregor ("Ragora")
• "DabberTorres"
• "Goomba"
• "ssuser"

Projects

The following is a list of projects undertaken by the Heracles Brigade, sorted by their inception date (or for projects that the Brigade did not start, by the date they were transferred under its umbrella):

• Battlezone: Return of the Old Gods
• Rise of the Black Dogs Decompilation Project
  • Rise of the Black Dogs: Re-Orchestrated
• Battlezone: Insurrection
• Battlezone Wiki
• Battlezone Version Archive
• Battlezone: Battle Grounds (Except version 1.0)
• Battlezone 98 Redux beta testing
• Battlezone Field Report
• Battlezone Classic
• Battlezone 98 Redux: The Red Odyssey beta testing
• Battlezone: Combat Commander beta testing
• Two additional unannounced projects

Trivia

• The Heracles Brigade's name is taken from that of the Olympian Hercules Brigade, using the original Greek Heracles instead of the Romanised Hercules. The logo is styled after the shield used by the Spartan army.