Supreme Commander Comments by Alec Meer
Alec takes a near-complete build for a spin.
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MrChuckles
18/01/07 @ 10:42
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I hate build and bash RTS's. The only ones i have liked acter a few games are:
TA, Starcraft, WK: Battles, Total War Series, Company of Heroes. Ooh, do game names get longer over the years? :-) |
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Sounds like it will be everything any RTS fan could ever want a game to be, but also doesn't appear to have anything in it to convince a non RTS fan (like me) that this is the game to convert them.
I'm still waiting for the RTS game that converts me. Company Of Heroes nearly did it, I really enjoyed playing through the training missions when I borrowed a copy from a friend, but as soon as it got to the first proper mission I found all the fun dissappeared. |
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TheDifficult3rdAlbum
18/01/07 @ 11:23
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Does anyone know what kind of spec requirements we're talking about for this?
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Quote from mkreku... "I saw a video of a nuclear blast in an army camp.."
That was World in Conflict by Massive the makers of Ground Control etc... ;-) http://www.worldinconflict.com/ |
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Moonprince
18/01/07 @ 11:57
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What makes you think its a game?
Those are real people down there dieing for you man, REAL PEOPLE... Looking forward to the game. Whens it out? |
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Looks too 'hectic' for me. I like to build me units and line them up neatly before sending a few SAS uber commando types into battle.
If you can do that, the game (or difficulty setting) is too easy. I find it no fun without a strong challenge and tough odds. God Damn I can only dream of this in a WH40K universe. Fingers crossed for Dawn of War 2. Doubt it will be anything like as large scale as this, but should be worth waiting for. |
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"Resource collection and micro-management was stripped down to a bare, self-regulated minimum, in favour of war on a massive scale."
Excellent, this does indeed sound like the spiritual successor to the mighty TA. Never was a game more aptly named than Total Annihilation. I fondly remember games which featured literally constant large scale battles, dead units numbers on each side which could run into the thousand and so many unit carcasses that tanks had to blast their way through them to reach enemies. Can't wait for Supreme Commander. The trailer looks awesome. "The Total Annihilation name may rest with Atari (which doesn't look as though it is ever going to do anything with it)" Absolute tragedy that a sequel was never done, especially considering the amount of shit games that DO get sequels. |
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TA was bestest cos:
I liked the way the boats sank. And the way the wireframes were coloured in when building And the way the wee cheeky planes buzzed about And the way the solar panels hid if they were frightened And the way you could tell your wee man to do loads of things and he would go about his business, working round problems And the way big bertha fired bullets that can actually miss (unique in any RTS...probably, developers take note, makes it exciting waiting for the hit) More TA memories please! |
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Really interested if the bottleneck on this game will be the processor (to coordinate so many units) or the graphics card. Might be out of my PC's reach I fear.
People are forgetting the majestic orchestral music of Total Annihilation, do we know if Supreme Commander has similar musical brilliance? |
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Looks great.
It's a minor thing, but one of the great things about TA before it, was units don't talk when clicked. They make little mechanical noises, almost like groans, but that's it. I hope Supreme Commander carries on the tradition. Why the hell must every RTS game insist on making units say, 'I obey and move with stealth' or some shit everytime you tell them to move another inch? I don't need to be told the same stupid thing by my units every time I issue them with a minor update to their orders, just get on with it. I can't play the Eldars in Dawn of War for that reason alone. Their annoying mechanised ramblings grate instantly. After the first acknowledgment, just make a small click noise or something. It's so embarrassing playing a RTS near other people when all they can hear are the same voices saying the same shit every 5 seconds. Anyway, regarding the turtle issue, I suppose as AIs get better, and more aggressive, being able to take advantage of the AI's early lacklustre decisions and build up your base is going to get more difficult. Personally, I like to be able to turtle as overly hectic gameplay frustrates me. I like know my base defenses are fairly solid before marching out a large force to obliterate my foe. It can be so frustrating trying to manage all your forces and build up replacements when your AI enemy is casually massacring your armies in swift and relentless manoeuvres that as a human, you don't have the speed to match. Still that's all part of the challenge I suppose, and if you can live with the carnage and win, well it's satisfying. No point me worrying about Supreme Commander though. It'll never run on my rig. I've got more chance running Rome Total War on my ZX Spectrum! |
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The beta is great, just to answer some people's questions/hopes:
"Looks too 'hectic' for me. I like to build me units and line them up neatly before sending a few SAS uber commando types into battle. So no turtling then? Because I like to ''command'' an impenatrable base, before even attempting to ''conquer'' my adversaries." You can definitely try to turtle, but only really on the larger maps. On these most people tend to build up a lot before attacking in some way. There's always a way round a defense which is great design in action. The giant experimental units are the "uber" units you're looking for :) "TA was the most defining game of it's time, if this is only half as good, it will still be the best game since TA." It is AT LEAST AS GOOD as TA (spoken as a true TA fan). "TA was bestest cos: I liked the way the boats sank. And the way the wireframes were coloured in when building And the way the wee cheeky planes buzzed about And the way the solar panels hid if they were frightened And the way you could tell your wee man to do loads of things and he would go about his business, working round problems And the way big bertha fired bullets that can actually miss (unique in any RTS...probably, developers take note, makes it exciting waiting for the hit) " Boats sink BETTER :D Yup hordes of cheeky tech 1 planes buzz about. The submersible aircraft carrier (awesome btw) can hold 150 (that's ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY!) aircraft at once. And they all launch quickly Cylon-baseship-style... The "queueing up loads of orders and leaving them to it" is of course back, and is much better, for example you can drag a queued-up waypoint, move or build order around while it's in the queue! Also you can double-click an attack order and it will form a "co-ordinated attack" simply and easy with any other queued attack orders on the target. The giant artillery can quite definitely miss a lot, but when it hits... oh, when it hits :) "uber-big bertha ftw... seriously the first Screenshot made me shed a tear..." That's right, it's the spiritual big BIG bertha, and it has a range of about 10km (to scale) :O "It's a minor thing, but one of the great things about TA before it, was units don't talk when clicked." Yep, no pointless unit talking, just robots that go where you tell them with no fuss... As people have mentioned you will need insane specs if they dont improve performance much from what it is now. RAM is also a bottleneck due to the size and complexity of whats going on on the map. Apparently its optimised for multiple-core processors so if you have one it could help quite a bit. Good job I didn't sign an NDA to play it :D |
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"Nipping to the other side of the map to tell an idling engineer to build another power generator feels like dicing with death when there's a slew of enemy gunships knocking at my front door. And a horde of tanks headed towards a vital forward base. And a fleet of battleships bombarding a coastal factory. And something gigantic and spider-shaped loping slowly from the unknown territory to the south. And... is that a nuke?"
I think you just described why I can't get into RTS games - I love the idea of building all the units ,fighting the battles etc. but it just gets to frantic to really enjoy. I think I'll always prefer turn-based stuff like Civilization. |
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"People are forgetting the majestic orchestral music of Total Annihilation, do we know if Supreme Commander has similar musical brilliance?"
I'm not; I stuck my TA disc in the CD player more than a few times, mostly for Track 6. They brought the same guy who did TA's music (Jeremy Soule) back for SupCom, so here's hoping. |
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I'm really bored of game designers and reviewers taking any opportunity to rubbish gameplay styles of the past. Just because something is old doesn't make it automatically bad. New is not automatically better etc.
Like many others, I enjoy playing RTS games at my own slow pace. If I wanted to play something fast I'd play an FPS (which I do from time to time). Of course, its perfectly valid for the developers to choose the apparently frantic gameplay style of TA (caveat: I haven't actually played TA) but please let us not pretend that this is somehow automatically superior to other RTS's where I must devote more attention to controlling resources and building/advancing. I'm afraid my mouse hand is getting kinda slow these days, so in all probability I will have to skip this game. Which is a pity, because it looks like I could have enjoyed it were it not for their conscious decision to punish those of us who like to move a bit more slowly. |
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Never was a fan of TA. I found it to be pretty bland and unoriginal in terms of units. Preferred Dark Reign, for both its style and substance, although I realize that probably wont be a very popular outlook around here :P
And that's why I'll always prefer furious RTS action over the " you take a turn, I'll take turn" gameplay of purely stat-based TB games. I hate to break it to you, but all games are purely stat-based ;) |
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"""""""""""I'm really bored of game designers and reviewers taking any opportunity to rubbish gameplay styles of the past. Just because something is old doesn't make it automatically bad. New is not automatically better etc.
Like many others, I enjoy playing RTS games at my own slow pace. If I wanted to play something fast I'd play an FPS (which I do from time to time). Of course, its perfectly valid for the developers to choose the apparently frantic gameplay style of TA (caveat: I haven't actually played TA) but please let us not pretend that this is somehow automatically superior to other RTS's where I must devote more attention to controlling resources and building/advancing. I'm afraid my mouse hand is getting kinda slow these days, so in all probability I will have to skip this game. Which is a pity, because it looks like I could have enjoyed it were it not for their conscious decision to punish those of us who like to move a bit more slowly. """""""" This complaining might actually make sense if the game didn't possess a high degree of customizable a.i. behavior, different size battlefields , high levels of automation (limited micromanagement), and general concepts that limit it turning into a clickfest. It's also interesting that you mention slow advancement and building up, since that's exactly what you do in this game; particularly when considering how large the maps are. Oh, and TA wasn't clickfest, which you would know if you actually played it. It possessed a high degree of automation also. """""""I hate to break it to you, but all games are purely stat-based ;) """""""""""" Please elaborate? I didn't realize tha SC utilized the same dice-rolls, damage modifiers, and general statisical data as a TB game. It's interesting to know that things such as gravity, inertia, weather effects, and tangible details all pertain to similiar stats witnessed in TB games.
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most recently on 19/01/07 @ 07:57
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Please elaborate? I didn't realize tha SC utilized the same dice-rolls, damage modifiers, and general statisical data as a TB game.
It's interesting to know that things such as gravity, inertia, weather effects, and tangible details all pertain to similiar stats witnessed in TB games. Ah, youve hit the money there, you see. The key word in your comment was witnessed. Its a lot easier to witness the statistics in turn-based games, given the infinite time allowed, and the general tendency towards externalising them. However, all games boil down to numbers in the end. Its the only thing a computer can process. |
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@a8a: Dark Reign was great too for its time, had much better (friendly and enemy) AI than TA, although I could enjoy both. Only niggles in that first game was the C&C-limitation (only one factory of a certain type can be producing stuff) and the awkward terrain graphics; never felt as clear as in other games (and the latter can sometimes be said of SupCom too though, even from up close it's not always easy to distinguish relevant terrain elevations). SupCom does seem to become a better sequel to TA than DR2 was to DR1.
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most recently on 19/01/07 @ 15:46
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What do you mean only one factory of one type cold be producing stuff? You could build multiple factories of the same type, queque unit production, and generally not limit yourself to particular build options. Also nit sure about the difficulty of discerning terrain elevation, since it's clearly obvious what's a hill, and what isn't ; particularly when you see your units climbing up one. The cliffs even had shadows, and elevation markers.
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Please elaborate? I didn't realize tha SC utilized the same dice-rolls, damage modifiers, and general statisical data as a TB game.
It's interesting to know that things such as gravity, inertia, weather effects, and tangible details all pertain to similiar stats witnessed in TB games. ----------------------- Ah, youve hit the money there, you see. The key word in your comment was witnessed. Its a lot easier to witness the statistics in turn-based games, given the infinite time allowed, and the general tendency towards externalising them. However, all games boil down to numbers in the end. Its the only thing a computer can process. ----------------------- Stated generally enough any statement can be made true!...and content-free. By that trivial argument, Katamari Damacy is all about stats too. There is an important difference between strategy games which show you die rolls, strategy games which try to hide that they use die rolls behind the scenes, and the few strategy games (TA, SupCom, Homeworld, Sword of the Stars) which use other mechanisms that allow for "emergent" behaviour. |
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