9 ms·

The making of Supreme Commander

85 points by camtarn 8y ago

baud147258 8y ago
As a RTS Sup Com was pretty cool, even if the scale of the maps was a little daunting. On the other hand, during the campaign missions, the maps extended as objectives were reached, which was a good way to avoid being overwhelmed right at the start. A few other cool features: chaining move or build orders, having worker helping factories, flying unit doing crash damage on death and being able to set repeating build tasks in factories.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Believe it or not, Supreme Commander is a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation - a game which actually had all of these mechanics back in 1997! TA can be had on Good Old Games for $6 and works perfectly on modern Windows or Wine.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    I believe you ;). Chris Taylor evokes TA a few times in the interview. Still I did not called these features innovative or new, just that they are very useful to in order to deal with all the complexities of the game. Still I'm not really interested in TA, I've been plenty happy with SC and I don't really want to climb another steep difficulty curve. (also lack of time too)
  - majormajor 8y ago
    TA used to crash at launch on GOG for Win 10 for me, but I rechecked after this and between updates to the GOG setup and/or Windows, it works now. Thanks!
drtse4 8y ago
Imho, this is probably the best RTS ever created. Huge maps, huge number of units easy to control with a great UI, amazing music (the first game that had a background music that was aligned to what you were doing in the game? i.e. a mass attack triggered the appropriate bgm).
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  I'm sure that the Elder Scrolls 3 had situational music, and that was a few years prior. TES 4 did for sure, and that was a year before. I'm a big fan of Jeremy Soule (composer of SupCom, Elder Scrolls 3,4,5).
  - jamesrcole 8y ago
    I don't know if it was the first but there was iMUSE at Lucasfilm Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE
- kybernetikos 8y ago
  Total Annihilation had background music respond to the in-game situation.
- recursive 8y ago
  I tried it out once. I recall being so overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that I didn't go back.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  It's also the only RTS I'm aware of that is dual monitor aware. If you have two screens, the second screen can show a persistent (controllable!) map of the battlefield. SC is an absolutely amazing title!
- jason46 8y ago
  All the DLC mechs they released periodically, wrecked the balance. A few were neat, but if you had all of them took away the fun for me. But, it was definitely a neat concept back then.
russnewcomer 8y ago
I'm a big fan of Chris Taylor and his games, the modding community around TA led 14-15 year old me to learn how to program so I could make my own mods. I think one of the most underrated things about the best of Chris' games is the interface. The TA, Dungeon Seige, and SupCom interfaces never get in the way of play, and are very, very fluid. GPG's two games that were less successful, DemiGod and Space Seige, added layers of complexity onto interfaces that made the games feel more technical, managerial, and less fun than needed to be. As I developer, I really strive to think about how the interfaces I design and implement are used by my users to quickly do repetitive or important tasks, traits I associate to Ctrl-grouping, shift clicking to build 5 units at a time in TA, and of course, strategic zoom. By the way, Camtarn, still like Guanine? :) I lurked the Cavedog WSB in the early years.
- camtarn 8y ago
  Holy crap! Yes, that's me :D What a blast from the past.
mrguyorama 8y ago
SupCom still survives today with Forged Alliance Forever[0], a fan made client, server, and community chock full of features, bug fixes, mods, and rebalances that make the game very polished. If you want a taste of Supreme Commander to truly understand the beauty of the game, check out Gyle[1] who is a truly underrated caster of the game on youtube. [0]:https://github.com/FAForever https://github.com/FAForever [1]:https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta/videos
- Nelgraf 8y ago
  Gyle! Agreed - a roommate and I slowly made our way through the backlog. You really grow to love Gyle - he's so enthusiastic and a fantastic commentator, if a bit obsessed with zooming in on reclaim while a battle is happening.
AceJohnny2 8y ago
For fans looking for a fix: Spring [1] is an RTS framework that started off rebuilding TA's engine. It has since branched off with mods creating new RTS's entirely... but still with that TA/SupCom feel. FA Forever [2] is a mod for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (the expansion), that gives access to community servers to download maps, mods, and find matches. It replaces Gas Powered Games' own shutdown servers. [1] https://springrts.com/ https://springrts.com/ [2] https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/
pivotalcmdr 8y ago
I want my dual panes back, isn't this a file commander? Who cares about games
docker_up 8y ago
Total Annihilation was one of the best examples of rock solid software that I had seen up to that point. My friend and I played it across the country on dialup modems, with 500 units each. It would slow down to a crawl, but it never crashed. We would optimize by giving each other 30 mins to build a fort and then we could attack at will. It was truly a thing of beauty.
- drharby 8y ago
  > nr 30mins NO NOOBS
- danso 8y ago
  I never really played online, but as a kid I was fascinated by the near-automation that TA allowed for with its unit queuing options. I'd happily pay full price for a game that had TA-era graphics, but the AI improvements of today. Though it seems improvements in single-player AI has stagnated with the growing ubiquity of multiplayer [0]. [0] https://aigamedev.com/open/interviews/stalker-alife/ https://aigamedev.com/open/interviews/stalker-alife/
danso 8y ago
Great to hear that Chris Taylor is working on a new RTS, but I wonder how it'll be received given that the RTS genre has seemingly been eviscerated, particularly by MOBAs. Even Starcraft 2 seems to be a niche title, even overshadowed by its predecessor -- which Blizzard opted to remaster. The only other RTS I've recently paid attention to is also a remaster: AOE2 HD. From my narrow personal perspective, it's easy for me to understand why RTSes aren't popular -- I'm too old to have the time to master them. But I wonder why the genre has stagnated for the rest of the world -- is it because it's too complex? Or because the mechanics of other similar genres, like MOBAs, are inherently superior? With instant-gratification being the default mindset nowadays, the thought of spending 30 minutes building out a base only for it to be wiped out in 2 minutes of action does seem antiquated.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pmalynin 8y ago
  I wouldn’t say the RTS genre has been destroyed per se. We have Stelaris for example and Hearts of Iron 4 some time ago. There is also RimWorld and Wargame. Banished, comes to mind. Oh and of course They Are Billions, great game combining Starcraft and age of empires. Anyway, I think the genre is alive and kicking — mainly driven by smaller developers. It’s a shame that EA killed off C&C but they only have themselves to blame.
  - Reedx 8y ago
    Well, most of those fall more under the more general umbrella of "strategy". Stellaris is 4x, Rimworld is a management sim, Banished is a city builder. RTS is stuff like Starcraft/Warcraft, Age of Empires, C&C, Company of Heroes, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander. I haven't played They Are Billions yet, but yeah, that looks like an RTS or really close to it. So maybe it's not quite dead, but hanging on by a thread! There's also Offworld Trading Company from a couple years ago which is RTS minus combat.
  - thrower123 8y ago
    Paradox grand strategy games are real-time, but it's bending the definitions of the genre to a ridiculous, meaningless level to consider them RTS games.
bmc7505 8y ago
I still think Total Annhilation had one of the best soundtracks of any video game ever recorded, including The Elder Scrolls. It was Jeremy Soule’s magnum opus. https://youtu.be/o2jS4ZaVOWA https://youtu.be/o2jS4ZaVOWA https://youtu.be/lA-iag83kQc https://youtu.be/lA-iag83kQc https://youtu.be/r_9QO_76l_I https://youtu.be/r_9QO_76l_I https://youtu.be/1mOG3Q8CSoY https://youtu.be/1mOG3Q8CSoY
- korijn 8y ago
  That first one reminds me of a theme from Shadow of the Colossus! https://youtu.be/57jIlw6HmCE https://youtu.be/57jIlw6HmCE from 15:10 onwards
- im3w1l 8y ago
  It's quite cool that you could insert the game cd into an ordinary music player and have the background music play. Shows how proud they must have been of it.
  - qu4z-2 8y ago
    That was a moderately common thing in those days. In particular, iirc, there used to be a cable between the CD-ROM and the sound card that let you play audio off the CD without having the (limited) CPU needing to get involved, deal with audio encodings, etc. The CD would have a data track followed by a bunch of audio tracks, then the game can just say "Play track 5" and carry on with its business. At least, that's my understanding. I was pretty young in those days and some of this is reconstructed "Oh, right, that would make sense". The downside is that if you find a dump of only the data track/files it's hard to reconstruct the full experience of abandonware games. FireFight just isn't the same without the background music.
  - BLKNSLVR 8y ago
    Quake soundtrack. Reznor perfectly matched the soundtrack to the mood of the game. I still listen to track 5 as a standalone piece of dark moody brilliance. 22 years later.
- beefok 8y ago
klibertp 8y ago
My one and only problem with SupCom is that it slows down to a crawl when you have many AI-controlled players on a large map. This is still true today - I tried playing SupCom on a high-end laptop from 2017, and maps larger than 10x10 with multiple AI opponents are still unplayable. There are AI mods which supposedly improve this, but in my testing, the difference was minor to non-existent. Which is a damn shame, because even the hardest, cheating AI is very easy to defeat if you're somewhat experienced, so I mostly resorted to playing against 3+ allied AIs, which is simply impossible on larger maps. That being said, SupCom is easily the best RTS I ever played - it was basically Total Annihilation, only bigger, better and prettier. And TA was already an exceptional RTS, one that people still played and enjoyed as long as a decade after release. I think TA and SupCom ruined the whole RTS genre for me. I was trying to play some newer RTSes, but they are all lacking in features which the two taught me to rely on and enjoy. Strategic zoom, queues of commands in factories and building units, waypoints, unit formations, ferry routes, terrain obstructing visibility, radars, and getting in the way of bullets/missiles, an economy where you have to balance income and spending, gradual construction of structures and units, massive amounts of units on the map and massive units themselves (experimentals), very well-balanced factions with each still being quite distinct and so on - there are games with some of these features, but I couldn't find a game which would have all or even most of them. SupCom2 was a disaster and I refuse to consider it SupCom at all, so I'm basically still waiting for the sequel. Or maybe I just missed a game like that - suggestions on the titles to try would be very welcome!
- jules 8y ago
  Have you tried FAF?
  - hnmonkey 8y ago
    I assume you're referring to https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/ because just googling for FAF doesn't give you anything useful.
    - hnmonkey 8y ago
      To add to this... it appears that FAF is referenced elsewhere in this thread by mrguyorama and AceJohnny2 while providing more details on it.
alyandon 8y ago
For anyone wanting to pick up a copy on the cheap, Supreme Commander bundles are currently on sale for 80% off on Steam.
- kwoff 8y ago
  I think it's not a coincidence...
corysama 8y ago
If you like this, you’d probably appreciate https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/
tynpeddler 8y ago
I really enjoyed Supreme Commander. There are a number of features (scale, strategic zoom, automation controls) that I wish were more popular in RTS's. Planetary annihilation tried to extend the concept in a novel way, but the execution stumbled a little bit and the micro transactions were aggravating. That being said, I think SupCom had a critical error that really hampered the longevity of the gameplay. SupCom (and Total Annihilation) follows the "Upgrade is Upgrade" model of game progression. This is a really common model in a lot of mediocre RTS's. Basically it means that in the early part of the game, you build a selection of robots, tanks, artillery, and planes. At some point you "upgrade" your economy and build a new selection robots, tanks, artillery and planes that are almost identical to the first batch but are bigger and better. And then this happens again and you build a 3rd set of units that are almost identical to the first and second sets of units, except they're even bigger and better. If that sounds repetitious and tedious, that's because it is. Basically you repeat the same game 3 times before you start getting to end game units that start offering you new and different strategic options. This is contrasted by Warcraft and Starcraft's "Upgrade is Sidegrade" model. In these games, every unit represents a new and unique set of options. You upgrade your economy in order to create an army that moves faster, or in the air, or has better artillery option. Economic progression is used to drive new tactics and strategy, or is used to counter your opponent's new units. In this model, the play changes as you move through the different stages of the game. This is much more interesting to play and watch as the game is constantly evolving as players produce new types of units. If someone could combine Planetary Annihilation's concept, with SupCom's execution of scale, and Starcraft's polish and upgrade model, I think we'd have an RTS for the ages.
- Farradfahren 8y ago
  Ever tried something from the spring-engine game family? http://springrts.com/ http://springrts.com/ Like Zero-k? https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/
- jbattle 8y ago
  You are on to something, but as a counterpoint: The T2 navy gives a lot of options not present in T1 - largely due to longer ranges. T1 subs and frigates mostly only interact with other naval units. But T2 get cruisers and destroyers anywhere near a coastline and they put large areas under thread A lot of T2 & T3 units have weird special powers (e.g. the destroyer that can sprout legs and walk on land, the T3 Loyalist has built-in TMD). These are somewhat sparsely distributed though The experimental units obviously have a lot of character Depending on circumstances, T1 units remain viable throughout the game. I've seen tons of matches where a T3-heavy naval invasion is pushed back by overwhelming numbers of amphibious T1 units (Zthuees) Making the switch from T1 to T2 and then to T3 is a huge part of the strategy of the game. It is true that the higher tier units are more efficient per unit of resource, but there are real costs (both in resources and in time) to upgrading your force and the decision of when to upgrade is never easy
xenihn 8y ago
Slightly offtopic but I'm now reminded of it -- I was a huge fan of TA as a kid, skipped Supreme Commander, and supported the Kickstarter for Planetary Annihilation based on the awesome pre-rendered gameplay trailer (as I'm sure many others did). I was really disappointed with the final game and put maybe 2 hours tops into it before never playing it again. It just wasn't fun to play. Despite that, I still felt satisfied that the game was finished and came out at all. The engine is really impressive IMO, and I enjoyed their engineering updates and videos. This is probably the only time I ever supported a project and didn't care at all for the final product, but still didn't feel burned because I could appreciate the enormous undertaking that it was, from engineering and development standpoints.
mariuz 8y ago
Previous related discussion Supreme Commander – Graphics Study https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770020

85 points by camtarn 8y ago

As a RTS Sup Com was pretty cool, even if the scale of the maps was a little daunting. On the other hand, during the campaign missions, the maps extended as objectives were reached, which was a good way to avoid being overwhelmed right at the start. A few other cool features: chaining move or build orders, having worker helping factories, flying unit doing crash damage on death and being able to set repeating build tasks in factories.

Karunamon 8y ago
Believe it or not, Supreme Commander is a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation - a game which actually had all of these mechanics back in 1997! TA can be had on Good Old Games for $6 and works perfectly on modern Windows or Wine.
- baud147258 8y ago
  I believe you ;). Chris Taylor evokes TA a few times in the interview. Still I did not called these features innovative or new, just that they are very useful to in order to deal with all the complexities of the game. Still I'm not really interested in TA, I've been plenty happy with SC and I don't really want to climb another steep difficulty curve. (also lack of time too)
- majormajor 8y ago
  TA used to crash at launch on GOG for Win 10 for me, but I rechecked after this and between updates to the GOG setup and/or Windows, it works now. Thanks!

drtse4 8y ago

Imho, this is probably the best RTS ever created. Huge maps, huge number of units easy to control with a great UI, amazing music (the first game that had a background music that was aligned to what you were doing in the game? i.e. a mass attack triggered the appropriate bgm).

theandrewbailey 8y ago
I'm sure that the Elder Scrolls 3 had situational music, and that was a few years prior. TES 4 did for sure, and that was a year before. I'm a big fan of Jeremy Soule (composer of SupCom, Elder Scrolls 3,4,5).
- jamesrcole 8y ago
  I don't know if it was the first but there was iMUSE at Lucasfilm Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE
kybernetikos 8y ago
Total Annihilation had background music respond to the in-game situation.
recursive 8y ago
I tried it out once. I recall being so overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that I didn't go back.
Karunamon 8y ago
It's also the only RTS I'm aware of that is dual monitor aware. If you have two screens, the second screen can show a persistent (controllable!) map of the battlefield. SC is an absolutely amazing title!
jason46 8y ago
All the DLC mechs they released periodically, wrecked the balance. A few were neat, but if you had all of them took away the fun for me. But, it was definitely a neat concept back then.

russnewcomer 8y ago

I'm a big fan of Chris Taylor and his games, the modding community around TA led 14-15 year old me to learn how to program so I could make my own mods. I think one of the most underrated things about the best of Chris' games is the interface. The TA, Dungeon Seige, and SupCom interfaces never get in the way of play, and are very, very fluid. GPG's two games that were less successful, DemiGod and Space Seige, added layers of complexity onto interfaces that made the games feel more technical, managerial, and less fun than needed to be. As I developer, I really strive to think about how the interfaces I design and implement are used by my users to quickly do repetitive or important tasks, traits I associate to Ctrl-grouping, shift clicking to build 5 units at a time in TA, and of course, strategic zoom. By the way, Camtarn, still like Guanine? :) I lurked the Cavedog WSB in the early years.

camtarn 8y ago
Holy crap! Yes, that's me :D What a blast from the past.

mrguyorama 8y ago

SupCom still survives today with Forged Alliance Forever[0], a fan made client, server, and community chock full of features, bug fixes, mods, and rebalances that make the game very polished. If you want a taste of Supreme Commander to truly understand the beauty of the game, check out Gyle[1] who is a truly underrated caster of the game on youtube. [0]:https://github.com/FAForever https://github.com/FAForever [1]:https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta/videos

Nelgraf 8y ago
Gyle! Agreed - a roommate and I slowly made our way through the backlog. You really grow to love Gyle - he's so enthusiastic and a fantastic commentator, if a bit obsessed with zooming in on reclaim while a battle is happening.

AceJohnny2 8y ago

For fans looking for a fix: Spring [1] is an RTS framework that started off rebuilding TA's engine. It has since branched off with mods creating new RTS's entirely... but still with that TA/SupCom feel. FA Forever [2] is a mod for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (the expansion), that gives access to community servers to download maps, mods, and find matches. It replaces Gas Powered Games' own shutdown servers. [1] https://springrts.com/ https://springrts.com/ [2] https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/

pivotalcmdr 8y ago

I want my dual panes back, isn't this a file commander? Who cares about games

docker_up 8y ago

Total Annihilation was one of the best examples of rock solid software that I had seen up to that point. My friend and I played it across the country on dialup modems, with 500 units each. It would slow down to a crawl, but it never crashed. We would optimize by giving each other 30 mins to build a fort and then we could attack at will. It was truly a thing of beauty.

drharby 8y ago
> nr 30mins NO NOOBS
danso 8y ago
I never really played online, but as a kid I was fascinated by the near-automation that TA allowed for with its unit queuing options. I'd happily pay full price for a game that had TA-era graphics, but the AI improvements of today. Though it seems improvements in single-player AI has stagnated with the growing ubiquity of multiplayer [0]. [0] https://aigamedev.com/open/interviews/stalker-alife/ https://aigamedev.com/open/interviews/stalker-alife/

danso 8y ago

Great to hear that Chris Taylor is working on a new RTS, but I wonder how it'll be received given that the RTS genre has seemingly been eviscerated, particularly by MOBAs. Even Starcraft 2 seems to be a niche title, even overshadowed by its predecessor -- which Blizzard opted to remaster. The only other RTS I've recently paid attention to is also a remaster: AOE2 HD. From my narrow personal perspective, it's easy for me to understand why RTSes aren't popular -- I'm too old to have the time to master them. But I wonder why the genre has stagnated for the rest of the world -- is it because it's too complex? Or because the mechanics of other similar genres, like MOBAs, are inherently superior? With instant-gratification being the default mindset nowadays, the thought of spending 30 minutes building out a base only for it to be wiped out in 2 minutes of action does seem antiquated.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pmalynin 8y ago
I wouldn’t say the RTS genre has been destroyed per se. We have Stelaris for example and Hearts of Iron 4 some time ago. There is also RimWorld and Wargame. Banished, comes to mind. Oh and of course They Are Billions, great game combining Starcraft and age of empires. Anyway, I think the genre is alive and kicking — mainly driven by smaller developers. It’s a shame that EA killed off C&C but they only have themselves to blame.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Well, most of those fall more under the more general umbrella of "strategy". Stellaris is 4x, Rimworld is a management sim, Banished is a city builder. RTS is stuff like Starcraft/Warcraft, Age of Empires, C&C, Company of Heroes, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander. I haven't played They Are Billions yet, but yeah, that looks like an RTS or really close to it. So maybe it's not quite dead, but hanging on by a thread! There's also Offworld Trading Company from a couple years ago which is RTS minus combat.
- thrower123 8y ago
  Paradox grand strategy games are real-time, but it's bending the definitions of the genre to a ridiculous, meaningless level to consider them RTS games.

bmc7505 8y ago

I still think Total Annhilation had one of the best soundtracks of any video game ever recorded, including The Elder Scrolls. It was Jeremy Soule’s magnum opus. https://youtu.be/o2jS4ZaVOWA https://youtu.be/o2jS4ZaVOWA https://youtu.be/lA-iag83kQc https://youtu.be/lA-iag83kQc https://youtu.be/r_9QO_76l_I https://youtu.be/r_9QO_76l_I https://youtu.be/1mOG3Q8CSoY https://youtu.be/1mOG3Q8CSoY

korijn 8y ago
That first one reminds me of a theme from Shadow of the Colossus! https://youtu.be/57jIlw6HmCE https://youtu.be/57jIlw6HmCE from 15:10 onwards
im3w1l 8y ago
It's quite cool that you could insert the game cd into an ordinary music player and have the background music play. Shows how proud they must have been of it.
- qu4z-2 8y ago
  That was a moderately common thing in those days. In particular, iirc, there used to be a cable between the CD-ROM and the sound card that let you play audio off the CD without having the (limited) CPU needing to get involved, deal with audio encodings, etc. The CD would have a data track followed by a bunch of audio tracks, then the game can just say "Play track 5" and carry on with its business. At least, that's my understanding. I was pretty young in those days and some of this is reconstructed "Oh, right, that would make sense". The downside is that if you find a dump of only the data track/files it's hard to reconstruct the full experience of abandonware games. FireFight just isn't the same without the background music.
- BLKNSLVR 8y ago
  Quake soundtrack. Reznor perfectly matched the soundtrack to the mood of the game. I still listen to track 5 as a standalone piece of dark moody brilliance. 22 years later.
beefok 8y ago

klibertp 8y ago

My one and only problem with SupCom is that it slows down to a crawl when you have many AI-controlled players on a large map. This is still true today - I tried playing SupCom on a high-end laptop from 2017, and maps larger than 10x10 with multiple AI opponents are still unplayable. There are AI mods which supposedly improve this, but in my testing, the difference was minor to non-existent. Which is a damn shame, because even the hardest, cheating AI is very easy to defeat if you're somewhat experienced, so I mostly resorted to playing against 3+ allied AIs, which is simply impossible on larger maps. That being said, SupCom is easily the best RTS I ever played - it was basically Total Annihilation, only bigger, better and prettier. And TA was already an exceptional RTS, one that people still played and enjoyed as long as a decade after release. I think TA and SupCom ruined the whole RTS genre for me. I was trying to play some newer RTSes, but they are all lacking in features which the two taught me to rely on and enjoy. Strategic zoom, queues of commands in factories and building units, waypoints, unit formations, ferry routes, terrain obstructing visibility, radars, and getting in the way of bullets/missiles, an economy where you have to balance income and spending, gradual construction of structures and units, massive amounts of units on the map and massive units themselves (experimentals), very well-balanced factions with each still being quite distinct and so on - there are games with some of these features, but I couldn't find a game which would have all or even most of them. SupCom2 was a disaster and I refuse to consider it SupCom at all, so I'm basically still waiting for the sequel. Or maybe I just missed a game like that - suggestions on the titles to try would be very welcome!

jules 8y ago
Have you tried FAF?
- hnmonkey 8y ago
  I assume you're referring to https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/ because just googling for FAF doesn't give you anything useful.
  - hnmonkey 8y ago
    To add to this... it appears that FAF is referenced elsewhere in this thread by mrguyorama and AceJohnny2 while providing more details on it.

alyandon 8y ago

For anyone wanting to pick up a copy on the cheap, Supreme Commander bundles are currently on sale for 80% off on Steam.

kwoff 8y ago
I think it's not a coincidence...

corysama 8y ago

If you like this, you’d probably appreciate https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/

tynpeddler 8y ago

I really enjoyed Supreme Commander. There are a number of features (scale, strategic zoom, automation controls) that I wish were more popular in RTS's. Planetary annihilation tried to extend the concept in a novel way, but the execution stumbled a little bit and the micro transactions were aggravating. That being said, I think SupCom had a critical error that really hampered the longevity of the gameplay. SupCom (and Total Annihilation) follows the "Upgrade is Upgrade" model of game progression. This is a really common model in a lot of mediocre RTS's. Basically it means that in the early part of the game, you build a selection of robots, tanks, artillery, and planes. At some point you "upgrade" your economy and build a new selection robots, tanks, artillery and planes that are almost identical to the first batch but are bigger and better. And then this happens again and you build a 3rd set of units that are almost identical to the first and second sets of units, except they're even bigger and better. If that sounds repetitious and tedious, that's because it is. Basically you repeat the same game 3 times before you start getting to end game units that start offering you new and different strategic options. This is contrasted by Warcraft and Starcraft's "Upgrade is Sidegrade" model. In these games, every unit represents a new and unique set of options. You upgrade your economy in order to create an army that moves faster, or in the air, or has better artillery option. Economic progression is used to drive new tactics and strategy, or is used to counter your opponent's new units. In this model, the play changes as you move through the different stages of the game. This is much more interesting to play and watch as the game is constantly evolving as players produce new types of units. If someone could combine Planetary Annihilation's concept, with SupCom's execution of scale, and Starcraft's polish and upgrade model, I think we'd have an RTS for the ages.

Farradfahren 8y ago
Ever tried something from the spring-engine game family? http://springrts.com/ http://springrts.com/ Like Zero-k? https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/
jbattle 8y ago
You are on to something, but as a counterpoint: The T2 navy gives a lot of options not present in T1 - largely due to longer ranges. T1 subs and frigates mostly only interact with other naval units. But T2 get cruisers and destroyers anywhere near a coastline and they put large areas under thread A lot of T2 & T3 units have weird special powers (e.g. the destroyer that can sprout legs and walk on land, the T3 Loyalist has built-in TMD). These are somewhat sparsely distributed though The experimental units obviously have a lot of character Depending on circumstances, T1 units remain viable throughout the game. I've seen tons of matches where a T3-heavy naval invasion is pushed back by overwhelming numbers of amphibious T1 units (Zthuees) Making the switch from T1 to T2 and then to T3 is a huge part of the strategy of the game. It is true that the higher tier units are more efficient per unit of resource, but there are real costs (both in resources and in time) to upgrading your force and the decision of when to upgrade is never easy

xenihn 8y ago

Slightly offtopic but I'm now reminded of it -- I was a huge fan of TA as a kid, skipped Supreme Commander, and supported the Kickstarter for Planetary Annihilation based on the awesome pre-rendered gameplay trailer (as I'm sure many others did). I was really disappointed with the final game and put maybe 2 hours tops into it before never playing it again. It just wasn't fun to play. Despite that, I still felt satisfied that the game was finished and came out at all. The engine is really impressive IMO, and I enjoyed their engineering updates and videos. This is probably the only time I ever supported a project and didn't care at all for the final product, but still didn't feel burned because I could appreciate the enormous undertaking that it was, from engineering and development standpoints.

mariuz 8y ago

Previous related discussion Supreme Commander – Graphics Study https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770020