5 ms·

Is Zero-k still popular now that its cousin https://www.beyondallreason.info https://www.beyondallreason.info has matured ?

dmos62 3y ago
Wasn't aware there's a successor. Screenshots make it seem very similar. Anyone played it?
- jadbox 3y ago
  They are similar but different. BAR is more of a unique game (for better or worse), while ZeroK is much closer to an HD remake of Total Annihilation.
  - killerstorm 3y ago
    Are you sure? BAR units are generally similar to TA units. It captures the feel of "what TA would be if it was full 3D and high resolution". Of course, balance is different, but TA balance was very odd. ZeroK seems to have terrain modification mechanics which is not present in TA. In BAR terrain can be damaged by big explosions, but it's very limited. FWIW I never played ZeroK but based on their intro video BAR seems to be closer to TA visually.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    It's pretty much the inverse : http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29067 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29067 BAR used to stand for "Balanced Annihilation Reloaded" - so it's sticking very close to TA, while Zero-K has been experimenting much more freely with what is possible in the Spring/Recoil engine. It's also probably a factor that BAR has spent a decade in development hell (under a different team than now ?), so it just didn't have the velocity to fork away sufficiently, even if it wanted to.
    - DayDollar 3y ago
      Eh, no? Zero-k was there first, and gathered vital info. The original setup for spring rollout of games was thoroughly inadequat to supporting large number of gamers. Fuck, the first lobby server wrote match infos into a freaking textfile. The first indicator of that popped up, when valve ended greenlight, and just greenlit all the things. Which propped Evolution RTS upon the steam front page for half a day, flooding the original lobby system and showing how inadequat the whole ecosystem was for that. The original Evo dev Forb learned from the whole mess after he returned from his day job. Zero-k then learned the lessons, developed a ingui lobby, started the whole matchmaking and better server deployment, detached from the whole "one central server" thing of the spring eco system. BAR did some graphical overhaul, with Floris, Beherith, Sprung and the whole original crew supported by new faces like Teifion and on and on. They optimized the Spring engine into a new version- more tailored to BARs needs and reworked alot of the stuff. Its gpl open source, so the project order and who invented what is pretty flowy.. everybody copies from everybody, one progress is everyones progress..
      - badosu 3y ago
        I don't think it's much about the timeline but more about the feel of being close to TA. In which case BAR indeed is closest to a some sort of TA-sense while Zero-K is more unique (and that's great!).
      - BlueTemplar 3y ago
        How does it contradict what I said ? I disagreed about «BAR is more of a unique game (for better or worse), while ZeroK is much closer to an HD remake of Total Annihilation.» P.S.: You might also be mistaken about EvoRTS' Steam release being specifically behind the motivation of Zero-K splitting up, since according to lead ZK dev the second at least partially predates the first ? http://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/236480#236480 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/236480#236480 > 2012(ish): Zero-K splits off to its own infrastructure after disagreement with infrastructure developers. From my perspective they were very stubborn regarding extending the protocol to allow for new stuff (Eg matchmacking, more advanced planetwars) and would make sudden changes that broke our autohosts. > 2013-2014: Evolution RTS is greenlit on Steam and released in 2014. I don't think Steam was on my radar at the time, but now it looked like a possibility. Looking back at the dates we actually put up a greenlight campaign five days after the Evolution RTS release. (Lobby interface issues being another thing, but then IIRC EvoRTS had already tried to improve on this before release, though not successfully enough ?)
- killerstorm 3y ago
  Yes, Beyond All Reason is a great RTS. Most people seem to be interested in 8 vs 8 team mode, but there's a plenty of other options, including FFA. I don't know how it compares to Zero-K. But it perfectly captures the spirit of the original Total Annihilation.
- Tuna-Fish 3y ago
  Not really a successor, but as the poster above said, a cousin. This lineage of open-source games started from Total Annihilation, which had a lot of mods that ran into engine limitations. This resulted in a bunch of enterprising open-sourced devs to develop a compatible engine, without those limitations. This engine (Spring Engine) has then evolved into something much more impressive and capable. Zero-K was implemented on this engine. Beyond All Reason uses the Recoil engine, which is a fairly recent for of Spring.
  - DayDollar 3y ago
    Eh, the engine was a accident. It started out as a 3d-viewer, capable of replaying ta games by the svedish yankspankers (clan sy). What started out as a viewer, escalated into a 106.0 version long engine, providing a war that consumes planets, each side with only one final wish - Total Annhilation at Zero-k, beyond all reason. Naw, the community comes and goes ebbs and flows. Its mostly on recoil discord, some are still on the irc server, the rest is on the BAR discord.
    - vanderZwan 3y ago
      > svedish yankspankers Presuming that the main code contributions also come from the Swedish scene I'm not entirely surprised that this happened. It sort of fits my impression of the gamer/programmer culture here (although I can't quite express why)
      - 3seashells 3y ago
        3 months of night, either tinker, drinker or metal guy torching towns church(thinker).
        vanderZwan 3y ago
        > torching towns church Surprisingly, that was only one metal band and every other metal band hates them for it. I have been told the average metal fan freaking loves churches and their acoustics. They might not like The Church, but they love churches.
- pashsoft 3y ago
  BAR has a small but active community, they also run tournaments. In terms of gameplay, it is superficially similar to Total Annihilation but much more polished. The UI and unit control mechanics are a masterpiece in their own right. A lot of what makes a strategy game "fun" is the feeling that you are actually in control of your army, and that your decisions matter. BAR delivers that better than any other strategy game, in my opinion. You can control large armies of tiny units without feeling overwhelmed by micro, and still have the option for individual-unit controls when you need them. Give it a try!
- loufe 3y ago
  It's THE game with my friend group right now. We play FFA, team v team, team v bossAI. Great polish, watching playbacks is sweet, observer seats is great. Overall fantastic experience, really impressive for FOSS
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Popularity has been waning naturally, just like the popularity of Spring lobbies before it, with respective peaks around 2017 and 2010, but AFAIK the newfound popularity of BAR has been also bringing significant new blood to these other Spring/Recoil games. (Without commercial levels of advertising, a lot of Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander / RTS fans had never heard of them, word of mouth can only go so far... at least until Twitch streamers became super-popular ?)
casablancatoast 3y ago
Thanks for the BAR link, I'm going to share that with someone who'll find it useful. Appreciated!
Buttons840 3y ago
To compare the two: Zero-K allows 16 vs 16 battles (and it works!), each player controls a relatively smaller number of units. In Beyond All Reason, there are 8 v 8 battles and each player controls a larger number of units, maybe 200 or so at the peak of battle. (There are some strong, but predictable AIs for both games.) Zero-K has more units that are less realistic and have more variety. BAR has more realistic units and less variety. BAR has tanks, Zero-K has flying tanks that can also turn invisible (this is a made up example, but illustrates the idea). Zero-K has a limited economy, you have to control land to to generate income, and fighting has more influence on who wins. In BAR, the economy is more exponential, and at high tech levels controlling land doesn't matter, you can generate a huge income in a tiny corner of the map and win because your economy is exponentially stronger than anything your opponents have.
- astrobe_ 3y ago
  To clarify, ZK doesn't population caps like e.g. Starcraft. The actual limit is actually the CPU/GPU (and maybe your bandwidth too). ZK's 16vs16 host, the "lobster pot" as they call it, can barely be playable if your rig is too weak.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    > ZK doesn't population caps That sounds like poor RTS design. Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins. Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but took one bad fight, so you can immediately spend all your money to get a new army. Meanwhile your opponent must construct additional pylons before they can get much further ahead - they grow stronger slower than you regrow the lost limbs.
    - pdntspa 3y ago
      Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want! Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has exploitable gaps in their defenses as their attention is split so many more ways.
remram 3y ago
BAR is more similar to the original Total Annihilation (and successors like Supreme Commander). It's a lot of similar units (e.g. tanks) with subtle variations, multiple tiers, with a focus on out-numbering your opponent. Zero-K went a different route. They simplified the economy (metal cost = energy cost) but added a whole lot of mechanics like overdrive grids and made every unit unique. There is a lot of variety with mind-control, jumpjets, shields, unit-throwers, self-replicators, teleports, terraforming, etc. Zero-K has been on Steam for a few years, I think BAR is working towards it. They are both good worthwhile games, they share some common elements, but they are both worth trying in their own right.
- liotier 3y ago
  > unit-throwers Was the BAR peewee-launching gun inspired by Zero-K ?
  - 3seashells 3y ago
    Zero k used terraform Ed ramps and newton's?
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    More likely the unit cannon from SupCom 2 ? https://supcom2.fandom.com/wiki/Noah_Experimental_Unit_Cannon https://supcom2.fandom.com/wiki/Noah_Experimental_Unit_Canno... But if I'm not mistaken Zero-K's pulling/pushing beam weapons predate SupCom2 (combined with terraformed ramps you get a unit cannon, though making the unit survive on landing is an additional challenge), though Lobsters came out after : http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Newton http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Newton http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Lobster http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Lobster
badosu 3y ago
This link might be helpful: https://www.beyondallreason.info/faq/what-are-the-differences-between-bar-and-zerok https://www.beyondallreason.info/faq/what-are-the-difference...
concordDance 3y ago
Not as much as BAR. I do prefer Zero-K though, it has a much less degenerate economy (no exponential growth) and actual unit AI.

dmos62 3y ago

Wasn't aware there's a successor. Screenshots make it seem very similar. Anyone played it?

jadbox 3y ago
They are similar but different. BAR is more of a unique game (for better or worse), while ZeroK is much closer to an HD remake of Total Annihilation.
- killerstorm 3y ago
  Are you sure? BAR units are generally similar to TA units. It captures the feel of "what TA would be if it was full 3D and high resolution". Of course, balance is different, but TA balance was very odd. ZeroK seems to have terrain modification mechanics which is not present in TA. In BAR terrain can be damaged by big explosions, but it's very limited. FWIW I never played ZeroK but based on their intro video BAR seems to be closer to TA visually.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  It's pretty much the inverse : http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29067 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29067 BAR used to stand for "Balanced Annihilation Reloaded" - so it's sticking very close to TA, while Zero-K has been experimenting much more freely with what is possible in the Spring/Recoil engine. It's also probably a factor that BAR has spent a decade in development hell (under a different team than now ?), so it just didn't have the velocity to fork away sufficiently, even if it wanted to.
  - DayDollar 3y ago
    Eh, no? Zero-k was there first, and gathered vital info. The original setup for spring rollout of games was thoroughly inadequat to supporting large number of gamers. Fuck, the first lobby server wrote match infos into a freaking textfile. The first indicator of that popped up, when valve ended greenlight, and just greenlit all the things. Which propped Evolution RTS upon the steam front page for half a day, flooding the original lobby system and showing how inadequat the whole ecosystem was for that. The original Evo dev Forb learned from the whole mess after he returned from his day job. Zero-k then learned the lessons, developed a ingui lobby, started the whole matchmaking and better server deployment, detached from the whole "one central server" thing of the spring eco system. BAR did some graphical overhaul, with Floris, Beherith, Sprung and the whole original crew supported by new faces like Teifion and on and on. They optimized the Spring engine into a new version- more tailored to BARs needs and reworked alot of the stuff. Its gpl open source, so the project order and who invented what is pretty flowy.. everybody copies from everybody, one progress is everyones progress..
    - badosu 3y ago
      I don't think it's much about the timeline but more about the feel of being close to TA. In which case BAR indeed is closest to a some sort of TA-sense while Zero-K is more unique (and that's great!).
    - BlueTemplar 3y ago
      How does it contradict what I said ? I disagreed about «BAR is more of a unique game (for better or worse), while ZeroK is much closer to an HD remake of Total Annihilation.» P.S.: You might also be mistaken about EvoRTS' Steam release being specifically behind the motivation of Zero-K splitting up, since according to lead ZK dev the second at least partially predates the first ? http://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/236480#236480 http://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/236480#236480 > 2012(ish): Zero-K splits off to its own infrastructure after disagreement with infrastructure developers. From my perspective they were very stubborn regarding extending the protocol to allow for new stuff (Eg matchmacking, more advanced planetwars) and would make sudden changes that broke our autohosts. > 2013-2014: Evolution RTS is greenlit on Steam and released in 2014. I don't think Steam was on my radar at the time, but now it looked like a possibility. Looking back at the dates we actually put up a greenlight campaign five days after the Evolution RTS release. (Lobby interface issues being another thing, but then IIRC EvoRTS had already tried to improve on this before release, though not successfully enough ?)
killerstorm 3y ago
Yes, Beyond All Reason is a great RTS. Most people seem to be interested in 8 vs 8 team mode, but there's a plenty of other options, including FFA. I don't know how it compares to Zero-K. But it perfectly captures the spirit of the original Total Annihilation.
Tuna-Fish 3y ago
Not really a successor, but as the poster above said, a cousin. This lineage of open-source games started from Total Annihilation, which had a lot of mods that ran into engine limitations. This resulted in a bunch of enterprising open-sourced devs to develop a compatible engine, without those limitations. This engine (Spring Engine) has then evolved into something much more impressive and capable. Zero-K was implemented on this engine. Beyond All Reason uses the Recoil engine, which is a fairly recent for of Spring.
- DayDollar 3y ago
  Eh, the engine was a accident. It started out as a 3d-viewer, capable of replaying ta games by the svedish yankspankers (clan sy). What started out as a viewer, escalated into a 106.0 version long engine, providing a war that consumes planets, each side with only one final wish - Total Annhilation at Zero-k, beyond all reason. Naw, the community comes and goes ebbs and flows. Its mostly on recoil discord, some are still on the irc server, the rest is on the BAR discord.
  - vanderZwan 3y ago
    > svedish yankspankers Presuming that the main code contributions also come from the Swedish scene I'm not entirely surprised that this happened. It sort of fits my impression of the gamer/programmer culture here (although I can't quite express why)
    - 3seashells 3y ago
      3 months of night, either tinker, drinker or metal guy torching towns church(thinker).
      - vanderZwan 3y ago
        > torching towns church Surprisingly, that was only one metal band and every other metal band hates them for it. I have been told the average metal fan freaking loves churches and their acoustics. They might not like The Church, but they love churches.
pashsoft 3y ago
BAR has a small but active community, they also run tournaments. In terms of gameplay, it is superficially similar to Total Annihilation but much more polished. The UI and unit control mechanics are a masterpiece in their own right. A lot of what makes a strategy game "fun" is the feeling that you are actually in control of your army, and that your decisions matter. BAR delivers that better than any other strategy game, in my opinion. You can control large armies of tiny units without feeling overwhelmed by micro, and still have the option for individual-unit controls when you need them. Give it a try!
loufe 3y ago
It's THE game with my friend group right now. We play FFA, team v team, team v bossAI. Great polish, watching playbacks is sweet, observer seats is great. Overall fantastic experience, really impressive for FOSS

BlueTemplar 3y ago

Popularity has been waning naturally, just like the popularity of Spring lobbies before it, with respective peaks around 2017 and 2010, but AFAIK the newfound popularity of BAR has been also bringing significant new blood to these other Spring/Recoil games. (Without commercial levels of advertising, a lot of Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander / RTS fans had never heard of them, word of mouth can only go so far... at least until Twitch streamers became super-popular ?)

casablancatoast 3y ago

Thanks for the BAR link, I'm going to share that with someone who'll find it useful. Appreciated!

Buttons840 3y ago

To compare the two: Zero-K allows 16 vs 16 battles (and it works!), each player controls a relatively smaller number of units. In Beyond All Reason, there are 8 v 8 battles and each player controls a larger number of units, maybe 200 or so at the peak of battle. (There are some strong, but predictable AIs for both games.) Zero-K has more units that are less realistic and have more variety. BAR has more realistic units and less variety. BAR has tanks, Zero-K has flying tanks that can also turn invisible (this is a made up example, but illustrates the idea). Zero-K has a limited economy, you have to control land to to generate income, and fighting has more influence on who wins. In BAR, the economy is more exponential, and at high tech levels controlling land doesn't matter, you can generate a huge income in a tiny corner of the map and win because your economy is exponentially stronger than anything your opponents have.

astrobe_ 3y ago
To clarify, ZK doesn't population caps like e.g. Starcraft. The actual limit is actually the CPU/GPU (and maybe your bandwidth too). ZK's 16vs16 host, the "lobster pot" as they call it, can barely be playable if your rig is too weak.
- rollcat 3y ago
  > ZK doesn't population caps That sounds like poor RTS design. Popcap is one of the simplest and most effective "anti-snowballing" mechanisms. Once you're "maxed out", you cannot get further ahead - you must attack and trade to build new stuff. If you can just keep making stuff without ever being forced to trade, whoever gets ahead first, eventually wins. Supply also serves as a comeback mechanic - you were even, but took one bad fight, so you can immediately spend all your money to get a new army. Meanwhile your opponent must construct additional pylons before they can get much further ahead - they grow stronger slower than you regrow the lost limbs.
  - pdntspa 3y ago
    Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want! Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has exploitable gaps in their defenses as their attention is split so many more ways.

remram 3y ago

BAR is more similar to the original Total Annihilation (and successors like Supreme Commander). It's a lot of similar units (e.g. tanks) with subtle variations, multiple tiers, with a focus on out-numbering your opponent. Zero-K went a different route. They simplified the economy (metal cost = energy cost) but added a whole lot of mechanics like overdrive grids and made every unit unique. There is a lot of variety with mind-control, jumpjets, shields, unit-throwers, self-replicators, teleports, terraforming, etc. Zero-K has been on Steam for a few years, I think BAR is working towards it. They are both good worthwhile games, they share some common elements, but they are both worth trying in their own right.

liotier 3y ago
> unit-throwers Was the BAR peewee-launching gun inspired by Zero-K ?
- 3seashells 3y ago
  Zero k used terraform Ed ramps and newton's?
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  More likely the unit cannon from SupCom 2 ? https://supcom2.fandom.com/wiki/Noah_Experimental_Unit_Cannon https://supcom2.fandom.com/wiki/Noah_Experimental_Unit_Canno... But if I'm not mistaken Zero-K's pulling/pushing beam weapons predate SupCom2 (combined with terraformed ramps you get a unit cannon, though making the unit survive on landing is an additional challenge), though Lobsters came out after : http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Newton http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Newton http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Lobster http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Lobster

badosu 3y ago

This link might be helpful: https://www.beyondallreason.info/faq/what-are-the-differences-between-bar-and-zerok https://www.beyondallreason.info/faq/what-are-the-difference...

concordDance 3y ago

Not as much as BAR. I do prefer Zero-K though, it has a much less degenerate economy (no exponential growth) and actual unit AI.