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Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)
- pohl 3mo agoBeen wanting to play this. Alas, macOS support is table stakes for me.
- gloosx 3mo agoYeah it's very sad for me as well, I was a big fan of supreme commander and I really wanted to play BAR. They have a special Notice for Mac users, which explain that they don't support Mac because: 1. No support for OpenGL 4.3 by Apple. 2. Dependency on a library not supporting ARM architectures. The first point is not a big deal, you can emit Vulkan commands from OpenGL via Zink, and then use MoltenVK to translate it all to Metal automatically at runtime. Surely performance will suffer a bit, but it should be playable. The second one is quite absurd though, ARM processors is not something exclusive to Mac, Windows-on-ARM laptops are becoming increasingly common, ARM market share in the broader PC space is forecast to approach 20-30% in the coming years as Windows-on-ARM software compatibility matures. This prevents a huge number of people from playing the game due to the ancient streflop library, and really this notice should be "Notice for ARM users" not "Notice from Mac users" UPD: Actually there is a guy who is trying to invent a direct OpenGL-to-Metal translation layer just to play B.A.R. it seems, and the progress is pretty huge at the moment: https://appgl.pages.dev/ https://appgl.pages.dev/
- p2004a 3mo agoThat notice is not worded in the best way and hasn't been updated for a while. However, progress has been made. On the Recoil engine releases (https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/RecoilEngine/releases https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/RecoilEngine/releases) page, we have had experimental Linux arm64 builds since March of this year. Additionally, several people are trying to get the graphical pipeline and overall build working on Mac; you can follow their progress at https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/RecoilEngine/issues/936 https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/RecoilEngine/issues/936 The challenge with arm64 is that Recoil Engine does deterministic lockstep simulation using actual native floats for performance. Porting all of those operations (which were implemented using the mentioned library) to work on arm64 and produce the exact same bit-perfect results as on x86_64 has been challenging.
- gloosx 3mo agoIt's great to hear, yeah I researched this topic a bit further and there are clearly some very determined people who want to bring BAR to more platforms, excited about the progress! Floats will be a big pain in the ass for sure and will cause countless desyncs, same story prevented playing supreme commander FAF on ARM processors, though a lot of attempts have been made
- dimitar 3mo agoThere is an interesting technical reason why its a challenge (and they can't just swap in a supported library): > What makes the “simulate inputs” approach work is that the engine takes utmost care to keep calculations identical on each client. This is not trivial because you still have to work with things that naturally differ on each client, such as mouse position or which units are selected - this is called the unsynced state. On top of that, there can be hardware differences that have to be worked around to get identical results - the huge effort involved is one of the reasons why Recoil is not available outside x86-64. https://recoilengine.org/articles/netcode-overview/ https://recoilengine.org/articles/netcode-overview/
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- zeafoamrun 3mo agoThis looks really slick and also very detailed. Is it free as in beer or free as in freedom?
- gertrunde 3mo agoFairly freedom-y by the looks of things: https://github.com/beyond-all-reason https://github.com/beyond-all-reason
- wffurr 3mo agoBoth, as I learned from 5 min browsing the site.
- qznc 3mo agoBuilt on the Recoil engine: https://recoilengine.org/ https://recoilengine.org/ Which is a fork of the Spring RTS engine: https://springrts.com/ https://springrts.com/
- kcb 3mo agoIt was. Not anymore though.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agowas and still is. absolutely nothing has changed.
- retrochameleon 3mo agoWeird. Are you paying someone in order to access the game?
- Teifion 3mo agoIt's completely free to play (though they/we have recently signed a publishing deal and there will be a paid for campaign mode later) with a combination of GPL and MIT source code.
- p2004a 3mo agoFree as a beer due to assets. - All the code is GPLv2, MIT and other open licenses. - Some assets are CC-BY-SA but there are also a quite a bunch proprietary ones
- Waterluvian 3mo agoThere’s a very “we’re selling business software” feel to this webpage, which makes me wonder what it would be like for business software to be marketed like a video game.
- hilariously 3mo agoHonestly it feels like someone whose used to internal metrics and management at Large Company made this.
- inigyou 3mo agoIsn't that most business software these days?
- gbuk2013 3mo agoI used to play the original TA a lot and BAR is very well done. Much harder than the original though - I had no trouble with TA campaigns but I have not even made it halfway with BAR before hitting skill wall. Not a teen anymore so it’s hard to motivate myself to try and push through. :)
- Perz1val 3mo agoThere's also Zero-K on steam and it has an actual campaign. Last time I checked BAR had none, but it was on the roadmap
- gbuk2013 3mo agoYou’re right - it’s not a campaign as such - it’s a set of scenarios (currently 22) in increasing difficulty. I haven’t played for a while after getting stuck but checking now I got stuck on the 5th scenario - even worse than I thought. :) I played Zero-K several years ago and it didn’t stick in my mind as much but maybe worth revisiting it - thanks! Reading about it seems to suggest that it’s even deeper in terms of strategy and tactics so I will probably struggle even more. :(
- SockThief 3mo agoThe game is very mature and well thought RTS. The user experience and performance is beyond anything on the market now. It beats all well known AAA studios attempts at it by far. It's still actively developed and very free to play. Here's a cast of 40 vs 40 players by a former Star Craft 2 pro player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1a5dkjUq3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1a5dkjUq3o
- j4k0bfr 3mo agoI love watching BAR multiplayer games but definitely felt a bit overwhelmed in the midgame with this one. How anyone can comprehend a 40v40 in real time is beyond me haha. I guess it's just a muscle to build. Looking forward to a break where I can get into BAR, I've been utterly nerdsniped. Uthermal's VODs are good stuff [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBIBYkD7tyY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBIBYkD7tyY
- Perz1val 3mo agoI think that's the point of those massive RTS games, your attention is like a resource you must manage
- __turbobrew__ 3mo agoIt isn’t only massive RTS. In 1v1 Brood War attention is also a resource.
- retrochameleon 3mo agoMore and more repitition. You get better at recognizing familiar scenarios and employing an effective measure without thinking about it too much. Early skill curve can be rough. Recommend playing 8v8 noob lobbies pvp or against bots to learn.
- NorthernGulch 3mo agoThis person is a former Starcraft 2 commentator, not a pro player.
- encom 3mo ago>All development updates, tech support, finding friends and all player and developer communication takes place on Discord. [ eye rolling emoji ]
- Sharlin 3mo agoIt's unfortunate, but what can you do? It's where players are, for better or worse.
- MarsIronPI 3mo agoAt least bridge to something the freedom-loving folks will use, e.g. Matrix, or (better IMO) Jabber.
- p2004a 3mo agoWe had Matrix bridge for a few months to some channels related to development. Pretty much no interest (except for 1 person that asked for it), no legitimate activity, yet, there were spammers showing up quite often. Bridging also didn't map all the discord functionality so it caused some confusion at times.
- cissikatt 3mo agoDiscord is the worst. Forums can be searchable for decades. When Discord is not cool enough to be around anymore, everything is gone.
- bob1029 3mo agoIf you are into playing with others, you might find a more stable community with FAF. https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/
- NBJack 3mo agoSome of the folks who give running commentaries on matches make it entertaining even if you don't play. Derp, Gyle, Willow; I've spent way more hours listening to their humorous takes on plays and strategies than I would care to admit. And frankly, it's the "average joes" of the game (lower ranked players) whom don't really follow the meta that often make it the most entertaining.
- somat 3mo agoI definitely enjoy RTS more as a spectator sport than as a player(I am probably not competitive enough to enjoy playing vs people) but I do enjoy a good match every once in a while. But... I hate the "casts" I much prefer to watch a single player just play the game rather than inane talking points and jumping all over the place loosing the narrative. This is such a dissociative experience (what I enjoy vs what everyone wants to provide) I wonder if there is a market opportunity somewhere here for professional sports. Just a cam feed focused on on a single player and their contribution to the game. A second person cast rather than the normal third person view.
- energy123 3mo agoWhat's the toxicity level of the FAF community?
- foolfoolz 3mo agoFAF has a good community. it’s clear some people are better than others and you won’t get yelled at for not knowing what to do and can ask for help. the problem with FAF isn’t community, it’s technical. the game and connectivity are so painful that it might take you an hour to get into a game. and then you play 30 mins, get to the core part of the game, and someone drops. it’s a 10/10 experience when it’s good but it might be good 10% of the time. you’ll frequently see comments that it’s a lobby simulator unfortunately FAF is an evolved TA with better mechanics than BAR. BAR is just modern graphics TA. which just feels old and outdated to me after spending so much time playing FAF which is better across every angle
- aetherspawn 3mo agoGreat game, technically impressive, but the community can be quite mean and toxic. I played for around a year after having played other TA Spring RTS for a few years prior, and if you don’t follow the exact meta of the month (whatever that might be) in terms of build order and things, people can get really aggro and your team can vote to kick you and take your units. Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it. The drafting for picking map spots is done in order of seniority, and the good players take all the low stress spots which leaves the newer players to take the more difficult spots. This feeds into a loop where the senior players get aggro at the new players for letting the front break down, but simultaneously they won’t take it themselves even though it’s the more important position. I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game. The front player blames the back player, the back player blames the front player, everyone flames the weakest player.
- RugnirViking 3mo agoWow, that sounds awful. That's beyond optimising the fun out of a game, it's straight up refusing to have fun. One wonders what they get from it?
- scns 3mo agoImaginary superiority
- tasuki 3mo ago> That's beyond optimising the fun out of a game I'd even dare to say it's beyond all reason.
- embedding-shape 3mo agoDifferent people get different things out of video games (and everything, really). For some, the fun is learning, and the game stops being fun when you understand it (this is me). For others, the fun starts after they're learned, and starts being good at it, but still have competition with others. For yet others, mastering it and being the best is the fun. All these groups of people sometimes play in the same lobbies, and what the players "gain" from the session can be very different depending on the person. There is no "right or wrong" way to play video games, or the right/wrong motivation for it, it's just different.
- plopz 3mo agoTheres been some drama with this game where a few of the core admins have claimed ownership and sold out to a publisher. They are taking the free open source game and selling it on steam with a free demo. In addition to the toxic community, its made the whole thing a bit radioactive. Curious to see how it all plays out.
- Panzer04 3mo agoWell, they can't sell out the game code. That's not how GPL works.
- gertrunde 3mo agoThe blurb in game suggests the multiplayer side of things will be open, the 'premium' thing on steam gives the one closed bit, which is the single player campaign. (In theory!)
- netsharc 3mo agoI'm pretty sure you can. But if it's GPL, you need to provide source to the buyer, and the buyer can publish that source for free.
- insanitybit 3mo agoWhat do you mean?
- PtaQQ 3mo agoHi, PtaQ here, Community manager for BAR. The idea behind the monetisation is to sell what has been built through the publishing funds. Everything available today and a lot more content will be released for free too and always available. Basically, the paid content will boil down to a single-player campaign. The funds help us finish and release the game which still needs a lot of focused effort which is not something you can reliably sustained without commissioning some of that work. The post below explains it in detail. https://www.beyondallreason.info/news/beyond-all-reason-and-hooded-horse#:~:text=Monetising%20BAR%20while%20respecting%20the%20roots https://www.beyondallreason.info/news/beyond-all-reason-and-...
- abc42 3mo agoI know this is kind of silly, but even though TA's game mechanics are obviously great, I really liked its ambience and story. The sort of a melancholic vibe of a slow-moving neverending war. BAR in contrast is a bit of a PvP clickfest, which I don't enjoy. I wonder if there's a game mode or another Spring mod that would give me a more authentic feel? Single-player or perhaps PvE.
- qznc 3mo agoThe engine website shows some other games which might be closer to the original TA: https://recoilengine.org/ https://recoilengine.org/
- Apocryphon 3mo agoLooking at this website, BAR seems to have oodles of lore, but it’s giving an LLM-written voice.
- icexuick 3mo agoThe voice on the website is a full real person. He's a professional voice actor that goes by the name of "Razkharn". Awesome guy.
- Apocryphon 3mo agoI don’t mean the voice actor I mean the writer of the lore entries
- Volshok 3mo agoI’m the Narrative Lead for BAR, and none of our content is LLM-generated, as anyone who has suffered through editing my rough drafts can confirm. Our Lore Guidelines state: “No LLM-generated content, but using LLMs for editing or brainstorming is acceptable.” I think the main AI-related tool we use is a NotebookLM with all lore for checking/referencing things Edit: I'm curious what sections read as LLM generated?
- amitayk 3mo agoBeen playing BAR for couple of years now. Do not sign up if you have a minor addiction problem to fun things.
- swordlucky666 3mo ago[flagged]
- inigyou 3mo agoThe game itself notwithstanding, is this website marketingslop? I don't think it's AI but it's definitely not written by the developers.
- cwillu 3mo agoAnd your evidence for this is what exactly?
- Ariarule 3mo agoNo? It's almost certainly not AI overall despite the Webflow badge; it's pretty similar now to how the site looked in 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20200806131653/https://www.beyondallreason.info/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200806131653/https://www.beyon... What do you not actually like about the site? I'm not a big fan of the trope of "hero" image slideshows taking up the whole screen, but if it's justified anywhere, it seems justified here where they're trying to make a game look cool, and the cards seem reasonably informative and not just vacuous. Yes, it is a "polished" design, and I wouldn't be surprised if they started with a template. What should they do; bad design to show amateurism? Would that be more or less slop?
- PtaQQ 3mo agoHey there, BAR Community Manager here. Nothing on the website is written by AI, we have a strict no AI art policy. Admittedly the text there is a bit old and we should update it soon.
- inigyou 3mo agoI literally just said it's not AI and you felt the need to disagree with me saying no, it's not AI, because you skipped past that and focused on the word "slop". AI slop isn't the only kind of slop out there.
- joseph_council 3mo agoIs that AI ?
- goels 3mo agoLooks great
- mboerwink 3mo agoI play Zero-K (a related open source game) a few times a month. I really enjoy their 'cold take' blog series discussing game mechanics and the history of TA derivatives. https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes
- WillMorr 3mo agoI played a ton of ZK back in 2016-21, it's the most polished game of its kind imo. The cold takes series is excellent, rts balance is such a hard problem and it makes for interesting systems analysis.
- gavmor 3mo agoThe cold takes themselves are a fantastic proof of the care and attention the devs put into this game, as well as the depths of their design philosophy.
- queuep 3mo agoInteresting, tried this game just 2 weeks ago and beat one of the pve modes with a friend just yesterday. Joined some 8v8 for noobs and some were very friendly but they also wanted to kick me for not knowing the game. After all they let me stay but I stuck to pve or vs bots with friends now
- tobinfekkes 3mo agoThis is amazing to see TA on HN. I grew up playing Total Annihilation in the 90s because my cousin worked for Cavedog and got us a CD for free. It is still one of my favorite games to this day. So many great memories with that game, countless hours playing with my brothers, getting up early to play before school, asking my parents for extra chores to earn more computer time. Games aren't the same anymore. I still have the original game and expansion packs. Highly recommend playing it.
- nekusar 3mo agoNot to mention "Buy 1 game, 2 OTHERS can play against/with each other for free"
- jansan 3mo agoI had the most intense battles with my brother, even well into our 30s when we only met a few times a year. It is sad that there never really was a successor that was as good. They could have lifted the 255 units limit, made the game more balanced, added a few more maps and units (but not too many), enhace the graphics (but keep it 2.5D, I do not want 3D in this kind of games) and make connectivity easier. Cavedog released a fantasy game after that, which I wanted to like, but it was crap. And the Command & Conquer games were never for me. Tried them but never felt them.
- jon-wood 3mo agoSupreme Commander was that follow up. Basically the same team as worked on TA, making more or less the same game but with larger maps and higher unit counts.
- LorenPechtel 3mo agoI've got it. For me, I can't hope to beat the AI using low tech spam to grab wide open resources. But when resources aren't to scattered I almost always win against the AI.
- jansan 3mo ago
- mciair_alpha 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mholm 3mo agoAs someone who loved Supreme Commander, I really wanted to like BAR, but I found it felt like death by a thousand cuts. I last played more than a year ago, so things might be different, but the QoL felt really lacking.
- adammarples 3mo agoThere are so many qol things in bar that I would love to see in faf. Area mex build, for example. Sticky unit grouping, draw unit formation is essential. Reclaim/repair area. Unit and command queue jumping. That said there are a few faf ones I would like to see in bar too.
- icexuick 3mo agoGuessing this would be: Good Transport mechanics? BAR is working on this.
- adammarples 3mo agoThe main one would be just picking up and moving command points
- willis936 3mo agoSupCom was my first RTS and I have fond memories of turtling on massive maps that would crash after hour 4. Planetary Annihilation scratches the itch and reminds me that I am very bad at strategy games whenever I think I might be smart. It's probably the most fair game I've played that I am completely awful at.
- corysama 3mo ago“Making of BAR” documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5F36yViPz7w https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5F36yViPz7w
- Thundernerd 3mo agoIs it PVP only or can I play this against bots as well? I would like to play it but the comments about the community make it so that I never want to touch PVP with a 10ft pole.
- dang 3mo agoRelated. Others? Beyond All Reason – open-source RTS game built on top of the Recoil RTS Engine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42826983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42826983 - Jan 2025 (4 comments) Beyond All Reason – An Open Source RTS Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40431216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40431216 - May 2024 (2 comments) Beyond All Reason – Development - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39012392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39012392 - Jan 2024 (1 comment) Beyond All Reason: Open-source RTS reimagining Total Annihilation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201265 - Aug 2021 (101 comments)
- InsomniacL 3mo agoBAR is amazing but there's a hurdle for new players. If you download it, don't join the first lobby you see. My advice is to watch some videos on youtube, play some games solo, then look for new player lobbies or create your own and set restrictions on it. It only takes one player on the enemy team who regularly plays the game and you'll get stream rolled. Or you'll join a game of regular players, can't hold your lane and everyone will get frustrated when their base is blown up from your lane not holding.
- energy123 3mo agoYou do need to lose a few games to be rated properly then you'll be stacked with the best players (relative to average skill in the lobby). Good players will eat the whole map for you.
- giov4 3mo ago[dead]
- Sabinus 3mo agoThis is very important advice if you want to have a good time playing the game. Picking the right lobby is changes your experience drastically.
- dgently7 3mo agothis. also realize its a complex game with a legit learning curve. you literally cant just drop in to pvp and expect to have fun. and also at least in lobbies with noob in the name its pretty rare for people to be actively hostile to the low os ppl who at least know the basics. but you do have to remember that in the middle of a match nobody has time to type and tell you what to do politely.(its an apm heavy game). try to assume good intent, its not ppl being rude usually.
- Lucasoato 3mo agoThis game is so great, particularly the depth behind the different roles you can play. You could be in the frontline and fight for every cm, or be behind, following your carefully crafted recipes to build an exponential economy that will eventually sustain your team late game. The learning curve could be a problem though, sometimes a game ends really quickly because a player is slightly less experienced than the others and it’s over.
- bar2 3mo agoBest RTS ever made, in my subjective opinion, but incredibly toxic player base despite active moderation. I think it's a numbers issue with 16 players in a standard game, and if you play five games in a session, with all chat enabled, you're going to run into a small handful of truly nasty people, which is souring of the experience and why I put the game down in the end. I know the standard advice is to ignore it but it's just not fun to be constantly exposed to aggressive and unhappy people.
- CrzyLngPwd 3mo agoWhat is singel player vs computer/bot experience? I'd love to wile away some time on a single player, short adventure/mission, game from time to time. I have enjoyed lots of fun times with game like cmomand and conquer in the past so something like that wouldf be amazing. Is this game it?
- bartvbl 3mo agoThe game has an easy and hard AI. Easy is great for getting started, hard difficulty varies by the map. They are nearly impossible on a large map where you try to turtle in a corner, but if you get the frontline close to them they're usually fairly straightforward to get under control. The game also has a raptors PvE mode that's great fun, especially with friends.
- pelorat 3mo agoIt's a decent game, but not a good 1v1 game. Fun to watch the massive 100+ player brawls though.
- killerstorm 3mo agoI tried playing SC2 for a few years but controlling units was too difficult: the only thing I could do is to send entire army to fight. No such problem with BAR, at least in early game: quite feasible to control each unit even if you don't have fast reflexes. That's pretty much unique in RTS. Late game is more chaotic, but it's fun in its own way...
- jonplackett 3mo agoNo MacOS support (cry emoji)
- bigyabai 3mo agoIt's probably translatable with Crossover or GPTK. Waiting for a native Metal port of most games is a good way to speedrun old age.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoOne thing people might find interesting about bar is how popular spectating matches is. It's not uncommon for the top 16 player lobbies to have twice that many players in game spectating and commenting on plays. It's currently a small community so it has a recurring cast of characters and people know each other across months or years of playing together. You have the Divas and the workhorses, the air or sea specialists, and the goofballs and communists
- halyconWays 3mo agoLong thread but I highly recommend this game. It scratched the itch I had for TA. Well, for everything but that amazing soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxAdOQtAFEs&list=RDBxAdOQtAFEs&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxAdOQtAFEs&list=RDBxAdOQtAF...
- italiansolider 3mo agoLooks like supreme commander.
- italiansolider 3mo agolooks like supreme commander
- tsouth2 3mo ago[dead]
- mgc_blackbox 3mo ago[flagged]
- WillowWithAWand 3mo agoJust from playing a bit in skirmish, this game seems really tryhard and that's not really what I want from my RTS games
- casey2 3mo agoThe entitlement in this thread is insane. Especially ironic coming from the Industry that invented crunch, the blackboard interview, social media. Routinely arguing for mass layoffs and complaining about "complexity" from allowing more than 3 people to contribute to a file. Of course the people who play games want to gatekeep you guys, stop talking about empathy and disruption and learn some basic self-awareness.