http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander2/images/6240621/5/?tag=thumbs_below;thumb;5

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander2/images/6240621/10/?tag=thumbs_below;thumb;5

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander2/images/6240621/14/?tag=thumbs_below;thumb;4

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander2/images/6240621/12/?tag=thumbs_below;thumb;2

their designs have a lot more character than in the first one.

What else did you expect from a Square Enix influence?

Listening to Christ T., it's almost like Spring's been R&D.

Unit launching cannons- CA. Low-profile UI- their experience and ours. Flexible hardware support for a broader band of interoperability and dual-screen support- Spring in general.

I stopped before he could mention Widgets, MT or the other biggies, lol, but I wouldn't have been surprised.

Their rendering system for maps totally pwns ours. That was pretty impressive tech.

Well I wouldn't call UI, changeable performance demand or multi-screen support as Spring-related topics in terms of this being of high relevance just for a niche like Spring. UI has always been a big topic, hardware issues are all about "Make it run on the consoles too with a nice look!" and well multi-screen might be rare but was in SupCom 1 too and also gets used now and then by other games...

Unit launching cannons also aren't real "Spring inventions"...

Rendering etc of course is just stunning and not like our 2002 tech with some plug-in eyecandy possibilities. I'm especially curious about the shader based pathfinding or however that was called. If they really made the entire pathfinding work on the GPU that's pretty amazing...

It should be possible to do GPU-based pathfinding, if they treated each Unit like discrete particles, pretty much what I described months ago, and got howled at for suggesting such a thing.

And our rendering system's fine... for Units. Other than no IK support, ofc. It's the map format that's entirely 2002. Between that and the broken Unit shadows, it's really holding the engine back atm. But hey, I've been talking about this for quite some time now, and even started working on alternatives before I realized that the broken shadows made it impractical until I write a Lua-based shadow volume and abandon yet-another piece of Spring's antiquated rendering system.

Buckle up,we are in for another loss of a considerable player batch.

Probably not, though without a new map format and the new model/animation formats we're definitely moving sluggishly.

Well besides the map format and the importance of vertex / IK animation for non-mechanical things there imo is one huge factor that makes e.g. SupCom 2 way more appealing - the lighting...

You can totally make a scene look way nicer with just some great lighting. I mean look at THIS screenshot. That Aeon Mech thing has no amazingly high poly count / geometry detail and the texture is nothing special but even totally simplistic with just some sort of "background metal" with some lines and dirt on it. It still looks amazing due to the great lighting. Together with some strong dynamic lights around it's probably even more impressive. You're able to get lots of that effect by simply using some per-pixel lighting although I guess in the case of SupCom 2 there's also some dynamic AO stuff around...

Lol at the walking eyeball egg thingies.

OMG did you guys watch the gameplay video by Chris t.? Lol supcom 2 sounds really really awesome. They have jumpjets for coms which is :) (see epicoms for how i feel about jumpjets). Also they have an escape pod upgrade where the head of the com blasts off, lands in base, and can then rebuild a body! ROFL!!!!!

Also CYBRANASAURUS REX ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL.

Dr. whathisface's pet :D

Which is why you should use your blog! People would read it just for those kinds of things nm the PURE stuff

...but everybody who is interested in that, and can anything practical about it, is here, AF.

I suppose I could use the sub-forum as a rant depository. I would kinda prefer that it was for useful things, myself. When I want to rant, I just take it to Dev., which is where it rightfully belongs.

Not really, you see there are these things called forum posts, and they bury your posts so nobody can see them after a little while without putting much effort into it.

Also forum posts dont help advertize pure as much as blogposts on a pure website

Whining about the state of the Spring Engine on my blog doesn't seem like a good way to advertise, though. I'd rather talk about the stuff that's going according to plan, like Pylon Wars and... uh... something involving towers.

You discussed pathfinding on the gpu on the forums, why not on your blog?

too many laser and lighting stuff, not enough oversized gatling cannons, flamethrowers and artillery guns.

Theres an oversized flamethrower on the cybran dinosaur thing

They say they're removing constant spending in favour of pay when you start. There will be a lot more economic micro if it's the kind of game where you just keep pumping out units. After playing THIS I realised how well constant spending works.

For example you want to spam 2 units from seperate factories in a 2:3 ratio, 1 unit costs 2 and the other 3. You have an income of 2.With constant spending just make the 2 different factories and assist until you get the ratio you want (normalised costs makes this even easier). With pay when you start spending the unit that costs 2 can finish before you gain 3 resources which means you will produce a lot more 2s than 3s. The only way to get around this is to constantly check your factories.

The flatbalance with unit upgrades is an improvement over their 3 identical just better tiers of SupCom 1. I still haven't heard anything to suggest that it won't be like the first one though.

Jumpjets tooo although Starcraft 2 has jumpjets. If Spring really was R&D they would have area commands.

Well, that, and they'd steal Custom Formations and a few other UI innovations.

And I doubt they will be CA-style unit cannons.