Planetary Annihilation (Incoming Moon Drops!)

[varikonniemi]

I hate the goofy round world maps they use. It just looks terrible to me.

I guess you must hate the earth also.

In my opinion this is one of the last immersion breakers corrected. If you 'zoom out' you will very soon start to see the curvature of the earth in real life also.

[NeonStorm]

I hate the goofy round world maps they use. It just looks terrible to me.

LOL :)

Just make bigger planets and maybe more gravity?

[Das Bruce]

So are the planets actually spheres or just warped rectangles?

[luckywaldo7]

It's a little more than just a PR stunt. They do updates like this regularly, and they use it to show their playerbase what kind of progress they are making and get feedback on it.

I much prefer it, anyway, to taking all the kickstarter money and then disappearing for a year. And it makes it much harder for companies to pull a Spore, Sim City, or Colonial Space Marines or so forth on you.

[gajop]

I wouldn't really call it a PR stunt.

Creating spherical worlds and small solar systems is just one of the new things they've done (yes, I know Populous had something similar, but nothing recent or as advanced).

If you've taken a look at the video you would've seen they've also made a really good replay system (near instant navigation in time steps, can go forward/backward), and I find it cool they're also using Webkit as a UI in games.

Sadly don't have the link to their terrain system (I think Pako linked it once), but that was pretty cool and it seems it has good-looking results, cliffs we can't have with regular heightmaps.

They aren't the first in most of these things, but it's all I wish Spring would have, and most other RTSs don't, so props to them and hope they do more of that.
Might even preorder it, and I've never supported a Kickstarter project (although in retrospect, seeing this and Wasteland 2 I think I was overly critical of that funding model).

[smoth]

I hate the goofy round world maps they use. It just looks terrible to me.

I guess you must hate the earth also.

hurr durr.

because the earth is a city block or smaller. the map was like a medium asteroid

[zwzsg]

Sadly don't have the link to their terrain system (I think Pako linked it once), but that was pretty cool and it seems it has good-looking results, cliffs we can't have with regular heightmaps.

http://www.mavorsrants.com/2013/02/plan ... ngine.html

[knorke]

It is kinda odd to have a "planet" smaller than your average golf course but I'm not totally against the concept (at least for the novelty). I think its main weakness is that you basically lose nearly 1/3 of your map real estate for the corners, horizon and the parts hidden by cliffs and buildings near the edges.

I think that is only a problem when zoomed out, on normal playing zoom the curvature of the planet is probally not so noticeable.

Their news and and videos are pretty interessting imo, havent seen such insight from other games before.

[PepeAmpere]

I'm sorry but i dont see anything interesting on their stuff they released, yet (including videos, screens, Mavors blog,...). Hype

[Neddie]

I'm not certain why one would be any more skeptical of crowdfunding than, say, angel investment, venture capital investment, or credit bootstrapping.

I haven't been bowled over by Planetary Annihilation, but it seems solid enough. I am far less worried about what I'll get for my money than I am with, say, the Ouya.

[PicassoCT]

Im actually interested how physiks will work out. The engine statement basically is we use a solid mesh from and thus will have great fun finding a way to hide all the stuff..

[scifi]

I hate the goofy round world maps they use. It just looks terrible to me.

I guess you must hate the earth also.

hurr durr.

because the earth is a city block or smaller. the map was like a medium asteroid

they did say , this was an average 2v2 and if you push it 4v4 map(and i recall someone state its to small for a 4v4), and there are going to be mutch larger maps, i find thats not an issue.

[varikonniemi]

I hate the goofy round world maps they use. It just looks terrible to me.

I guess you must hate the earth also.

hurr durr.

because the earth is a city block or smaller. the map was like a medium asteroid

So no wars should be waged on a future artificial planet with an ultra-dense core netting normal gravity for a planet such size? Also creating an atmosphere and biome is much easier when you start small.

(the obvious reason for such a small planet in the demo is that they have not yet managed to make a bigger one perform adequately)

First i thought your comment was trolling and my answer was a troll back... but you seriously think realistic round maps are bad for a rts?

Spring does not need better artwork, nor better animations. What it needs is crude technological supremacy which it has enjoyed for quite some time. Planetary annihilation is the first title that i think seriously could hurt the playerbase since it offers what has been one of the most requested features for spring for ages: spherical maps.

[zwzsg]

I don't care about realism as in like in our earth. Only about realism as in self-coherence.

And spherical map eleminate the artifical barrier of the map edge, which is quite an immersion breaker for me, not to mention the source of many nasty bugs and sploits.

[PicassoCT]

the immersion breaking can be avoided.. just have some minefields and AA Rebells out there and you wont get astray..

[zwzsg]

Farcry 1 had helicopters with instakill snipers to prevent the player from leaving the play area. It still felt artificial, and arbitrary.

[varikonniemi]

I don't care about realism as in like in our earth. Only about realism as in self-coherence.

And spherical map eleminate the artifical barrier of the map edge, which is quite an immersion breaker for me, not to mention the source of many nasty bugs and sploits.

I was not saying something should even remotely resemble earth. All i was saying was that things should resemble the laws of physics we have grown accustomed to in this universe.

Spring does this very well, but the artificial limit of an area versus an space is painfully obvious.

[smoth]

First i thought your comment was trolling and my answer was a troll back... but you seriously think realistic round maps are bad for a rts?

Considering you just ASSUMED I was trolling right out the door I was at first tempted to NOT give another serious reply.


artificial asteroids/satelites you mean? I am not interested in playing a game of man made satellite jumping.

I think zooming in an out on a planet in an rts reduces the key parts of the rts to a minigame. I prefer the game to be focused on one area. I find the spherical world would have to be HUGE to not be immersion breaking. Every time I fly in an aircraft I start taking pictures at spring height and find it amazing how much shit is in a view. to make something I would not find immersion breaking would require huge battlegrounds. I remember a while back a demo video for some mech game where you could zoom way the hell out of the planet and shit. It was pretty reasonably huge. It probably died and was never finished.

I would rather see paging landscapes over round planets. even still if you are playing an RTS game at a planetary scale it would require making units reduced to little more than "artillery level 2/1/4" specs and highly generic forms. All the detailed units and creative stats I like in TA games start to get supremely simplified partially because at that scale detail is a waste of time and because there is too much to focus on to have a LARGE unit variety.

so I have many reasons I hate the design ultimately because it is closer to a 4x planet management thing with minigames for planetary fights. we have many other games which do that sort of thing better.

[PepeAmpere]

zwzsg: Flashpoint/ArmA2 solve it nice way..

[scifi]

First i thought your comment was trolling and my answer was a troll back... but you seriously think realistic round maps are bad for a rts?

Considering you just ASSUMED I was trolling right out the door I was at first tempted to NOT give another serious reply.


artificial asteroids/satelites you mean? I am not interested in playing a game of man made satellite jumping.

I think zooming in an out on a planet in an rts reduces the key parts of the rts to a minigame. I prefer the game to be focused on one area. I find the spherical world would have to be HUGE to not be immersion breaking. Every time I fly in an aircraft I start taking pictures at spring height and find it amazing how much shit is in a view. to make something I would not find immersion breaking would require huge battlegrounds. I remember a while back a demo video for some mech game where you could zoom way the hell out of the planet and shit. It was pretty reasonably huge. It probably died and was never finished.

I would rather see paging landscapes over round planets. even still if you are playing an RTS game at a planetary scale it would require making units reduced to little more than "artillery level 2/1/4" specs and highly generic forms. All the detailed units and creative stats I like in TA games start to get supremely simplified partially because at that scale detail is a waste of time and because there is too much to focus on to have a LARGE unit variety.

so I have many reasons I hate the design ultimately because it is closer to a 4x planet management thing with minigames for planetary fights. we have many other games which do that sort of thing better.

I will state, that was only a small scale map(2v2 up to 3 ffa, they talked about 4v4 but dismissed it).

And as a note to spring, i doubt Dsd is going to be larger than the planet size they are aiming at. The low poly units and very low detailed features, i bet you can have a planet 4 times the size of that(poly wise) if not more, size isnt the issue nor the batlefield shape.

All the detailed units and creative stats I like in TA games start to get supremely simplified partially because at that scale detail is a waste of time and because there is too much to focus on to have a LARGE unit variety.

I have that feel, hmm will they make a TA2 or an improved supcom version. I feel they are going for the more macro styled gameplay, similar to supcom, this is what disapoints me the most, i was kinda expecting a blend of micro and macro, not just plain full macro.

I mean who doesnt enjoy microing samsons and janus on BA, or even the commander EMP in evo, or The commander in XTA, or even the specific unity types of gundam RTS.

I enjoy this kind of micro/macro balance, but i feel they arent going to go this way, its still to early to tell but well see.