Ashes of the singularity

[Super Mario]

Besides how do you know they are just 'benchmarks' perhaps it is indeed the gameplay?

Is this a question? Mate, it involves showing numbers. Display cpu usage should be a major clue for you.

[AC-mister]

You are literally jumping to conclusions based on little information we have regrading game play. Most video that I have seen are meant to be benchmark demos,

And you don't see this as a problem? Six months on, they should have put out something more substantive by now if they really have it. Impressions are pretty damn important. Every bit of press you release as a company should be geared towards drumming up interest in the product you are trying to sell; towards explaining what your product is all about. And right now everything points towards this being a pure tech benchmark RTS. Every published screenshot to tidbit to concept art imbues this, not just the videos.

Mind you, neither Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation ended up really deviating from their earliest preview builds (and in Planetary Annihilation's case, remained strikingly true to what its fakely rendered Kickstarter promo showed) in their final products. They both followed pretty predictable development paths, and both had their camps of followers reminding everyone to "wait and see!"; and "we don't know what this new tech will be like!".

[Super Mario]

You are literally jumping to conclusions based on little information we have regrading game play. Most video that I have seen are meant to be benchmark demos,

And you don't see this as a problem? Six months on, they should have put out something more substantive by now if they really have it.

How about they show it, when they feel it's ready and not because of some unreasonable arbitrarily time you limitations you set on them.

[AC-mister]

Lol, arbitrary? That is how long they have had their official website up and readily available for anyone to see, complete with splash backdrop and menus laid out specifically to promote what they have to show. This entire time they have been airing their "unfinished" laundry for every lolvideogameblog to reprint, getting it out there to audiences and making an impression. Unreasonable? The company has the power at any time to reveal as much or little of their product as it suits them. If they know their product is in an unready state to be judged then they should have held off their official announcement and press releases until that time. In the end it is the responsibility of the company to know how to appropriately market their wares. It is not the responsibility of the audience to keep patting rockstar developers on the back and handing out benefits of the doubt.

[luckywaldo7]

It is not the responsibility of the audience to keep patting rockstar developers on the back and handing out benefits of the doubt.

QFT

[PicassoCT]

You show the best you got, and if you cant show it, you got not.

They have no tanks videos.. - means no reliable groudcollission for some reason.

[smoth]

I am 100% with ac and orph on this.

BTW guys, great write ups

[Super Mario]

Lol, arbitrary? That is how long they have had their official website up and readily available for anyone to see, complete with splash backdrop and menus laid out specifically to promote what they have to show. This entire time they have been airing their "unfinished" laundry for every lolvideogameblog to reprint, getting it out there to audiences and making an impression. Unreasonable? The company has the power at any time to reveal as much or little of their product as it suits them. If they know their product is in an unready state to be judged then they should have held off their official announcement and press releases until that time. In the end it is the responsibility of the company to know how to appropriately market their wares. It is not the responsibility of the audience to keep patting rockstar developers on the back and handing out benefits of the doubt.

What does any of this have to with the game play that you complaining about? This is has nothing to do with responsibility, but rather your entitlement that is masquerade as "responsibility" demanding that they show things to you based on the length of the website is up. You gave no justification on why that it is, especially when other game companies do this as well. Apparently we need to kick reason out of this picture and to judge unfinished products as finished, because heaven forbid that they decided to show their products at an uncompleted state.

[hokomoko]

You show the best you got, and if you cant show it, you got not.

They have no tanks videos.. - means no reliable groudcollission for some reason.

Reminds me of DPRK which had nuclear tests and missile tests but no combined tests.

[Silentwings]

I guess soon someone will start a crowdfunder where they aren't even planning to make a game, just to make really awesome advertisements for one.

[Super Mario]

I guess soon someone will start a crowdfunder where they aren't even planning to make a game, just to make really awesome advertisements for one.

And when that happens, get your popcorn bags and watch the resulted drama from the shitstorm.(assuming that not advertising for a current existing game of course)

[smoth]

lol annorite silent wings?

[PicassoCT]

These are the guys who made this made Sins of a Solar Empire.
Which was good. Im not trying to bash them.

They have a actual game to show, its just not as superior as we wish it where.

They simply scaled up the battles and the results are a loss of information.. as feature
No Shapes, no icons.

This is a technical feat. Not a gameplay feat.
Game is not final yet

[AF]

My initial thought was "Didn't caydr make that map?"

As for medic type units repairing other units in their group, that's nothing new, even starcraft has that

[Super Mario]

My initial thought was "Didn't caydr make that map?"

As for medic type units repairing other units in their group, that's nothing new, even starcraft has that

Close, but not quite. In starcraft you have to manually heal units while in this game they claim that it will be automatic.

[Orfelius]

relevant
I am liking the way the developers are communicating and listening to the community (even to the point that the community is basically helping them design the game).
Looks like they are more keen to focus on COOP and SP with good non-cheating AI involved rather than on PvP and potential e-sports scene. I am glad to see this however it was said that there might be no spectating and replays upon release.
There is apparently also a very good reason of no real footage out there: the game is still in avery very crude state and its assets are slowly being chugged out. Instead the engine itself is given more priority.

This is so far their biggest design issue (which I already mentioned yet I also was deemed "stupid" for questioning following game aspect):

One of our biggest struggles is that we don’t want the game to be purely about cranking out tons of units and throwing them at each other. Unit composition, resource access, positioning should all be crucial factors.

Let me tell you a visit on their forums have somewhat given me more hope. We'll see.

[PicassoCT]

Thank you for correcting my wrong observations Orfelius

[PauloMorfeo]

Hurray for another spiritual successor to TA. True, we've had so many disappointments (I really liked SupCom1, though not as much as Spring at its peak of glory). However, eventually, if they keep trying eventually someone has to get it right, no?

Kudos for awesome graphics. I noticed that, unlike SupCom where units were pretty hard to distinguish from one another, units appeared easy to distinguish.

Kudos for planned Linux - since Steam started pumping lots of games for Linux I don't even have Windows installed any more (and I proudly haven't paid the "Microsoft tax").

I guess soon someone will start a crowdfunder where they aren't even planning to make a game, just to make really awesome advertisements for one.

I've heard in an old presentation (it's on youtube) that they were going to open the alpha to early supporters. That immediately raised me concerns that they are somehow being crowd-funded or, otherwise, taking money from people on promises of a game.

Time and time again I've seen people being taken advantage of on the promise of a cool game, being charged unreasonable amounts of money (even the upcoming full price is unreasonable - if people buy the game in advance only cheaper than otherwise is acceptable) and then, seemingly inevitably, just deliver whatever minimum they can get away with to say "it's delivered" and then bail out of the game (since the market has already been spent and all the hype has faded away).

And I agree with Silentwings too.

relevant
I am liking the way the developers are communicating and listening to the community (even to the point that the community is basically helping them design the game).
Looks like they are more keen to focus on COOP and SP with good non-cheating AI involved rather than on PvP and potential e-sports scene. I am glad to see this however it was said that there might be no spectating and replays upon release.
...

If that really comes to be I believe that will be very cool and a great success. People who play a relaxed strategy game, instead of some "cut-throat" game like SC or Quake or Unreal Tournament, are also not likely to desire a "cut-throat" setting where you're 1v1'ing people eager to f# you up in any way possible.

That's been a staple of Spring and even right from the old days of TA. In the old days of TA I remember that more often than not people would play Team vs Team or just chill out in single player. In Spring the 1v1 scene has always been very minute (unfortunately, I must say, since 1v1s are fun *too*, as well as "cut-threat" single-player the likes of those challenges in SC), and the success of "Chickens" was also a good indication of the same thing.

... listening to the community (even to the point that the community is basically helping them design the game). ...

To be honest, I actually hope so. The best thing about the Spring "games" is the gameplay, not the graphics nor the polishment nor the features nor the user base critical mass nor anything else.

SupCom's gameplay wasn't all that great - evolving from T1 to T2 to T3 felt completely bland; diffs from faction to faction were almost completely bland; fighting was bland; ... PA's gameplay is disappointing too.

Apparently, the community is way better as establishing interesting gameplay than the companies themselves. I could be wrong but, considering the past, I'd actually prefer to see a company follow an entirely different route. In fact, I'd actually like to see them hire some of the Spring "game" developers as consultants.

[otyugh]

Close, but not quite. In starcraft you have to manually heal units while in this game they claim that it will be automatic.

Medics and medivacs do heal automaticaly, I don't see your point ? In SC1 medics did too, only there was some "cure" function that had to be used manually (for blindness and such).

[Forboding Angel]

Close, but not quite. In starcraft you have to manually heal units while in this game they claim that it will be automatic.

Have you ever played starcraft? Healing is automatic. Only terran scv repair is manual, and that can be changed to autocast by right clicking the repair button.