Spring RTS Engine

I don't know why anyone has a problem with SupCom's uber system requirements - just turn the speed down to -9 and it plays smooth as buttah.

Of course, it might take a few days to finish a game...

A lot of the half decent UI improvements are things they stole from spring. And I have yet to see something they implemented from spring and improved on or even equalled.

Epic win, got the demo running on windows2000
garage.gaspowered.com/?q=node/8997
GPG fails at making stuff artificially incompatible for no reason.

AF wrote:A lot of the half decent UI improvements are things they stole from spring. And I have yet to see something they implemented from spring and improved on or even equalled.

+1, I hate the way they keep jabbering on about the "ferry" system for transports

We could have a Spring Mod with very low Unit Icon Viewdistance, some HighPoly Impressives and the removal of some of the Good little Additions of Spring - and we would be as good as SC - oh and we could add some Performance Failures of Course..

in a brisk 16-18 hours, ill have the supreme commander demo. I love these speeds, pushing close to 17KB/s. As long as this game doesnt have inconsistent mouse button assignments, id probably buy it.

all in all the hype supcom got way way way outpaced the game itself.

Fang's post last page summed it up nicely:

I refuse to play supcom, not cause of some nitpicking, but because the game which was supposed to revolutionize RTS, and put the S back in RTS statements of this sort were made by the dev team and chris taylor himself, was when I played no different from AA in terms of balance and behavior, just on a slightly larger scale.. with a few features that spring lacks but that are not uncommen in the general rt"s" gaming market..

also the smug that keeps saying he was #1 in the game i got a question to ask you: How did you win your games?

i just think that a lot was promised about this revolutionizing the rts genre and im not seeing a whole lot here.

Issac is the one you are thinking of, and if I recall, he figured out what worked with the least effort, and went for it. Issac is, when in practice, a superior RTS player, but even he has grown bored of Supreme Commander, if I recall.

Here are some of my critics about Supcom:

- i like the way the game feels and plays. It has a really descent UI and the demo is surprisingly faster than the beta.

- i must say, that on my 1,3 years old computer, Supcom still plays quite well on medium detail. With a computer life-span of around 3-years, i find the required sys-specs within the limits (though not of the least!)

- compared to Spring, Supcom runs smoother here! (and with quite some better graphics, but as you might know, i really prioritize gameplay above visuals). However, enough fps does enhance my gameplay 'value'. Spring has some very nice visuals, but in the end, they don't meet up with SupCom, and plays even slower also (on my system)

- Some here are complaining that Supcom hasn't made its "rtS-goal". I think you're wrong. The resource-management, as well as the strategic features are quite (far) beyond any other existing RTS-game. As the whole game is on a 'slighty' larger scale, this automatically shifts it more from tactics to strategy. The formations, build-queus, ETA's, pathing (and changing) and many other features really do support the S in RTS. Compared to Spring i must say that Supcom does a better job in claiming the S of RTS.

- I already disliked the fact of 3 factions. Not only for this, but also for the fact that i familiarize with the TA-universe (unit-names) i really DO hope to see a TA (or Spring)-Mod for Supcom. The Demo cybrian faction immediately showed me that it is in need of (a lot) more different units.

- I must confess, that after my first demo run (and official look at Supcom) i still wasn't convinced. I discussed it with friends, and stating Spring > Supcom (demo). After playing some Spring, and again some Supcom, i must also confess, that i am quite doubtful now.

Spring (AA) = closer to TA, probably better balance and units and kinda familiar feel (high gameplay value)

Supcom (demo) = more strategy & resource-management & better sounds & visuals, runs faster, quite some neat new (&good) features (for the final Supcom: possibly also high gameplay value)

AF wrote:A lot of the half decent UI improvements are things they stole from spring.

Ehr. What?

Spring stole stuff from Total Annihilation and I'm pretty sure the extra zoom levels were added right after they were demonstrated it in Supreme Commander.

If we were going to complain games suck because they "stole" from other games then there isn't a single game on the market I wouldn't call shitty.

And who plays Spring for Absolute Annihilation? This engine is so much more.

What? You think that that's all I meant Spring "stole" from Total Annihilation? It wasn't. At all.

I wasn't replying to you, Zell.

I don't know about the engine, and the whole moddablilty of Supcom. That will reveal itself in the future. (although taylor claims that supcom is also the best modable rts to date...)

ZellSF wrote:

AF wrote:A lot of the half decent UI improvements are things they stole from spring.

Ehr. What?

Spring stole stuff from Total Annihilation and I'm pretty sure the extra zoom levels were added right after they were demonstrated it in Supreme Commander.

If we were going to complain games suck because they "stole" from other games then there isn't a single game on the market I wouldn't call shitty.

LOL, seeing as the initial objective of spring was to re create TA in 3d its not surprising features in TA are included in spring.
Anyway I don't think he meant sup com sucks because it stole from spring, just that its not as revoloutionary as they claim, as much of the UI stuff they constantly bleat on about has been done before, its the gameplay, op defences, silly system requirements and the almost identical units for each side that make it suck ^^

The good thing is that its gonna be modded to death so I might get it once a good mod for it comes out, other than that I'll stay well away

spring steal features? well yeah. pretty much every feature is a result of "xxxxxx has this feature, why dont spring lol". the diffrence is that spring does them all, wheras supcom dosnt. supcom is graphics and numbers over stratergy and gameplay, and for me, that just dont cut the mustard.

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:spring steal features? well yeah. pretty much every feature is a result of "xxxxxx has this feature, why dont spring lol". the diffrence is that spring does them all.

Uh, no. Just no.

And Supreme Commander isn't as revolutionary as they claimed? Woah, what cave do you live in? Advertising has been around forever and if you are disappointed because you believed in it, get used to it.

The fact is, its only about a quarter of the 'revolutionary' experience its made out to be. The reason critics hail it as being revolutionary is because they haven't played spring at all because its not a commercial product...

Spring is simply too complex and poorly documented to hit it big with the mainstream. I've done some testing to this point, and the results haven't been good.

Think. Our most popular mod has around three hundred units. You have to deal with four cameras, three visual maps, minimap management, two main methods of resource gathering plus minority solutions, a changing gui with a scalable number of commands per unit, storage, the lua widgets, group-ai, and then every little tweak.

I love it, but the majority of casual gamers could never perform well and would not enjoy it. You can't expect somebody to learn one mod, let alone many, without a lot of time, focus, skill and intellect.

j5mello wrote: also the smug that keeps saying he was #1 in the game i got a question to ask you: How did you win your games?

i just think that a lot was promised about this revolutionizing the rts genre and im not seeing a whole lot here.

its kinda a joke that i keep saying it but for a few minutes i was number 1 out of several thousand, but only for about an hour




How did I win?


My basic strategy went like this


Build starting Mex/Energy

Build a ground lab, queue 5 or so rushing units and then 100000000 Mantises

Build an air lab immediately after

Build 1 bomber and send it over to the enemy base to cause AA Panic

Rushers arrive at their base while they are in full AA panic mode and they have nothing but sky slammers to defend themself

Air lab builds workers the rest of the game

Tech up Mexes

Skip T2 land and go straight for seige bots while inundating the enemy with mantises

Start a stream of seige bots which are almost impossible to stop (i think there was maybe 1 game i lost after having built seige bots.)



That was all best-case scenario actions and thats what happened in about 50 of my 70 games.




The main problem with supreme commander fundamentally is it skips over resource management, which despite what you might think, is the most important and exciting part of any good RTS.

The general player base in the beta was also really horrible, there was no community atmosphere at all, everyone wanted to prove they were top shit.



But i love competition and the excellent ladder system made me love the game for about a week before i just got burned out from playing it every waking second