Spring RTS Engine

I have to say that I am not as impressed as I thought I'd be. But at the same time a part of me is 'not as impressed as I thought I'd be' the rest (And much much larger part of me) is ecstatic!

Because PCG, ever wise, put the Sup-Com experience into one sentence:

"Google Earth: Total Annihilation".

So its basically the TA that we all know and love...made a thousand hundred times bigger and easier to use, with new graphics and new units, balance and (Thankfully) the art design so units on the same team will...actually look like they belong on the same damn team.

So this is all well and good, but I see a surprising lack of 'innovation'. I see lots of REALLY REALLY nice little mini-improvements, like the ability to click and drag patrol points and the lack of annoying micromanagement (Imagine if you had to direct every single infantry man in a 500,000 click by 500,000 battle!).

So I am excited, despite the lack of innovation. Its got big guns, big nukes, big maps and big units + TA's awseomtacularness. So Spring will still be a contender, because its already more innovative on a verity of levels (and will continue to be in the future).

So, in the Taylor Family, TA is the elder sibling who had a sadly overlooked, but spectacular, carrier, while Spring is TA's cousin who fell into a pit of radioactive ooze and mutated into some kind of weird amphibious blob thing that kicks total ass. Now Sup Com is the younger kid, who for some reason is fifteen thousand times the size of everyone else, but the same general shape.

Can size alone be enough to make a game great?

Maybe. Would I become Chris Taylor's sex slave to get a copy of Sup Com ahead of schedule...yes.

Zoombie wrote: So, in the Taylor Family, TA is the elder sibling who had a sadly overlooked, but spectacular, carrier, while Spring is TA's cousin who fell into a pit of radioactive ooze and mutated into some kind of weird amphibious blob thing that kicks total ass. Now Sup Com is the younger kid, who for some reason is fifteen thousand times the size of everyone else, but the same general shape.

That actually made me laugh.

I thought SupCom got hyped up exactly because it's TA 2.

There's another article? What month? I gotta get it. Do they mention spring at all, like last time? Having AA's URL in that magazine got me like 20 jobs.

its the december 2006 issue. no, they dont mention AA this time. all they talk about is their multiplayer game really and some of the new units.

Looks like other people are realizing what I've known all along: SupCom will be a nice game but will lack innovation. In other words it's overhyped.

I've only ever seen one hypefest actually live up to (and exceed!) the hype, and that's Tim Tebow. (UF freshman quarterback/demigod of football, for those of you who somehow haven't heard his name before.)

SupCom, sadly, is not Tim Tebow. It won't live up to hype. It will, however, generate a lot of revenue for Mr. Taylor and for GPG, which is what it is intended to do.

Actually the 'hype' has mostly been centered on the sheer friggen size. The PC article continually referenced the sheer scale of the game as innovative, but pointed out that it was really just TA...bigger. And is that a bad thing?

Pfft, no.

Who expected SupCom to innovate gameplay-wise? We expected it to be TA 2 with innovations being limited to the GUI.

This is a good thing.

I expected them to have a smoother feeling game (TA rocks, but DOES feel that little bit rough.... (No comments from the viewing public, at least none that aren't U rated))

I guess we'll find out, though.

The preview said it was smooth playing, with very nice GUI. Lots of nifty 'little' things.

KDR_11k wrote:Who expected SupCom to innovate gameplay-wise? We expected it to be TA 2 with innovations being limited to the GUI.

Quite a few people, not necessarily here at this moment.

I posted in another forum about how I didn't think SupCom was going to live up to the hype, and somebody flamed the living sh*t out of me, saying basically that I'm an ignorant heathen because I don't worship the ground on which Chris Taylor walks. Turns out she was pissed because I didn't orgasm upon hearing about the "innovative never before done zooming system!!!!!!!11", which - surprise! - looks exactly the same as Spring's.

Also, Chris Taylor sounds like a Speedmetaller at heart during interviews, which does not bode well for the gameplay balance in his new game. He talks a lot about "lol lol huge massive uber-dewm-ownzinator-lazerbotts-of-dewm!!!11" in one interview.

Hopefully the resource system makes them hard to get to...

Or at least an anti-speedmetal mod that does the same thing.

From what I've read, the small unints are VERY important and you need to have them. Lots of them. Lots and lots and lots and lots of them, see. And you have to use them. The writer waxes about how he builds a huge ship (called it The Tick) and then overextends it. He does damage, but unfortunently it is blown away by a larger, more manuverable army.

So Chris Taylor likes talking about the huge units. Why? Cuase they are COOL! I mean, you can't wax eloquently about the middle level tanks, or the light vehicals. But if your game has a friggen huge end all unit, you can say "Hey...neat". But the big units sound more like spear heads. Your army does MOST of the damage, really, but the big unit is what scares the living crap out of the enemy. Its a bad situation, surrounded like that. Take out the army, and the big unit will mop up. Take out the big unit, and the army smashes your base.


Also nukes > big units. If you don't protect your big units (using sheilds, jammers, cloaking devices, sticking them underwater...I don't know. Use your damn imagination!) they WILL get hit by aircraft/nukes/armies/other super units.

So the 'worry' that the games are going to turn into 'speedmetaliage' strikes me as silly. You're not going to have gillions of super units, like in speed metal. You're going to have like one or two. Maybe three, if your DOMINATING the map.

I read somewhere the total unit count clocks in at only something like 280 or so for three teams.


AA has almost 400 for two teams

Well, AA has 'seaplanes.'

EDIT: Still, though, that's dissapointingly low.

I'm willing to bet you can up that in the options.

Candleman wrote:Well, AA has 'seaplanes.'

EDIT: Still, though, that's dissapointingly low.

not really, it basically means they killed a lot of redundancy. Units in ta had a really bad habit of large overlaps in uses which worked well enough for TA, but it was not very conducive to a cohesive gameplay experience.

So Long as that 260 doesn't include buildings (of which there only appears to be about 10 or 12 of anyways) Then Its not too low. At 3 factions, 3 major factories, with 3 tech levels, thats 27 differant factotries. dividing 260 up by that gives almost 10 units per factory. Too low you say? OTA only had 10 at max. With most having only 6.

Ishach wrote:I read somewhere the total unit count clocks in at only something like 280 or so for three teams.


AA has almost 400 for two teams

Dont forget the expansionpack, so they can get more money out of us

And drone, that number is OFF COURSE including buildings.

And about the zoom system, didn't spring copy it form the supcommovies....