21–30 of 41 posts
Hey, just dropping in to say: the moment I saw the demo of the feature, I said to myself, "that's gonna be due to a good underlying data structure and this article is going to be about that data structure". Was not disappoint. This is a lesson I learned way too late in IT: Get the data structure right and interesting features come at reduced cost.
I believe the same devs behind this game are trying to now produce https://industrialannihilation.com/
Oh weird, this is my post from 2013. Surprised to see it here.
Opinion time! Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game but was held back by its ambition to be a novel engine. The one that got my nerves on edge was they have a zoom mechanic where the strategic map was a weird shape - there were multiple worlds and each world was spherical rather than a 2d grid. It did terrible things to the gameplay because suddenly orienting the map was a challenge. It was really wel…
However, I don't think I have seen a dev team flex their engine-developing muscles as much since in a game. It's clear that a team of Uber-talented (pun intended) people with a passion for their craft set out to use a lot of cool technologies, and I think that's worth something by itself.
Oh weird, this is my post from 2013. Surprised to see it here.
Just a curiosity: why did you call them curves?
Opinion time! Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game but was held back by its ambition to be a novel engine. The one that got my nerves on edge was they have a zoom mechanic where the strategic map was a weird shape - there were multiple worlds and each world was spherical rather than a 2d grid. It did terrible things to the gameplay because suddenly orienting the map was a challenge. It was really wel…
1) Games are meant to trigger the imagination which is fun. In this sense, Planetary Annihilation looks successful.
2) Games are a computer interface that should be fun to interact with. In this sense, Planetary Annihilation looks like an extreme failure. Managing battles on multiple planets in real-time sounds incredibly frustrating and the often overlooked aspect of actually interacting with the game would be horrible.
I always found StarCraft limiting, it didn't excite my imagination. I couldn't understand why Starcraft 2 was (and still is?) the most successful RTS game. You fight with 10s of units and you can't zoom out; where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination? Then I realized StarCraft was an game about user interface, and the user interface is pretty good. Select units, click them around, watch and click the mini-map, keep it simple and responsive. It's under appreciated how fun it is to simply select a few units and click them across the screen.
StarCraft isn't my favorite, but the subtle user interactions in the game are limited but not frustrating. Whereas Planetary Annihilation always looked like a game where user interactions have fewer limits, but a lot of frustration.
I believe the same devs behind this game are trying to now produce https://industrialannihilation.com/
Interesting. I'm concerned that I'll have to try and play satisfactory while I'm under artillery fire, and their last foray into the genre had too much frustration compared to fun, but assuming that those systems stay relatively light this could be exactly what I'm craving. Annihilation and it's successors have always had a special place in the RTS genre.
Factorio is a fantastic game, so I'm optimistic that copying that model might be good-ish.
Hey, just dropping in to say: the moment I saw the demo of the feature, I said to myself, "that's gonna be due to a good underlying data structure and this article is going to be about that data structure". Was not disappoint. This is a lesson I learned way too late in IT: Get the data structure right and interesting features come at reduced cost.
Put an interface around it and you can change the underlying data structure.
Opinion time! Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game but was held back by its ambition to be a novel engine. The one that got my nerves on edge was they have a zoom mechanic where the strategic map was a weird shape - there were multiple worlds and each world was spherical rather than a 2d grid. It did terrible things to the gameplay because suddenly orienting the map was a challenge. It was really wel…
PA: Titans is 85% positive on Steam with over 10,000 reviews. It's objectively a good game!
> I got the impression the engine was consuming too much of their attention.
I think you have the order of operations wrong.
Having multiple, spherical battlefields was arguably a mistake. It absolutely limited the game's audience and made controlling things much more confusing and difficult.
But you have to remember this game started as a Kickstarter. We didn't have a prototype, just a vision. The game was sold on multiple planets of combat. There was no way we could have possibly changed the game from multiple spheres to a flat 2D plane after raising $2.2 million on KS.
In fact I'd argue there were multiple "bad ideas" that we were forced to ship because the community decided they were PROMISED those features. Sometimes those promises were things like the core vision sold on KS. But sometimes the features were small things casually mentioned as ideas being considered. Managing community expectations is very difficult!
PA 1.0 was a bit a flop for reasons. But PA: Titans was quite good. The game was shipped on a custom engine in just 2 years, or 3 years for Titans. In hindsight it's one of the most impressive team achievements of my career. I don't know how we did it.
I believe the same devs behind this game are trying to now produce https://industrialannihilation.com/
I was expecting early access steam, not a literal preorder page with no release date set. I feel like that's the wrong way to do this. You either use preorder with a scheduled full release window, or steam early access. Taking money as preorders for a steam early access with pretty much no release window... That feels more like vaporware to me. At least add it to steam for people to wishlist.