I was addicted to following the dev updates when this was in original development. Was a huge fan of RTS at the time and found the space theme and the early concepts of slamming astroids into your enemies to be amazing.
The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a curiosity: why did you call them curves?
The interpolator for the current value is generic. It could represent any function, including curves like parabolas. I don't remember whether or not we actually used that capability though.
Oh! Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks.
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#33Opinion 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…
I have two perspectives on games: 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 intera…
"where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination" Please see Supreme Commander. Its a regular 3D rts map so its easy to navigate, you get ALL the zoom, and most stuff gets bigger (in size & qty) as the match goes on till either someone wins or no one in the map can mentally manage it all!
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have two perspectives on games: 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 intera…
"where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination" Please see Supreme Commander. Its a regular 3D rts map so its easy to navigate, you get ALL the zoom, and most stuff gets bigger (in size & qty) as the match goes on till either someone wins or no one in the map can mentally manage it all!
I've played it. I prefer the open-source game Beyond All Reason which runs better on my computer.
And yeah, that was an implicit comparison I was making, I would look at games like SupCom and wonder why StarCraft was more popular, and thus my previous comment.
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#35What was the fate of this game? I still play Supreme Commander: FA, but never heard of Planetary Annihilation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Taylor_(video_game_des...
Supreme Commander 2 is just terrible, I wonder how it got screwed up with Chris still architecting it.
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#36Opinion 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…
> Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game 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 con…
I bought grew up with Total Annihilation and tbh Planetary Annihilation is a step backwards...
I still play TA ...
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#37Opinion 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…
> each world was spherical (...) suddenly orienting the map was a challenge
The other downside was the fact that it was possible to assault arbitrary points - e.g. drop units from orbit in the middle of enemy base. It required much more awareness about the whole map. In 2D game one could mostly focus on front lines and choke points.
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#38Oh weird, this is my post from 2013. Surprised to see it here.
This is my favorite technical writeup. I think I asked you before on here if you still had info about how PA's pathfinding or csg geometry worked, those were two other cool things I remember from the OG tech demo.
I don't know anything about the CSG. I didn't start the pathfinding system,m but I did a lot of work on it. I could maybe someday turn that into a blog post. But I don't have source access anymore.
The tldr of pathfinding is voxels and flow fields.
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game 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 con…
I bought grew up with Total Annihilation and tbh Planetary Annihilation is a step backwards... I still play TA ...
I also still play TA from time to time. It is kind of annoying that if your screen resolution is big enough to display the entire map at once that it crashes.
Re: The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
#40Opinion 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…
I have two perspectives on games: 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 intera…
One thing that SC2 gets right which is endlessly frustrating when trying to play most other RTS games is how the units react to repeated similar commands: if you click a destination and then adjust that command slightly, the units don't miss a beat in their movement, and just adjust their course slightly (SC2 being the kind of game that it is, SC2 players will often just spam that command with only minor adjustments). In most other RTs games I've played, that second command will often recalculate the movement of the selected units sufficiently differently that it at least slows them down, and spam clicking will just cause them to derp out completely, making unit movement a frustrating task.
(To say nothing of Supcom's annoying habit of units setting off in the opposite direction. Especially irritating for your ACU when trying to beat a hasty retreat, which arguably shouldn't even have the vehicle movement mechanics which causes this)