To this day, still one of the best RTS games of all time.
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Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#22To this day, still one of the best RTS games of all time.
Let's say you're not too familiar with the genre, but you've been curious for a while and want to explore more. Maybe you played some Starcraft at a friend's house in high school, and that's pretty much it for genre exposure. And by you I mean me. What games would you recommend for a newcomer in 2024? What are the genre-defining classics, and which ones still hold up? What's the recent hotness? The modern classics?
Personally the only entertaining ones to watch are Starcraft Brood War or Starcraft 2 right now.
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#23If you also happen to think SupCom was the most ultimate superior RTS ever made, because it's truly strategy scale with a thousand units PER PLAYER including on 8v8 maps, and the simulated ballistics of almost all weapons means you can defend your base from an incoming nuke by scrambling your jet fighters so that they run into the incoming warhead and airburst it "safely" above your base, and love that artillery shells can also hit those same planes, or that a plane shot out of the sky can fall on a tank and destroy it, or that you think a giant walking mech with a backpack nuke launcher is the metalist fucking thing,
Check out Forged Alliance Forever. It's a community made, open source, "launcher" for the Supreme Commander game, that patches it, mods it, allows you to interact with other players and find games and get ranked against them, and also is a replay viewer, so you can watch how the pros actually do the insane micro and economy play that earns them the 2000+ ELO score, and also a mod manager, and also a friends list.
If you are like me, and love all that but actually suck at playing strategy games in general, check out Gyle on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@GyleCast who has been casting SupCom games for at least a decade now, and really shows off some of the best that the game has to offer, including multi-hour "EPICs" that can involve ten thousand units controlled by several semi-pro players.
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#24An underrated aspect of the SupCom engine was that it natively supported multiple monitors, with independently controllable cameras on each one so you could keep an eye on any two parts of the map, or just zoom the second one all the way out to get a giant minimap. That's something you never see today even though it would be easier to pull off with modern graphics APIs (IIRC SupCom actually runs two copies of the gam…
As someone who had two monitors at the time (that was more a geeky thing by then than now), it was my favorite feature of the game. Also in-game shields.
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
And, for completion, with the same engine that beyond all reason is done, but with a different game play feeling: https://zero-k.info/ I personally prefer Zero-K (flatter tech tree, territory can be more important), but both are great games.
Also prefer Zero-K. The economy system design results in better team games imo. Though obviously it's a lot less pretty.
I've never played much Zero-K, but from I understand the eco in BAR is truely exponential, after you get to the top of the tech tree and have a metal maker economy. It's an interesting design, since late game human becomes the bottleneck in expanding the eco, since exponential growth also means you have to increase your attention in managing it.
Zero-K from what I know has overdrive fusions, which isn't really exponential in the same sense.
In the end, both are great games.
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#26An underrated aspect of the SupCom engine was that it natively supported multiple monitors, with independently controllable cameras on each one so you could keep an eye on any two parts of the map, or just zoom the second one all the way out to get a giant minimap. That's something you never see today even though it would be easier to pull off with modern graphics APIs (IIRC SupCom actually runs two copies of the gam…
As someone who had two monitors at the time (that was more a geeky thing by then than now), it was my favorite feature of the game. Also in-game shields.
I played it on two big CRTs. You needed a strong desk to run multiple monitors back then.
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also prefer Zero-K. The economy system design results in better team games imo. Though obviously it's a lot less pretty.
I've never played much Zero-K, but from I understand the eco in BAR is truely exponential, after you get to the top of the tech tree and have a metal maker economy. It's an interesting design, since late game human becomes the bottleneck in expanding the eco, since exponential growth also means you have to increase your attention in managing it. Zero-K from what I know has overdrive fusions, which isn't really expone…
It's limited by builds pace though
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's say you're not too familiar with the genre, but you've been curious for a while and want to explore more. Maybe you played some Starcraft at a friend's house in high school, and that's pretty much it for genre exposure. And by you I mean me. What games would you recommend for a newcomer in 2024? What are the genre-defining classics, and which ones still hold up? What's the recent hotness? The modern classics?
Supreme Commander is a great start Personally, I'd also recommend Homeworld and the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series On the free-and-open-source front there is Zero-K (which I don't care for) and Beyond All Reason, both of these are Spring Engine games, and Spring Engine started out as a 'modernization' of Total Annihilation. Most games built with it don't fall too far from the original Homeworld 3 comes out in May,…
It actually started out as a ta3dviewer of total annihilation replays
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#29If you also happen to think SupCom was the most ultimate superior RTS ever made, because it's truly strategy scale with a thousand units PER PLAYER including on 8v8 maps, and the simulated ballistics of almost all weapons means you can defend your base from an incoming nuke by scrambling your jet fighters so that they run into the incoming warhead and airburst it "safely" above your base, and love that artillery shel…
Shoutout to FAF. Best RTS I’ve ever played.
Been meaning to check out Beyond All Reason, supposedly it’s a FOSS spiritual successor to FAF
Re: Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
#30To this day, still one of the best RTS games of all time.
Let's say you're not too familiar with the genre, but you've been curious for a while and want to explore more. Maybe you played some Starcraft at a friend's house in high school, and that's pretty much it for genre exposure. And by you I mean me. What games would you recommend for a newcomer in 2024? What are the genre-defining classics, and which ones still hold up? What's the recent hotness? The modern classics?
Depends on which branch of RTS design you want to explore.
Age of Empires 2 still has a significant player base, for example, so it's both a genre-defining classic and modern ranked multi-player.
Other RTS design traditions include Total Annilation, etc. Plus there's adjacent stuff, such as They Are Billions which just does the base building part and drops some of the other mechanics.