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Linux Planetary Annihilation

Discussion in 'Gaming' started by Loafers, 22 Aug 2012.

  1. Loafers

    Loafers What's a Dremel?

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    Last edited: 23 Aug 2012
  2. dolphie

    dolphie What's a Dremel?

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    This looks AMAZING! Thanks for the link!

    Yes, a big yes. It's just one of those rare and brilliant situations when you have one or two big dominant games in a genre that are resting on their laurels (in this case C&C), and then out of nowhere a game comes along that just does everything better. The gameplay was better but it was better technically too. It was the first time you had a true 3d map in an RTS. Previously everything was just totally flat, but in TA there were craters and hills and mountains and your vehicles actually followed the terrain and struggled to get up hills and then sped down the other side etc.. It's something we take for granted now, but TA was the first one to bring it to us.

    Not just that but the maps were far bigger too, had far better graphics, and more variety with deserts and weird alien planets and whatever else. It also had more elaborate animations, planes used to move around like icons in the past, but in TA they flew around like real little fighters and you could even press a key to 'follow' a unit like a jet and follow it as it flew around blowing stuff up.

    It also had great units, little mechs and bigger tanks and spy planes and all kinds of stuff. It also made 'harvesting' far more interesting by letting you manually harvest rocks and trees if you ever needed a quick boost. And you had a Commander unit which was far more interesting than just a construction yard like in C&C. It also had very long range base defences like the Big Bertha which could win the game for you if you could manage to build it and protect it. It gave another option to winning, not just making loads of units and attacking.
     
    Last edited: 22 Aug 2012
  3. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    TA was for me, the BEST RTS ever made (ok, I was younger and probably now look at it through rose tinted specs).

    Even so, it really was groundbreaking at the time, and far surpassed any of its rivals in graphics, gameplay and scope.

    Supreme Commander maybe a technically better game, but for sheer out and out fun, TA is impossible to beat.

    Hell, even the intro was awesome (but not as awesome as Dawn of War)



    This looks stunning, and much better than I thought it would look! I'm going to explore!
     
  4. [ZiiP] NaloaC

    [ZiiP] NaloaC Multimodder

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    Berthas were fun, but get a Buzzsaw or Vulcan (or five of them) and the 10 Fusion Reactors needed to power them at full-speed, then enjoy the fireworks. Long-rang rapid fire plasma artillery. Sheer awesome. Throw in the Core Contingency expansion and you had the Krogoth; a giant mech that count stand against an army and if you had radar around it, it would kill everything within its radius before it could even see them!

    Total Annihilation, for me, revolutionised RTS and showed what could really be done. C&C games were skirmish games, TA was truly a strategic game.

    Follow on from that with Supreme Commander (moreso 1 than 2) and there is the core fundamentals of TA with a beautiful new engine, a fully zooming camera that has as a result, made every other camera in an RTS game feel horrifically restrictive.

    If you're looking for good RTS games, get SupCom 1 & 2. The 2nd one has a far more simplistic economy model which makes for an easier introduction I think, but they did stellar work with the engine and it is very pretty. SupCom 1 and its expansion "Forged Alliance" has the same economy model as TA and it is what will decide if you live or die. Steam recently had them both for 5 quid, so keep your eyes peeled for them again.

    Back to the original topic of Planetary Annihilation, it looks brilliant in terms of scope and if those are actually the style of graphics that they are going with, then that too! You can crash asteroids into planets for feck sake! :D I'm waiting on funds to clear into my bank so that I can do a kick for this, it looks great and from the games they have worked on, they have a good bank of experience behind them.
     
  5. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    Kickstarted!

    Can the Bit Tech community raise $100 for this awesome looking game?

    $20 will get you the game and a wallpaper! Bargain!

    EDIT:

    Just upped my pledge to $50. Its the equivalent of £30 which is what I'd pay for a game like this anyway.
     
    Last edited: 22 Aug 2012
  6. Xahl

    Xahl Your mum's a Dremel

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    It's nice to see some potential resurgence for base building RTS'. I'm fine with the continuing trend of fast, unit based RTS games but it has come at the expense of the old style.

    TA and SupCom had such a nice and sophisticated economy system; planning a large construction took some effort in balancing your energy and mass. Something which SupCom2 removed and therefore contributed towards the remiss of that game.

    I love the concept of turtling up and building a wall and defenses but then still having the option of creating an army and sending it out was great. It's the choice that makes this series of games so good: I could turtle, I could have a mobile army, I could just focus on air combat, I could defend and go nuclear.

    PA looks like it's going to have this spades. I'm hoping there will be the option of playing on a large single planet as well as across a galaxy; but I do really like the edition of cross planet warfare. The idea that I could have a 4 hour war with someone on my planet; eventually win and then begin to fully realise the insignificance of that war based on a galactic war taking place simultaneously.

    I'm trying not to keep reminding myself about this game since it may not happen (but let's be honest it probably will!) and is still early in production. Bah! I WANTS IT NOW :waah:
     
  7. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    Really great interview with Uber Entertainments Jon Mavor
     
  8. [ZiiP] NaloaC

    [ZiiP] NaloaC Multimodder

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    Myself and friends always said that if your economy wasn't either in the Red or hovering at +/- 0 then you weren't making full use of it :D
    In both TA and SupCom, watching your Energy being draining almost instantaneously when your heavy artillery opened up at full-whack was always incredible.

    Do-able in other RTS games too, but not to the scale or grandeur of TA/SupCom. One of my mates was an absolute ******* for turtling. It always always ended up with us having to use nukes strategically to remove all the tank traps and scattered defences, whilst our armies were fighting to break into his base, just so that when the smoke cleared over our ruined first wave, the next army was able to cover at least some ground before the next wall of defences.

    It certainly reads like that is definitely an option. From the Kickstarter page;
     
  9. Elton

    Elton Officially a Whisky Nerd

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    SupCOM was awesome. And one of the few games that you could win with level 1 units if you had the Saavy.
     
  10. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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  11. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    This is very interesting indeed! - Finally going to make use of my 30" display/

    PC Gamer: "That touches on something I wanted to bring up: with the action happening across all these different play areas, it would seem like situational awareness will become a real challenge for the player. I might be really focused on an intense battle on one planet, and then something else equally important begins to happen on a moon somewhere far away.

    Jon Mavor (lead dev): There are two things that we’re doing to address that. When you’re zoomed out to the solar system scale and you can see everything that’s going on, we’re putting down big icons that represent where your base locations are, with a status on them.

    The other thing I’m going to do… If you remember, Supreme Commander supported multiple monitors. I don’t know if you ever played it in that mode or not. You had one monitor that was your main one and a second monitor that was another view of the world somewhere else.

    We’re going to bring that feature back, but we’re going to make it more flexible, so you’re going to be able to split your viewpoint and look at your different bases on the same screen. You can have a viewpoint that’s got your moon base, a viewpoint that’s on the asteroids, and then a viewpoint on the planet if you want to.

    So like a bank of security cameras…

    Mavor: Exactly. And they’re all active windows. You can do everything in those windows, contextually, that you’d be able to do in the main window. Now, I don’t necessarily expect every player of the game to split their thing into a bunch of windows and use that, because I really want the high-level strategic awareness to be there. But advanced players are definitely going to be able to do that."
     
  12. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    I'd backed this already, based off my love of Total Annihilation.
     
  13. [ZiiP] NaloaC

    [ZiiP] NaloaC Multimodder

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    The multi-screen support in SupCom was nothing short of epic. I struggled with it on 2 CRT monitors when I first played it as I was on an 8800GTS and it couldn't really cope with all the action going on, but it was playable.

    I would have my 2nd screen set up with my base, full map and then 2 key points whilst my primary screen was roving around.

    The Strategic View from SupCom makes every other camera option in other RTS games pathetic and weak. It was one of the best features in the game.
     
  14. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    Tell me about it!

    Has anyone tried to play CoH etc after playing SupCom - I feel like I'm playing with one hand tied behind my back!
     
  15. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Different games - I love CoH, and the restricted zoom means it is much more about unit tactics, rather than overall strategy. I find that games that let you zoom out a long way often become more about the broad strokes than individual units (RUSE is another example of this).

    That said there are some games, such as Dawn of War, where I wish there was one or two more 'notches' to zoom out.
     
  16. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    Yeah, sure, I do agree, I just spend the entire game wanting to zoom out!
     
  17. Loafers

    Loafers What's a Dremel?

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    ah my gawd they just updated the kickstarter page with new goals and what they plan on adding if they reach those goals! naval units sounds really awesome...
     
  18. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Yeah, I really want them to hit the stretch goals - naval units and better orbitals? DO IT NOWWWWWW.


    EDIT: Sitting at $642k with 22 days to go? They're going to easily hit them...
     
    Last edited: 23 Aug 2012
  19. [ZiiP] NaloaC

    [ZiiP] NaloaC Multimodder

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    I'm seriously considered putting in a $100 kick for this. Not for 3 game key as I would like to see more people support it, but would like to get a physical copy of something like this for a change :)

    The stretchgoals sound awesome, fingers crossed that they make it!
     
  20. lp rob1

    lp rob1 Modder

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    It... it will be on Linux too?!

    [​IMG]
     

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