I've spent half a day reading up on the game and watching videos, so I'll be dumping all my finds here soon. The most important questions I had, and the answers I found to them, were the following:
1. How big can the planets get, because right now it looks more like Asteroidal Annihilation, as I mentioned in the Universim thread:http://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=4873I wrote:However, the "galactic scale" is bogus, since the planets are more like the size of asteroids, a la Planetary Annihilation (aka Asteroidal Annihilation), than real planets. Which totally bums me out. I'd rather have one real massive planet than all those tiny faget asteroids that pretend to be planets and can only fit 12 buildings on them. It just looks stupid
And the good news is that THERE IS NO LIMIT TO THE SIZE OF THE PLANETS besides what your hardware can support:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/supe ... ost-510915neutrino wrote:The technical design goal is no upper limit on planet size other than available CPU and memory. In other words no hard baked in limits other than those based on processor architecture.
In practice network bandwidth and unit count may be more the limiting factor at the moment than sheer map size. But there will be no upper limit on what you can attempt to setup (past a certain size may be a console command or something to setup so we don't cause people to constantly crash the game).
(Note that "neutrino" is Jon Mavor, creative lead of the game.)
Given enough time for technology to catch up, we'll be playing with Earth-size planets eventually. This dude describes exactly what I am dreaming of:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... ?context=3Havitech wrote:How big is "bigger"? I exclusively played the massive 40km and 80km maps in SupCom because I loved how you actually had to use and coordinate transport units to ferry your army across vast distances. There was also nothing quite like building a Galactic Colossus and sending it to walk under the ocean for a 20+ minute trip, then watching it finally surface on the enemy beachhead and stomp their base to ashes.
Loved everything I saw in the trailer, but one of my first thoughts was, "what is this, a planet for ants? It needs to be at least... 10 times bigger! With everything about 10 times further apart!" I want to be able to spend 20 minutes just building my base before players can even get probes to reach each others bases, much less send their first skirmish forces. Is this at all realistic to expect from the game?
If the game can really deliver on playing "a 12+ hour game with 40 of your closest frenemies and thousands of units" then I will fall to the ground in violent-but-joy-filled convulsions. This finally sounds like the grand scale of RTS I honestly have been hoping for since I first got into SupCom.
uber_neutrino wrote:Back us and I'll make it happen.
The max size of the planets will only be limited my memory and CPU. SupCom had a max size...
Havitech wrote:Incredible. I already pledged $50, I'm going to keep telling all my friends about this with links to the Kickstarter.
2. What about multi-monitor support?The Alpha did not support multiple monitors, but at some point (they are now in what they call "Gamma") they added the following feature in:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/di ... 981847849/SXX wrote:Yes there will be support of multiple monitors as well as "picture in picture" mode.
If all of your monitor have same size currently you can just resize game window to all of them. It's not looks perfect, but works.
The end goal is this:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/15/plane ... interview/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.
Note, he's not talking about just three monitors, but as many as your machine can handle:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/65 ... ration-rtsWill you support multiple monitors?
The plan is to support multiple windows across as many monitors as you want. The more windows you want to open the higher the system requirements.
Even more exciting, as far as monitor tech is concerned, is the scalability of the detail level:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... ?context=3ColaColin wrote:Will it be possible to tweak settings like level of detail? It really annoys me that I cannot see wrecks/trees/whatever from the fully zoomed out perspective in supreme commander. I think it would be nice if the game could be configured to just show anything even from a fully zoomed out view, so that people with the right computer can use it. PA's graphics looks rather simple to render and it will support lots and lots of ram thanks to the 64 bit version, so it might just run fine. Considering that some people play games like PA for many years there will be a point in the future were most people can profit from it.
EDIT: somebody else wrote abour permantly lasting wrecks of units and you said no, not possible. While I understand it is unrealstic in longer games, it also would be great to make this somehow tweakable. Like: keep at least X wrecks on the field before removing any and make that X easily configurable.
I just want the game to be able to scale as much as possible with faster computers, even in the future, cause I hope to spent years with PA ;)
uber_neutrino wrote:Yes. This will be configurable. The main reason is that when we get ultra large high resolution displays.
This will be the killer app for 4K screens. Far more useful for this game than for any other type of game.
Also, persistent wreckage was eventually added (I mean in the design -- not sure if the Gamma currently supports it):
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... ?context=3uber_neutrino wrote:Wreckage is in!
3. Will there be shared unit control, a la Age of Empires (which is a far superior form of cooperation), as opposed to standard co-op?http://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryannihi ... he/c5wsd2juber_neutrino wrote:Yes, I was agreeing we are going to support team play where more than one person can control a single army.
uber_neutrino wrote:Basically there will be a distinction between a team which is where you control one set of units and an alliance where you have separate armies.
Note he said "more than one person", not "two". Which is just unbelievably incredible and the future of the genre.
So that's all I have for now. The answers to all my crucial questions were not merely positive, but "infinitely positive", if that makes sense, since what I am basically asking for is MORE, MORE, MORE, and what they are saying is THE SKY IS THE LIMIT. I have zero reservations now, and bumped the game up to the top of my Most Wanted list. It's hard to explain why without giving you Videogame Culture: Volume II. Yes, MGS5 belongs to a higher genre, but PA does more within its genre than MGS5 does with its, so PA wins for now.
Now I am going back to watching this video from a recent build (May 22):
Giant Bomb Quick Look EX:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J25QPvbugdgMore updates soon.