I don't know why Wargaming would go through the trouble of obtaining the TA IP unless they wanted to do something with it. Unless they're just going to sit on it like Atari did, but I doubt it. Nothing lives up to nostalgia so if they do make a sequel, unless it's very, VERY good I doubt that it will feel 'better' than TA does at this point. edit:I've just read through this entire thread and it's gone so far off of the rails that it's not even funny. Well, actually it is. It's hilarious. :lol:
There are some news on this subject Chris hinted in an recent audio podcast that he is indeed developing Total Annihilation 2 for Wargaming. Check out the other thread if you want to know more: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/chris-taylor-developing-total-annihilation-2-audio-podcast.52094/
from an outside perspective - not knowing the backstory of this Chris fella and Uber.... It comes across like he's bought the IP to either turn around and try and sue for using concepts from TA, and perhaps a half arsed stab at making a "better" game purely to try and rub it in the face of Uber. I guess im more concerned about the more than likely incoming lawsuit. Can someone fill me in on the backstory?
I would e surprised if lawsuit is the purpose. Yes, PA does get way too close to TA's style and name, but it also seems that he has never had issue with the game, just thought the money they were asking for was too little. One thing to keep in mind is that when making Supcom, they tried to get the TA property, but couldnt. In a way, he can now make "Supcom 3" completely in the clear. What I mean by that is any ideas he uses have previous art in the form of TA and he has that property. It makes him immune to lawsuit. So if he wants to work off of Supcom:FA and call it TA2, I will definitely give it a try. FA has the best gameplay of any RTS I have ever played and easily the best modding system. If he works from its codebase, work in the tech stuff they learned from SC2 and improve from there, he could have a game that makes anything else just seem primitive in comparison. And as a final thought on PA being a competitor, the more I play it, the more I realize it is a different game. They will hold two different places in people's minds. Also, there are years probably before we will see TA2 if he is working on it.
tenshirou - when money is involved.... people will do very nasty things. They may not do it straight away, they may even release their game first.... but if it doesnt sell as well as they hope, they will now allways have the option to turn around and sue Uber for IP infringement to make up for money lost.
Except he doesn't own the SupCom IP, Square Enix does. That is a possibility, but I'm not sure where ownership of the Engine ended up to be honest, I'm not sure if that falls into the IP or not. These are very accurate I'd say, of course it depends on what CT decides to do to "innovate" in TA2, to be frank I don't trust him as a designer anymore and while he was a big part of TA and SupCom, a game isn't defined by a single person, it's a huge Team effort, and the core fo the Team behind TA and SupCom is working on PA right now so it'll be interesting to follow TA2 to see what happens, I'll be glad to be proven wrong. Mike
TA is the prior art to Supcom. Commanders, gate'ing in, the whole game design. SE doesnt have any ground to stand on since TA actually is the older item. I meant TA2 is Supcom 3 in all but name. As far as suing goes, there is a time limit on it. I do not know if it is the standard statute of limitations (7 years) or not though. There is something dealing with not enforcing a copywrite or patent that basically says, if you dont do it, you lose it.
I don't want to get into a discussion about laws and suing because I know next to nothing about all that. But yeah If you meant in all but name then SE doesn't have much to stand on(not that they might not still try), but still, I don't trust CT as a game designer. Mike
they don´t anymore ... irrc it was sold to nordic games ... soooo no supcom for a loooooooong time ... maybe never again jump to 3:46 http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/23/and-everything-else-from-thq-went-to-nordic-games/
Zep, actually, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I played SupCom, FA when it came out and took a break. I have been playing FAF for the last few months now and I feel like I am back to my old playstyle, I am a very strong eco-whore and I am always the anchor for my team as the Setons air player. I think I would dare to call myself a "strong" player, at least when it comes to economy. Even now, the "arbitrary" econ drain really messes with me. The econ gain rate is predictable, however, the drain rate is not constant. It varies due to what I am producing, but there is a hidden multiplier. I believe this is based on the Build time and Build Cost. While I am sure I could take the time to learn every different ratio, I find that rather overly complicated. To me, to remove the "arbitrary" variable would help not just a little, but a LOT. I think build time isn't really needed to balance things. I believe things should be based around the drain rate of each production unit/building. That way if the drain is -10 metal/engineer, and I use 10 engineers to build, then I know I am draining -1000. This allows me, as a player to do some simple calculation in my head to know how I will be affecting my economy. Unless I'm totally off the mark? Simply put, SupCom hides things from the user and doesn't make it blatantly obvious. This makes it both hard to learn and hard to receive information at a macro scale.
p.s. I think Planetary Annihilation oversimplifies by remove Energy AND time from the calculation. I'm ok with the SupCom idea of require both different Mass and Energy costs. Just the build time variable throws me off.
I can't disagree, but it's something that is very hard to make evolve (because the community is used to how it works). But the latest patch start doing some steps toward that (ie. the factories being as efficient at building units compared to engies)
I don't see the point in buying the property with PA coming out. I suppose at this point it's just for name and brand recognition. Seeing as how so many people that made TA & SC are at Uber now.
so what does it bring nordic to have the publishing rights? do they get money from further sales from the first and FA and that´s it? i don´t realy get that ...