I just bought Planetary Annihilation (PA). The price was right. Also, the fact that Uber's Garat (lead project developer) would take the time out of his busy schedule to post on the Steam forums, as well as Uber's forums, tells me that this is a developer that its work seriously. Background: I'm a causal gamer. As I've gotten older, I simply don't have the time to spend hours upon hours playing games. I look for something that plays great but looks and sounds even better. Yes, eye candy is important to me. Why? Like I said, I'm not a hardcore gamer, but a casual one. I spent my earlier years playing games like TA, SupCom FA, and Command & Conquer. Initial thoughts: This game is fun. Looks great. Sounds great. You should buy it (especially at the price of $30). I was initially worried that the cartoonish graphics would turn me away from this game. I much prefer realistic looking units like those found in TA and SupCom FA. However, I must admit that the cartoonish graphics of units, structures, terrain, etc. actually look decent in person (the YouTube videos makes PA's graphics look worse than it is for some reason). The sound effects also sound pleasantly good. I was worried that the bleeping sound would drive me insane but it's actually OK. Don't get me wrong. I would much rather PA have more realistic looking units and more realistic sound effects. As decent as both currently are, I think this game could be better with these 2 changes. More to come....
Really, this game will be open for modding by the community. All the model and texture files are already sitting out there in the open, anyone can mess with them. Same with sound effects, although I agree a variety of sound effects might help, both on reaction and on one's ears.
What? They don't look metallic dude. Look at some examples from supcom. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vNe_oQAgbbE/TUMiP1OmqyI/AAAAAAAAACg/5itYRSg1PVo/s1600/Supreme Commander 2 Screenshot 2.jpg http://www.google.com/imgres?espv=210&es_sm=93&biw=944&bih=951&tbm=isch&tbnid=bhu5utggtvu4eM:&imgrefurl=http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/File:Seraphim_ACU.jpg&docid=wL6GS6BErXVKxM&imgurl=http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090416073515/supcom/images/2/21/Seraphim_ACU.jpg&w=228&h=352&ei=gooYU6L5GoesiAeT0YC4Dw&zoom=1&ved=0CJ8BEIQcMBY&iact=rc&dur=756&page=2&start=20&ndsp=18 Or like this kinda: http://www.google.com/imgres?espv=210&es_sm=93&biw=944&bih=951&tbm=isch&tbnid=loODTOks79ASMM:&imgrefurl=http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/category/mechwarrior-online/&docid=a1G3L4Gprjby4M&imgurl=http://www.dansdata.com/images/blog/mwo/hgn-hm256.png&w=369&h=496&ei=iYsYU82vEuGKiQeOsIBg&zoom=1&ved=0CGAQhBwwBA&iact=rc&dur=1617&page=1&start=0&ndsp=16 http://www.google.com/imgres?start=...cQhBwwCjjIAQ&iact=rc&dur=1303&page=11&ndsp=20
I'm glad to see the PA community is alive with ideas. Personally, I enjoyed the looks of the units in Total Annihilation the most (especially some of the 3rd party units - there was this combat tank in particular that looked fantastic and had great animation). That's not to say that the units in PA look bad. It's just that TA units had a more serious look to them (I know, this coming from a avowed casual gamer). I also loved the sound effects in TA. Also, the explosions looked and sounded incredible.
Came up on 2 issues: 1. How do you save / load a single player skirmish game against the AI? 2. When you start a single player skirmish match, you're told to select a place in the "Green Zone" to place your Commander. What Green Zone? I don't see any on the planet.
The color brown has a nice bronze look to it.....Try that out, it is my favorite color with blue a secondary. Shame about selectable secondary colors though, lets hope we get them back.
One nice thing about TA was that you could select a unit, then press Ctrl-A, which would then select all the units of the type that you had initially selected. I don't think PA can do this.
1. This has not been implemented yet as the game is still in development. 2. If you don't see any on the planet, they have not loaded or the game might have automatically chosen for you. This sometimes occur when you have a poor connection or you're playing in a very large map and it takes a long time to load. It can, the shortcut for it is Ctrl+Z
Double Click on a unit to select all units of its type that are currently visible There are also lots of shortcuts (look them up in the options menu) that do similiar stuff. You cannot save / load games yet I think that "Green Zone" problem is a bug. Might need to search for a solution.
Double click does not always work. It usually does not work when there's hundreds of units, the game starts to lag and the game does not recognize the double click so having this shortcut is better.
Thanks for the help from this awesome PA community. Also, it turns out that the "green zones" were missing because I had selected "cinematic option" without fully understanding what it does. I must say that I'm impressed that Uber thought about giving gamers a cinematic view in the first place. Just shows how great things are when gamers make games for gamers.
