Livestream 1/10

This is all very primising, can't wait to see all this mapped onto a sphere and in motion
Thanks again to Uber for sharing all this stuff.

just to be clear, I haven't seen the livestream yet, but is this early prototype gameplay preview, or just a render/concept image?
Probably concept though

A concept image, however its a full 3d scene as demonstrated by the multiple pics from different angles in the livestream.

I would love to see those simple terrains from the trailer appear in the final game. But as they said, the details will be toned down.

I quess you didn't play Supreme Commander 2 more than 5 minutes then.

Now now, we have had this discussion a million times before.

So is the game going to look more like the picture or more like the kickstarter video?

The kickstarter video was only a proof of concept (focusing on a temperate planet) whereas the pics in the livestream shows actual terrain for the desert biome that is going to make it into the game in some form. It should be noted though that the pics in the livestream have very little in the way of open space and passable terrain. This is most likely because it was created with the intention of demonstrating as many terrain features as possible instead of actually playing on.

The live stream pics actually look very much like the concept video. The only difference that i can see is the super detailed terrain, shadows and the toned down color of the units. And looking at it just makes me sea sick. Maybe it's just the angle of the canyon :roll: .

Completely Off-Topic:

• Surely I'm not the only one who sees the thread title "Livestream 1/10" and thinks it's being rated horribly?

A little (not exhaustive) sum up of what has been said on live stream about PA :

As English it's absolutely not my native language, you can expect some mistakes here but hopefully I'll be corrected.

They mostly talk about AI: Unit AI and computer AI.

Unit AI:
2 Kind of orders :

• - specific chain-able action order (attack unit, go here, etc.)

• - zone area order (attack this area, reclaim units in this area, etc.)

Area orders sound really promising because the AI unit (or group of unit) will optimize their actions to the the job in the most effectively way. It will take into account the surrounding environment.

For example, an unit will shot where it will do the most damage by taking into account position of enemy units, their health, the damage area of its weapon, ...

Units will be able to coordinates themselves to be the most effective. I understand that 10 units will not shoot at the same time on the same unit if this unit can be one shot.

For defensive units, it will be able to choose multiple defence stances. The AI should reacts quite correctly even if you are not here during the attack.

Computer AI:
The computer AI will be challenging (and "kick *** of average player") but not cheating except if you ask specifically for it. For example, the possibility to give to the AI a complete view of the map during all the game.
It will be base on neural network. (Possibly adapt itself during the party ?)

You will be able to choose different type of AI.

It will probably be possible to give some orders to the AI.

They also talk of the ground:
Some (most ?) parts of environment will be destructible. Like in TA there will be fire forest.
As view in the demo video, asteroids will be able to destroy big part of planets.
(and nukes mountains ?)
There will be probably a terra forming units or something similar that will be able to create bridge for example but it is not the main focus of the game.

Replays:
It will be able to replay games with the possibility to replay back a missed event.
You will be able to also click on the corpse of a dead unit to see in a window the replay of its death.

Other elements:

• - May be crawler bomb unit will be present. They like crawler bomb but it is quite hard to balance.

• - Gaz planet will boost planets production through an orbital building. No unit or building will be able to land/build on.

IA...?

You mean, AI?

(Artificial Intelligence)

I'm guessing you don't know who you're talking to then, but tell me then, how DO the SupCom2 Maps function seeing as I'm "obviously" wrong.

Mike

Exactly. It's mean to get the biome features in one place for conceptual reasons. All along we've been building pieces like this as our model for the procedural generation. Then you let the process feed back on itself and repeat.

Exactly !

Just because it is IA in French (Intelligence Artificielle).

I correct it now. thank.

The main problem with supcom2 maps from the top of my head was:
1. Not enough mass extractors (and mass extractors were done wrong).
2. Air was completely op late game and land rushes could be stopped fairly easily even with an air starting bo (at pro level 1v1) which meant air builds were so common and stupidly boring to play/watch. Furthermore there was no reason to not go all air on team games as air rushes could kill players effectively and fast.
3. The overall approach to an enemy base on a land game was more of an A to B route rather then having multiple arcs to A to B to allow for harassing and counter attacking to become viable (open palms being the exception).

Im probably forgetting a few others

EDIT: Oh yes and no map editor was a big one ^^

Except those are less so about the maps themselves(except 3, 1 technically as well but sorta not) I'm talking about how the "3D model" aspect of the maps was almost purely cosmetic and how the pathing was handled in such that the map didn't have any direct effect on it as it was handled by a height map texture, so that's why there were areas around the "ramps" where you couldn't issue any orders.

The SupCom2 method may look nicer, but it didn't play any better than FA's height map style maps either.

Mike

Ok yh I got a bit carried away with number 2 but I don't see how the supcom2 maps were "worse" than FA.

Also I feel that the community made maps will be played a lot more than the pre-made maps over time so the state of the maps will be fairly dependent on the community. (even though i believe uber's maps will be great too)

So the pathing design for PA is to work on basically arbitrary meshes (technically manifold meshes actually). This is actually fairly challenging because we used the "grid" as a shortcut in a lot of cases. Doing things like flowfields is quite a bit more complex but we are working through the issues. Then add on the fact that it all has to be dynamic...

I just explained it.

Uber isn't making any maps for PA, they making a planet generating system, big difference.

Also that point about community maps isn't applicable to SupCom2.

Mike

I got off the subject of supcom2 but ty I forgot about the planetary generating system.