So, I was wondering, will the game support units at multiple elevations at the same lateral point? For example, if you have a gigantic... Mostly-indestructible super-bridge on a metal planet, can you have a land-based engagement on top of the bridge, and have a naval war going on under the bridge? This doubles as well for 'artificial' environments, such as sub-bases situated in caves or massive supercities situated around gas giants. Like those flying platforms in Star Wars. Are these kinds of things possible? Because that would truly make this game "next-gen" in my eyes, at least compared to Supreme Commander.
So much yes. I'm imagining a canyon with a natural bridge, with boats hanging out on the river just under it firing lobbed shots at the infantry above.
SupCom2 just had complex map geometry. You couldn't actually have units *under* other units (aside from aircraft OFC). There were never any tunnels or caves or bridges, which severely disappointed me.
As they said in the May 3rd LS and elsewhere on the forums, the system can handle overhangs and such, as they also said there are lots of edge cases where things like gravity and the camera need tweaking to work in, so we might not get it with release, but the capability is there, just needs more elbow grease so to speak. Mike
I don't recall this in the livestream. Can you provide a reference? From previous info releases, it looks like they're using cubemapped flowfields for pathfinding. Cubemaps can't handle overhangs. It's obvious that the map geometry itself is fully 3D, but I haven't seen any evidence that pathfinding, which is the real challenge, could support overhanging/bridge/etc paths.
It was in a post where someone asked if Mobius strips were possible as maps (not at the moment). I believe bridges as you describe are perfectly possible, the issue would be in situations where "up" is ambiguous. For example, I think a Halo world would be possible, but not one that is double sided, or any kind of continuous donut shape. As long as there is a central point that all "ups" originate from, the actual geometry shouldn't matter (they don't use a fixed grid for navigation, but a set of connected nav meshes - so a bridge is simply a mesh joined at two ends to other parts of another mesh). Some speculation here of course, but it's the general vibe I'm getting from Neutrino.
I am going to get on a soap box here about Map Complexity. Map complexity in general is improved when you have tunnels, bridges, pathways of different means. Complexity is improved when you have different unit types that can maneuver different pathways whether its due to size, mobility type, transportation, energy requirement, etc. There are all kinds of fun things that could add to the equation, such as changing terrain (tides and water elevation?), (ice bridges that melt?), (physical bridges that could be destroyed or opened and close?), etc. Wow. I completely disagree. One of my favorite strategy games is Final Fantasy Tactics. This game has proven it's worth time and time again as it gets rereleased over and over again on multiple platforms outselling many newer titles. My only gripe about Tactics was that there was never a solid sequel worthy of it and that there wasn't even more and better strategic map content created. I could go on and on about how complex map elements make for interesting game play. Honestly, I probably should because Annihilation games have a long history of boring battlefields. Worse yet, the battlefields got worse with each title. TA battlefields were too basic or were not designed for the strategic element. Supreme Commander battlefields were more basic. Supreme Commander 2 battlefields were super basic. I am all for emergent game play, but there is also something to be said for bringing out the glorious possibilities. One of the reasons Spider bots worked so well in TA was because the maps weren't really designed with a lot of thought to unit paths through crazy objects and spider bots could go anywhere. However, this hurt the general game play of a lot of great maps or map tile sets. http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-ma ... floodedv04 This is a link for one of my favorite Annihilation battlefields ever played. Note that it is 3rd party. Look at all the elevation changes. Look at all the nooks and crannies. This map can be played with or without water in the center for a naval or none naval game. http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/tabula It's an extremely well designed map especially for an Annihilation game for multiple players. There are all kind of factors that can add to map complexity and each item may seem somewhat as a simple nuance, but if you have a lot of different nuances these things can add together to make battles more complex, unit functionality more interesting and in general extend the life of the product by entertaining the players imaginations. I am going to get a little psychological here, but I think about how I dream about the games I play after I play them, and I would like to think I go to different places when I dream. The more interesting battlefields, the more places I visited in game, the better my experience will have been and my psychological response will be.
Well the maps are going to be at least as complex as those pictures there. But supcom2 has maps as complex as that too, not all, but some. And complexity doesn't always mean better.
If you're expecting a real time strategy game to play like a turn-based tactical RPG you're bound to be disappointed. FFT has you controlling a handful of highly customisable warriors, while SC/TA give you hundreds of expendable tanks. Maps full of cliffs and ravines look cool and sound like they'd make for interesting play, but more often than not they're just frustrating. There's no room to manoeuvre and units start having gun elevation/depression problems, or losing arguments with cliffs. They tend to degenerate into a bunch of lanes and chokepoints and you may as well be playing your game on a tree diagram. Relatively flat land with subtle features (which you might call 'basic' because they don't look like the product of an early Minecraft terrain generation algorithm) allows for fluid gameplay where positioning and manoeuvre matter. Hills and rivers can be as significant to gameplay as sheer cliffs and gimmicky destructible bridges, they just don't look as impressive when viewed from above. Too much stuff in a map is probably worse than not enough. Got your problem right here. You should be playing on Assassination, since that's what the game is balanced for. Obviously things won't be as deep if you take away the core objective of the game.
I am sure he meant 'total annihilation' or 'planetary annihilation' rather then the annihilation game mode.
In the Supcom 2 DLC there was a map where naval units could go under land units *a little* but not really go under them entirely. There was a trick to do it though. The engine could do it.
I don't doubt that the engine couldn't do it, it's just how easy it would be to make it commonplace. There's a lot of pathing (in PA's case, weight painting), map design and geometry that has to go into it to make it work well.
The random map generator is probably capable of everything you're asking and more, just a question of tweaking the values. I agree with your premise, interesting maps are always a better choice, especially with a new better pathfinding system. A lot of people won't agree, and that's fine too. I'm not worried, it's a highly moddable game, with a map generator. Anything we want will be done, and if not, we can just do it ourselves.
