[HN Gopher] Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
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Supreme Commander Graphics Study (2015)
Author : UglyToad
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-04-09 13:18 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adriancourreges.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adriancourreges.com)
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| To this day, still one of the best RTS games of all time.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Let's say you're not too familiar with the genre, but you've
| been curious for a while and want to explore more. Maybe you
| played some Starcraft at a friend's house in high school, and
| that's pretty much it for genre exposure. And by you I mean me.
|
| What games would you recommend for a newcomer in 2024? What are
| the genre-defining classics, and which ones still hold up?
| What's the recent hotness? The modern classics?
| pdntspa wrote:
| Supreme Commander is a great start
|
| Personally, I'd also recommend Homeworld and the Warhammer
| 40K: Dawn of War series
|
| On the free-and-open-source front there is Zero-K (which I
| don't care for) and Beyond All Reason, both of these are
| Spring Engine games, and Spring Engine started out as a
| 'modernization' of Total Annihilation. Most games built with
| it don't fall too far from the original
|
| Homeworld 3 comes out in May, I can't wait :D :D :D
|
| ps- I'd be remiss to omit Command & Conquer... Red Alert 2
| and Generals are my favorites. I don't care for Starcraft but
| that series is worth mentioning too.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| It actually started out as a ta3dviewer of total
| annihilation replays
| Spellman wrote:
| If you specifically want more Total Annihilation style RTS
| games, Ashes of the Singularity scratches a similar itch.
| And of course Planetary Annihilation does TA IN SPACE with
| the ability to sling asteroids at your opponents.
| Personally switching to a 3D sphere world broke my brain.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Personally the only entertaining ones to watch are Starcraft
| Brood War or Starcraft 2 right now.
| ijk wrote:
| Depends on which branch of RTS design you want to explore.
|
| Age of Empires 2 still has a significant player base, for
| example, so it's both a genre-defining classic and modern
| ranked multi-player.
|
| Other RTS design traditions include Total Annilation, etc.
| Plus there's adjacent stuff, such as They Are Billions which
| just does the base building part and drops some of the other
| mechanics.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| There's still nothing that comes close to Warcraft 3 (the
| original, not the remastered abomination, don't fucking touch
| it). Dawn of War 40k had some neat ideas as well.
|
| So probably WC3 -> DoW 40k -> Starcraft 1/2 -> weep because
| the genre is dead
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Not for lack of trying, though. Stormgate and Tempest
| Rising are boty trying to take on the mantle of Starcraft 2
| with probable releases this/next year.
|
| But yeah overall high production values pickings are pretty
| slim - last year saw Company of Heroes 3, 2022 had a Dune
| game, 2021 had Age of Empires 4. 2020 might be a high point
| with Warcraft 3, C&C, and AoE 3 remasters.
| araes wrote:
| Mostly, I tend to put the RTS' into ideas about "real-time
| strategy."
|
| _Dune II:_ One of the first, one of the best. 3 factions,
| all very different, story mode with scope. Interesting units
| when "harvesters" was a new idea.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II
|
| _Command & Conquer / Red Alert:_ Excellent unit select, very
| orthogonal unit choices, live-action cutscenes (which while
| of questionable quality, were still pretty amusing) Red Alert
| also has an excellent soundtrack (although extremely facist
| march themed with "Hell March", yet quite listenable).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert
|
| _Age of Empires:_ Artificial Intelligent opponents that didn
| 't "cheat" with extra resources or out-of-game knowledge,
| they were simply competent opponents. Age of Kings is
| probably the showcase. Rotational rock-paper-scissors unit
| effectiveness. Several "victory" types. Gameplay that tended
| to support longer games, rather than 3-minute rush (Commander
| vs Legacy in an MtG context). Only complaint is unique units
| were often not enough for long enough to really be special.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II
|
| _Warcraft II:_ Not sure how relevant today, yet one of the
| first to feature an online matchmaking service that was not
| utter misery (and _actually_ had players at lot of the time!)
| Also, neat cartoony style that became the basis of WoW, DOTA,
| and many others. Possibly the best though, first game where
| you could spend half an hour just cycling through all the
| quotes ( "I can see my house!") for units (and their
| annoyances at your clicking "Are you still touching me?").
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_II:_Tides_of_Darkness
|
| _Homeworld:_ There is Still not a significant other 3D RTS
| franchise (EVE Online is very close for an MMO). Basically,
| about the only game that does actually 3D strategic space
| combat in an actual spherical playing field over vast
| distances, with multiple-ship scales, and per unit
| positionable cameras ( "camera can be set to follow any ship
| and view them from any angle, as well as display the ship's
| point of view"). The story's also quite well written, and at
| least provides a plausible reason for each of the missions. I
| watched _Star Wars: The Last Jedi_ , and thought "You people
| should have played Homeworld, you would have written such
| better space battles. Somebody over at Battlestar Galactica
| must have played Homeworld."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeworld
|
| _Sins of a Solar Empire:_ Neat game design based on solar
| system "zones", where you can only really fight around solar
| systems, and then transit is mostly hands off (often with
| surprises when you exit jump space into fog of war).
| Planetary and solar system upgrades that are inherent to the
| idea of "planet" rather than just tower defense. Multiple
| ship styles and races with fairly different play styles
| depending on the build choice. Been a while, yet from what I
| remember, also not quite as punishing as Starcraft about
| choosing the "correct" choice.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire
|
| _Warhammer 40K Dawn of War:_ Gameplay that 's not built on
| mining anything, rather more like capture the flag, holding
| locations for time frames to accumulate "something". And then
| pretty much all the pre-existing craziness of Warhammer that
| is far too long for a single game recommendation. LOTS of
| units and armies though.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Dawn_of_War
|
| _Total War Franchise:_ (Medieval II, Rome, Shogun, and
| Warhammer are notable entries) Scope. Massive scope. Battles
| with 10 's of 1000's of soldiers on the field. Became a bit
| much to deal with in some of the games, yet neat to be able
| to create your own LotR "Ride of the Rohan" scenes.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_(video_game_series)
|
| _Achron_ (have not played, would like to try) Time travel
| RTS with three time-frames units fight in, and propagating
| time waves that erase the future. You can "chronofrag"
| yourself, by having future self meet past self. A Grandfather
| Paradox resolution system, where units are removed if they
| fall out of the "possible futures."
|
| _Supreme Commander:_ (and prior Total Annihilation) are the
| subject of this article. Also massive scope. Huge, smoothly
| scalable maps. Tons of unit choices. Enormous numbers of on
| map units simultaneously.
| liotier wrote:
| Enjoy that style ? Go play Beyond All Reason, its free and open-
| source spiritual heir - https://www.beyondallreason.info
| bloqs wrote:
| Thank you for this, had no idea it existed
| vladms wrote:
| And, for completion, with the same engine that beyond all
| reason is done, but with a different game play feeling:
| https://zero-k.info/
|
| I personally prefer Zero-K (flatter tech tree, territory can
| be more important), but both are great games.
| concordDance wrote:
| Also prefer Zero-K. The economy system design results in
| better team games imo. Though obviously it's a lot less
| pretty.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| I've never played much Zero-K, but from I understand the
| eco in BAR is truely exponential, after you get to the
| top of the tech tree and have a metal maker economy. It's
| an interesting design, since late game human becomes the
| bottleneck in expanding the eco, since exponential growth
| also means you have to increase your attention in
| managing it.
|
| Zero-K from what I know has overdrive fusions, which
| isn't really exponential in the same sense.
|
| In the end, both are great games.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| It's limited by builds pace though
| paulddraper wrote:
| Exponential is great; it ensures a reasonable end to the
| game. (A problem TA suffered.)
|
| Also, when the games do last a while, it is truly amazing
| to watch. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIC_JMZKBkQ
| paulddraper wrote:
| I played Total Annihilation as a kid. Finding Beyond All Reason
| was amazing.
|
| And spectating 8v8+ with tens of thousands of units is
| something else.
|
| It's unfortunate that large scale RTS isn't a more popular
| genre.
|
| Instead it's all Fortnite/CoD/WoW
| InsomniacL wrote:
| if you haven't seen already, check YouTube where the mods
| enable larger lobbies.
|
| There are some really good casts of 40 vs 40 players or more!
|
| Here's a recent 25 vs 25:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btnU_IPWPmY
| paulddraper wrote:
| Oh I have. Those are wild.
| m463 wrote:
| I still play the CNC games every once in a while.
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| I still play Total Annihilation. I am not a "gamer" and don't
| play any computer games anymore, but boy do I still love
| Total Annihilation.
|
| My cousin was a tester for Cavedog in the late 90s and gave
| us a copy before it was big. I still have some CDs!
|
| Love to see Beyond All Reason continuing the spirit.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It feels like Starcraft 2 was the last traditional RTS; I
| suspect part of that is because other developers think their
| game wouldn't have a chance without competitive multiplayer
| as tight as SC2's.
|
| That said, there's still some RTS games in the indie space /
| on Steam, like Homeworld: Deserts of something. But that one
| was ultimately disappointing overall.
| Spellman wrote:
| I thought technically BAR is the OSS heir of Total Annihilation
| (which then Supreme Commander later developed).
|
| Only 2 sides, no unique Experimental units, etc.
|
| That being said, it's a great FOSS game and really captures the
| genre feel of epic scale.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Yes, Supreme Commander, Beyond All Reason are cousins (and
| Planetary/Industrial Annihilation) -- all successors to TA.
|
| And there are the direct TA mods...Balanced Annihilation and
| TA: Escalation
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Part of that family is also the spring engine (zero-k and
| others)
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I want to like BAR because it is so obviously made with passion
| and attention to detail but I can't get over how wonky the
| units look. I don't mean the quality, but the design. They
| don't look at all cool and I can't get the power fantasy of
| leading an army of killer robots. I feel like leading some
| random hodgepodge of guns mounted on trash cans.
| corysama wrote:
| If you find graphics studies interesting, you can find a few more
| at http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2020/12/29/graphics-
| stud...
| jsheard wrote:
| An underrated aspect of the SupCom engine was that it natively
| supported multiple monitors, with independently controllable
| cameras on each one so you could keep an eye on any two parts of
| the map, or just zoom the second one all the way out to get a
| giant minimap. That's something you never see today even though
| it would be easier to pull off with modern graphics APIs (IIRC
| SupCom actually runs two copies of the game simultaneously,
| driving one monitor each, to get around DirectX limitations of
| the time).
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Slightly less impressive was the minimap, which was also an
| entire second(third) copy of the game's graphics process.
| (Although really you weren't 'supposed' to use the minimap,
| since strategic zoom took its place.)
| m463 wrote:
| I find these kinds of bend-over-backward-things amazing. It
| is probably not a good ROI to get it that correct, but it
| admirable and makes the game lots of fun.
|
| In a similar vein, I think fallout4 lets you use an ipad as a
| pip-boy to do maps and other management things.
| yayitswei wrote:
| if it makes the game lots fun then there's a good case for
| the feature!
| RGamma wrote:
| And our LAN games became soo slooow over time..
| reactordev wrote:
| It's trivial to render to a texture (framebuffer) using a
| separate camera matrix and shader pipeline to make a minimap.
| It was in 2015 as well. Rendering to two separate windows is
| also trivial if you're rendering to textures first instead of
| directly to the backbuffer. Making use of those two windows
| is not trivial.
|
| All in all, SupCom had issues with the number of units on
| screen (or in general) and would slow down considerably under
| heavy troop battles. Still, it was awesome.
|
| Ever since 2006 or so it's been standard practice to break up
| the rendering pipeline and render to textures that you would
| combine in various ways in post (deferred shading came about
| around this time). So it's not an entire graphics engine
| process. It's just simply a render target.
| pdntspa wrote:
| I loved this feature but the game crashes if you use it with >2
| monitors :(
| gwervc wrote:
| As someone who had two monitors at the time (that was more a
| geeky thing by then than now), it was my favorite feature of
| the game. Also in-game shields.
| jsheard wrote:
| I played it on two big CRTs. You needed a strong desk to run
| multiple monitors back then.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Yup, strategic zoom on monitor 2, micro control on monitor 1.
|
| If you never played SupCom, you would imagine that being
| terrible since most RTSes of the day were so fast paced, but
| SupCom followed much more of the SiNS/Stellaris/etc flow of
| gameplay. High level strategy with microcontrol.
|
| Watching your waves of tanks (in strategic view) slowly push
| back their line of artillery because you simply strategized
| better as your air force slowly picked off economic resources
| was so satisfying.
| jl6 wrote:
| Are you listening, Factorio devs?!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It was also one of the first games to make use of multicore
| CPUs, although it was far from ideal and ultimately you ran
| into a cap on one core's CPU usage regardless since one thread
| still had to do more than anything that could be deferred to
| others.
| metadat wrote:
| There's also LOUD, the mod version of the game which adds even
| more dynamics and higher tier skill trees.
|
| https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-supreme-commander-forged-...
|
| I've actually playing this the last few days :)
| elromulous wrote:
| Since the article opens with discussion of RTSs in the (late)
| 90s, I feel it would be a crime to not include Dune 2[0], largely
| considered to be the first "modern" RTS.
|
| Edit: Dune2 came out in 1992, so it's understandable that it's
| not mentioned, I meant more in the broader discussion of RTSs.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If you also happen to think SupCom was the most ultimate superior
| RTS ever made, because it's truly strategy scale with a thousand
| units PER PLAYER including on 8v8 maps, and the simulated
| ballistics of almost all weapons means you can defend your base
| from an incoming nuke by scrambling your jet fighters so that
| they run into the incoming warhead and airburst it "safely" above
| your base, and love that artillery shells can also hit those same
| planes, or that a plane shot out of the sky can fall on a tank
| and destroy it, or that you think a giant walking mech with a
| backpack nuke launcher is the metalist fucking thing,
|
| Check out Forged Alliance Forever. It's a community made, open
| source, "launcher" for the Supreme Commander game, that patches
| it, mods it, allows you to interact with other players and find
| games and get ranked against them, and also is a replay viewer,
| so you can watch how the pros actually do the insane micro and
| economy play that earns them the 2000+ ELO score, and also a mod
| manager, and also a friends list.
|
| If you are like me, and love all that but actually suck at
| playing strategy games in general, check out Gyle on youtube
| https://www.youtube.com/@GyleCast who has been casting SupCom
| games for at least a decade now, and really shows off some of the
| best that the game has to offer, including multi-hour "EPICs"
| that can involve ten thousand units controlled by several semi-
| pro players.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Shoutout to FAF. Best RTS I've ever played.
|
| Been meaning to check out Beyond All Reason, supposedly it's a
| FOSS spiritual successor to FAF
| sabartonn wrote:
| Total Annihilation (1997) was the predecessor to Supreme
| Commander (2007), both by Cavedog. Beyond All Reason is
| pretty much a remake of the former.
| limbicsystem wrote:
| I was completing my PhD at the time. I called it 'Thesis
| Annihilation'.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > you can defend your base from an incoming nuke by scrambling
| your jet fighters so that they run into the incoming warhead
| and airburst it "safely" above your base, and love that
| artillery shells can also hit those same planes
|
| Or how you could blip your shields on and off in sequence with
| artillery bombardments to free up energy for your forward
| artillery, giving you just that slight leg up on your opponent.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I am a devoted FAF fan. I've been watching games online for
| about 10 years now. I've probably seen close to 1,000 at this
| point, but I've never once played it. I suck at RTS games and I
| don't have a Windows machine.
|
| I probably know more about the game than some of the players
| but I have never even owned it ;-)
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| I played it for the first time in 2017 and I was somewhat sad
| to have played only WoW between 2005-2013.
| heelix wrote:
| Supreme Commander is still pretty active, via the FAForever
| community. The original single player maps were converted to co-
| op. Lots of game modes, a new race, unit tweaks, new maps - very
| much a game that still gets love.
|
| When the next steam sale hits, you only need the Supreme
| Commander: Forged Alliances game (Under $3) and
| https://www.faforever.com installer and it all updates lovely.
| Works on Linux, multi monitors, and a dozen or so players
| connecting.
|
| For me, I found this was the open source project I used to keep
| my SpringBoot skills current. Nothing but positive things to say.
| daveidol wrote:
| One of the best video games ever made
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