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Sky Shadowing
Feb 13, 2012

At least we're not the Thalmor (yet)
These guys have to have the biggest grin on their faces. They achieved their first goal, and every stretch goal.

Congrats, Uber. Now all you have to do is deliver.

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Tornhelm
Jul 26, 2008

Davincie posted:

Red Alert.
Frank Klepacki. I bought all of the C&C soundtracks just to get the music he did for them.

Thewittyname
May 9, 2010

It's time to...
PRESS! YOUR! LUCK!
What's amazing to me is that they raised more money yesterday, the last full day, than they did the first full day of the Kickstarter ($208k vs $207k). And, they did so with half the number of contributors. They are very successful in getting people to up their pledges substantially. (I should know, I did it twice :ohdear: )

Dr. Video Games 0031
Jul 17, 2004

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

And some of the other music he did for it sounds almost identical to Oblivion. In fact that was the first thing I thought when I first heard the music in the game. Dude has his moments (the one you linked is good), but overall he's a pretty serious hack and I kind of dread whenever I find out he's making the music for a game.

I don't know if it plays for the other races, but one of the songs that plays during the Sylvari personal story sounds so much like the Zanarkand theme from FFX I thought it was literally that for the first minute or so. Still, there are some pretty great songs in that game, some that really surprised me with how good they were. I'm with you, Soule is grossly overrated and really inconsistent overall.

my kinda ape
Sep 15, 2008

Everything's gonna be A-OK
Oven Wrangler

Kaboobi posted:

As a note: They also mentioned multiple times that the game will be more expensive after the kickstarter, I'm guessing a $30 release price.

During the livestream yesterday he seemed to heavily imply it would be $50. He basically said there's a price most RTS games are priced at and if you guessed that number you wouldn't be wrong.

oogs
Dec 6, 2011
This is going to be awesome. It cleared all the stretch goals.

Orv
May 4, 2011

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

I don't know if it plays for the other races, but one of the songs that plays during the Sylvari personal story sounds so much like the Zanarkand theme from FFX I thought it was literally that for the first minute or so. Still, there are some pretty great songs in that game, some that really surprised me with how good they were. I'm with you, Soule is grossly overrated and really inconsistent overall.

Soule seems to deliver on the theme of whatever game he does, and then a couple songs within the soundtrack, and then everything else is just some kind of remix. TAs soundtrack was pretty decent though. Maybe he's just gotten complacent in his fame?

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying

Orv posted:

Soule seems to deliver on the theme of whatever game he does, and then a couple songs within the soundtrack, and then everything else is just some kind of remix. TAs soundtrack was pretty decent though. Maybe he's just gotten complacent in his fame?

TA is just about the only soundtrack of his where everything was good. Maybe Morrowind.

Also glad to see that they met every goal, even without PayPal included. :toot:

Dukka
Apr 28, 2007

lock teams or bust

Also they are doing their live countdown/QA thing right now.

oogs
Dec 6, 2011

Dukka posted:

Also they are doing their live countdown/QA thing right now.

That guy blowing bubbles got annoying, fast. Also, the voice actor guy is apparently married to the GladOS voice actor.

Orv
May 4, 2011

oogs posted:

That guy blowing bubbles got annoying, fast. Also, the voice actor guy is apparently married to the GladOS voice actor.

He does the Sniper, and I believe another Valve character.

Mr. Samuel Shitley
Jun 15, 2007

by XyloJW
Ahaha I kicked in at the last minute to get the Backer pricing, and the email (by default obviously) says "Thanks to you, PA has been funded succesfully!!"

Yep. You heard it guys, it was this guy right here :smugdog:

Jet Jaguar
Feb 12, 2006

Don't touch my bags if you please, Mr Customs Man.



oogs posted:

That guy blowing bubbles got annoying, fast. Also, the voice actor guy is apparently married to the GladOS voice actor.

Wait a minute. The TA narrator is married to the actress who played GlaDOS? My mind is blown. Just imagine them trying to order breakfast.
"I'll have the eggs, you monster."
"A shrewd tactician always orders the waffles."

Thewittyname
May 9, 2010

It's time to...
PRESS! YOUR! LUCK!

Jet Jaguar posted:

Wait a minute. The TA narrator is married to the actress who played GlaDOS? My mind is blown. Just imagine them trying to order breakfast.
"I'll have the eggs, you monster."
"A shrewd tactician always orders the waffles."

Yeah, the two of them were talking about their past a bit on the live stream. Apparently before being a voice actor, he was a jazz guitarist and met his wife in Europe while playing for a musical she was in. He turned to acting, then voice acting and then convinced his wife to try voice acting by submitting a demo tape to Valve.

Woebin
Feb 6, 2006

Giggily posted:

TA is just about the only soundtrack of his where everything was good. Maybe Morrowind.
The Secret of Evermore soundtrack was pretty sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF0i55epJuY

Wingless
Mar 3, 2009

oogs posted:

Also, the voice actor guy is apparently married to the GladOS voice actor.

I can't be sure why, but this makes me really happy.

XboxPants
Jan 30, 2006

Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

Woebin posted:

The Secret of Evermore soundtrack was pretty sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF0i55epJuY

Wow, no idea about that connection. But now that I check wiki & mobygames, apparently a whole bunch of the people that worked on Evermore then split off and joined Humongous/Cavedog/Gas Powered to work on TA and Supreme Commander. Never would have expected that.

Orange Crush Rush
May 7, 2009

You don't need thumbs for revenge

Orv posted:

He does the Sniper, and I believe another Valve character.

He was the radio guy in one of the Left 4 Dead Campaigns, I want to say Death Toll? The one with the boat rescue.

I have zero idea why I know something so specific but there you go.

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Holy hell even the stretch goals got their asses wrecked :stare: This is gonna be awesome.

Taffer
Oct 15, 2010


Orange Crush Rush posted:

He was the radio guy in one of the Left 4 Dead Campaigns, I want to say Death Toll? The one with the boat rescue.

I have zero idea why I know something so specific but there you go.

He does a whole bunch of dota 2 heroes as well, 8 or something similar.

Soviet
Jul 17, 2003

stick it in me
This is the first Kickstarter that I've ever contributed to. Can't wait for beta.

a cock shaped fruit
Aug 23, 2010



The true enemy of humanity is disorder.

Taffer posted:

He does a whole bunch of dota 2 heroes as well, 8 or something similar.

I love his Pudge.

Wingless
Mar 3, 2009

EDIT: Crap, wrong thread.

Wingless fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Sep 16, 2012

Orv
May 4, 2011
Yeah I wouldn't describe the PA videos as adorable. :v:

Sky Shadowing
Feb 13, 2012

At least we're not the Thalmor (yet)
Did they ever reveal how much they had through PayPal? Just out of curiosity.

Dukka
Apr 28, 2007

lock teams or bust

Sky Shadowing posted:

Did they ever reveal how much they had through PayPal? Just out of curiosity.
A little over an additional $100,000.

Dull Fork
Mar 22, 2009
When I was growing up, my parents were cruel cruel beings. I went from a dos/win 3.1 PC that I could play duke nukem on, and scorched earth. To an iMac which could run Civilization 2, Starcraft and TA.

TA was one of the defining games of my childhood, and I played the gently caress out of it. I flipped out when I saw that SupCom was a thing. But, just like someone else mentioned in this thread, it... didn't scratch that itch. I don't know what it was, but it didn't suffice. It actually made me happy to hear that the lead coder felt the same way a bit.

So when a friend of mine linked me this, I promptly flipped my poo poo all over again. I chipped in, back before they had made any stretch goals. To see this project fly past its last goals in the last day or two blew my mind. I can honestly say that thanks to a mixture of nostalgia and a love of strategy games, this will be my most highly anticipated game in the history of ever. I can't wait to have a hand in helping shape this game (during the beta) to make it the best it can me.

Mr. Samuel Shitley
Jun 15, 2007

by XyloJW
Remember how I mentioned that the guy who wrote the music for Colony Wars would probably do a sweet job on this as well? I got ahold of him (:stare:) and he expressed interest, so are these guys set on a composer as of now?

RamrodMC
Mar 2, 2011

midget astronaut
Yeah, they laid it out on the livestream. The music is being done in-house by their own sound guy, same guy that did both MNC games. Someone had asked why they didn't get Jeremy Soule back, and that was the answer.

Azzip
Oct 22, 2006
Something really profound
Yeah, don't think they have budgeted for getting someone external in, and it could be argued that the stretch goal was for the orchestra so changing around now wouldn't be right.

I haven't played any of the MNC games so not sure what his musical style is, but I don't think they'd have him do it if they didn't think he could handle it.

Seditiar
Aug 5, 2012

Venturebeat released a pretty nice article about Planetary Annihilation. There's some stuff I haven't heard about the game before, that could just be me though.

Baloogan
Dec 5, 2004
Fun Shoe
Can anyone speculate on when the alpha will start?


PA's forums suck so hard. We should uselessly chat about this game, maybe play a little zero-k.

http://zero-k.info/



Zero-k is pretty drat awesome.

Here is an essay posted by one of the zero-k devs on uberent.com's forums.

quote:

Firstly I may as well introduce myself. I'm GoogleFrog, a core developer for Zero-K (a TA inspired open source rts which I doubt many people have heard of) and I also won a few Achron tournaments (that time travel rts which I think fewer people have heard of). I've backed PA with $100 basically because I have wanted this game to exist for a long time and I like alpha testing rts.

I'm posting this here because I was a bit disappointed that the UI in SupComm wasn't powerful enough, not enough was improved since TA. At this time the precursor to Zero-K already had a UI that was in many ways more powerful. I'm trying to head off this outcome for PA with a slew of suggestions which are basically 'copy X from ZK'. Of course the easiest way to absorb this feature request would be to play the game for a bit and use the UI (it's not shameless plug because I would make an awful marketer). Anyway here are some things in ZK which I think could benefit PA.

This also might be a bit premature (although the kickstarter is going really well) but I want to post on the forums and then these ideas would just end up spread around all over the place anyway. Better if I make a central post right now.

Area Commands
In TA and supcomm how do you reclaim a large wreck field? You have to set up patrol commands that cover the entire field and then hope that no damaged units wander through and distract your constructors. Area commands give you a much better way to do this.

Simply select the command, click in the middle of the field and drag a large circle. Constructors then reclaim everything within. Off the top of my head ZK has area selection commands for reclaim, repair, resurrect, attack, load, unload and mex. I don't see why PA shouldn't be able to do this as well. Yes, this has been extended to mexes. Constructing them is just another area command because clicking on each spot in a large area is tedious.
(btw the cursor isn't showing up in these screenshots.)

Custom Formations
This is the ability to create free form formations on the fly to fit to the current situation. The solution in ZK is very simple; right click somewhere and drag the mouse to draw a line then release the mouse to have your units moves towards that line.
It sounds unwieldy but I find myself giving most group move orders as custom formations orders. To cover a front with AA units just draw along the front. To make a firing arc just draw the arc. To spread units out just make the line a bit wiggly. To scatter just draw a circle. Custom formations drawing can also be supported for patrol, fight (aka a-move) and attack ground.

There might be a bit of a conflict with SupComm's ability to move command waypoints. One solution would be to associate the orders given by each custom formations order and then make these groups of orders movable as a group. If PA is extremely 'strategic' it may turn out that custom formations is not needed at all.

To be really advanced custom as well as ordinary formations could be merged. For example artillery could be placed behind assault units along the custom formation line.

Construction Priority
Here is the situation; you just scouted your opponent's nuke and need to get anti-nuke ASAP. But, being a good player, you are running your economy at 0 metal by spending as fast as your production. To divert as many resources as possible to your anti-nuke you have to go through many of your constructors and factories and pause or cancel their construction projects.

Even in less extreme circumstances you may want to work on a project with a larger fraction of your income. The only way I could see to do this in supcomm was to fiddle with pause or add more constructors such that overall you drain much more than you produce.

Construction priorities is a simple state toggle for every nanoframe and constructor. There are 3 settings; low, normal (default) and high. Constructors with high priority get first dibs on your incoming resources. When all high constructors are constructing at full capacity the leftover resources filter down to the normal priority constructors and once they are fully constructing the remainder filter down to low priority. Nanoframes with high or low priority temporarily set their constructors to high or low respectively.

With this system you can implement your economic intentions with as few clicks are possible. No more tedious pause economy management. I'd like to point out you can replicate priority behaviour with infinite pause/unpause micro but it is infeasible, I don't see why players should have artificially limited control over their economy.

A-Move++ (smart unit fighting)
A-move (or fight, patrol, whatever you call it, I call it 'fight') tends to have the same basic functionality; move towards the enemy and when you are in range stop to shoot it. If this is to be an rts which is low on tedious micro then I think units should be smarter than that. Units which out-ranges their targets should automatically kite when told to (probably with some kind of state toggle). If there are slow projectiles then it should attempt to dodge (this is quite hard though so I'd cut back on the slow projectiles).

I see the potential for a bit of an argument over this one and how much automation is always up for debate. My implementation is a bit worse than human management (remember the humans are using custom formations) but I find it makes light ranged units scale well into late game across multiple fronts. It also lowers the apm barrier of entry by providing a baseline unit effectiveness at a simple task which I think it always good.

Design Stuff
That's as many core UI things I could be bothered writing up for now. Below are some things which I have found work in ZK but don't necessarily fit in PA. By no means do I want them to be the same game. ZK really goes for a large set of really diverse units that somehow end up balanced. PA could have quite a lean unit set (much like supcomm) and focus on the large scale army movement and planet mechanics.

Uniform Constructor Drain
In ZK a constructor will always drain as much metal as it drains energy. When it is working at full capacity it always drains the same amount. This is because everything has Metal Cost = Energy Cost = Build Power Cost. Basically the costs in TA look like they were hit by a random number generator. There are some themes such as high energy aircraft and high metal ships but there is also a lot of noise. Anyway uniform drain makes economy planing a lot easier for what I think was a fairly minute loss in depth. I think it is worthwhile considering for PA. If the distinction is really important there could at least be a few classes of drain ratios. Maybe PA will do away with construction assisting all together, I don't know.

No Armour Classes
This is a really situational design feature so I'm not even sure if it belongs here. I'm just pointing out that it is entirely possible to have every unit deal the same amount of damage to every other unit. But if you want units interaction to be somewhat abstracted (instead of physics based) then armour classes are a fine way to do that.

Flat Tech Tree
Again might be entirely irrelevant to PA (actually probably is). I'm just pointing out that it is possible for a TA-like game to have very little in the way of tech progression while still having heavy units. Basically the way this works is that every constructor can build every structure which makes the UI a bit simpler. I think it creates more strategic diversity (eg what happens if I porc and fly to the moon really early) but I see that many people like 'epic tech progressions'. Also there is definitely something to be said for sudden tech jumps that shake up the game. ZK does this a bit as you add more factory types.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit 24 August, Extra stuff added
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some people on the ZK forums said I missed a lot andI have a bit of spare time so here are some more ZK features I think would work for PA. I'm not that familiar with supcomm so while I will try to avoid mentioning things which overlap with supcom I will not always succeed.

To try to keep things brief I'll just describe the mechanics of the feature in ZK. I'm not trying to prescribe exactly how things should be done for PA (anyway I have no hope of doing so). This is just a brief way to describe the idea. Many of these are minor UI or control things that could be added by players if there is decent local modding.

Economy Breakdown
A popup appears when mousing over the metal bar which tells you where your metal comes from and where it is going. The implementation in the image tracks your economy as a player and as part of a team. The same thing exists for the energy bar.


Drawing on terrain
Players can draw and place markers on the terrain to coordinate. Each player has their own colour. Drawing mode is enabled when a key is held down. In ZK left click drag is draw, double left click places a text marker, middle click places an empty marker and right click erases.


[size=150]Movement independent attack command[/size]
This is a command which is independent of the rest of the command queue. Units do not move in response to this command, it only controls their weapon target. This lets you control unit target priority and movement at the same time. There is a command to set target and a command to cancel target but they can be a bit unwieldy.

Of course the normal attack command would still be present. A smoother way to use this command is to automatically add it if you give units a move command while they have an attack command. The attack command is then replaced by this independent target command. There are also more images (some are superfluous but people love images).

The image shows attack ground, of course it can be used on units as well.


Factory Queue Insert
Queuing a unit in a factory with Alt held inserts the unit at the start of the queue. If the factory is set to repeat inserting means you only want one unit, it is not added to the repeat queue. The inserted command is put at the head of the queue if repeat is disabled and the current construction cancelled, this is mainly for "oh **** I need unit X right now" moments.

Seems arbitrary but it actually works quite well. The usual Shift = 5x and Ctrl = 20x modifiers apply.


Command Insert
Hold Shift+Space to cause given orders to be inserted in the middle of an order queue. The command is inserted such that the added length of the queue is minimised. Holding Space by itself inserts the order at the very start of the queue. Works for all orders.


[size=150]Build ETA[/size]
Display the expected construction time somewhere above each construction. This simply projects the completion time based on it's current work speed.


[size=150]Configurable Initial States[/size]
This would let you configure the state (movestate, firestate, cloak?, priority?, activation?) of each unit type when it is constructed. This requires some sort of menu and is probably best done while not in a battle.

Multiple Building Placement
The 'Building Buildings' section of this page. I can't explain it better and don't want to copy it all here. Basically it lets you queue squares, lines and boxes of buildings and set the spacing between them.

Radar Drawn On Terrain
Radar is drawn on the terrain along with LOS, this view can be toggled. Two ways to visualise this are shown in the image. The filled in radar is a bit more visible when zoomed out but the edge based radar is less intrusive and clearly visible when zoomed a bit further in. Ideally people would get to choose the one that suites them.


Retreat Zones
This is a lightweight implementation of units that retreat when damaged. Units have a toggleable state for their repair level, when their health goes below that level they retreat to nearby repair zones which the player places. Constructors near the zones automatically repair the units and when fully repaired the units go back to do whatever they were doing.

Weapon Spread and AoE Drawer
When the attack command is selected this draws the AoE of the unit's main weapon and projected hit area based on inaccuracy. I think it is a really good way to teach people the characteristics of unit weaponry and it helps when placing nukes.


Persistent Scouting
Structures which have been scouted but can no longer be seen are drawn as semi-transparent ghosts. This preserves information from scouting. The ghosts are removed when the building's position is visible.


Defence Range Visualiser
Turrets generally don't move about (I assume) so once an opponent's turret is scouted the range of that turret is drawn on the terrain. This makes them easy to avoid, the range is also drawn for ghosts. This works for every static thing with range such as heavy artillery and anti-nukes.


Smart Radar Dot Shooting
There are quite a few assumptions of other features here. If there is radar AND radar wobble AND there are perfectly accurate weapons with no aoe THEN it would be nice to be able to tell them not to shoot at radar dots. This would be a toggle because sometimes their shots do not have to be saved.







While we wait for PA we should play the next best thing.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying

Baloogan posted:

While we wait for PA we should play the next best thing.

So Balanced Annihilation? Supreme Commander? Because Zero-K is awful.

Baloogan
Dec 5, 2004
Fun Shoe
Zero-K is pretty fun. :catstare:

Dukka
Apr 28, 2007

lock teams or bust

Baloogan posted:

Zero-K is pretty fun. :catstare:
Of a group of like twenty people that I know like TA/Spring Mods/SC, only one likes Zero-K. Statistics yo.

Taffer
Oct 15, 2010


I can confirm that. I think the only people that like Zero-K are the developers. Or maybe just Google Frog.

Woebin
Feb 6, 2006

Having never played Zero-K or even heard of it before now, I think that effortpost has some good ideas. Some not so good as well, but definitely a bunch of really good ones. I hope the devs read it and agree with the things I like.

For those saying Zero-K sucks, are there any specific failings you could point to or more of a general thing? I'm at work so I can't try it right now anyway.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying

Woebin posted:

Having never played Zero-K or even heard of it before now, I think that effortpost has some good ideas. Some not so good as well, but definitely a bunch of really good ones. I hope the devs read it and agree with the things I like.

For those saying Zero-K sucks, are there any specific failings you could point to or more of a general thing? I'm at work so I can't try it right now anyway.

It's a game for the Spring engine that uses a lot of Total Annihilation assets. Chances are that if you saw a good idea in that post, it was more of an engine thing developed by people outside of the team than something unique to Zero-K. I haven't played a lot of Zero-K because it wasn't good, but it basically removes the tech tree, spreads all of the units around to a bunch of different factories, and then tries to balance the game like Starcraft or something.

edit: That post in the forum is actually very disingenuous because he's presenting all of those UI widgets as being part of "Zero-K" and not Spring. That's like a dude making a Supreme Commander mod taking credit for the entire UI and engine. Also, if I recall correctly, the ZK UI actually looks like garbage too. Basically the only good things he mentioned are part of the engine.

turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 24, 2012

Taffer
Oct 15, 2010


Woebin posted:

Having never played Zero-K or even heard of it before now, I think that effortpost has some good ideas. Some not so good as well, but definitely a bunch of really good ones. I hope the devs read it and agree with the things I like.

For those saying Zero-K sucks, are there any specific failings you could point to or more of a general thing? I'm at work so I can't try it right now anyway.


Most of the cool stuff you see in that post(right click drag to move in a line for example) is just the spring engine, and not unique to zero k. Zero k is generally disliked for its very simplistic and poorly balanced unit choices, faction choices, economy management, and general unfocused development. It has changed more over the course of development than any other game I have ever seen, but not because the devs realized there was a problem to be fixed it an important feature to be added. Basically, the entire history of its development has been ruled by "hey that would be cool" without any thought for balance or gameplay. It's a huge mess.

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rednecked_crake
Mar 17, 2012

srsly who wants to play this lamer?

quote:

PA's forums suck so hard. We should uselessly chat about this game, maybe play a little zero-k.

I really don't understand why so many people are making their own little threads on what should or shouldn't be in PA. The guys making it have been thinking about the game for months; they think about it all day, every day. Just because you spent an hour thinking about something really cool (and likely pretty impractical in more ways than one) doesn't mean everyone else should read about it.

Is there even a solid foundation yet, apart from the planning they had during the Kickstarter?

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