PCZone Supreme Commander Interview

[DEATH eVADER]

PCZone newsletter just arrived in my email account, it is two and a bit pages long. You can find it [URL="http://www.pczone.co.uk/interviews/interviews_story.php?id=132861[/URL"]here[/URL]


here is a snippet:

Supreme Commander is being labelled 'the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation' and expectation is high. What part or parts of the game do you think will most surprise TA fans? Chris Taylor:
I think they're going to be pleasantly surprised about how ambitious we were - we did not cut the ambitious aspects of the design at all. I would really be horrified if they were disappointed with any of it. We've added the modding so that the community can get in there and be creative, the AI system is fully scriptable, the unit control system not only is fully scriptable but we've got a complete scripting debugging system. The map editor that we include in the game, the mod management - we've gone overboard with what we're providing to the community. I would be broken-hearted if they were disappointed with the game.

What can you tell us about the engine you're using for the game and how is this technology helping you realise your goal?
Chris Taylor: We built this engine from the ground up specifically for this game design, so the zooming, the air, the land, the sea, all of our projectiles move in free space - we've pretty much built it to give us this exact experience. The technology is exactly what we need, the engineers are doing a spectacular job at getting us what we need. I seldom get a "No, I cant do it," - it's a designer's dream to be able to come up with a game and have a team full of wonderful people working on it.

What's the Supreme Commander's role on the battlefield, what can he do? Chris Taylor: The player really needs to decide that early on and they can change that. The Supreme Commander has a bunch of upgrades, he can be upgraded to become a base defensive unit, you can build up his construction capabilities of the Commander so he can build units faster, or you can equip him with jump jets, shield systems and radar and you can deploy him in the field. So the players decide how they want to use the Supreme Commander themselves.

Coming from the man himself, he makes a good point

People have always been talking about the death of the PC as gaming platform, what's your view on this?
Chris Taylor: I was really intrigued to see Call of Duty 2 as a top seller on Xbox 360 because you would have no Call of Duty 2 unless you had a PC, because it was developed on the PC and the 360 version was a direct port. So really the PC is a next-generation game platform. People just don't recognise it as that, they think of it as just a PC. Right now the Xbox 360 has a state of the art video chipset in it, which means that a year from now it will be dated and the PC will once again excel. The fact is consoles utilise their resources three times more efficiently than the PC, so the PC has to be a lot more powerful than a console before it exceeds the capabilities, but all of that is just observations of different kinds that mean the same thing to me. The PC will continue to hold its ground. We're seeing consoles go up which is bemusing because as consoles go up in price the PC becomes more attractive. That was one of the most attractive thing about the original 8-bit Nintendo, it was $99 and the PC was $3000. Well now a console rigged out is $400 or $500 and a PC you can get for $899, so the gap has radically closed and if that trend continues and MMOs and great products continue, then the PC will do great.

 

[Hazar]

most definently going to be getting this one... it looks to have everything I want in an rts

 

[X-FacToR]

Feal like ive been waiting forever, I want it now!!

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Feal like ive been waiting forever, I want it now!!

I'm hoping to see it at this years E3, or even better, this years GDC

 

[Hazar]

I want it now as well D:

 

[Fishlore]

Sounds cool. What was he talking about when he said you could expect 50-250 units in a battle. Seems like a small number considering the vast scope of the battlefield. Maybe it's just taken out of context.

 

[CyberPitz]

I sure can't wait..I loved TA to death..and I'm sure I'll have all sorts of orgasms over this.

I havn't played TA: Spring in a while though..hope it's goin alright.

 

[Ren.182]

Really looking forward to this. Should be a fun game and it sounds really massive

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Sounds cool. What was he talking about when he said you could expect 50-250 units in a battle.

Perhaps in context of a 'manageable battle'

 

[Hazar]

I *hope* he ment engaging each other, but many more around elsewhere on the map

 

[Quixoticism]

Sounds awesome, I can't wait for this game.

 

[destrukt]

as much as i love chris taylor, cod2 isn't a direct port, the x360/pc version were developed side by side. q4, king kong and others were direct ports. the argument that console games were developed on pc's is weak.

supreme commander is going to be freaking awesome.

 

[spookymooky]

I've heard a lot of hype, but don't know what the features for this game are. Can anyone fill me in?

 

[hungryduck]

gosh, its gonna be sooo good

 

[Hazar]

I've heard a lot of hype, but don't know what the features for this game are. Can anyone fill me in?

there's several great gamespy articles detailing it. go check them out, lots of nice screens too

 

[CyberPitz]

there's several great gamespy articles detailing it. go check them out, lots of nice screens too

Yeah, the game does look hella sexy...I always thought it was so cool how I would just fly the little scout airship around, and dodging the missles as best as I could, see how many passes I could make through the enemy base.

*sigh* good times

 

[Fishlore]

Perhaps in context of a 'manageable battle'

I'm sure this is true. My point is, they have designed this engine from the ground up specifically for this game. Each map is supposed to be extremely large, like a planet. If there are only 250 units the world would be incredibly underpopulated and all of that open space would be useless.

Like someone else said, I hope they mean up to 250 units actually battling at one time while there are hundreds of units elsewhere throughout the map. But if that's the case, do you have 500 units on the map, but only allow about 250 of them to fight at any given time? What kind of limitations would that put on what is supposedly free form gameplay?

Don't get me wrong. I think this game could be a lot of fun. I just wished I knew more details about this point specifically.

 

[Hazar]

I'm guessing that he was just making a rough estiment, and the real number will be much larger