Supreme Commander Talk

The development of Supreme Commander 2 has been announced. The unexpected part is that the series is switching from its former publisher, THQ, to Square Enix. Yes, that Square Enix, the ones that make Final Fantasy.

This sounds like it could be incredibly awesome, and I’m definitely looking forward to it. No release date is set yet and it’ll probably be a while, but who knows, maybe this blog will become active again with the release of SupCom2.

To the the readers loyal enough to SupComTalk to still be checking to updates to this very day: Rejoice! Grokmoo and I have started a new PC gaming blog called PC Game Fun Time. We’re hoping it’ll be exactly like SupComTalk in its prime (seeing as how much fun we had writing this blog), only because it’s focused on PC gaming in general and not one game in particular, we should be able to keep it going for a much longer time.

So head on over to the very first introductory post and get started. PC gaming is a wide world, and we’ll need suggestions on what to cover now more than ever.

Alrighty folks, so it’s been awhile since Grokmoo and I stopped playing Supreme Commander, but that doesn’t imply anything about you, the readers. If you’re reading this and you’ve ever played Supreme Commander, I want your input on the poll and in the comments if you feel like explaining your vote. Here’s my explanation (and wow, I can’t believe that was all the way back in August). If you haven’t ever played Supreme Commander, don’t bother with the poll, though if you want you can explain why you’re reading this blog at all in the comments below (hopefully it’s because of my witty writing!).

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Chris Taylor, game designer behind Supreme Commander (as if you didn’t already know that), believes that “secure computing” is the future of the PC gaming world. Now he’s not so naive as to think that DRM is the answer (because SecuROM, pretty much the best in the breed, is about as airtight as a shot-up sponge). When he says secure computing, he’s talking about playing games from a central server rather than on individual desktops.

Now there are all sorts of ways to interpret what he’s talking about, because the description given in the article is pretty vague, but I think what he wants is for essential parts of the game not to ship with the client whatsoever. The only way you’d be able to play is while in constant communication with the server. Think World of Warcraft: anyone can make copies the client, but to be able to play the game, you need to log in to one of the servers, which only accepts logins from accounts that are paying the monthly fee. Only Blizzard has the code that runs the servers, so no one can run their own pirate servers. World of Warcraft is thus effectively “secure computing” according to Chris Taylor’s concept.

Sure, it works for MMORPGs, because a central server is necessitated by the nature of the game, and users accept and understand it. But for other games, especially single player games? Are consumers really going to put up with an unnecessary net connection being required to play for no other reason than anti-piracy? That would ruin the experience on laptops, which many people use in situations where net access is not available (think airplanes, buses, or trains).

And this brings up another problem: the gaming company now has to run and maintain an unnecessary server farm to service all of the requests from people playing single player. Keep in mind that these servers won’t merely be doing verification or validation; if they were, you could either spoof a verification server that would always send back “OK”, or simply remove the verification code from the client executable. No, these servers need to be constantly running a critical part of the game that the client doesn’t have so there is no way the server can be excised from the loop. That’s not insignificant.

The nice thing about computer games as they are now is you can pretty much play them indefinitely, so long as you keep your compatible hardware in operating condition. Not too long ago I went back and dug out my old copy of Dune II (on floppy disks, no less), and played through the campaign for old time’s sake. Now imagine if that game had been programmed using the “secure computing” paradigm; what are the odds that, after all these years, those servers would still be running? Very slim! With this form of secure computing, the PC game purchasing experience isn’t like buying a game in the traditional sense; rather, it’s more like purchasing a license of the game that expires whenever the game’s publisher decides it no longer feels like running the server, or goes under.

If Total Annihilation had used secure computing, no one would be able to play it today, because Cavedog has long since gone belly-up.

I understand that copyright infringement is a big problem in the PC gaming world, but I don’t think that “secure computing” is the answer. It’s simply not fair to the consumer to make games require an online component for no other reason than to prevent unauthorized copying. That’s too punishing of the people who buy the game legally. Thus, I really think multiplayer games with value-added server components (think MMORPGs or matchmaking services like GPGnet) are the future of PC gaming. There’s simply no good way to make a single player game pirate-proof.

Update 2008-02-28: Version 2 of this post is now published on Cyde Weys Musings. Why did I modify it and post it elsewhere? Two posts for the price of 1.5, that’s why! Seriously though, I do discuss some solutions that would make the secured computing initiative more palatable to consumers, so Chris Taylor — go read that one too.

After just my first hour of playing Supreme Commander those many months ago, I knew strategic zoom was something amazing, and that it would revolutionize the real time strategy genre. The ability to fluidly zoom out and see the entire battlefield, then zoom back in just as quickly to a hot spot of interest, was such an enhancement to the gameplay that I couldn’t believe I had ever played RTSs without it. Try going back to an RTS that uses a minimap — you’ll see how agonizing it is, how much harder it is to marshal your forces on a grand scale. I also recall, within my very first hour of playing Supreme Commander, I vowed that I would never play another RTS that lacked strategic zoom ever again. So far I’ve made good on that vow. Thankfully, there’s Sins of a Solar Empire.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a 4X space game in the same vein of Masters of Orion or Galactic Civilizations, except instead of being turn-based, it’s real time, thus making it an RTS. I’ve only had a little bit of time with it so far, but Grokmoo has played it a lot more than I, and we both love it. One of its best features? Strategic zoom, naturally. I wouldn’t exactly call it a rip-off of Supreme Commander, as a lot of space games before Supreme Commander had maximal zoom capability. Of course, it’s much more of an accomplishment to do it in a game like Supreme Commander, because you have all the terrain to worry about; in a space game, the planets and such just scale smaller with distance, and the background (stars or whatever) can remain unchanged. But just because it isn’t as big of an achievement as Supreme Commander’s strategic zoom doesn’t mean that I appreciate it any less.

Strategic zoom is amazing. As Supreme Commander fans, we all know this. So it’s such a relief that it’s starting to pop up with regularity in other RTSs. Hopefully, within a few year’s time, it will be a standard feature of the genre. Any game lacking it would be judged an outright failure, much like how the ability to assign units to groups in RTSs and give them simultaneous orders obsoleted all RTSs before them. Unfortunately, StarCraft 2 looks it it’s going to heavily challenge my vow of not playing another RTS without strategic zoom. What in the hell was Blizzard thinking? They’re displaying the same short-sightedness as the stagecoach builders in the early 1900s who, after seeing the first automobiles, thought that they were nothing more than just a passing fad, and cheerily returned to strapping animals onto awkward wheeled wooden boxes. Once you see the future, how can you turn a blind eye? Strategic zoom is as transformative for RTSs as the automobile was for transportation, and we haven’t nearly seen the full ramifications of that sea change yet.

Well, my shortlived contribution to SupCom Talk is over, at least for now.  I realize this may be disappointing to some, but the truth is that writing regularly on a blog takes a fair amount of time and effort, and when you are one of the only people writing posts it becomes even more difficult to take the time to put out quality writing on a regular basis.  Having a kid recently has certainly cut down my available playing time as well.

However, all that said, the principle reason I have subsided in my writing is that I have gotten into the World of Warcraft lately.  Now I realize many people have strong feelings about this game, a lot of them negative.  I have played EVE Online before which is an extremely hardcore Sci Fi MMO and, while I greatly enjoyed it, it just didn’t fit my lifestyle.  WoW on the other hand is much more casual and, best of all, I got my wife into it too which means we can play together.  Now I don’t know how many of you are married, but I love my wife very much and she has always been very understanding of my gaming.  The ability to play a game with her is worth a lot to me as it is rare that we find a game we both like.  So with what limited gaming time I have now I primarily adventure with my wife around the World of Warcraft and to be honest I am loving it.

Now unlike Cyde Weys original departure post, I have not actually lost any interest in Supreme Commander.  The Forged Alliance expansion fixed any and all issues I had with the game, and I bought my new computer with Forged Alliance in mind.  Supreme Commander remains my RTS of choice, and I still get a game in every now and then.  It may very well be that I will start playing more often in the future, as I don’t see another RTS coming out that would pull me away from SupCom.  I’m basically just taking a break from the RTS genre in general when it comes to large commitments of my gaming time.

As for SupCom Talk, I sincerely hope it stays alive.  There is so little community for this great game and this blog has been a bastion of great discussion in the past.  I fully intend to keep my account on the blog and as future opportunities arrive I would greatly like to post again.  I’ll just have to wait and see.

So this isn’t really goodbye or anything, just an explanation for why I have stopped posting frequently after such a short time.  Hopefully you’ll see more posts and comments from me in the future, in the meantime I hope you are enjoying the great game that is Supreme Commander and that if you do take a break you will come back again down the road.  Also, anyone interested in contributing articles is welcome to let me know by posting a comment on the site and I will get in touch with you.

It pains me to see this site with so little activity, as it was my favorite during the time I played Supreme Commander (from about February through June or thereabouts) and got the most visits. Not even two weeks ago I built myself a new computer and bought Forged Alliance, so I’m a bit behind, not only in SupCom playing but with the improvements FA brought to the table as well. Even from playing the campaign (I’m currently on the last mission on normal difficulty; go me!) I can tell there are a lot of subtle differences that on the whole make FA a totally different experience.

Back in “the day” when I played SupCom, overall strategy was fairly shallow regardless of the supposed depth of the game due to the incredibly high number of units and structures. The goal was simple — reach T3 assault bots before the other guy. Maybe a tactical missile snipe or a secret engineer drop would work, but by and large the game was all about spamming economy and reaching T3 on land as quickly as possible. All posts and reports I’ve heard about FA say this doesn’t work anymore, and it’s kind of obvious that something major has changed when you look at the unit stats and see that a T3 mass fabricator only produces 12 mass at the cost of 3500 energy. Yikes!

Since I’m behind the times, I don’t know exactly how these innumerable minute changes affect online play. Between taking time to finish the campaign and having other games to play like Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4, I’ve yet to take FA online, though I have watched a 1v1 replay. Yes, just one. To keep this post relatively succinct, what kinds of strategies work best in online play with all the changes in gameplay? What does a player new to FA but not SupCom need to know about the units, planning, tactics, and strategies before venturing online? These are the types of questions on my mind at the moment. I know the basic overarching idea is “map control,” but what about everything else that leads up to attaining such control?

Ok the title may be a bit harsh, but this guy seriously made me mad.  I’ve had hardly any time to play Supreme Commmander lately, but this weekend I jumped on for a couple ranked games.  Second game, I drew Dark Heart, a personal favorite of mine now.  I used my typical build order and rushed to get Riptides, which I needed desparately as my Aeon opponent was using hover units and navy to good effect.  I fought for and won the central island and gradually outbuilt my opponent, bombarding his home island and eventually overrunning him.  It was a good game, a protracted slugfest with some good plays by both sides.  I would call it a close game.  Then my opponent effectively ruined any fun in it for me.

Here’s the problem: my opponent spent much of the last part of the game whining about the Riptide and how it is “over-powered”.  Now, first of all, the Riptide has been re-balanced very effectively in my opinion and is certainly not overpowered.  Secondly, the middle of a game is not the right time to complain about overpowered units.  Sure, you can mention it, but don’t say it over and over and over again and make it seem like “oh the only reason I am losing is the Riptide is so overpowered, blah blah”.  After he lost I congratulated him on a good game well played.  His response was profanity, to blame me for ruining the game by spamming an overpowered unit, that he hated Forged Alliance, and that he liked the original retail better.  Then he disconnected.

Now seriously folks, can’t we all just play nice?  Sportsmanship is a very basic principle, and is well suited to RTS games.  I generally offer players an honorable surrender if I am defeating them, to save us both time, and thank them for a good game.  If I lose, I always try to congratulate the other player on the win, especially if it was a clever move.  Winning and losing graciously are a part of any game.  Sure, you play to win, but if you lose take it out on yourself, not the other player.  If the Riptide is overpowered, take it to the forums and whine there.  Learn from your mistakes, pretty much everything has a counter.  The Riptide is very expensive, has short range, and is vulnerable to air, but my opponent never even tried to exploit these.  Saddest of all, when I looked at the score I saw I had outproduced him by almost double.  While he whined about an overpowered unit, he was losing due to simple map control and econ.

I apologize for the rant, but I want to encourage everyone out there to keep it cool.  Remember it’s a game, and a fun game at that, with lots of cool robots and pretty explosions.  It makes me think, and I enjoy that.  Challenging yourself is good, and learn from your mistakes.  Study your replays, watch what you did wrong and how you could have done better.  Win and lose graciously, treat your opponent with honor and respect.  That is all.

Session 6: Multiplayer save and rewindable replays.

Fix this when you fix the engine problems, as it seems to be engine related as well. Supcom games take a long time to play. Some of us have jobs and family and don’t have time for even 30 min games (interruptions you know). I play mostly against friends that have the same kind of issues. (that is when i play online at all. . .) Saving 15 min (or 30, or 1 hour) into a fun game is essential. I suspect that if you fix this then we will also get rewind in replays. Do you have any idea, GPG, how much that would help the people who write the reviews that keep the community going? How many more would get involved if they didn’t have to deal with the frustration of missing something important 45 min in? I know I would! Reviews would get better, and people who like to read them would get more involved.

(for a bit more on save files, take a look at Dans Data. It’s an interesting read. And yes, Dan does play FA. He even posts on this site once in a while.)

Forged Alliance came out recently and we have a great new crop of writers working on SupComTalk. The only thing we need now is more readers! That’s right, Supreme Commander has seen a bit of a resurgence with the release of its expansion, but shocking as it may be, many of the latest generation of SupCommers aren’t even aware of SupComTalk! So do your patriotic duty this holiday season and let them know about it. I’m not giving to give out any specific ideas as to how (such as the official forums or the GPGnet chat lobby). I trust you all can figure it out yourself.

And incidentally, I know one blogger who’d love to receive Forged Alliance as a holiday gift. He might even have to go to the trouble of writing up some blog posts about it were that to happen.