It’s official: the patch is coming on Wednesday
Gas Powered Games has taken a curious departure from the usual mantra of “It’ll be released when it’s done” to announce that the patch will be coming on Wednesday, May 23. That’s only, oh, about a month and a week after the original mid-April release date, but so long as it’s finally here … (assuming it makes this release date, anyway).
We already covered the upcoming balance changes in the patch, but there are many other changes coming too that we don’t know about yet. The patch notes will be quite exciting. One thing we’ve all been left wondering about, though, is why GPG waited so long and released everything bundled together in the form of a mega-patch rather than smaller incremental patches over time (surely the map editor doesn’t need to be linked to the balance changes?). Use the comments to discuss.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I believe that they said that the changes were all linked due to the sweeping performance changes which were rewrites of much of the code, so all the code changes were inter-dependent.
Perhaps a Map Editor should be a separate thing, but if it is, I wonder why they are releasing that as a patch and not a separate download altogether. Perhaps it is somewhat integrated into the game.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Oh man, this is a pleasant surprise. Looks like it may very well beat C&C3’s mega-patch.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I’m looking forward to this, it should take everyone out of their comfort zones which can only be a good thing IMO… especially if their comfort zone is rushing to T3 and spamming seige assault bots!!
With all this talk of balancing does anyone know if this patch implement support for direct x 10?
May 18th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I would doubt that DX10 is being added. And I almost hope it’s not, because then I would have to get Vista.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Support for DirectX 10 has been cancelled for all future SupCom 1 products (I’ve sent an e-mail about it to Cyde but I guess it slipped under his radar) => http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=10802 . It sounds drastic, I know, but the reasons SonofShagrat and Neutrino are giving aren’t that bad, you can only wonder what they could have done if they didn’t waste so much time and resources on a DirectX 10 update.
Looking forward to Wednesday.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Wow, Ryuken, that really sucks, but thanks for pointing the thread out. I’m pretty pissed, and justifiably, since before release they blatantly claimed the game would one day go DX10. This is pretty disappointingly; my respect toward GPG definitely just lowered a notch or so.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
The fact that GPG has retracted a claim that were made before releasing the game means that they essentially lied about an aspect of the game that could have been a selling point, not only for SupCom, but for expensive hardware and software, significantly irritates me. Their reasons for excluding DX10 at this point don’t interest me, I hold them responsible for making a (pretty big) promise then not delivering on it. I pretty much specifically bought an nVidia 8800GTS for this game’s DX10 future.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
About time. No wait. That was over a MONTH ago. No info, bugs, late patches. Are you guys sure EA doesn’t own this company? Their support is just about as bad…
May 18th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
They also said they would put multiplayer saves in the game. Then they’ve been very quiet about it lately so I expect that is another lie as well.
This will be my last GPG game. Why support a company with such a bad track record towards it’s user base?
May 18th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Eh, when the patch is downloading, then I’ll believe it. Though I’m happy it sounds like it should be very soon. As for people who upgraded their system for one game, before it came out, to specs that weren’t even going to be supported on day one. Well….I know it wasn’t cool of GPG to advertise that way, but life-lesson learned. When it comes to software, if it isn’t done and in your hand or on your system, it isn’t happening.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Lol, guys, if you complain that soon you’ll never find a company that you can “trust”. :) Chris Taylor and co shouldn’t have promised DirectX 10 tech in the interviews/previews but then again, as it is said in the specific thread, there are other factors that aren’t under their control and things they couldn’t have foreseen (bad drivers, bad Vista etc.). Face it, DirectX 10 gaming for now is still more of a joke than anything else, just like the GFW-hyping for that matter, until Crysis or the CoH-addon arrive and even then only a small number people will enjoy the “big” benefits. And how can you be disappointed about something that was never detailed? GPG never outlined what they were planning to do with DirectX 10, they only said they were brainwashing about it and that it would come. I think it’s a bit naive then to go out and buy an 8800 just because you know “something” will happen. I might sound harsh here but really, come on, it’s not like they are dropping support for Vista or are cancelling out other graphical updates.
About multiplayer saves: they said it would make it in one of the next patches, that’s all we got. I guess they can’t be upfront about it since they don’t know what’ll be easier to develop or not. Try and read the dev posts ( http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=1194 ) for a while and see for yourself how that “bad track record towards the user base” turns out, the least thing you can say about GPG is that they have been pretty responsive to the complaints of players thus far. TA wasn’t perfect from day one as well.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Baddox: Dual core optimization has already hurt this game plenty. The fact that some 15 year old buying their first cheapy computer with a low-end core 2 duo can outperform my P4 clocked to 4 GHz is frusterating enough. I’d rather not have the same thing happen to my 6800GT SLI setup because of DX10. You can say all you want about the latest technology but too many hardware optimizations is what’s making the console world more appealing.
whoster: Those are some pretty strong words. Actually if you insist on things like patches being exactly on time, you’re better off with a larger company like EA or the current Blizzard. EA is actually criticized for a lack of quality in its games. If GPG doesn’t believe it can release a quality patch on schedule, I’m willing to wait a month of more - especially for a game this good.
Both of you: I’m frankly very impressed with what GPG has been able to do considering the size of their team. Also double-posting flames isn’t very good form.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
“brainwashing” should of course be “brainstorming” in my previous post. I could slap myself.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I thought about it some more and on a happier note: yay patch!
May 18th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
First off, I’m usually an early adopter, which everyone knows isn’t efficient money-wise, but it’s worth it to me. I’d rather be on the leading edge of technology than the trailing edge–I’d rather buy hardware that WILL play up-and-coming games than hardware that will let me GO BACK and play month- or year-old games. Also, I don’t consider it naive to expect a game developer to do what they say they will. I understand that delays are very common and often inevitable, but when a developer completely drops a pretty significant feature that they promised, I believe I am justified in getting upset.
I realize that I may have contributed to hijacking this thread, since it was about the patch release date, not the DX10 issue. I apologize for the lack of etiquette (does anyone say netiquette anymore? [I sure hope not]). The DX10 issue, however, would probably be a good topic for someone to write a column on so we can discuss it there.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Yipee! The day after I get home!
May 18th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
lefeu: How can dual-core optimization possibly be a /bad/ thing?
Let’s face it, your 4GHz P4 is extremely inefficient by today’s standards. If the game wasn’t optimized for dual-core, it would still be no faster on a single-core computer (or only marginally so), but it would be far slower on those dual-core computers that are out there. Still probably faster than on a P4, though.
Looking to the future, the tendency towards multi-core capable games will only strengthen. It isn’t actually that hard to write software that uses an arbitrary number of cores, and with Intel working on a new architecture that will allow potentially /hundreds/ of cores, the programmers will just have to get used to it.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
lefeu said: “Dual core optimization has already hurt this game plenty. The fact that some 15 year old buying their first cheapy computer with a low-end core 2 duo can outperform my P4 clocked to 4 GHz is frustrating enough.”
lol. I know it’s annoying that time does actually pass in the world of computers, that CPUs get more powerful and games come out at the worst times. It’s a crazy world out there. I hadn’t upgraded my 1.4 Athlon for 4 years until February, then I got myself a dual core 2×1.8ghz and a £40 video card (and other stuff for ~£450) and away we go.
The most obvious thing you could say about SupCom is that it is a game firmly routed in the high end hardware market. To suggest that optimisation for such hardware is hurting the game is frankly silly - it’s what the game is designed to be run on. The point you do have is that this damages the single CPU crowd, which make up the majority of users at the moment - a crowd that isn’t the real audience of SupCom. This is a PC market, PC gamers are the most ‘hardcore’ gamers and tend to consistently upgrade their PCs in order to play the latest games. Ergo, design for the future and you’ll secure a decent playerbase for a few years, instead of being a flash in the pan RTS like those that design for the now-that-rapidly-becomes-the-past-just-as-you-go-gold.
The DX10 thing does seem odd given what I just said, but then I don’t know what development tools are available for DX10, what can be done with the technology that makes it worthwhile, and whether GPG think it is a wise business decision or not (to release as a free patch?)…evidently not.
Also…Champs league final and the big patch on one day?! Woohoo!
May 18th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
The DX10 thing makes perfect sense to me. First, there isn’t all that much benefit to it - it’s got a few more effect, yay, but I don’t really notice that these days.
Second, and most importantly, I don’t have Vista. I won’t have Vista. You can tear XP from my cold and dead fingers, but that still means I won’t be using Vista. There just isn’t any benefit, and I’m singularly unimpressed with DRM.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Sorry if I took the thread off topic, dissapointed about directx10 support but tbh its only cosmetic. I’d have only cared about it for a few days before I got used to it and forgot about it.
Its better that GPG can focus on the far more important task of tweaking the game, for the good of all the people that own the game instead of the minority that have vista and dx10 hardware. I’m looking forward to seeing some epic tech 2 battles after Liverpool are crowned champions of Europe!!
May 18th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I’ve been waiting for Supreme Commander to come out for so long, its about time it will finally be ready to be released… =P
May 18th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
patch! :D
May 18th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
bah, the game was released before it was ready, as is evident by a patch that takes 2 months to fix all the major errors and balancing issues
May 18th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
This patch is gonna be awesome…
Who cares about the DX10… you spend half the time zoomed out so far that the graphics dont make that much of a difference anyways.
Seems to be a LOT of international (read, not from north america: the center of the human world :D ) traffic on these forums… Move to north america guys, it’s awesome. You can own all sorts of guns…. and most of the country is public/crown land too, so you can spend your days shooting at tree stumps and doing whatever the hell you want.
And yes, i see the irony in the fact that our public land is “crown” land… stupid canada and it’s british colonial terminology.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:34 am
I’ve trusted GPG, i trust GPG, i will trust GPG. That’s all i can say. They are supporting their game like no other company did it until now. The patch has been delayed ? Well pretty good thing ! it will be better. DX10 patch will never come ? who cares ? i also bought a 8800GTX + Vista ultimate system, but hey, If Nvidia and Microsoft suck at providing good code for driver/operating system i’m not going to blame GPG.
All i know is that it’s been 10 years since i had not played a game that much.
May 19th, 2007 at 2:49 am
Well, at least we now have a set amount of time to wait before we either applaud gpg for doing the patch right, or lose all hope and abandon the game. I’m somewhat inclined to believe that they’re rewriting huge chunks of the engine in a very good way. I’ve had similar programming experiences (albeit in other languages) and sometimes you’re forced to have functionality before appearance, optimization, and other general polish (due to publisher/client/whatever). The balance changes are my ray of hope there.
Who knows how it’ll actually turn out.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:13 am
I’m not dissapointed at all. Vista is an awful graphics hog. If you had dx10 graphics running on top of that the game would be a mess. Lets just wait a year and GPG may well put it in an addon pack despite what they say. GPG are bound to be very stretched at this point. They’re after announcing lots of titles and are about to become a much bigger studio. The fact that they’re comminting to something like the optimisation and rebalance path is a wonderful thing in itself. You never got anything like that for Total Annihilation despite the downloadable units.
May 20th, 2007 at 12:51 am
I too am wounded by GPG’s announcement. I expect them to spend all the time and resources they have trying to patch this game to run on DX10, because they said they would way back in the beginning. Especially since from everything I’ve read all the DX10 video drivers out there have problems.
No, wait. That would be STUPID.
And now, a look into my crystal ball…at the GPG office of yesteryear. *Image fades in*
Development team: “Hey Chris, Microsoft is saying DX10 is going to rock. We should really try and take advantage of that.”
Chris Tayor: “Sounds good. Those features they’re talking about do look like they would kick ass. We’ll patch it when Microsoft gets it working and we can figure it out.”
Later…
DT: “Hey Chris, we’re really having a hard time with this DX10 stuff. We’ve tried talking with everyone else about it, but they can’t get it to work right either. Even Nvidia and ATI are having trouble.”
CT: “Hmm…well, give it a little more time. Microsoft will get it working, and it seems to have potential from what they were saying. I mean, just look at the great fonts they used in their documentation. It must be something special.”
A little later…
DT: “Hey Chris, it’s looking like DX10 is a pile of crap. We’ve checked, and there isn’t a good use for large piles of crap in SupCom, The balance and optimization guys are saying they could really use some help.”
CT: “Screw it. I can’t think of a good use for large piles of crap in SupCom either. We’ll have to wait until MS gets us something we can actually use. Go do something productive with your lives by helping the other teams. I’ll go take the heat for not being able to deliver on this point due to circumstances completely out of my control.”
DT: “Hooray! Something productive! We can be useful again! Gee wiz Chris, you’re the best boss ever!”
*image fades*