Comments on: Things missing in Forged Alliance, Session 3

By: Widjet

Widjet — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:39:20 +0000

this is totally off topic, and probably years in the future, but could you imagine a co op mode where there was a base commander, like we have now, and the teammates took control of an individual unit in fps mode? all the unit stats would be exactly the same, but instead of an ai controlling it all they would see are the requested waypoints from the commander. any unit not under the control of a player would behave just as it does now. its like uber micro!

From what I understand of what you said, that sounds like Natural Selection (the half-life mod). It only works if you have a good commander, so it can be frustrating.

By: LucusLoC

LucusLoC — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:10:39 +0000

By: LucusLoC

LucusLoC — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:04:34 +0000

all this does is underscore my point on how important a good map editor is. we need a good map editor!

By: mOoEyThEcOw

mOoEyThEcOw — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:37:03 +0000

I personally have to disagree with the comment about no RTS having a fully modable game, WC3 with the TFT expansion has an editor so powerful you can make a shooter out of an RTS game, and the RTS based editing is superb (I know I use it daily), and because of it there are at least 10,000 maps for WC3:TFT and the game is still going strong 5 years later.

By: Monk Ellipse

Monk Ellipse — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:48:17 +0000

Kymlaar, that is an *excellent* point, auto-download would make playing custom maps a TON easier!

By: Echo

Echo — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:17:07 +0000

I WANT BETTER CO-OP MAPS. Senton is gettin hella old

By: Meddish

Meddish — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 03:11:25 +0000

haveing good map editor is useless if u have to manualy downlaod the map point 1!
secondly licencing ur engine is again useless i remember ‘Z2′ ‘Earth 2140′ ‘Earth 2145′ and one other game that all used the same engine and they where all useless because after u played one u had played them all!
next as for the editor i like the dumbed down version, i think EVERY map editor needs one, BUT i also think in the case of supcom the profisional tools need to be released to us as well even if they are more buggy and crash more often if they give us more options, and if they cant do this then drop us the code on what we need to do to make out own tools and we will.
but again all of this is useless if there isnt a auto download feature!

By: Kymlaar

Kymlaar — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:55:02 +0000

I think just as important as a new map editor is the auto-downloading of maps. While TA didn’t do it, FPS titles have been doing automatic downloading of maps for a long time. A good map builder doesn’t make as big of a difference if deployment of those maps can only be done in a manual way. If they included something in the multiplayer lobby code that made the game automatically download unknown maps, provided they were available in the vault, it would get many people involved in vault content.

Don’t get me wrong, the vault is a wonderful thing. I just wish I could get a map from it automatically when I connected to a host.

By: EbolaSoup

EbolaSoup — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:33:24 +0000

Yeah, I guess you’re right about RTS engines. The only examples I can think of offhand of new projects using engines from previous ones are StarWars Empires at War. I believe that was based on the Dawn of War engine or some Warhammer game. But even there, I believe it was the same developer and if so they just re-purposed their own tools rather than licensing it. The other example it when they used the RomeTW engine for that History channel show. They may even have just been using the game out of the box.
So licensing it out to others may not ever have been on the table. Still, it does seem to me that the modding aspect of Dungeon Siege was much more heavily promoted by GPG than it is for SupCom. My wife played it but I never really did so I may be wrong. Does anyone here have a sense of that? Has GPG been less active in promoting and facilitating modders with SupCom than they were with DS? I wonder if it’s a money/publisher thing.

By: LucusLoC

LucusLoC — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:29:46 +0000

im not really sure you can compare RTS engines with FPS engines. it seems to me the FPS engines are used over and over again, because the content is mostly story/multiplayer driven. you will often see 10, 12 or even more games all using the same engine. you rarely see this with RTS engines. a lot of RTSs come out that are the only game to use that engine (RoN, WC3, C&C3. . . correct me if i am wrong) it seems that if you make two RTSs with the exact same engine, all you have done i made the same game with different skins and balance. of course this is an oversimplification, but just look at the mod community and all the different styles of gameplay (zone control anyone?) arguably these are “different” games, but to me its just SupCom with different rules. i think many in the RTS community would agree, exact same engine = exact same game with different mutators turned on. I think that this is primarily because the engine brings so much to the game in an RTS (unlike an FPS where the engine is only what you look at, the game depends on the levels, guns, play style etc. of course there are many exceptions, like fear, that added to the base engine to make a unique play experience) don’t get me wrong, im not saying that a “new” game based of the SupCom engine can’t be better. im just saying its still going to *feel* like SupCom, just in a different skin. i think that is why you don’t see massive RTS engine licensing, because all the games based off of that engine would feel about the same (unless the add a lo of extensions to it, in which case you may as well just write your own). the reason you want a good map editor in an RTS is not for developers who are going to license your engine (you’ll actually be lucky to have any) but rather for the fans, so they will be able to more easily make new content for the game, and keep it alive for longer, so that you can sell more copies. the easier it is to use the map editor the easier it is for more people to make content (but you also want to keep all the advanced controls available, for the hard core modders). i know that i tried to use the editor, and while i can get maps working, its just to frustrating juggling between programs. so i don’t make maps, despite the fact that i usually love to do that (i was an avid mapmaker for SC and C&C, because i only played them single player. my friends would get them and usually liked them. in SC i also priced queens so high in gas that you could not use them. i hated them soooo much. . .)

on another note, what would be interesting to see is a random map feature, like in RoN. if you then combine this with “unexplored” (something which no one uses and everyone hates, because the maps never change) it could be really interesting.