We'd all like map making tools. I had to resort to editing the maps that are already here just to fix balance a little bit. But people, be reasonable! (SUCK IT SPLAT!)

THERE ARE NO MORE PATCHES, MOD TOOLS OR MAP TOOLS COMING.

Can we now talk about the actual game design? Kthxbai.



NOT HELPING

I agree that GPG were given an agenda by Square, but I bet it included the possibility of more DLC originally and when the game didn't take off as much is was scrapped.

I disagree that balance would have been static. More DLC would have required more balancing and patches including the possibility of major rebalancing if the DLC was a whole new faction or significantly large number of new units. Balance was changed in the current DLC for example.

I'm sure Supcom2 was a mild success for GPG and square. As long as it made money and gives a trickle from steam downloads in the future then they will be happy. The game design however was not a success which as Neph says we should probably discuss more. Although my OP and Nephs WOT outlines the main issues I think its just three that matter to the non-competitive player: Econ and Mods/Maps.... But I am still trying to sort through it in my head....

Why talk about 'actual game design' when the absence of patches/mods/maps already killed the game? That's necromancy.


It is helping. It indicates the difference between an RTS game and a dead RTS game.

See Duncane, this is what I meant. We cant have a proper SC2 thread here. I hate being right sometimes...

Time for this to go back on topic. There's absolutely no need to keep bringing up FA when people are trying to talk about SC2.

Ah but even the trolls can tell us somethings....

Tenshi07 post raises something about supcom2 that hasnt been mentioned. The dumbing down of the graphics style. Its one of the first things that annoyed me - it felt too cartoony, but I got used to it and now most like the new units. What do we all feel about this?

Tenshi07 also again raised the econ - that its too simple in supcom2. I dont think its just the lack of flow. In supcom2 you really almost dont need to think about econ at all past the first few minutes and it switches to research. I have to say I like this, but I can see that its a bit TOO simple. Could supcom2 econ be made more complex without adding more mirco?

Its also interesting that Tenshi07 tried out the scale mod and liked it. Thats a good indication of why normal players dont like standard supcom2.

If we're going to start talking about Aesthetics(and not graphics, yes there is a difference!) this is MANDATORY VIEWING!!!!

Extra Credits Season 2, Ep. 16 - Graphics vs. Aesthetics

And you might as well watch the whole series cause it drops all kinds of awesome knowledge like you wouldn't believe!

Mike

Hmmm interesting... last I checked the Revamp mod was voted as one of the Top 100 mods on moddb for 2011, it's been featured in PC Gamer magazine, and I have lots of fun using my custom made GUI research tree generator, mod manager, and soon to be custom music editor. And last I checked, LoD was making some nice progress with maps. Oh, and do I need to mention the modelling and all the new units Jazz has brought to the game? To paraphrase what everyone on moddb is saying: EPIC. Oh wait, that was a quote. Also not to mention that the Revamp steam group has 400+ members.

The SC2 community is only dead at these forums. That's because the majority of people found discussing SC2 on these forums tend to be the ones that like to play the default SC2 game. And these people are in the minority who play SC2. It's pretty nice hearing on moddb people posting to say that they bought the game just to play Revamp. Meanwhile, those of us who HATE the default SC2 are actually the ones still generating revenue for GPG and SE. Quite ironic.

Even the most amazing game design will result in a dead community and no revenue if it's not built on proper technology. And an amazing engine doesn't automatically mean you'll have amazing game design.

Sup2 is lacking parts in both (though it does have nice features in both). Since everything must be considered here, everything is open for discussion. That includes modding and mapping, and it includes support.

Neph, stop being elitist and start with the rational thought processes.


Now, back to aesthetics.

Some of the decisions in Sup2 were made so that units were visible on crappy televisions. Accentuated designs make things more visible at lower resolutions and details. This is especially true for effects. Go watch any of the fan videos, and once the fighting starts you'll see nothing but a sea of white fire, flashes, and smoke.

That's so you can actually see what's happening at poor resolutions. The unfortunate side effect is that it looked pants on head retarded when you have a decent screen in front of you. This is just a reflection of the fact that Sup2 was made with consoles in mind. Units and effects are always visible to the PC crowd, but we suffer for it as things weren't polished in our favour.

Now consider the colour choices used everywhere in Sup2. They're made to stand out on poor screens, or when everything is glowing white hot... oh right.

Well, the hardware requirements for FA were WAY, WAY too high, so I understand why they tried to bring that down. Unfortunately for us PC gamers there was ofcourse the XboX version, which changed a lot of things about the aesthetics. I wouldve liked better combat effects/animations, map textures, and some less cartoony unit models, but at least it worked like a charm on my PC...

Also, have you guys ever seen any presentations about aesthetics in Starcraft 2? I found them very insightful (too lazy to find a link right now, might edit later), because they explain why units should be recognisable. It isnt just about console games, its also about being able to broadcast the game: Non-hardcore players must be able to see what is going on at a glance, and immediatly able to distinguish all units. But, SupCom has an additional layer for that: Strategic Icons. While extremely boring to look at, theyre there, and I think its kindof a missed opportunity because the icons and zoom should allow you to get a good understanding of the situation (too bad they almost never show up well on streams..). Therefore you can get away with letting your units look less cartoony.

I wonder what your thoughts are on how the visibility provided by strategic zoom / icons should affect aesthetics, ASSUMING SUFFICIENT HARDWARE CAPABILITY (no console)

In Sup1/FA they were pretty damn good. They conveyed;

• Team (not faction),
• Tech level,
• Type (plane, VTOL, land, walker, sea, sub, structure),
• Role (granted that this doesn't apply to T4 when it should have).

Sup2 kept most of that (which is a good thing) though it failed to convey upgrades which could only be discerned by zooming all the ******* way in. The increased number of experimentals became a detractor because you couldn't see what some units were except by zooming.

A strategic icon is an awesome practical tool to give players the same information zoomed out as zoomed in. They did have a nasty habit of cluttering up and z-fighting though. Sup2 did that nice trick with the grouping which helped somewhat, though R.U.S.E. did the same thing but better.

Actually, a few points:

- You couldnt check tech level by just looking at the icons right? A T1 AB looks the same as a T3 SAB...
- In SupCom2, a lot of upgrades wherent viewable at all.. You wouldnt have a clue if your opponent had training 3 or 5, you could only make an educated guess based on how quickly they killed your stuff.
- Type: Sure.
- Role doesnt work for multipurpose units. It limits the abilities you can give a unit, in a way unless youre either gonna use a lot of icons or make them less accurate.

Also: As I sad the current icons dont work well in streams: They get blurred and hard to recognise. My main issue with them. Even on the lowest quality GSL stream you might not be able to read supply numbers, but at least you can still see the difference between a marine, a ghost and a marauder.

Edit: I hated the way they did that unit grouping thing in supcom2, because those circles intervened with my unit control: I couldnt micro my units because that thing was just sitting there.

The dashes underneath the icon denoted tech. level.

I'll definitely give you the points on silent upgrades and multi-purpose units. But your argument on streams is a red herring - who cares about streams?

Player comfort > Audience comfort.


Always.

If players played using a low-resolution stream then you'd have a case to make.

[EDIT:] Yes, that happened to me too with grouping, hence why I said RUSE did it better. ;D

You can cater to both. A good competitive scene improves longlivity of a game, therefore sales. And a good competitive scene needs viewer comfort. You just have to be creative.

Never notices the dashes, but then again im a FA noob ^^

Im thinking about how you could replace the current icons to be a bit more recognisable on low quality, but short of giving different units more diverse icon shapes, I got nothing. Ofcourse, cutting down on unit redundancy (basically going with supcom2 amount of units, maybe +1 unit for each theatre per faction) would allow you to make the icons more distinct because you wouldnt need a ton of them, and units arent "kinda like that other unit only bigger"

Edit: I just thought of my ultimate GBA experience: Advance wars. Simple unit icons like that would be recognisable on low quality, no? I doubt it fits supcom well, so dont grab the pitchforks yet, but some kind of icon resembling the actual unit, not its type, in a recognisable yet still simplistic way would be perfect IMO.

True.

But I still think the comparison to Starcraft 2 is flawed - when do you ever zoom out to the level where you'd need strategic icons? If that situation ever did arise, I doubt you'd be able to pick the difference between Marines and Marauders.



Go buy RUSE.

Well, the problem is that in my experience, in SupCom you zoom out ALL THE TIME, but that makes units less recognisable. If you make untis more recognisable in strategic mode, you can be a bit more free with the actual unit aesthetics instead, making them look more cool and less cartoony. Get my point?

Also: Havent played Ruse but I hated the way that looked. Too simplistic: They replace armies with just one icon. Also it looked like they replace the map with a strategic map instead of just zooming out far and replacing the units. The biggest problem being that micro would be impossible in strategic mode. So no, thats not what I meant.

At the risk of going off topic: RUSE doesn't have micro. It replaces it entirely with mindfuckery and deception. It's purely a game of wit and intellect, and not mechanical ability.

Then that is obviously not what I am looking for

in that case you can play starcraft, because supcom was always about a macro game to me.

FA was an experimental game, what GPG should have done was refine what worked and thrown out what didnt.

what worked:
-Scale
-Modding
-Largely macro game, managing units location instead of clickmove over and over to dodge tank bullets or arty.

what didnt work:

-mex upgrade system (could be debated)
-lag
-Pathfinding

what kind of worked but some didnt like:

-flow eco (this could be made with GUI changes to be very user friendly, I think gpg should look into revamping this.)
-Tier system (progression, but at the cost of exponentiality.)
-massive hard to build experimental units. (accomplishment but hours of play to make)
-scale (this caused lag, hundreds of units will make lag)



Now I know you'll disagree, but supcom 2 did not really live up to my expectations, it was awesome for the first month, but I found myself playing FA more and more as time passed. I know im beating a very dead bruised, and probably decomposing horse here, but I Wanted to say it.

Anyone have more info on this?

When everyone talks about "scale" in FA or supcom2 what do they mean? Is it just the unit size in relation to the map size?

The actual size of the basic units is a part of it (ACU/Experimentals/Buildings seem ok), but also the speed at which they travel and turn, the distance they shoot, the speed and size of the projectiles, how units seem to have very little 'weight' behind them, and sight distances are small.

Also some of the map's props seem out of scale; when I see trees in game they should be knee to waist height on an ACU, not twice as tall.

The 'nukes' this game employs (for balance reasons onviously) must only be the 0.1 kiloton variety like Kim Jong Il had, since even the Trinity device (first nuke ever circa 1945) would turn most of the bases you could make in your average maps to dirt, instead of just 1/8 of said base.

how the battle feels contributes to the scale.

I also meant how you can zoom out and have 1-4 battles of 10-100 units going on in FA where in supcom 2 there is normally a large blob around acu and a small blob raiding/rushing.

the sizes of the factories vs the size of the maps was a bit to big in supcom 2. You should feel like your building a building in a desert not an acre of land.

To put it simply, the immersion and atmosphere was almost spot on in the original.

See Neph's comment in my signature for reference.

If I knew you were gonna sigquote me, I shouldve spent more time thinking of a proper way to word that haha.

But the main purpose of that post was the chemistry between FA units and the texture layer of the maps, which I find lacking in supcom2. In supcom2 I dont feel like my awesome units are walking in a fitting environment, its more like a bunch of toony units that sit on a 3d model, I mean the map textures are very low res, coupled with the flashy explosions and shiny units... Well, its just not immersive.

Anyways, I dont completely agree with your statements about scale. Yes, the game feels a lot smaller. Yes, I'd like to see bigger maps, and wouldve liked the game rebalanced for that. I'd that in 1v1, Way Station Zeta was standard map size instead of Finns Revenge, team games should also scale up respectively by about 30-50% or so. But I feel unit sizes are just right when you look at the size of open spaces and chokepoints. The size of structures allows you to be strategic with their placement. This adds nice way to do simcity. It might not nescessarily look great, but it adds depth to gameplay as you can use some structures to shield others or block paths. (Not talking about PD walls GPG olololol). Maybe factories couldve been 5/5 or 6/6 instead of 7/7, but thats small enough, and I feel the rest of the structures have the right size..