Chis Taylor on Supreme Commander

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-01-23 11:26am

Interesting. Could you elaborate on the type of experience you're aiming to offer with Supreme Commander? And where do you believe you are pushing the boundaries of the RTS genre with the game?

Chris Taylor: The game is a simulation, not a rock, paper, scissors style game. It has a gritty realism on the battlefield where common sense actually works, where you don't get surprised by any arbitrary game rules. We're pushing the boundaries in so many ways - the scope and scale, the size of the units, the size of the maps, the ways in which you can coordinate attacks and set waypoints and adjust them on the fly. You can build a structure, then before it's complete issue build orders to it, so when you come back to it you can see tanks rolling out of your factories without having to micro-manage them. This is stuff we wanted that just makes the game experience more intuitive and fun.

Can you tell us whether there will be anything like terrain advantage or flanking?

Chris Taylor: All of those things apply because it's a simulation which means artillery shoots further on hills, so any time you've got tanks engaging, the ones on higher ground are going to shoot further and you're going to take a big piece of the enemy's arse before they get a chance to return fire. Hold down tactics work where the profile of the tanks is greatly reduced because of its position on the hill, you get both a targeting and a range advantage. All of the flanking tactics work exactly the way they would - they work naturally. If you read tactics in a book you could employ them in the game.

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.

Players will be able to direct battles in traditional RTS view and also zoom out to a god-like meta-view vantage point and direct vast armies and their resources to fight across an entire planet. Can you tell us more about this feature and how it operates?

Chris Taylor: The goal with the full strategic view is to give players a true picture of the whole battlefield. Before you had the mini-map and it was painful because you really didn't have the resolution or detail. Not only do we have the ability to zoom out and see the full theatre of war but you can issue commands. It's remarkable at how useful and powerful it is. This game gives players, for the first time ever, a complete idea of the entire picture so that they can make really informed and effective decisions about how to deploy, where to set up a base, or build a radar tower, or spot defensive holes - things like that.

How many units can we expect in one battle and what are you doing to make it easily controllable?

Chris Taylor: You can expect anywhere from 50 to 250 units in a given battle. To make it easy, all of the usual RTS mechanics will work, like selecting every unit of the same kind. We haven't implemented it yet but triple clicking will give you access to every unit of that kind in the entire world, so I can rally every bomber I've got of that kind to that point with three clicks. The drag selection mechanism works whether you're zoomed in or out, so you can zoom to strategic level and drag select over an entire region of the world to select those units. You can shift click to order commands, you can change those commands on the fly - you get all your feedback system like ETA and time on top, which is basically a military term which means when that unit is going to be at that location. I can then pick another unit and give it a path coming around from the side and use that to make sure that they arrive at the same time.

This is a great interview, lots of nice stuff. I've only quoted excerpts that I think form the core of the new information.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-01-23 11:31am

Sounds sweet, now where is it? Me want!

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-01-23 12:24pm

I've got wood.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-01-23 12:40pm

Between this and Medieval 2: Total War, I'm going to be drowning in RTS fun.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2006-01-23 12:42pm

This is looking to be a good year for games... i can't wait till this gets released.

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2006-01-23 02:38pm

So when does this game come out? I need to know my time table for how long I have to upgrade my computer to deal with it.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-01-23 02:41pm

Captain Cyran wrote:So when does this game come out? I need to know my time table for how long I have to upgrade my computer to deal with it.

You have atleast another half a year, if not a year.

Okay, probebly not a year but something around that timeframe.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-01-23 03:01pm

The more I hear, the more impressed I become. SC is looking to redefine what RTS games are all about.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-01-23 03:52pm

Alyeska wrote:The more I hear, the more impressed I become. SC is looking to redefine what RTS games are all about.

..much like TA? Woo. Can't wait! *fiddles with trillions of unit types*

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2006-01-23 06:57pm

I guess i'm going to have to get a new computer some time in the next year then. Dang.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2006-01-23 08:51pm

Every tidbit and interview released about SC just gets me all excited over again.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2006-01-23 08:58pm

Well this explains the crap Dungeon Siege 2 support. The devs where busy on Supreme Commander and DS2 was just to pay some bills

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2006-01-24 10:38am

I second the statement made by the honorable fictional isotope. DAMN but this sounds sexy. I particularly like the new information about the customizable Supreme Commander...interesting aspect, and new information, too, unless I missed something.

Miles Teg · Post by **Miles Teg** » 2006-01-24 02:45pm

I'll be in my bunk...

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2006-01-24 02:49pm

Sounds sweet. I hope it's moddable...*imagines Titan Legions*

Instant Sunrise · Post by **Instant Sunrise** » 2006-01-24 03:59pm

You know, there is already a SupCom TC for Total Annihilation in the pipeline.

All it is are a few units right now, but they look GOOD. See the thread here.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » 2006-01-24 07:14pm

That "unit AI modding" idea worries me. Could some programmers tweak their unit AI so that it is brighter than that of the regular flavor? It could be difficult to detect in Multi- games if there were no cross-checks...

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-01-25 12:23am

Dave wrote:That "unit AI modding" idea worries me. Could some programmers tweak their unit AI so that it is brighter than that of the regular flavor? It could be difficult to detect in Multi- games if there were no cross-checks...

Theres a simple solution that every game I know of uses. Games check before joining a multiplayer game wether everyone has identical files. Simple.

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2006-01-25 01:26am

This could lead to some of the best multi-player ever. At the scale of a whole world you could play for a long ass time before even finding the enemy base, or you could launch a daring long range bomber raid to cripple them from the start if you got lucky and located their base

. There are soooo many possibilities.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-01-25 02:30am

Hate to say it DD, but if we're talking a whole world, honest to god Earth-sized, scaled appropriately and all, then having NO IDEA where the enemy base is would be just plain silly. I mean, seriously, a multiplayer game where you play for an hour or more before you find the enemy? That doesn't sound exciting, it sounds BORING. Here's how that game mechanic will play out: You'll sit on your ass looking for the enemy for an hour, building your base with no idea what's going on, then suddenly, before you're ready, he finds you first, and you still have no idea where he is. You get curbstomped by multiple nukes and lots of troops before you can orient yourself. GG, you wasted an hour to get plastered in fifteen minutes. Unless there is a damn nice battle recorder, you'll have no idea what he did to plaster you, and new players will toss the multiplayer aside in a heartbeat.

I'm not saying that the overall games should be short, mind you, but an hour of dead time? That's lame as hell. Then the game becomes a base building simulator, not a wargame, and since a lot of the base building mechanism is supposed to streamlined to increase the focus on combat, that makes no sense at all. On a fun level and a common sense level, you should know where your enemy's base is and be able to start harassing and/or having skirmishes in the middle ground from the first ten minutes on.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-01-25 02:46am

Hotfoot,

I don't think Darth David meant an hour would go by without large-scale enemy combat, only that you wouldn't be able to easily pinpoint their base for said fifteen minute nuke fest.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-01-25 04:32am

Oh come on guys you really think the maps are going to be anything approaching planet scale? They'll just be big. Don't get the wool pulled over your eyes by developer hyperbole. Who needs a big map anyway?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-01-25 07:38am

The scale of the maps from visuals suggest extremely large, but not scale planet size. You can have hundreds of the biggest battleships possible onscreen in fully zoomed out mode and still see ocean. That's big enough.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-01-25 12:22pm

You get curbstomped by multiple nukes and lots of troops before you can orient yourself.

I cannot believe that Chris Taylor wouldn't implement an ABM system, given TA. And of course, if you can't be arsed to patrol your own perimeter, maybe you deserve to lose.

The maps are not going to be planetary in scale - we simply don't have the hardware for it. But they do look to be mighty big, and that's all that really matters.

Of course, I would imagine there would be a few "knife-fight" sized maps as well.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2006-01-25 01:28pm

I just hope that SC stays away from the Corner Base problem. I sooo hate it when games use completely artificial corners and map-edges as a part of an ideal base location.