Supreme Commander Demo released!

Rightous Fist Of Heaven · Post by **Rightous Fist Of Heaven** » 2007-02-06 04:08pm

It is true! Checked Gamershell.com only a minute ago, and to my immense surprise saw I listed there. Linky linky:

http://www.gamershell.com/news/36103.html

KrauserKrauser · Post by **KrauserKrauser** » 2007-02-06 04:25pm

Bastard!

My plan to clean up the apartment tonight is now in ruins, why now?

Can't wait to give it a spin.

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2007-02-06 06:16pm

Still an hour or two to go on the DL... It's a biggun.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2007-02-06 06:17pm

I'm downloading from fileplanet, and I've still got 35ish minutes to go before I even start downloading it! I've got to leave for work in less than an hour, and I don't think I'll have the energy to play it when I get home. BLARG!

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2007-02-06 06:26pm

Campus connection too slow... well, I can wait two weeks. Any idea whether they've dropped that chunky Warcraft-style interface?

Rightous Fist Of Heaven · Post by **Rightous Fist Of Heaven** » 2007-02-06 06:36pm

Still 29 minutes left. Even had to re-start the download from another location once... *sigh*

Last gameplay trailer I saw seemed to still have the old style interface. Not sure about the demo.

Pint0 Xtreme · Post by **Pint0 Xtreme** » 2007-02-06 06:47pm

3rd Impact wrote:Campus connection too slow... well, I can wait two weeks. Any idea whether they've dropped that chunky Warcraft-style interface?

What chunky Warcraft-style interface are you talking about? To my recollection, they've had one interface and they haven't changed it. It is similar to Warcraft's. If that's what you're talking about, then no, they haven't changed it.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-06 06:52pm

3rd Impact wrote:Campus connection too slow... well, I can wait two weeks. Any idea whether they've dropped that chunky Warcraft-style interface?

You mean the build menu and what-not? I didn't have a problem with that and I'm not a huge Warcraft fan.

The interface itself is awesomely powerful. Being able to change movement queues? Being able to assign production queues for factories still being built? Being able to orchestrate a massive airlift into enemy territory within fifteen seconds?

Yes plz.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-02-06 06:54pm

Looking like a refugee from Dark Reign in an otherwise groundbreakingly modern game?

Hell ys

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-02-06 07:01pm

My poor 7800GT cannot drive twin displays even at 1024x768 on each

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-06 07:04pm

Stark wrote:Hell ys

stark i love you

phongn wrote:My poor 7800GT cannot drive twin displays even at 1024x768 on each

Where is your FIOS now?

(I feel your pain; my 7800GT is also inadequate to such a herculean task.)

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-02-06 07:08pm

Dudes I was lookin at GFX cards and 8800s are only like 200 more than a 7800 how does that make you feel?

PS I have a 6600GT I can barely run ONE screen in 10x8.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2007-02-06 07:11pm

phongn wrote:My poor 7800GT cannot drive twin displays even at 1024x768 on each

My work machine, which has a 7800GTX, did alright driving two 20" monitors at 1600x1200, but I didn't touch the other video settings. I'm going to find out shortly how a single 8800 does with one monitor at 1920x1200 (the current Vista driver still has issues, so I'm not going bother trying SLI).

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-02-06 08:46pm

Awesome! Compared to the early beta, the interface is much, much better in the demo. More viewing area, streamlined, and no glitches. The main menu is cool, and I also like how they did the campaign race selection screen. Overall, the game actually looks polished now. It has a lot of 'slick.'

And in my personal opinion I think Brackman's a little funny in the head.

PS: Dual-screen is GLORIOUS!

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2007-02-06 08:59pm

Looks like a no-go for me... Half way through extracting the autorun thing, it freezes up.

EDIT: The above is a dirty filthy lie. Got it going.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2007-02-06 09:30pm

Oh yeah, runs real nice with an 8800 and a C2D.

The interface is very good, but I wish it more in the TA style (unit menus on the left). But I should be able to change that with a mod.

Rightous Fist Of Heaven · Post by **Rightous Fist Of Heaven** » 2007-02-06 09:33pm

Ok, finished with my first skirmish game. For the first half an hour or so I was pretty much totally clueless about how to proceed with anything. Took me a while to find out how to advance to next levels of buildings and so forth, was too pre-occupied gazing at the wondrous scale of it all.

After nearly two hours in that skirmish, I win by a fluke. My strategic artillery manages to hit the enemy Commander several times, which blows up and nicely takes the entire enemy base with it. I was a tad disappointed since I didnt even get to try the nuke subs and strategic nuke launchers properly.

My first impressions of the game are good overall. The selection of different units is vast, and there is so much stuff to get familiar with that it will take days to fully learn the capabilities of even the Cybrans in the demo. Performance turned out to be a very nice surprise for me. I cranked up resolution to 1680*1050 with all other graphical goodies except shadows on full and even during the final half an hour, the game was still running very smoothly.

But, more on this subject once I actually learn how to properly play with the Cybrans.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-02-06 09:52pm

For better or for worse, all three races play nearly alike so if you learn to play the Cybrans it won't take you long to learn the Aeons or the UEF.

HSRTG · Post by **HSRTG** » 2007-02-06 10:06pm

Must...resist...must..not..give...in...

Awww fuck it. Downloading.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-02-06 11:15pm

I've been playing the Beta and utterly unimpressed, so we'll have to see how this new Demo does. The main issues aside from balance are just how bland everything looks and how clunky the resource/up-tech/basebuilding models are. I'm looking forwards to some quickstart modes rather than the ones they have now, that or something being introduced into the lower tiers to make them valuable.

Pint0 Xtreme · Post by **Pint0 Xtreme** » 2007-02-06 11:23pm

The demo reminded me why I detest playing against the computer AI. Regardless, it's a pretty solid demo. I'll probably buy it as soon as it comes out.

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2007-02-06 11:28pm

I'm wondering if it's worth attempting to run on my system
Athalon 2500+ Barton 1.8 Ghz
1 1/4 Gigs of DDR400 RAM
Ati Radeon 9600 256 Megs of RAM
I ask this because people with much better systems than mine are (apparently) have performance issues and at that file size I'm not gonna waste time downloading something that won't run.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-06 11:38pm

Covenant wrote:The main issues aside from balance are just how bland everything looks...

I think the game looks beautiful. What's your conception of a good-looking RTS?

Stark wrote:Dudes I was lookin at GFX cards and 8800s are only like 200 more than a 7800 how does that make you feel?

*shrug* I got my 7800 a year ago. It still serves me very well... I personally imagine it'll be at least another year before I upgrade my vid card, if not longer.

Shinova wrote:For better or for worse, all three races play nearly alike so if you learn to play the Cybrans it won't take you long to learn the Aeons or the UEF.

Personally, I love it. I don't want some weird asymmetrical battle where it's "OMG BIG PONDEROUS SLOW DUDES VERSUS SUPER-QUICK YET FRAGILE LITTLE GUYS", I want straight-up slugging matches.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-02-07 01:01am

Uraniun235 wrote:Where is your FIOS now?

950KB/sec download sustained

Uraniun235 wrote:I think the game looks beautiful. What's your conception of a good-looking RTS?

It certainly looks amazing ... but it's a bit sterile compared to, say, CoH.

*shrug* I got my 7800 a year ago. It still serves me very well... I personally imagine it'll be at least another year before I upgrade my vid card, if not longer.

Ditto that. I tend to have a roughly three-year upgrade cycle or so and the 7800GT was the best bang:buck GPU at the time

Arrow wrote:My work machine, which has a 7800GTX, did alright driving two 20" monitors at 1600x1200, but I didn't touch the other video settings. I'm going to find out shortly how a single 8800 does with one monitor at 1920x1200 (the current Vista driver still has issues, so I'm not going bother trying SLI).

Well, I did turn on AA, so that might have had something to do with it. I'm also using Vista64 with a 2.4GHz dual-core Opteron.

EDIT: I turned off AA, cut down fidelity and LOD and now I can use dual-screen awesomeness.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-07 02:12am

phongn wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:Where is your FIOS now?
950KB/sec download sustained