Supreme Commander Demo released!

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-02-17 01:02am

I suspect in most multiplayer games you'd stash the commander off in some unknown corner or even underwater.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2007-02-17 01:08am

Shinova wrote:I suspect in most multiplayer games you'd stash the commander off in some unknown corner or even underwater.

Which is ridiculous. This guy is supposed to be the leader of your army, and he should be in the middle of your base keeping things running smoothly. Not underwater sleeping with the fishies and guys wearing concrete slippers.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-02-17 01:16am

Shinova wrote:I suspect in most multiplayer games you'd stash the commander off in some unknown corner or even underwater.

And that's nothing more than a workaround for poor game design. It's like all the TA commanders hiding under the ocean.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-02-17 01:27am

Stofsk wrote:Which is ridiculous. This guy is supposed to be the leader of your army, and he should be in the middle of your base keeping things running smoothly. Not underwater sleeping with the fishies and guys wearing concrete slippers.

Well that's a roleplay preference. I don't think much about that sort of thing when I'm playing.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-02-17 01:34am

You don't think it's broken to give you an instant-fail unit that explodes like a bomb?

I don't think I *ever* played with commander=lose in TA: I just stashed the commander underwater somewhere helping construct... something... and ignored it. Great way to focus gameplay on the commander!

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-02-17 01:36am

Broken? I dunno, unless it totally messes up the game I just play around it.

Pint0 Xtreme · Post by **Pint0 Xtreme** » 2007-02-17 02:11am

Alternatively, I can upgrade my commander so he's more impervious to assassination attempts or, more frequently, I just build a whole bunch of subcommanders which adequately hides my commander since it's relatively difficult to find the real commander in a cluster of 'fake' commanders.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-02-17 02:25am

Here's what you do:
Upgrade your commander with Resource Allocation and T3 engineering suite.
Have it stand underwater somewhere
Surround the area with tons of AA
Have it build a T4 unit by itself. Repeat.

So, it'll be building fatboys, monkeylords, or colossi for you, giving you resources, and also rather safe.

Or you could just give him shields, give the subcoms around him shields, and hide them under shields and lots of AA.

HSRTG · Post by **HSRTG** » 2007-02-17 02:45am

Yes, but the big nuke still a bad design decision. As big a fanboy as I am of TA, the commander boom of SupCom is, well, game breaking. It should've been at least smaller, if not cut out entirely.

Post by **Vympel** » 2007-02-17 03:30am

Well I finally downloaded the game and played it.

It's boring. I can't even be bothered finishing a skirmish. Is the campaign better?

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2007-02-17 03:36am

Man, they really dropped the ball on the demo.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-17 04:38am

Within a month of the game being released, someone will probably make a mod in which the commander nuclear detonation is removed.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-02-17 11:10am

So has no one bought it yet? Seeing it in the shops this week with all these apparent flaws makes me wonder how they'll manage to win back disappointed fans without major patches.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-02-17 11:23am

I can't buy it yet, like everyone else in the US.

Don't worry, when the reviews come out, all the people will be rushing to the game store to buy the game!

Apparently PC Gamer gave it a 91%, but I'm waiting for Gamespot.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2007-02-17 12:34pm

I bought it. My main gripe is how annoying it was to find a decent multiplayer game. Hopefully this will get fixed soon

Oh, check out this mod for a better GUI:

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2007-02-17 12:43pm

It absolutely shocks me that a fan-made modification beats the shit out of the officially-released demo. It really, really does.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2007-02-17 12:46pm

Stofsk wrote:It absolutely shocks me that a fan-made modification beats the shit out of the officially-released demo. It really, really does.

I'm hoping the GUI mod gets adopted by GPG or something like that.

Also the demo is probably based of the retail version which is missing a month of performance updates from the beta

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2007-02-17 12:52pm

Xon wrote:
Stofsk wrote:It absolutely shocks me that a fan-made modification beats the shit out of the officially-released demo. It really, really does.
I'm hoping the GUI mod gets adopted by GPG or something like that.

I'd have a problem with something like that, honestly. The modders do the work better than paid professionals, so in order for the work to be adopted they should get paid something for their efforts. I don't know what the chances are of this happening.

(I know in the Sith Lords Restoration Project, not only can't Obsidian help the modders out by answering their questions but when the mod itself is completed there's no chance in hell LucasArts will adopt it and make it 'official' - 1) the modders already copyrighted their work and 2) LucasArts will never admit they raped the game. But that's cool, it's Obsidian whose reputation takes a battering)

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-17 01:43pm

Stofsk wrote:I'd have a problem with something like that, honestly. The modders do the work better than paid professionals, so in order for the work to be adopted they should get paid something for their efforts. I don't know what the chances are of this happening.

*shrug* I know that back in the days of TA, if Cavedog had officially implemented mods/programs made by the fans, a lot of the fans would have been ecstatic to have their work used by Cavedog and acknowledged that their work was good enough to be used in the official product.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2007-02-17 02:29pm

Uraniun235 wrote:
Stofsk wrote:I'd have a problem with something like that, honestly. The modders do the work better than paid professionals, so in order for the work to be adopted they should get paid something for their efforts. I don't know what the chances are of this happening.
*shrug* I know that back in the days of TA, if Cavedog had officially implemented mods/programs made by the fans, a lot of the fans would have been ecstatic to have their work used by Cavedog and acknowledged that their work was good enough to be used in the official product.

And I know that if I wrote a TNG script and sent it along and they used it and gave me a credit in the film I would still call them up and go "Dude, Where's My Paycheck?"

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-02-17 03:50pm

Again, there are people who would probably cream their pants just to have gotten their story produced by Star Trek, and would happily forego getting paid if it meant their material was aired.

(Also, I'm pretty sure that in the TNG days when they opened up story submission to the public, all submissions were done so under the clause that anything sent in would automatically become copyrighted property of Paramount. (But then, story submissions wouldn't be full scripts anyway, but just concepts which the writing team would approve, and then probably get fleshed out via writing-by-committee.) I could be wrong though. As for the "professional" route of submitting stories to a TV production, there are Rules concerning the payment of writers, in which there is an existing expectation of payment shared by all parties involved.)

Furthermore, you're making it pretty plain in your post that in taking the time to write out and send in this story, you're expecting to get paid if the Powers That Be accept it. This is hardly the case with mod writers, who are explicitly writing and releasing code with the hope that anyone who wants to use it can do so freely.

Ultimately, as GPG would probably seek to avoid legal hassles, it would probably come down to the mod creator's wishes as to whether or not the mod would be incorporated wholesale into the game. If GPG saw it as highly desirable but the mod writer wanted to be paid, GPG could easily sidestep the issue and create their own version from scratch which accomplished the same results as the mod. (and, quite possibly, be less buggy)

I personally think your "concern" is rather silly. It's not like your ST script, where if it doesn't get bought then it's relatively worthless, and where the rights to the script are potentially lucrative. There's no real difference as to whether or not GPG adopts this guy's interface mod; either way people will have free access to it, and either way people will be getting use out of it.

Honestly, your post makes it sound like you're just bitter about the notion that Some Guy was able to create and implement an idea better than Some Other Guy who just happens to get paid to work at a Big Development House; I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that this notion is exactly the sort of thing that the Open Source movement is based on.

(are you against open source and puppies???

)
(kidding)

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-02-17 04:23pm

Most of the complaints against the game seem to come from people with a more ground control or total war crowd who favor no to little base building and smaller, more tactical battles with living soldiers who provide human-ish feedback rather than cold robots.

I dunno. I like building a giant fortress, and on small maps the action starts pretty quick and doesn't stop, especially if it's multiplayer. And for me cold, emotionless robots who don't bat an eye and maintain formation even when getting shelled mercilessly appeal to me as much as live soldiers do.

It all seems personal preference more than anything. as for the UI mod, I see it as a positive evidence of Supcom's ease of moddability. This kind of ease of fan input means good things for Supcom, not the other way, in the long run.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2007-02-17 04:42pm

wautd wrote:I bought it. My main gripe is how annoying it was to find a decent multiplayer game. Hopefully this will get fixed soon

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

I'm sure that once the game has been out for about a week, you'll have no problems finding multiplayer games to get horribly utterly demolished play in.

Word of warning/shameless promotion: Clan DI is huge and has some really good players. Come look us up!

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2007-02-18 05:52am

Stofsk wrote:And I know that if I wrote a TNG script and sent it along and they used it and gave me a credit in the film I would still call them up and go "Dude, Where's My Paycheck?"

GPG has payed community members before to write tools for them. I cant see the difference between that and a GUI mod

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2007-02-18 10:31am

Well, I have to say that I understand the gripes, but I still enjoy the game a lot. Basically, you either like TA style games or you don't. If you liked TA, this is an improvement. If you didn't, it's not going to make you change your mind.