Supreme Commander

[IcEBuRN]

Ahh sweet, another game that reinforces my loathing of 'current gen' PC gaming. Only develop for the dual core, 2GB Ram, duel graphics card wielding monster PCs....

Playing PC games nowadays is like going back in time. To get a game to run anywhere near decent on my machine I seem to have to knock the details down to medium or below and some how the game manages to look worse than pretty much any game that was released about 5 years ago... Why on Earth do developers insist on doing this?! Why not just use some optimised shader effects that give a similar look at a minimal strain to the system? Instead it's always; 'turn everything off and Woo! It looks like Half Life 1 And still runs pretty shit'.

I remember back in the day I had trouble running UT2003 at max detail. I wasn't too fussed though as medium still looked great and the textures where still pretty detailed. I guess that's why the source engine looks and runs so well on many systems. It doesn't rely on system intensive (and lets face it, most of the time, shit looking) mapping effects for it's detail.

TA Spring looks better than this, and runs faster too!

LOL

Because games move with the times and hardware. THEY DON'T look like 5 year old games with the details turned down. They look a fuck load shitter than they were intended to look true, but wtf do you expect. If you've got an old system, how do you expect games companies to continually improve graphics????

You're system hasn't magic'd another CPU out of it's arse. You either lose the fancy new graphical effects or you lower it down to something roughly equivalent of an older game, designed to run on an older system. I don't see whats hard to grasp about this, or how it could be any other way...

Anyway, I assume you're paying a high price for all the AI and balls going on in Supreme. That's gonna kick you in the nuts. Unless of course you wanna downgrade to a limited size map and unit base??

[choddo]

But what gets me annoyed is the fact developers feel the need to use all of these high-end per-pixel whatever whatever effects on pretty much everything and as a result my machine struggles to run a scene containing a green grass texture, 1 tree maybe some sea (plain grey texture) and a robot (singular).

Time to get out of the PC arms race big boy. No need to piss on everyone else's parade.

You can turn a lot of stuff down in this game, and while Source is probably the best example of a scalable engine, this does ok.

Why on Earth do developers insist on doing this?!

Because they can?

[Beertiger]

Ah this game is the perfect nostalgia trip. A little reminder of what RTS titles were like before Dawn of War/Company of Heroes raised the bar, seemingly miles out of reach if this is the best contender.

[footle]

It's a bit different to Company of Heroes...

Although the temptation of the dual screens seemed interesting, it's so utterly unnecessary that it really does seem to be a tick in the box feature, rather than something that changes the game. Possibly because it's so easy to zoom in and out.

Not convinced by the whole tank rush thing. It really does feel like the ultimate tank rush game...

[redbloodcell]

It's a bit different to Company of Heroes...

Although the temptation of the dual screens seemed interesting, it's so utterly unnecessary that it really does seem to be a tick in the box feature, rather than something that changes the game. Possibly because it's so easy to zoom in and out.

Not convinced by the whole tank rush thing. It really does feel like the ultimate tank rush game...

Tank rushes don't work, the AI is clever and it takes too long to get tanks to them. It'll have turrets/it's own force ready and mobilised by the time you get there, which leads to big battles in the middle areas. Even on easy AI with the modded Beta the AI soundly kicked my butt the first few times I played until I got used to the scale. Experimental units can turn the game, but even they can be taken down with the right tactics.

And yes, comparing this to CoH and DoW isn't really fair. This is a massive scale sprawling warzone, whereas they're more like skirmishes.

[Dimahoo]

Athlon 64 3200+

Geforce 6600 GT 256MB

2 Gigs DDR RAM

It ran pretty well at 1024 by 768 on medium detail, that was until the scale of the battle became so immense with such a huge battlefield and a massive number of units on screen that my poor PC was reduced to running it in a slide show

1024 by 768 - oh fucking dear. I WAS Joking about 320x240.

[johnj]

Wish theyd do a 64 bit version ;( It still wouldn`t run on my laptop, but at least I`d have an excuse to install a new windows.

I wish I was in one place long enough to buy a mosnter pc too.

I wish I could play thi game. sniff.

[footle]

Comedy are the recommended requirements in Vista.

A 5.0 performance rating.

Bear in mind that the performance rating is based on your lowest scoring component - my Core Duo 2 6600 CPU at stock only rates a 5.3...

[On the other hand, if I go single monitor, it's playable at 1680*1050...]

[hoot]

Just had a crack at the new demo, really doesn't run very well on my PC unfortunately. Even cranking most the settings to low / off, once a decent size skirmish kicks off, it really starts to struggle. This is on a AMD 3200+ (939), gig of ram and a 256mb ATI X800(?). Seems a bit strange as when the graphics are toned right down it's pretty much just TA in high res, obviously there's a lot going on behind the scenes but even so, does feel like it hasn't been very well optimized.

Boring, technical crap aside, it seems to play very well, very old skool in a lot of ways but with everything refined, optimized and all on a scale never seen before in an RTS game.

[suzakuseven]

It has the worst hud ever! Fills most of the screen

[Guest]

It has the worst hud ever! Fills most of the screen

Depends on your resolution.

I had a crack, seems quite dull to me - thus far. And my fighter jets, when built, just flew away off screen. I have no idea where to.

I only ever really got into C+C though

[Valver]

It has the worst hud ever! Fills most of the screen

You can hide the HUD with Ctrl-Alt-F1

It also supports dual monitors. Set them to span mode in Windows and SupCom allows you to play the game over two screens (in different rezes if needed) Different parts of the map on each screen FTW! Also helps get around the HUD if you dont like it much

Its also optimised for dual core CPUs. (someone asked earlier) From the readme:

Dual Core and Performance

Supreme Commander Demo will utilize your dual and quad core processor natively and automatically. Running a dual or quad core processor is one of the best ways to improve performance in Supreme Commander Demo.

[Jabba The Hunt]

While im really looking forward to this I will point out that homeworld did a similar thing with the full zoom out though the maps weren't quite as big i imagine.

[Valver]

While im really looking forward to this I will point out that homeworld did a similar thing with the full zoom out though the maps weren't quite as big i imagine.

With this multi monitor thing I think you can actually have two seperately controlable maps. ie watch your base on one, and command a distant battle on the other. The monitor uses mouse focus to determine what zooms and so forth.

I've grabbed the demo today - I shall set it up tonight (with two monitors) and report back!

[Puck]

BUMP!

According to Play this is out on 360 12 September. As a huge fan of Total Anihliation back in my PC gaming days, I was hoping this would provide some good RTS fun on consoles.

According to 1up this doesn't appear to be so.

Balls!