Listened to a part of it previously (never got around to listening to the whole thing). I agree that it was more than what would conventionally be called a MOBA, but unfortunately as you say, they didn't do a good job of explaining what they wanted to do in the Kickstarter.
Personally I've had no problem backing more original KS ideas. But I think a key factor is that I need to TRUST that the devs behind it can deliver, and that usually takes experience and back-catalogue of some kind before I'll look more into it. And with those guys that have worked on well known titles previously, they generally tend to want to do the evolution of the stuff they loved doing previously.
Oh, forgot to mention one from earlier. The voiceover dude from the original Kickstarter pitch video is John Patrick Lowry. He did the narration for the original Total Annihilation intro and mission briefs, and he's back for this, presumably for another intro.
Bonus trivia: He's married to Ellen McClain, who amongst other roles in Valve games, is the voice of GLaDOS.
In other Alpha news:
- Anyone who's gotten into the Alpha via the Kickstarter, you can now convert your standalone key into a Steam key. Log into your account on the store page, select "my keys" along the top, and then click the key. You will then have the option to convert it to a Steam key. Note: Once you have done so, you standalone copy will temporarily stop working until you log into your Steam copy. After that, either Standalone or Steam copies will work.
- Linux and Mac clients are now up. Might try this later myself, looks like they're aiming for a simultaneous ship on all three. Which is pretty groovy, any excuse for more Penguin gaming.
- If for some reason you want to visit the Steam forums, and don't want to be inundated by sheer volumes of mass hysteria and idiocy (seriously, still ongoing. The worst people are getting banned and literally making new dummy accounts to continue spamming threads), the devs have set up a separate Steam forum available only to those that currently have the game on Steam. Click on the stickied topic labelled "Planetary Annihilation - Forum Options", and the link will be in there.
In general, it's fun seeing this (Steam forums notwithstanding). They're updating the game literally every day at the moment, maybe every other day on occasion, and you're already seeing a gradual evolution of the control scheme, and the game running faster and becoming more stable.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
This is an interesting piece. It's from a few months ago, but it's basically all about Uber's beginning's, the troubles they've had with MNC, and eventually the move to Kickstartering Planetary Annihilation.
Definitely well worth a read if you want some background on how things turned out. Be sure to look out for "ooo27"'s post in the comments, he has slightly harsher words. :P
Yeah just some random alpha footage (not mine) since I haven't been posting much recently. It's a relatively small biome for 4 players, the plus side is that you get to see a base take up maybe 1/4 of the freaking planet. This is very much "waves and wave of my own men" territory, to the point where the game slows to approximately 4 frames / second. :P
I'd post about the patch notes, but honestly, those are changing practically every other day.
agreed. That was sometimes an issue in TA as well, though, one of my best games had me and said earlier friend kill each other's commanders in the opening minutes of a 4-man. We had chosen that commanders dont kill their army on death. Luckily the fight was well away from our other construction bots, and after 10seconds of jubilation, "YES! I killed his commander! Oh... fuck... we killed each other's commander..."
He went and joined forces with another friend (all he had left was two construction flyers. I had a vehicle factory and a few mechs. Took most of the night, but I finally won against them. It was refreshing not having to worry about your best most powerful unit. They would have to consume my entire base to best me. I made a maginot line of dragon teeth, light lasers, and missile towers across the entire southern half of the map. It was a metal poor map, and so each deposit denied was another 5 desperately needed warriors in skirmishes, or artillery piece to knock on each other's door.
The clincher was finding their fusion plants with a commando squad of amphibious drones. Killed their whole economy and took the two's alliance side of the map. the last player was pure attrition and artillery.
it would be good if walls just blocked shots like the old dragons teeth in TA, but let your own units shoot through them, as we see now.
one good thing that I see from this is the non mutual destruction of commanders. sure, your base suffers for it, but your own commander weathers that nuke like a champ.
Are the graphics supposed to get better as they near release?
Also, I booted up Forged Alliance today. Forgot how brutally complicated SupCom is. Sounds heretical, but I think my simple mind prefers SupCom 2.
There's definitely some good design aspects to SupCom 2. I think one of them is that whilst it's still a rate based economy, they designed it to make it harder to crash your economy like you could in the original SupCom. I can't remember the specific details, but I think it might have been that extractors draw power in SupCom where they don't in SupCom 2. Or maybe something else, it's been a while.
There's definitely some good design aspects to SupCom 2.
There really are. Hell, the pathfinding for units made it almost impossible to get stuck. Treating each unit essentially as a water drop in a fluid simulation was god damn brilliant.
This game is looking pretty sweet, I'll be keeping an eye on it for when AI finally goes in so I can have non-peoples to pew pew out at sea.
i'm sure his computer lost a few years of life computing that since the alpha does not have the best code atm, i can only imagine he was below 1fps and his videocard was putting off enough heat to warm up a burrito.
Livestream shows 3v3v3 team armies game (as in, 3 armies, each has three players controlling units).
Some other general notes to catch up on things:
- 32 bit client now available.
- Linux / Mac clients now up and available
- Team Armies are now up. As the Stream shows, this means each player controls their own commander, but they are all part of the same army and can control the same units / structures.
- Various Miscellaneous stuff to do with the Alpha and future updates (modifiable UI, working mass points (every planet is a "metal" planet at this stage) etc.)
- Moving planets, moving units from planet to planet, moving planets to be adjecent to other planets so that you can attack, these are all things that are still to be worked through.
- Unit sizes / relative planet sizes still up for change (and we haven't seen the largest planets yet).
- "Snap to Grid" building (basically a way of making bases neater) should be coming soon in an update.
- People are already making mods for the game. Things like darker night-side, or additional units are in the works.
Other stuff:
A shoutcast from today showing off the 2v2 Team armies:
Nothing really spectacular but notable just to see how the game is progressing. Things like navigating the globe and planet lighting are starting to come into their own.
On a slightly unrelated note, one awesome Forged Alliance Forever game:
I love the tool to plot out planetary intercept courses. I mean it's literally just dots on lines but for the first time it really crystlises in my mind the idea that "oh hey, we're going to be crashing planets into each other."
And that makes me freaking excited. The mental image of two planets arcing towards each other on their ellipticals on a collision course is sweet enough alone. But then you've got all sorts of other shenanigans that you could get up to with system modelling like that. Like matches where the orbits pass in close proximity to each other, allowing short distance planet invasions before they swim apart again. Or where two planets are doomed to crash into each other after 30 minutes so it's a race to get offworld whilst interfering with your opponent's attempts to get the resources to do so. And a large number of things you can do with team games, resource spreads, and inter-planetary travel / planetary movement.
For the most part, not much other news to report. Alpha is Alpha is Alpha. It's progressing nicely, they've implemented the system for some basic custom planets and being able to play them with others now. There's no real core strategy to speak of at the moment, it's still mainly testing with little balance. I'm expecting that to get a major upshift though once multiple planets and inter-planetary travel come into play.
Ok, I'm back from PAX and I wanted to talk about this desperately, but I decided to wait until after PAX was done so that I didn't cheapen such a wonderful gift.
I went to the UBER panel at PAX and I saw Greg Stackhouse. Center of the photo, 3rd row, wearing the shell and bacon jacket zipped up.
I told him that I still play Total Annihilation with a few buddies from high school every so often and that I followed their youtube stuff and watched a lot of let's plays from prominent players and eventually we got to talking about the calculus involved with trying to make all the celestial bodies in a system work together let alone trying to smash the damn things together. I wanted to buy into the Alpha and Beta but I didn't have the money just quite yet, even with PAX, but I let him know that as soon as it was ready for launch I'd be one of the first to buy it from steam. After about ten minutes or so talking about other stuff with Planetary Annihilation and the old Boneyards Metagame with Total Annihilation, he pulls a card out from his shirt pocket and says, "Here. Hold on to this, this will let you into the Beta and get you the launch copy of Planetary Annihilation."
And starting today, the beta is live. I played a few matches against the AI already, and so far it looks promising. Lots of stuff is still missing and/or needs polish, though. Anyone want to play a multiplayer match sometime?
I get that they have to honor the kickstarter thing, but paying extra to beta test is absolutely stupid. No reason whatsoever not to wait till December and play a more finished and cheaper version.
I keep staring at this in steam with longing, so I need more of those that have it to talk about it. It has AI? I had heard the beta had no AI!
The AI right now is extremely basic from what I've seen. It builds bases and sends units to attack you and other AIs. I haven't seen it try to expand to other planets, but afaik that's a feature they've only recently implemented. Playing against the AI is just a good way to test out stuff right now, not a challenge.
I've been trying to figure out how to fill a slot with an ai player, since I haven't seen a way to do it yet. I just want to get some basics down before I jump into games against other people
I've been trying to figure out how to fill a slot with an ai player, since I haven't seen a way to do it yet. I just want to get some basics down before I jump into games against other people
Yeah, that's a bit counterintuitive. If they aren't filled, AI fills them automatically.
Obviously Beta is Beta, and progress is ongoing. They've got the core systems in (land / sea / air combat, planet generation, planetary systems and interplanetary travel). Now they're adding in to each of those, new units are still incoming (which is good because the current selection is mainly there to test core concepts), and things like lighting and effects are going to start getting added in (you can't really focus on those things in Alpha territory whilst everything is shifting). As far as I've seen, smashing asteroids doesn't look like that in-game yet, but I suspect that footage may be from a later dev build.
Posts
Really cool to hear that TA and SupCom veterans are doing this game!
And I think Kickstarter can be used for new ideas (god knows I've backed too many), but that wildman was just weird (and didn't feel new either).
Personally I've had no problem backing more original KS ideas. But I think a key factor is that I need to TRUST that the devs behind it can deliver, and that usually takes experience and back-catalogue of some kind before I'll look more into it. And with those guys that have worked on well known titles previously, they generally tend to want to do the evolution of the stuff they loved doing previously.
Thanks for the links. I can't wait for this even more. May have to go play some SupCom or Red alert 2 to prepare my loins/stop thinking about it.
Origin: Broncbuster
Bonus trivia: He's married to Ellen McClain, who amongst other roles in Valve games, is the voice of GLaDOS.
In other Alpha news:
- Anyone who's gotten into the Alpha via the Kickstarter, you can now convert your standalone key into a Steam key. Log into your account on the store page, select "my keys" along the top, and then click the key. You will then have the option to convert it to a Steam key. Note: Once you have done so, you standalone copy will temporarily stop working until you log into your Steam copy. After that, either Standalone or Steam copies will work.
- Linux and Mac clients are now up. Might try this later myself, looks like they're aiming for a simultaneous ship on all three. Which is pretty groovy, any excuse for more Penguin gaming.
- If for some reason you want to visit the Steam forums, and don't want to be inundated by sheer volumes of mass hysteria and idiocy (seriously, still ongoing. The worst people are getting banned and literally making new dummy accounts to continue spamming threads), the devs have set up a separate Steam forum available only to those that currently have the game on Steam. Click on the stickied topic labelled "Planetary Annihilation - Forum Options", and the link will be in there.
In general, it's fun seeing this (Steam forums notwithstanding). They're updating the game literally every day at the moment, maybe every other day on occasion, and you're already seeing a gradual evolution of the control scheme, and the game running faster and becoming more stable.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Definitely well worth a read if you want some background on how things turned out. Be sure to look out for "ooo27"'s post in the comments, he has slightly harsher words. :P
http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/3/19/4094472/uber-hail-mary-monday-night-combat
Origin: Broncbuster
Yeah just some random alpha footage (not mine) since I haven't been posting much recently. It's a relatively small biome for 4 players, the plus side is that you get to see a base take up maybe 1/4 of the freaking planet. This is very much "waves and wave of my own men" territory, to the point where the game slows to approximately 4 frames / second. :P
I'd post about the patch notes, but honestly, those are changing practically every other day.
He went and joined forces with another friend (all he had left was two construction flyers. I had a vehicle factory and a few mechs. Took most of the night, but I finally won against them. It was refreshing not having to worry about your best most powerful unit. They would have to consume my entire base to best me. I made a maginot line of dragon teeth, light lasers, and missile towers across the entire southern half of the map. It was a metal poor map, and so each deposit denied was another 5 desperately needed warriors in skirmishes, or artillery piece to knock on each other's door.
The clincher was finding their fusion plants with a commando squad of amphibious drones. Killed their whole economy and took the two's alliance side of the map. the last player was pure attrition and artillery.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
one good thing that I see from this is the non mutual destruction of commanders. sure, your base suffers for it, but your own commander weathers that nuke like a champ.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Also, I booted up Forged Alliance today. Forgot how brutally complicated SupCom is. Sounds heretical, but I think my simple mind prefers SupCom 2.
Everything is supposed to get better before release.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
There's definitely some good design aspects to SupCom 2. I think one of them is that whilst it's still a rate based economy, they designed it to make it harder to crash your economy like you could in the original SupCom. I can't remember the specific details, but I think it might have been that extractors draw power in SupCom where they don't in SupCom 2. Or maybe something else, it's been a while.
This game is looking pretty sweet, I'll be keeping an eye on it for when AI finally goes in so I can have non-peoples to pew pew out at sea.
"Yeah Jeb?"
"Why's that Ice World gone all pink?"
Saw this on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryannihilation/comments/1gv7cw/queued_15000_tanks_and_went_to_sleep/
Livestream shows 3v3v3 team armies game (as in, 3 armies, each has three players controlling units).
Some other general notes to catch up on things:
- 32 bit client now available.
- Linux / Mac clients now up and available
- Team Armies are now up. As the Stream shows, this means each player controls their own commander, but they are all part of the same army and can control the same units / structures.
- Various Miscellaneous stuff to do with the Alpha and future updates (modifiable UI, working mass points (every planet is a "metal" planet at this stage) etc.)
- Moving planets, moving units from planet to planet, moving planets to be adjecent to other planets so that you can attack, these are all things that are still to be worked through.
- Unit sizes / relative planet sizes still up for change (and we haven't seen the largest planets yet).
- "Snap to Grid" building (basically a way of making bases neater) should be coming soon in an update.
- People are already making mods for the game. Things like darker night-side, or additional units are in the works.
Other stuff:
A shoutcast from today showing off the 2v2 Team armies:
Nothing really spectacular but notable just to see how the game is progressing. Things like navigating the globe and planet lighting are starting to come into their own.
On a slightly unrelated note, one awesome Forged Alliance Forever game:
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
And that makes me freaking excited. The mental image of two planets arcing towards each other on their ellipticals on a collision course is sweet enough alone. But then you've got all sorts of other shenanigans that you could get up to with system modelling like that. Like matches where the orbits pass in close proximity to each other, allowing short distance planet invasions before they swim apart again. Or where two planets are doomed to crash into each other after 30 minutes so it's a race to get offworld whilst interfering with your opponent's attempts to get the resources to do so. And a large number of things you can do with team games, resource spreads, and inter-planetary travel / planetary movement.
For the most part, not much other news to report. Alpha is Alpha is Alpha. It's progressing nicely, they've implemented the system for some basic custom planets and being able to play them with others now. There's no real core strategy to speak of at the moment, it's still mainly testing with little balance. I'm expecting that to get a major upshift though once multiple planets and inter-planetary travel come into play.
I went to the UBER panel at PAX and I saw Greg Stackhouse. Center of the photo, 3rd row, wearing the shell and bacon jacket zipped up.
I told him that I still play Total Annihilation with a few buddies from high school every so often and that I followed their youtube stuff and watched a lot of let's plays from prominent players and eventually we got to talking about the calculus involved with trying to make all the celestial bodies in a system work together let alone trying to smash the damn things together. I wanted to buy into the Alpha and Beta but I didn't have the money just quite yet, even with PAX, but I let him know that as soon as it was ready for launch I'd be one of the first to buy it from steam. After about ten minutes or so talking about other stuff with Planetary Annihilation and the old Boneyards Metagame with Total Annihilation, he pulls a card out from his shirt pocket and says, "Here. Hold on to this, this will let you into the Beta and get you the launch copy of Planetary Annihilation."
Fucking. Wow.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I do hope they can get a voice over for things like unit alerts and so on done by the SMNC guys.
it was pretty cool. And to clarify, I was at their booth, not panel. Two seperate things, but the rest of it was true!
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
The AI right now is extremely basic from what I've seen. It builds bases and sends units to attack you and other AIs. I haven't seen it try to expand to other planets, but afaik that's a feature they've only recently implemented. Playing against the AI is just a good way to test out stuff right now, not a challenge.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Yeah, that's a bit counterintuitive. If they aren't filled, AI fills them automatically.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Just grabbed it real quick before conking out last night - no single player yet, right?
Obviously Beta is Beta, and progress is ongoing. They've got the core systems in (land / sea / air combat, planet generation, planetary systems and interplanetary travel). Now they're adding in to each of those, new units are still incoming (which is good because the current selection is mainly there to test core concepts), and things like lighting and effects are going to start getting added in (you can't really focus on those things in Alpha territory whilst everything is shifting). As far as I've seen, smashing asteroids doesn't look like that in-game yet, but I suspect that footage may be from a later dev build.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN