Hell, It's About Time! Frost Giant Studios Unveils Stormgate, the First Truly Social RTS

[lexluthermiester]

Empire Earth was another one of my favorite RTS's growing up as a kid... but it didn't age as well as say Age of Empires II and Warcraft 3 did.

@lexluthermiester Did you ever play Empire Earth? Just curious.

I tried it out, wasn't my jam.

 

[Prima.Vera]

I remember back when I was playing Doom and Star Wars: Xwing Alliance one of my friends showed me Command and Conquer (first RTS) -- which I thought cheesy at the time, but it grew on my quickly and the multiplayer eventually had me and my friends hooked. At first we played it over a high speed RS-232c serial link using a null-modem cable, which actually didn't work all that bad but of course you were limited to two players.

Yes, we need a new C&C: Tiberian Sun in our lifes...

 

[Tartaros]

crying, and still replaying the old RTS games while we wait.

RTS games got ruined by all of them trying to be E-sports, which is very far from what most RTS games were about - they changed to be fun to watch, instead of fun to play.
Everything suddenly had time limits to keep matches under 30 minutes and focused on how high your APM is - when crazy shit like supreme commander had you go mega-scale with thousands of units and coastal artillery

You can enjoy them like that. I play from time to time with my friends and we do with no attacks before x minutes rules because we like to take our time and do massive army clashes. The problem is not the focus of the games themselves, the problem is there was like a 10 year drought of rts because they don't make numbers on twitch.

 

[Mussels]

I just replayed supreme commander and FA again, finished the campaigns.

Amazing howe well they aged, and how they run on new hardware. Now it's time to actually play supcom 2, i boycotted it at launch over how it was so dumbed down and never actually played it - and i'm curious about the story now


2007 guys, 2007

We've gone from a single unit having a dozen individually tracking weapons with 3D geometry to starcraft II where marines can shoot interstellar capable battlecruisers out of orbit with a rifle with insta-hit pew pew magic bullets

Every projectile had to actually *hit* the target, it was possible to dodge or friendly fire a lot of things

 

[big_glasses]

2007 guys, 2007

We've gone from a single unit having a dozen individually tracking weapons with 3D geometry to starcraft II where marines can shoot interstellar capable battlecruisers out of orbit with a rifle with insta-hit pew pew magic bullets

Every projectile had to actually *hit* the target, it was possible to dodge or friendly fire a lot of things

2007? Try 1997 instead, with Total Annihilation!
a "3D"-surfaced map*, hills with gradient and line of sight blocked by terrain (radar and projectiles also).
Originally 250 units per side, lifted to 500 in a patch and then modded/unofficial patch to 5000. And proper projectiles.

* I believe the map is 2D with a bump-map to create the heights.


Sad no one have added TA to fav RTS
For me, probably
WC3
TA
SC2
RA2

For Stormgate, I'm cautiously excited.
They promises good things (coop campaign, custom games and pvp ladder/system), but including "first scoial..." and "f2p" is a bit of warning signs for me. Wondering if they will use the similar F2P as SC2 does now (free MP, paid campaign)

Tech-vise nothing particularly interesting from their statements so far. I'm still on the side that the most interesting game-tech (especially/atleast in the realms of strategy games) so far is UEBS2, running the AI/pathfinding on the GPU. Allowing for massive battles of millions of units on the field at a time. (debatably how RTS/Strategy game it is... but similar enough that their tech is cool)

 

[80251]

I remember in one of the classic, Westwood, CnC titles there was some kind of biowarfare unit that would say "it'll be a silent spring" his weapon spewed out some toxic sludge.

I remember Total Annihilation but I never bought it because C&C was my friends and my choice of RTS.

So was SupCom the best RTS ever? I remember C&C copied the giant robot unit that SupCom had in one of their EA iterations...

 

[Tartaros]

2007? Try 1997 instead, with Total Annihilation!
a "3D"-surfaced map*, hills with gradient and line of sight blocked by terrain (radar and projectiles also).
Originally 250 units per side, lifted to 500 in a patch and then modded/unofficial patch to 5000. And proper projectiles.
View attachment 250885
* I believe the map is 2D with a bump-map to create the heights.


Sad no one have added TA to fav RTS
For me, probably
WC3
TA
SC2
RA2

For Stormgate, I'm cautiously excited.
They promises good things (coop campaign, custom games and pvp ladder/system), but including "first scoial..." and "f2p" is a bit of warning signs for me. Wondering if they will use the similar F2P as SC2 does now (free MP, paid campaign)

Tech-vise nothing particularly interesting from their statements so far. I'm still on the side that the most interesting game-tech (especially/atleast in the realms of strategy games) so far is UEBS2, running the AI/pathfinding on the GPU. Allowing for massive battles of millions of units on the field at a time. (debatably how RTS/Strategy game it is... but similar enough that their tech is cool)

The game that was supposed to be in Starcraft's shoes if the makers didn't go bankrput before putting their own online matchmaking. I remember that Starcraft was the poor man's Total Annihilation back then.

 

[Mussels]

2007? Try 1997 instead, with Total Annihilation!
a "3D"-surfaced map*, hills with gradient and line of sight blocked by terrain (radar and projectiles also).
Originally 250 units per side, lifted to 500 in a patch and then modded/unofficial patch to 5000. And proper projectiles.
View attachment 250885
* I believe the map is 2D with a bump-map to create the heights.


Sad no one have added TA to fav RTS
For me, probably
WC3
TA
SC2
RA2

For Stormgate, I'm cautiously excited.
They promises good things (coop campaign, custom games and pvp ladder/system), but including "first scoial..." and "f2p" is a bit of warning signs for me. Wondering if they will use the similar F2P as SC2 does now (free MP, paid campaign)

Tech-vise nothing particularly interesting from their statements so far. I'm still on the side that the most interesting game-tech (especially/atleast in the realms of strategy games) so far is UEBS2, running the AI/pathfinding on the GPU. Allowing for massive battles of millions of units on the field at a time. (debatably how RTS/Strategy game it is... but similar enough that their tech is cool)

TA was literally my first PC game, however it's not as compatible and has serious visual issues on a lot of modern systems. Forced to run in windowed mode with flickers, texture and shadow issues on modern operating systems


The first LAN party i went to we did TA FFA with 8 players, i roflstomped them all by kidnapping commanders with transports and using them as kamikazee bombers in other players bases, and they promptly banned me from any future TA tournaments

 

[big_glasses]

TA was literally my first PC game, however it's not as compatible and has serious visual issues on a lot of modern systems. Forced to run in windowed mode with flickers, texture and shadow issues on modern operating systems

Have you tried the gog-version? I seem to recall that one worked for me, or was it with the unofficial patch? Been a while since I last tried (https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43735)

The first LAN party i went to we did TA FFA with 8 players, i roflstomped them all by kidnapping commanders with transports and using them as kamikazee bombers in other players bases, and they promptly banned me from any future TA tournaments

nice

 

[lexluthermiester]

I remember in one of the classic, Westwood, CnC titles there was some kind of biowarfare unit that would say "it'll be a silent spring" his weapon spewed out some toxic sludge.

That doesn't sound familiar to me, but might have been the C&C2 Tiberian Sun Firestorm expasion.

The first LAN party i went to we did TA FFA with 8 players, i roflstomped them all by kidnapping commanders with transports and using them as kamikazee bombers in other players bases, and they promptly banned me from any future TA tournaments

That's just funny as hell!!

Have you tried the gog-version?

This. I have it, works fine last time I ran it. Of course, now that I think about it, the last time I ran it was on Windows 7. It should run on Windows 10/11 ok though.

I seem to recall that one worked for me, or was it with the unofficial patch? Been a while since I last tried (https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43735)

Interesting.

 

[80251]

@lexluthermeister
The unit in question was the Desolator:
https://cnc-central.fandom.com/wiki/Desolator_(Red_Alert_2)

 

[Mussels]

I recall back in the days of 56k dial up, one of the expansions added an EMP that if you fired on a harvester would desync the game and cause all sorts of hell as everyone in the game would end up playing something totally different to the rest

We had some effed up tournaments

 

[80251]

Multiplayer over 56k dial up -- that must have been an experience in itself. Did you ever actually play with 4 players in a match?

 

[Mussels]

Multiplayer over 56k dial up -- that must have been an experience in itself. Did you ever actually play with 4 players in a match?

nah the internet was so bad we did LAN parties

 

[lexluthermiester]

nah the internet was so bad we did LAN parties

What are you talking about? People still do LAN parties. But you're right, that was a big reason BITD.

 

[Mussels]

What are you talking about? People still do LAN parties. But you're right, that was a big reason BITD.

theres a whole chain of conversation going on there.
"back when i only had dial up internet in the dark ages, we played lan parties of all these games offline'

Also, having now played and beaten supreme commander 2: what a shitshow. They had a few cool ideas, but the game was crippled due to the terrible changes made for consoles (drastically cut back scale, changed the economy completely, terrible level design and story for campaign)

i hope this game doesnt suck because yeah, we need something new