

Whether these fundamental changes are actually major changes is yet to be seen, but it could offer a more challenging and responsive gaming experience that runs far smoother than previous RTS. Throw in the fact that the new AI actually does whatever you can do instead of simply building and throwing enemies at you and you’ve got two changes to how the RTS works. It wasn’t something that truly awed me when they demoed it, but once I got some time with the game on my own it was clear how much better it could make an RTS. It cuts down on processor needs because the units are working as a group and it cuts down on gamer aggravation because your units don’t get stuck or muddled. If they run into something or someone they’ll flow around it like people do instead of stopping and redoing their route or bumping and turning until they’ve figured it out. When you tell a group of units to move they’ll form up and then move to their location.

In SC2 this is exactly how units will move. No one bumps into each and then turns we all just sort of move through each other. So Gas Powered found some really smart guy and he figured out what they’re calling a flow field.Ī flow field is kind of like how people move on a crowded sidewalk. However, in a game like SC where you can literally have hundreds upon hundreds of units on the screen at the same time it became a very big task for the computer to process every move, and on top of that you literally had hundreds of units running into each other constantly. Previously in RTS games you gave a group of units a command to move and they all got individual routes to get there and if they ran into anything they’d bump and rotate and bump again and rotate, ad nauseum. One of the ways that the team at Gas Powered Games has made the game run faster is by revamping the path control of how units move. The differences I saw were negligible, so unless they were lying it looks like a far bigger audience will be able to actually play SC2. To demonstrate this they had some not-so-nice computers running the game next to their all powerful computers. According to them they’ve succeeded, and SC2 will run on even some of the lowliest computers out there. Instead they dug their heels in and figured out ways to do more, but with using far less power.
SUPREME COMMANDER 2 BEST FACTION UPGRADE
Gas Powered heard the issues people were having, and decided that needing everyone to upgrade their computer in order to play the game probably wasn’t the best sales strategy.

To begin with, SC2 is not going to be the computer destroying monster that the original Supreme Commander was. To be released: March 2 (PC), March 16 (Xbox 360) I got a chance to see exactly what they are doing with SC2 last week, and now you can read all about it. And they’re actually going in to the fundamentals of how RTS function and making them work better too. By bringing together Square Enix’s well known love of story driven gaming and Gas Powered’s epic RTS heritage the two are hoping to make an RTS like you’ve never seen before. Square Enix and Gas Powered Games are hoping to change all this with Supreme Commander 2. This isn’t even touching on the fact that aside from attempting to cram the genre onto a console, the fundamental gameplay hasn’t changed in ages. In short, while the rest of gaming has moved onto epic storylines and truly powerful tales, the RTS, which is a genre ripe for telling epic stories, has pretty much done nothing. Personal stories are out the window, and becoming invested in what is actually a war that kills thousands of people is almost impossible thanks to your God-like disconnection from the battlefield. In most cases you’re put on a flat map, given a bunch of soldiers, told to build something and then told to defeat someone by some general in a room. If there is a genre out there that has sat pretty stagnant, it’s probably the RTS.
