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General discussionThe story of Supreme Commander and how Chris Taylor redefined real-time strategy games(128 posts)(128 posts)
(128 posts)
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Posted June 05, 2020
With the real-time strategy series Supreme Commander coming to GOG.COM, we thought it was the perfect time to highlight the creator of the series, Chris Taylor, as well as dive into their journey through the world of video games, while also highlighting the amazing RTS titles he helped create.

Born in British Columbia, Chris got his start in the game industry in the late 1980s with Distinctive Software. The first game he was a part of was the baseball title Hardball II, but it wasn’t until his move to Seattle, Washington in 1996 that his path really started to become clear.



It was at that time, with Cavedog Entertainment, that Chris got the chance to stretch his creative legs as the designer and project lead for the iconic RTS Total Annihilation.

Total Annihilation was a huge success, even though it had to compete with one of the titans of the industry, Age of Empires. It even won Gamespot’s Game of the Year award in 1997.

After his time with Cavedog Entertainment, Chris went on to found Gas Powered Games in 1998.

Chris Taylor, Gas Powered Games, and a look at the amazing Supreme Commander

Taylor hit the ground running with Gas Powered Games. First, he and his team created the fun action-RPG title Dungeon Siege in 2005, but the real star of Gas Powered Games was Supreme Commander, released in 2007 along with its sequel, Supreme Commander 2 from 2010.



The Supreme Commander series is considered the spiritual successors to Total Annihilation but due to rights issues, Chris Taylor and his studio could never completely come out and state that. Even so, the game is heavily influenced by it.

Like in Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander has you playing as a powerful singular unit. This unit, called an Armor Command Unit (ACU), takes lead over one of three factions and each faction has its own storyline consisting of six missions.

Balancing real-time strategy with micromanagement

Both of these real-time strategy titles offer a unique look at resource gathering, something RTS fans are sure to be familiar with. To keep this part of the games’ experiences straightforward, these titles only focus on two resources. In Total Annihilation, those two resources are Energy and Metal, while Supreme Commander uses Energy and Mass.



Supreme Commander also does a great job of dealing with tedious micromanagement issues by streamlining how you control units. While you can individually decide what a unit is doing, you can also set up a queue of actions, allowing units to go about their business while you continue to manage things elsewhere.

Another thing Chris wanted to make sure of when creating Supreme Commander regarded the scope of the game. He believed that many titles at the time were closer to “Real-Time Tactics” games, in that they didn’t really get the scope right. That’s one reason why the title is so epic in scale, to help really drive home the fact that it was a strategy game and that players’ choices would echo throughout a large, engaging map.

Upon release, the game was a huge hit with fans and critics alike. Critics praised the title for its unique map that offered seamless strategic zoom and its dual-screen mode. Even the story, not typically a huge selling point in RTS titles, was acknowledged for being thought out and engaging.



Now available on GOG.COM

Overall, Chris Taylor and the team at Gas Powered Games knocked it out of the park with this iconic RTS title. Supreme Commander and Supreme Commander 2 are still totally worth playing, and now, with both games being released on GOG.COM, it’s the perfect time to dive in for the first time or play it again if you love real-time strategy titles!

What do you think? Plan on checking out the Supreme Commander series on GOG.COM? Let us know down in the comments!
Posted June 08, 2020
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guppy44: RTS fans, any others here I should play? My experiences have been with Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, WarCraft, StarCraft, Command & Conquer and the like. I know I've missed out on some good oldies like these and I'm looking to remedy that.
Rise of Nations might be worth a try.
Posted June 08, 2020
forgot to mention but faf now has infinite maps : https://youtu.be/rJW8kIWpJ4g

This too, for single player mode-only, is a interesting feature.
Posted June 08, 2020
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tatsujb: Supreme Commander's UI was garbage.
Naw, it was much better than FA.
Posted June 08, 2020
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tatsujb: Supreme Commander's UI was garbage.
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BmB: Naw, it was much better than FA.
"was" ... maybe... they only thing that was good was minimap.
but FA minimap was movebale and resizable.
FA UI is smaller witch is much better.
Right now FAF has implementer many many UI improvements.
aslo on faf you can rebind hotkeys..

didn't read whole thread but came here just to say that GOG's SC:FA is not compatible with FAF right now
Posted June 08, 2020
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zlo.19056: didn't read whole thread but came here just to say that GOG's SC:FA is not compatible with FAF right now
Good to know, thank you.
Posted June 08, 2020
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i_hope_you_rot: Which SupCom has the better AI ? I'm not interested in mp only sp and mods .
Sounds like you would be interested in LOUD AI project... i personally really don't like it, but i have heared it really improves game performance (by making that nothing is really happeining but if it works...)

FAF have fixes for default AI and also Sorian AI available by default.
FAF has mod vault with mod autodownload for easy games with friends (and easy mod discoverability, many mods in vault).

FAF has some other AIs that i don't really know much about but there even was an AI tournament
https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=16088

Also when talking about single player need to say that FAF has other game modes, If you play COOP campaing alone it is just gonna be harder version of a campaing but you can also play campaing with mods without changing game files.
also FAF has extra missions, i have heared there even was a seraphim campaing.
There are many survival maps, fun, hardcore and even competetive (you play against players AND against sparms of units). If you find survival boring you can play survival run. that is pretty much a cool scripted mission where you need to protect a moving target (like experimental) and break defences in time in front of it. Usually those are played by 4 people, but there are difficuly options so you can play alone.

There are also adaptive maps with optional spawns, optional reclaim count, optional civillians and other stuff.... so same map can be played differently and can adapt to number of players. faf has ton of other features tho... i can't just tell about them in one post... other game modes like Phantom-X (kinda like mafia) and Claustrophobia (map is shrinking, kinda like battle royale... fun for FFAs)
Post edited June 08, 2020 by zlo.19056
Posted June 08, 2020
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aabe011: Played Supreme Commander 1 through the campaign and some skirmishes, it was an RTS visual dream with a great UI and great fun. When I saw the price on 80% sale - Instabuy!!! Enough said.
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Orkhepaj: hmm isnt sc2 better?
Never had the pleasure to play Supreme Commander 2 but I currently have my cross-hairs on SC2 to buy it.
Most reviews agree that SC2 was less demanding on the player than SC1, I'm just a casual gamer. If you pick SC1 you won't be disappointed but watch a review of each before you decide. Regards.
Posted June 09, 2020
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BmB: Naw, it was much better than FA.
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zlo.19056: "was" ... maybe... they only thing that was good was minimap.
but FA minimap was movebale and resizable.
FA UI is smaller witch is much better.
Right now FAF has implementer many many UI improvements.
aslo on faf you can rebind hotkeys..

didn't read whole thread but came here just to say that GOG's SC:FA is not compatible with FAF right now
No it was better in almost every way. You could easily toggle range overlays, and see multiple overlapping ranges from different units. In FA you have to fiddle with some little menu and tick boxes. Do you think anyone wants to do that just to get basic useful information instead of having simply one button and hotkey for each? The build queue was more clear, the upgrade screen was not only more clear but also more detailed and immersive. Even your resources were easier to see at a glance. The only thing FA has going for it is that it takes up less screen space. But I would much rather want a more immersive, detailed and most importantly useful UI than simply a small one.

Even the line of sight is a downgrade. SC1 shows you exactly what you can see. FA tricks you with a fake circle. It looks nice, sure but it is still the same grid based line of sight as before, only it makes it harder to see what you can see. Units could be invisible well within your line of sight, or they could be visible far outside of it, it simply misleads.
Posted June 09, 2020
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guppy44: RTS fans, any others here I should play? My experiences have been with Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, WarCraft, StarCraft, Command & Conquer and the like. I know I've missed out on some good oldies like these and I'm looking to remedy that.
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eiii: Rise of Nations might be worth a try.
Ah yes, forgot about that one. I haven't played it before but remember being interested. Thanks for the suggestion!
Posted June 11, 2020
I don't really care about vanilla FA, most people play FAF. i don't even remember if FA has seartain features or they were only added in FAF. so i will compare to FAF now.
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BmB: You could easily toggle range overlays, and see multiple overlapping ranges from different units.
it works only when you have very few units, you can only use that to check unit's range and toggle it off again cause it just unusable. does not matter if units were selected or not. i have attached a screenshot, base if big, but there are not many units, mostly massfabs. in FA you set up most important ranges once and then just enable "single unit selected rings "on" ". When you builf stuff you can also see range. There are UI mods that can allow you to see ranges around your cursor when you have units selected so you can check if they can reach certain places without sending them there.

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BmB: The build queue was more clear
don't remember significant differences. but on faf you can drag units around build queue, can clear build queue except unit that is currently in production, can bind a hotkey to toggle repeat build and pause.

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BmB: the upgrade screen was not only more clear but also more detailed and immersive.
on faf you can queue upgraides (and orders before and after upgraides), also faf added a tooltip so you can hover mouse over ACU \ sacu or select it and quicly see what upgraides it has (see screenshot). also you can select multiple sacus and order them to upgraide, don't need to do that individually. can also build preupgraided sacus and they kinda count as separate unit and you can select different types of preupgraided sacus with double click and they have different icons. but yea smaller icons are less immersive.

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BmB: Even your resources were easier to see at a glance. The only thing FA has going for it is that it takes up less screen space. But I would much rather want a more immersive, detailed and most importantly useful UI than simply a small one.
maybe harder to see at a glace... There are more numbers about reclaim count and reclaim income. (see screenshot "UI") so it is pretty detailed and usefull. and again there are UI mods, and probably one that makes numbers bigger already exist in FAF mod vault

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BmB: Even the line of sight is a downgrade. SC1 shows you exactly what you can see. FA tricks you with a fake circle. It looks nice, sure but it is still the same grid based line of sight as before, only it makes it harder to see what you can see. Units could be invisible well within your line of sight, or they could be visible far outside of it, it simply misleads.
Yes that is true, but it does look a lot better. i think it is not grid based but more like slow refresh rate. i think if we had engine source code we could fix that.
Attachments:
z_2e7577ea.jpg (489 Kb)
faf_upgraide_too.png (279 Kb)
ui.png (385 Kb)
Post edited June 11, 2020 by zlo.19056
Posted June 11, 2020
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guppy44: RTS fans, any others here I should play? My experiences have been with Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, WarCraft, StarCraft, Command & Conquer and the like. I know I've missed out on some good oldies like these and I'm looking to remedy that.
From those not mentioned already, I can also recommend Armies of Exigo and Battle for Middle Earth I and II, if you can get your hands on them. They are currently not being sold anywhere.

Also of mention is Grey Goo. It has a pretty good single player campaign although a bit short. Steam only.

Maybe Heroes of Annihilated Empires too. The game leaves a lot to be desired, but it is fun for one playthrough. Available on GOG.

And lastly, Ancestors Legacy. The game was a very nice surprise and I enjoyed it greatly. Also available on GOG.
Post edited June 11, 2020 by idbeholdME
Posted June 14, 2020
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Pootzwacke: SupCom 1 is amazing. SupCom 2 is pretty, but way less deep - it plays like a simplified Command and Conquer-style game with a fraction of the depth.
Is SC2 also easier to play than SC1/FA?
Posted June 15, 2020
Anyone has any update on GOG contacting Square Enix about FAF?
Post edited June 15, 2020 by zlo.19056
Posted June 16, 2020
faf can go fuck themselves
Post edited June 16, 2020 by mireka
Posted June 18, 2020
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Pootzwacke: SupCom 1 is amazing. SupCom 2 is pretty, but way less deep - it plays like a simplified Command and Conquer-style game with a fraction of the depth.
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eiii: Is SC2 also easier to play than SC1/FA?
Yes, it is.
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Community
General discussionThe story of Supreme Commander and how Chris Taylor redefined real-time strategy games(128 posts)(128 posts)
(128 posts)