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Supreme Commander
You can bet your socks, shirts and anything from your underpants draw that this is the next game of the century
Firstly, a brief history of Total Annihilation the game that started it all back in 1995 (thats more than 12 years ago!)
It all starts with Chris Taylor landing a job with Ron Gilbert at Humongous software based on a pitch for a new type of Real-Time Strategy Game (RTS). Humongous software was known for developing childrens software so a new company was formed, named cavedog (Considering it came down to a choice of Frozen Yak or CaveDog - i think they chose the best option) Chris Taylor was the brains behind the project, bringing in graphic artist Clayton Kauzlaric straight away followed by a number of other developers as the project reached completion. A few months after the game was released in 1997 Chris Taylor decided to start out on his own and quit from Cavedog and started his own computer games company; Gas-Powered Games. Meanwhile what was left of the original Cavedog crew then released every Sci-Fi fan's worst nightmare - a fantasy game! Straight up I should say I'm not really a fantasy fan. As soon as you mention spells and dragons I'm just not very interested anymore. Infact my computer gaming buddies well know my "dragon rule". That is, if there is a dragon (or winged-beast approximations) in the game then I will most humbly not play! - and for those fantasy fans out there - it's nothing personal When Cavedog released their fantasy game, Kingdoms, my gaming buddies and I even bought a copy, expecting it to be much like Total Annihilation. How wrong we were! We instantly went back to Total Annihilation and loaded in even more 3rd party units to keep us quiet about the $70 we just blew on a fantasy game. Kingdom's destroyed a lot of what I can only presume was Chris' work. For instance, in TA when you had a suitable stock of metal and energy you could build nuclear reactors and nuclear metal refiners. These items were an escape from the resources rush - No longer would you have to fight tooth and nail over a resource pit - you could build you own plant and generate metal and energy on a higher plain! I personally hate games that force you to fight over lumps of rock (yes I'm talking to you: Dawn of War) Chris obviously liked this feature too, Total Annihilation had some maps where the entire map was a resource pit - this level of resources saw TA become the first truly megalomanic real-time strategy game. Most games don't let you have either huge or diverse armies but TA let you have both. Wars became long running metal mashes as wave after wave of Giant Korg bot was dispatched by wave after wave of Big Berth gun emplacements. That's not to say that you couldn't have a quick 'grunt rush' game, but the real fun was the long running multi-player games. They were light years ahead of other Real Time Strategy games of the day - in the sheer size and scope of the battles you could conduct. Some of our multiplayer games could go for up to 16 hours at a time.. Just as soon as you thought you have a grip on all the pieces (and there are always new 3rd party pieces being added to this day) a huge squad of something you'd never seen before would walk over a neighbouring hill and bring death and destruction to your base. Most Real-Time strategy games pay very careful attention to what gamers affectionately refer to as "the Rock-Paper-Scissors balance" If your enemy drives a tank into your base then you use an anti-tank weapon to take it out.. Total Annihilation multiplied this principal by a factor of 10. In Total Annihilation you couldn't afford to have just one of each unit - you had to have 10 of each unit and they had to be well balanced and well spaced - something that is quite realistic in any modern combat. Anyway enough of the reminiscing, the good news is that Chris Taylor has finally realised a dream that started just after he left Cavedog - to bring out the mother of all games, the game that could beat the previous holder of this title (Total Annihilation) the game that would one day have the power to change all of our lives. - ok so that last bit was a bit of an exaggeration. Supreme Commander
http://supcom.gaspowered.com/
 Chris obviously learnt a few tricks about keeping the lid on game information until the right time from Cavedog, so little information is available about this game right up until it was released.
You can bet your socks, shirts and anything from your underpants draw that this is the next game of the century The first big thing about the game is the plot. For those of you that like to hang around forums, many of the Total annihilation community believed that the plot for the original single player versions of the game was wafer thin and possibly non-existent. So not to make the same mistake twice, Supreme Commander's Plot is to be worthy of good sci-fi book or film. Emphasis has been placed on the 'compelling nature' of Supreme Commander's plot. Chris has also added another race to the mix, so Supreme Commander features three individual races (UEF, Cybran and Aeon) with individual traits, strengths and weaknesses and some of the most kick-ass experimental weapons. Depending on which race you choose, Scenery and imagery will try to show yourself as the under-dog.
There's an extensive timeline to explain how civilizations evolved to their present state. Apparently Earth scientists discovered a way to travel faster than the speed of light and have spread to other planets, robot-o-sized themselves and then flip-flopped into a number of different factions. Supreme commander retains may of the features that were pioneered in Total Annihilation. The sizes of the pieces are huge. If you like to play games where the stakes are high and the scale is grander then Supreme Commander will be for you. The sheer size of you massive units strikes fear in the heart of any enemy. The monster spider pictured above is an experimental piece that can squash full size tanks with it's feet. As it moves over the battlefield smaller pieces scurry around it trying to elevate their guns to hit the main body. Once again the nukes in Supreme Commander are similar to those in Total Annihilation (with better graphics of-course) when they strike they will level a city and there are only a few pieces that can survive multiple direct hits.
 See the wood from the trees...
Supreme Commander can zoom out far enough to display a your armies as icons. From this overview you can draw up battle plans and give your troops movement orders etc in much the same way as the Citizen manager in Empire Earth II. From the early days of star craft where you were limited to 640x480 screen resolution (you could virtually only see two or three units of the screen at the same time) - I'd shudder to think how many times I have asked, no begged... to scroll out a decent amount to see all my pieces in on the screen at once. As many RTS gamers know, resolution isn't everything. Pressing home on the keyboard means you're in for a big surprise. It basicaly runs Supreme Commander in split-screen. You can zoom each map in to the piece level or out to a map level. I've not tried it but I believe this would work very well with two monitors, allowing you to have you mini-map on a separate monitor!
Chris Taylor and the boys over at Gas powered software have made sure that while all of this sounds huge it's not too difficult to control. Units in the game are smart enough to be told to patrol or bomb certain areas, fighters will automatically return to base to re-arm and repair, Air Transports can even be coerced to ferry units repeatedly without any further interaction.
The usual features of Real Time Strategy Games such as waypoints and queued instructions for all pieces are all in Supreme Commander as well as new features not seen in Real-Time Strategy games before  Cumulative Buildings are buildings of the same type built together work more efficiently but are more unstable and easier to destroy - designing your base has never posed more complex strategic challenges and puzzling!.
Ever wished you could watch the action on the front line and have someone else manage your base expansion - enter the base commander.
Apparently you assign some construction bots to the commander put him in your city and he will continue to build your buildings and also repair and maintain the buildings in his zone. Unfortunately i have not been able to get this to work yet. Also, the base commander explodes with considerable devastation. If you have a bunch in your city and a nuke or a cannon shell hits them then they will chain explode most of your city away - use with caution. More Maps & Mods... There are already plenty of maps and mods available for Supreme Commander. Some even come with the game.
The trick to installing maps is to unzip the map files and place them in a sub directory under the Supreme Commander directory ie:
\Supreme Commander\Maps\mynewmap\
You may need to create this directory if this is the first map you're adding. Mods are added in a simplar fashion. Just copy the mods into the existing mods directory:
\Supreme Commander\Mods\mynewmod\
Well we hope you enjoy playing Supreme Commander. We think it was worth the long wait.
 Planet Annihilation
http://www.planetannihilation.com/
Stocks all the mods, patches and unit updates to keep your copy of Total Annihilation up to date.
Gas Powered Software
http://supcom.gaspowered.com/
The official homepage for Gas Powered Software's Supreme Commander.
GameSPY Supreme Commander Interview
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/supreme-commander/631678p1.html
A good interview with game designer Chris Taylor about the release of Supreme Commander.
Grok (Friday, 23 December 2005)
From the website I'd say SupCom is still deep in development and been there a while - hopefully something good comes of that. :-/ for the DOW sledge! | peter welling (Wednesday, 1 November 2006)
how can i purchase this asap. | john (Monday, 25 June 2007)
good |
Supreme Commander
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