Supreme Commander: Gone Too Soon (Retrospective)
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- čas přidán 18. 05. 2019
- Supreme Commander is a well known series - and one that in my opinion, did not reach its full potential. Created by RTS veteran Chris Taylor, it delivered massive battles on a huge scale, and persists as one of the best strategy games of the 2000s.
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'Retrospectives' playlist - • Retrospectives
Gameplay recorded on PC.
Audio recorded using a Rode NT-USB.
#supremecommander #gpg #gaspoweredgames - Hry
"Nooo no no no. We don't make products, we make games"
What a beautiful word, can't say the same with AAA game companies like EA
SAY IT LOUDER MY CHILD
I know right. Extremely well said!
@@Zade_95 And it was spoken, Prophet vs. Profit....
EA sucks it's in the game.
And just around a year or so ago I was wondering if Chris was bitten by a businessman and maybe that's why SC2 is the way it is. It's quite nice to know that the man is still the man and not a mutant leech.
Forged Alliance Forever is amazing, keeping Supreme Commander alive to this day. still the best RTS to date
I agree!
You should've added the faf link for ppl i guess. :)
faforever.com/
Damn right ! Its even more complex then Supreme commander 2.
Chris Emmer no c&c but ea
and if your poor try zero-k its free and also a fork of total annihilation
The collision detection is honestly one of the most impressive things in supreme commander. All projectile attacks have their own hitboxes and they don't home in on the enemy like it many other RTS games. A shot can miss the target, fly past it and hit an enemy unit behind it. I've seen ridiculous things like fighter planes intercept incoming nukes and artillery shells by being exactly on their ballistic trajectory, saving an entire base by pure chance. It's all simulated to a ridiculous degree, it's one of the reasons why the game has performance issues. But nobody would have it any other way.
Without this you wouldn't have the fun spectacle of whittling down a base with artillery and sending in an experimental to mop up. It'd just be over too quickly.
They just need to do a remaster giving it quad or octi and more core support. That'd help the lag so much.
@@robertharris6092 it already has n core support. 100% load on the first two, and 30-60% on all following cores.
It is possible the second most impressively programmed piece of software after elite II, in all of history.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 what everyone says is the first core is used for most things and the 2nd core is just for physics simulation. Its one of the laggiest games iv ever played. Even on my friends octo core threadripper and GTX 2080
@@robertharris6092 Check the core loading in task manager. I have no idea how well the gpu is optimized, but its using all cpu cores. Any lag I have seen was from AI, not simple number of units.
I'm still shocked that RTS gaming has not evolved past what Supcom did...its quite sad. To this day supcom is still the ultimate RTS gaming experience.
It's difficult. The games just don't sell that well.
@@ryan1840 Yes thats been the case ever since TA! But it is the best evolution of RTS gaming...unfortunately people like more dumbed down stuff
Rts games can't compete with cod
Scott B tru I haven't played cod since the 2nd one on pc lol
@@scottb9997 yeah. You have to actually like think about what you're doing in an rts.
No. I do not remember Total Anihilation. And I do not still get trembling limbs whenever that game is mentioned. I did not spend entire weeks on end tactically dismantling the enemy to the last single unit and then denying it access to any resources, basically taunting and torturing it until I had the entire map covered and that lone enemy only had one tiny corner left in which my units just tore it apart. No. I do not remember any of that. I am not going back into rehab, goddamnit!
Total annihilation was fun it was like the pre quel to what made sup com amazing
This is precious! Thanks!
I thought only I had that mental illness.
Forged alliance forever guys and girls. I still play this all the time. Join the community!
Same
I love that game and hard to master lol
Salty _Pepperpot where are you I need yall
I played all games except for Forged Alliance. I just can't find any copies for the xbox. I can't afford a pc, so it's harder.
is she friendly with new players?
We need more designers like Chris Taylor who make games they'd love to play. It really shows in supreme commander and his excitement then and now in talking about it.
I am a huge fan on Supcom and Total Annihilation. I have played since release and I am still active on weekly basis in Forged Alliance Forever (mostly Setons map 4v4 games).
I am also a lead game designer and I am making games I'd love to play.
Reminds me of Chris Roberts passion for star citizen which launched his project for star citizen.
@@dan7564 Chris Taylor finished his games, though.
@bigbenhoward - Chris Roberts psssh. Didn't like Wing Commander back when it came out 30 years ago... Star Citizen is more of a ponzi scheme than a game.
I think Taylor himself said that he became a dev like today is thank to Ron Gilbert. When Gilbert was still in charge of Taylor, Gilbert specified to Taylor that even though he was his boss, the man who has the final say in the project is the artist himself (Taylor).
I think their interaction was what helped shaping Taylor's mentality of what a game designer should be.
I also love how the projectiles have actual physics instead of the basic "hit-scan", simplistic model with near perfect trajectories that most games use.
CheapSushi yes!
A great example of that is a game I was watching on youtube where there was a large number of air-superiority fighters above a nuke-silo. When the missile launched it collided with one of the ASFs and destroyed most of the players base.
@@domhaanen6698 Supreme commander 2 and maybe forged alliance has that too. (Haven't played FAF yet)
@@Blank-pr4pt iirc, Total Annihilation had that too.
most games actually have attacks act more like homing missiles. That also extends to MOBA games and it's pretty immersion breaking.
You forgot to mention one of the defining features of Supreme Commander - reclaim.
It's unique among strategy games of its era and is important from a thematic and mechanical aspect. While games like Warcraft, AoE, CnC etc. have their units disappear when they are killed, SupCom takes a more realistic approach and its units leave behind the mass and energy of their wrecks when killed.
Learning how to reclaim is extremely important in PvP as it adds another layer of macro economy and decision making. If you miscalculate and your super expensive experimental dies in front of the enemy base then you have just given them a massive economy boost. Not only do you lose the advantage, but the tables have actually turned against you. This allows for some insane comebacks against difficult odds which makes matches very unpredictable a lot of the time.
Yea this is one of the most important things when its comes down to PVP, it is essential to reclaim mass in the beginning, even reclaiming trees gives u a boost to get a head of the enemy in economy
had something like that happened to me, I was pushing the enemy back and they had a base that had stealth generators there, so I move my units there thinking nothing was there, I go back building up a defensive position cause the enemy was attacking me there, looks back to give my units orders, and there's my Fatboy half dead, then dead. The enemies did not win, but they got a lot of stuff from my dead army, the only reason why we won is cause they did the same to us, and I built up fanboys and did my bampy favourite strategy when he's losing, dig in and let the enemy exhaust themselves, it worked like a charm.
The closest thing to this is probably CnC GLA salvaging for upgrades.
I never played supreme commander but total annihilation is one of my favorite games of all time and that also had the reclaim mechanic. Watching this made me realize I have to give this game a go as it seems like it's just a more modern TA.
@@shepergames3734 Try TA Escalation too. It brings over several units and mechanics from Supreme Commander backwards through mods.
Supcom, one of the rare games being hyped at E3 that actually mirrored what happens in the game.
I was hoping that wasn't the case. The E3 preview looked like a tech demo.
Actually the E3 preview was quite dishonest: It showed mixed use of basic tanks with massive experimentals fighting alongside.
@Harli Baron Dude that thing was an expensive paperweight.
@@alexcat6480 Did you just call the Atlantis an expensive paper weight? It's one of the most powerful naval units in the game. Has a massive torpedo range capable of killing enemy ships from outside their reach whilst still sitting safe within it's own fleets protection, allowing you to force engagements or gradually push the enemy into a corner. Also if you're not using regular units alongside your experimentals you're generally using them wrong. Experimentals are durable and capable of punching holes through solid defences, but they have a poor DPS to mass cost ratio. Bringing some standard units alongside them effectively allows you to double their damage output for a fraction of their cost, and gives you a more versatile force that can be used to mop up behind the experimental during the chaos without delaying it from reaching the key targets.
@@UnknownSquid Why does the faction with the super-amazing submarine-aircraft carrier not also have a regular aircraft carrier to build and compare to? For super-amazing things to be super-amazing, they need the grounded version to compare to. "super amazing" is relative.
Sending basic tier stuff up against massive stuff was worse than pointless, they were experience sinks for the massive stuff.
I'll admit, I almost cried when I watched this. I was about 10 years old when I got this and I was rightaway blown away by the variety of units and buildings, and it was before I found out there are TIERS that bring even more.
I spent hours a day playing this and it didn't get boring, I was also surprised by how difficult campaign could be compared to little number of RTS games I had chance to play. It was truly something unique, something new. As I grew up and decided to give it a go once again, I was even more surprised by how many thing I was missiong out as a child. For example projjectiles of every unit being an actual physical entity, which has to actually HIT the target. The unique economy system where resources don't run out, but rather slow down your progress.
Still a great RTS, still great today. Playing this and hearing this calm ingame music as the match begins, brings me an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. It maybe not the most well known RTS, it may not have an overly large playerbase, but it will forever stay as one of the best RTS games I have ever played, entirely unique on it's own. Thank you a lot for making this.
Loved reading that, I'm glad it was such a positive experience for ya! I get that same feeling, every time I play SC I pause and think "man, this game's really good" :)
soroka the peddle file anime pfp user
@@Zade_95oh dude you should check out this rts series called earth 2150
Alright lads then I'll take this as a recommendation! I only ever played TA but always loved it and wanted more. This is looks more like a spiritual successor than I had realised it was.
You definitely should. It was truly a great successor to Total Annihilation. One later installements are yet to top.
And now Sanctuary: Shattered Sun looks like Supreme Commander's own spiritual successor.
Is nobody going to talk about the amaaazing Soundtrack SupCom had? Jeremy Soule did such an amazing job, i still find myself humming the melodies at the bus stop, only realizing afterwards that i just hummed the melody from a game i have not played in 5 years.
Why the fuck haven't you played it in 5 years??
You haven't played in 5 years?? What's wrong with you?? ;)
I play this game every week had a 7 hour war once it gets ridiculous and I love it
My favorite thing had to be capturing an enemy engineer and then building a research lab of their type to get the best of all the factions into one army
nostalgia
I love it when strategy games just let you do that, warcraft3 letting you use banshees to possess a worker unit and command and conquer letting you capture enemy construction yards with engineers also comes to mind
Dude I would pay a thousand bucks for a Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Remake with updated graphics, multi core support and fixes to some of the issues the old game had (pathing, projectiles hitting terrain, matchmaking, desyncs, rejoin after disconnects, etc.) and then maybe one more faction or at least some more units. This game is unbelievably good.
rejoin after disconnects is now a thing in the community run FA here is the link you need join us soon comander www.faforever.com/
I totally agree. FAforever doesnt offer what B20C0 said either...Honestly I would like them to speed the gameplay up a tad sometimes it felt like the game was crawling....Maybe TA speeds would be awesome to keep the action going. But yes fresh coat of paint, new units, new faction, new maps, and everything else he said above we be the end all of RTS games!
@@kingfisher1638 I'm already using FAForever, didn't play for a month or so but I heard there was an update that allows it. It's still pretty janky though.
I still play from time to time but it's kind of annoying to deal with the slowdowns (Seton's is my favorite map and it's notorious for being a slow disaster in the lategame).
Projectiles hitting terrain isn't an issue lol it's by design.
@@bg8580 Nah, that's not by design, that's just targeting not caring about anything but the target. It's far future with cyber-symbiosis and sentient machines, surely even UEF woulda figured out "target obstructed - no shoot, check for targets within reach".
also god-DAMN the soundtrack's good.
Dark souls?
It's from the games: Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander and so on...
WTF... You're here? Well, hello! I know you from the TF2 community.
Jeremy Soule's masterpiece with Total Annihilation is definitely legendary!
Yeah like it was playing in the background and I was just listening to it completely forgot this was a review lol.
Supreme Commander 1 was an Epic in a time where the word "Epic" lost all meaning.
A detailed strategy game with a lore and story that runs across worlds and factions. You save people, not persons.
Forged Alliance developed on the excelent foundation and polished it to a shining beacon.
The Story was breathtaking, the gameplay holds up even today and the Hardware Requirements are not too big of a deal, when you know what to do: Single-Thread-Speed.
The Problem with Supcom 2 was ... it took what was epic and made it mundane.
The modern problem of the "more more MORE" mentality.
MORE Experimentals for a lower cost! But that diminished what made them special.
MORE Upgrades! But that negated what made your Commander special.
Subcom 2 also was a massive scaledown. Nukes where tiny, normal units where huge. The AON Illuminate faction *does not have NAVI.* Experimentals can be taken out by a small group of normal units. The FATBOY Quadtank Mobile Artilery Mobile Factory Mobile Shieldgenerator Submergable Airstaging Platform has been turned into a Tank with moar GUNS!
Then there is the Story. Gone are the conflicts with rational thinking. Gone are relatable villans.
We have a Father that goes against dudebros and the "army is bad" cliche.
We have a Naive Illuminate Terrorist that gets tricked by a maniac that has "I will nuke you" written on his forehead. (Spoiler: He nukes a city for no reason)
We have a Super-Smarty boy that goes after the maniac.
Did I forget to mention that all of them where in the same class?
As in: They went to school together?
There are amazing things about the Sequal. The Pathfinding is breathtaking. But even with those systems, important gameplay ballancing gets ruined, since units cluster up so much, that AOE weapons are overpowered while Point-Weapons are next to useless.
A Perfect version of Subcom would be: The Optimisation of Subcom 2. The Pathfinding of Subcom 2 with the Army Layout options of Forged Alliance. The Scale and Tier System of Forged Alliance. The Ballancing of Forged Alliance. The Story depth of Forged Alliance.
But it seems we will never see that ...
Good thing, that we still have Forged Alliance Forever.
A little sidenote: Forged Alliance grows with technology.
As it was released 1v1 2v2 and 3v3 where pretty much the maximum, with 4v4 being next to impossible to run.
Now: 4v4 6v6 and even 8v8 are possible. Phantom Modes are introduced, new gametypes etc. The Community kept this game alife and it is still running to this day.
If anyone wants some Quality FA CZcamsrs: I can recommend:
BRNKoINSANITY for Gameplay
GYLE for Commentry
8v8 monkaS
Complete chaos
I am proud of my Children in this comments section and those who watched the video.
Supreme Commander was my childhood video game and it still is a favorite to this day!
Thank you for making this video, it has reminded me that I need to formally join Forged Alliance Forever and jump back into the game.
Thank you for watching dude, appreciate it!
Cybran forever!
Gustaf Brackman bro I was 12 and this game got me to skip 2 grades in middle school I was top 5 in this game and 2nd best mathematics in Wisconsin this game is the best game ever created the best RTS
I just now bought the Supreme Commander Collection on a whim for some 6€
@@PillowWillow007 where did you get it?
To this day Forged Alliance is still my fav strategy game, despite the flaws it has (mostly engine related, game's old after all)
I remember the campaign in this. 9 hours 1 mission :D WHAT A BLAST!
LOL Took me a day to finish 1 chapter.
@@Weigazod 2 days here. Admittedly, I was intentionally prolong the war because I just love the destructions so much. Especially when one realized that in SC, no matter how huge the arena is, its actually only 8 souls, max, trading blows on a continent level brawl. With an, actually, unlimited resources to pull out from.
@@LockandLoad79
I actually didn't realise it was afternoon by the end of the mission. So much thing to do in the mission.
Kane's wrath and Forged Alliance are masterpieces
SC2 was my first foray into Supreme Commander. Got Forged Alliance later. As of right now I have 279 hours on Steam for Forged Alliance, so that should say a lot about what I think about it.
I also still have SC2 on Steam, although I have modded it to bring it closer to the original. Both are fun, both are good, I like them.
Come join the FAF community, we have cookies!
And don't forget to subscribe to Gyle. He sounds like a Totalbiscuit from an alternate universe as well!
@@esprit101 .... yea the mirrorverse ...
only DAKRSIDE HAZ COOKIES! i lost one in Starborne ya seen it!
Are those _Supreme_ Cookies?
@@code-dredd CZAR cookies, you will love em!
I would pay full price for SC FA Remaster, I love it so much...
Better animations, more threads usage, better pathfinding and so on
it dosnt need remastering even by todays standards its still rock solid in terms of graphics.
@@ashleygoggs5679 but not in terms of multi threading
@@Squee7e supreme commander was one of the first games to utilize this feature which is why it was recommended to use a core 2 duo back in the day. Sure it could be abit better but imo still absolutely solid.
@@ashleygoggs5679 it supports only two threads :(
Especially the physics and pathfinding calculations would benefit of real multithreading.
I really hope the community someday will be able to rework the engine in order to fix such issues
Just crowdfunding the game! 😁😁😁
Gas Powered Games hold a special place in my heart, not quite as big a place as Westwood Studios but right next door in the nicer part.
Supreme commander forged alliance is hands down one of the best war games in history!
*the* best.
there's nothing else that even gets close.
Here to chime in for the Forged Alliance Forever community.
I mean I suck at the game, but the guys there are pretty damn amazing!
Play ladder to improve. GLHF
:)
The biggest problem with Supreme Commander 2 is that it's called Supreme Commander.
Same thing with Civilization: Beyond Earth, and I bet there are a lot of others out there.
When you take the name, you have to live up to the expectations unfortunately.
It could have been a good game if it stood on its own, unfortunately for it, it was put up alongside giants, and never could hold up
It was a decent game, but yeah - after FA, the expectations were massive, and it just couldn't live up to it.
Personally, I felt like adding structures onto structures was a bit of a stretch.
In all honesty people would've probably had a problem with it *not* being called supreme commander as well.
You know, with it being so similar to supcom1 yet much simpler and with a different name, the public opinion of a bad supcom clone is inevitable.
Trinal Galaxy SupCom2 still better than the C&C titles before it’s end ( except generals )
I still prefer supcom 2 over the FA, though I haven't played much of FA. I do think that the differences between the two hurt SC2. The community didn't transfer over. It's like if Elton John made a good rap song; it's good, but Elton John fans wouldn't listen to it.
Respect for the devs & designers who worked on the Supreme Commander franchise. The games are great even today. Superb work.
Time to reinstall Supreme commander!
Get Forged Alliance and visit faforever.com and join the online lobby. There are games going with fan made patches and balance..
Do it for me, my Child
reinstall? why do u ever uninstall supcom? i mean...supcom 1 FA of course.
i tried SC2 demo and was horrified. even the visuals were way worse!
cobrazax I uninstalled it in 2007/8 simply cos it didn’t run on my machine, and I turned back to dow and sc (at the time). I kept an eye out for supcom to see what it was like and where it was going, but it’s kinda amusing that, since then, I’ve installed TASpring (Opensource Total Annihilation) half a dozen times yet I somehow missed supcom entirely.... Honestly, I think I missed the memo, so to speak. Not even joking since I certainly did go out of my way a handful of times to look into supcom 1&2 to see ‘if I was missing out on something’ and I totally didn’t realise what supcom really was all due to, well, I guess it just didn’t have the same competitive exposure that sc and stuff had? Shrug, really dunno how I goofed this one, LOL.
@@jmkhenkafaf is for virgins, sc2 is where it's at
There’s this game on steam right now called Zero-K...it’s basically an Open Source SupCom. It’s actively being worked on and may be able to carry on the torch
I'll be giving it a try at some point!
@@Zade_95 There's also Planetary Annihilation.
I played Supcom for over 4000 hours. That's how many hours one works full-time over two full years!! Supcom is and remains the greatest RTS ever made. Like chess, it can never be mastered but always improved upon. I stopped playing only because I needed to do real life more and setup personal boundaries around my video game consumptions (lol). Thank you Chris Taylor for a masterpiece.
4000 hours? My man! I think I am pretty close to that too. What is your FaF name? After all these hours I still haven't experienced everything in the game.
Ahhh the good old days of TA and Supreme Commander.
What i also loved about these games was the soundtrack. By Jeremy Soule if i remember correctly.
The legend of video game music
16:35 hahaha, "Supreme Commander 2 era" idk.... i just tryed it and moved back to playing FA, and many people that i know were playing FA did exactly same.
A lot of people did I think! Different games for different people :P
Yeah, I don't know anyone saying that SC-2 is a better game, din't even want it for free from a friend.
*tried.
@@Zade_95 Yeah instead of making a game for their fans and that exploited and showed off their special talents and features they made a re-skinned C&C.
Sup Com 2 was horrible, anime storyline thanks to Square Enix and derivative RTS gameplay that was way worse than any of their competitors.
I don't believe it was 2 years, very optimistic lol
To this day i remember when my friend got my a box copy of Supreme Commander on my birthday. I was kinda suspicious, i rarely trust cheap games from supermarkets but i have to say he chose good. Next 3 days i spent totaly immersed, churning out fatboys and mavors. I really hope ill live to see the day of SC remaster, where we would get something akin to pc burning Crysis, full 8x8 battles on those massive 100x100 km maps with no slowdowns...
Been playing SCFA for about the 5th time since it came out. Each new computer/laptop, SC gets installed and played! For the 1st time I'm having 1000 unit battles with out any lag. Possibly my favourite game of all time!
It is amazing to hear of this game history from Chris Taylor.
I know right - very interesting guy to listen to
Supreme Commander please stay alive! 🙄 🙏
Thanks to FAF its still going strong
LOUD Mod is also another great addition to SupCom:FA that optimizes the game heavily, improves the AI and incorporates some popular mods kinda like FAF! No multiplayer lobby, but steam multiplayer works and its great fun with friends. Great video and really cool you got to interview Chris! I hope I get to meet him one day.
I'm watching this as a long-time Command & Conquer fan. I can't believe I haven't heard of this franchise before! I need to check it out. Both games and their expansions are in a bundle on Steam, so I want it now. I love the quote by the creator, "We don't make products; we make art."
I remember building a new computer for playing Sup Com and glad I did.
I play this game from time to time just to remember the good times I had. Thanks for making this.
My pleasure. Thank you for watching!
Hey, love your vid! 15:30 you recommend buying both even though the rule about only being able to play with seraphim online if you only bought FA was only true back in the GPG.net days. now on steam, you're allowed to play every race online with only FA. and, of course, the same applies for using steam FA with the FAF multiplayer client.
Oh awesome! Thanks for the tip mate :)
The soundtrack brings back so many memories. This and aoe are my favourite RTS games of all time
the only RTS game I could put alongside SupCom and not feel bad for the other game is Homeworld, THAT game was another genre masterpiece that should have defined where space RTS games were going, instead we got EAW's 2D plane and cinematic camera
@@trinalgalaxy5943 I'm not going to lie I forgot about homeworld, but yes I agree the 3D up and down movement makes the battles so much different to anything else. I still love Empire at War though especially with the Republic mod.
What a lovely dose of nostalgia! I loved TA & SC. My oldest son who is now in his early 20s cut his gaming teeth on games like MechWarrior 2, Age of Empres (another epic classic) as well as TA & SC. I think I still have SC sitting around & may just have to dust it off.
I still from time to time go back and play TA. So many memories of playing it LAN with my dad.
Wholesome :D
Very unfortunate that this series had an abrupt end.
:'(
Ouch... an RTS that you play in the cloud... I instantly lost all interrest in that project :c
And on mobile devices.... Hard pas on that.
It depends how it's done, it could in theory be rather interesting. Particularly if they decided to structure it around a large meta battle system, something like a sequel to the total annihilation boneyards addon - where winning or losing a battle has consequences in a wider campaign decided by players.
There have been some notable titles released in the last few years which run purely in the browser and stand alone as quality experiences so there is precedent in that sense. I rather like the idea of true cross platform titles. Especially if they can put all players on a relatively even playing field.
Constructing a truly engaging experience (graphics and controls, the physics system and so on) that competes with previous native RTS titles though... I'm not sure if that's possible with browser tech today.
I think the best we could hope for is a good game of a different type.
@@icewyrm No, streaming means dead on arrival. I feel sorry for Chris, but a lot of the problems he's had is due to stupid decisions.
Yeah, hard pass on that one brother
@@-JustHuman- Don't you guys have phones?
I remember being in middle school when I woke up in the middle of the night in the living room, with the G4TV channel on. As I woke up, I saw the the Supreme Commander trailer and was instantly hooked. I would constantly get on my DSL connection so I could check out the units on the GPG website as they released them, eating up the bits of lore they posted along with it. I was super excited and worked hard to scrape some money to have a "gaming" computer that could play it at a whopping... 18FPS on low. It didn't matter, I didn't care, I loved it. I played it for YEARS, and I am sure I have placed several thousand hours of game time in over the years before it faded off.
I don't say this lightly when I say it changed my life. I even made mods for that game, including a decently large modpack that, sadly wasn't able to be fully finished before it sadly had to be abandoned due to the team breaking up. Making those mods, that all started with wanting a cooler Cybran Battleship, made me go to college to hone my 3d Modeling, Animation, and programming. I got my current job as a 5 year software engineer at a major power company because of my skill in writing the language of supcom: lua. I owe this game a lot to my success.
In my spare time, I am working on my own RTS; slowly, methodically. I hope when it comes out, people can see some of the influences SupCom had on it, and on my life.
the clip from firefly almost made me drop a tear, what an undeserved fate for such a masterwork
It’s my boy. Supreme Commander
God speed you magnificent bastard!
I bloody love this game and everything it has to offer!
Me too! :D
I've always really wanted to sit down with Chris Taylor and pick his brain about the Dungeon Siege mythology. Probably my favorite game of all time.
Supcom was the reason I had to go out and buy the biggest graphics card my PC could handle. It was awesome, but FA was just that little bit better. I'll always love games like C&C, but supcom was in a league of its own. All the problematic mechanics and idiosyncrasies of games like Command & Conquer were patiently annihilated by the developers of supcom. No more micromanaging. True air to air combat. And finally...FINALLY, everything from units to landscape, to nuclear explosions were made to true scale. The fact that even GPG had to scale back the concept makes me wonder if this game can ever be matched. A big shout out to the modding community for keeping it alive!
Hell yeah dude - I agree! Still go back and play it to this day
Haha upgrading your PC to run the game with no slowdown and then realise its the game and not your PC, bad times!
@MikeProductions1000 does PA have more than 1 faction yet?
@MikeProductions1000 PA is the next logical step in RTS, but I just couldn't get past how blocky and crude the units looked. I watched a few LPs and read some reviews but never went out and tried it. And with my current job, I just can't set aside 3-4 hours to play a game like that very often any more. Maybe some day.
"For it's time Supreme Commander was massive in it's scale"
I dare you to name a bigger RTS. No, Planetary annihilation *isn't bigger* . It is still the biggest RTS to date.
PA has universe size, but SUPCOM FILLS its space with breadth and depth!
Sins of a solar empire might compare in scale. Try that one on steam.
The scale in PA is all sorts of wacky. The planets can barely be considered moons and the moons that are described as moons are incredibly small, almost to the point of simply being asteroids. The fact that going AROUND the planet is a viable strategy to attack someone shows how silly the scale is, some of the units would literally need to be built to take CURVATURE of a planet into account if their sizes are anything to go off.
Despite the silly scale, the game is a whole tub of fun. But Supreme Commander will always be my favorite RTS, I actually felt like I was commanding massive machines of war, especially because I could watch as it stomps trees (which if the comparison scales that people have posted online are to be believed, are actually VERY big trees) beneath its feet. The game felt much more close to home than the 'planets' in PA. I doubt any game in the near future will come anywhere close to Supreme Commander in scale, the only games that have managed to surpass it are space RTS's like Sins of a Solar Empire or Stellaris, but I personally feel that those hardly count.
@@trinalgalaxy5943 Remember CZAR block Mavor's shell from leveling the Paragon. :'(
What kind of RTS has that physics?
@@Weigazod The only game I hold above SupCom is Homeworld. it actually mattered how and where you positioned in 3D space in that game
Thank you for the history lesson and interviewing Chris. SupCom is a legend
My pleasure, thank you for watching!
Proper dual-screen games are so rare and most are just bad spanned attempts. The ability of SupCom to do most of what you wanted on both screens was so good that I cry every time I see a new RTS come out that is limited to a single screen. Still my favourite game to just zone out on!
Rare? can you name any other game that does dual screen other than just streched over 2 screens? i am actualy very curious about this because by (put in your deity of choice) i havent seen one at all. this game is the reason i started to use two screens back in the day. (why are you draggin two screens to a lan? Supcom!)
Supreme Commander is alive and well over at www.faforever.com. Join our community and learn why SupCom (and its expansion, Forged Alliance) is considered one of the best strategy games of all time.
I hope you don’t forget to mention that you can capture enemy engineers to gain access to their tech tree.
I almost always did that when i could in the campaign.
usually their engineers didnt survive, but their factories could be cut off from resources and easly taken!
Been a fan of supcom since release, still religiously watch Brink and Gyle here on youtube.
I was super excited by the idea of supcom 2. I remember hearing about its features - like flow field pathfinding, which was released 4 months before starcraft 2 was released touting the same feature!). But the thing that put me off SC2 was the visuals.
You can even see the problem just watching this video. Nothing is distinct. Buildings for any single faction look very much alike. The problem may be that they put *too* much detail in. Supcom 1 buildings and units are visually distinct (with a few minor exceptions) because of their simplicity. This lets you spend concentration on gameplay rather than having to figure out what's what. Supcom 2's attention to detail ultimately makes it more bland. Sure, you can zoom and and watch the neato mass extractor animations, but why? You will do that once, say "that's nice", and never really look at it again. From that point forward it just becomes visual pollution which harms the overall game experience.
I think the tech three had a similar problem. It's claimed to be simpler, but I really thought it was way more complicated. Supcom 1 is simple: 3 types of units (air, land, sea), each with three tiers, including engineering tiers, and experimentals as the cherry on the 3 layer cake. It's conceptually very easy to remember. The supcom 2 tech tree, on the other hand, is a web of weird and sometimes unintuitive dependencies, and also requires the management of a fourth resource (the other three being mass, energy and time). It also makes any particular upgrade less strategically significant, which means you don't get such well defined phases during the game. In supcom 1 the choice to move to tech 2 land comes with a strategic cost that has to be balanced against your tactical choices. In supcom 2 those strategic and tactical decisions get smeared out, making them less impactful and therefore less interesting. The extra detail does more harm than good.
Absolutely loved this mate, it's a great look into everything around SupCom. Gave me a bit of closure after all these years. Good job!
It's not gone, it's still there. FAF is still best RTS to date.
I loved supreme cammander so much. I used to play one match and then look at the game timer and it will be 2 hours long
and you actually played 3-4 hours because the game slowed down.
This game still brings cpu's to their knees. I look forward to the time when this type of scale of combat can be in mmos. some sort of command level guy pumping out thousands of bots, and players that can play heroes on the ground fighting with and against said bots.
I think the closest analog to sup com. Would be ashes of the singularity and etherium. For scale the wargaming, ruse, and steel division titles do work. Although I will say sup com is more complex than fa...most players don't know that units in vanilla sup com can vet!
I want a FASA Mechwarrior game that works that way - and have ever since MechCommander. The technology is there, but it's never going to happen.
@@fudgeweasel bf2 used to play a bit like that, and thats a fairly old game
I somehow never comprehended how utterly massive the units are, the tiny little Engineers are already bigger than the trees.
Yeah I know right! Every so often I'm like... oh, right, these things are MASSIVE
Favourite RTS of all time, thanks for bringing attention to it.
My pleasure!
That was a well-written retrospective, Zade. Well done. Interesting, informative, and accurate. And nice work getting Chris to comment. It's a delight to see and hear the creative mind behind my favourite RTS ever, Total Annihilation, in the flesh.
Thanks Andy - appreciate the kind words :)
So much respect to Chris and and you Zade.
I mainly got into Sup Com 2, and went back to Sup Com 1 with friends. We'd play it at almost EVERY lan party.
It was EASILY my favorite RTS series, and left a lasting love for mecha within many people.
Cheers for the great video.
Appreciate it mate! Awesome to hear the stories of the good ol days. I did similar things!
I was a Bone yards Core Commander in 1998 under Total Annihilation
I was a proud beta tester of Supreme Commander ten years later.
Cheers Chris. :)
I got the upgrading TA on GOG Galaxy, and have played dozens of times. (yes I played it when it first released). Tons of fun. Also own SC and SC2 on Steam. Played several times. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome! Thanks for watching :)
Supreme Commander Retrspective AND a facereveal in 1 video, damn son im honored :D
There has been a face reveal before (channel updates) - but I appreciate it nonetheless!
This is honestly one of the best retrospective's I have ever seen for a game, the fact that you actually got the mind behind the game to put some additional context into it raised this to the next level.
as someone who played this from 2009 onwards, this is a game me and multiple friends still come back to. It's so hard to find a 'real' strategy game now a days, where they all want to be something like Starcraft, or others that build around a 'competitive' scene. It's frankly aged well, simply because nothing else has actually chosen to listen to the design philosophy. I've seen a couple games attempt this, but then they fail to grasp the scope required to actually play the game. I'm so glad I got to see this video, because what it means to me is that many people understand just how good this game actually is, despite it's failure in 2012.
I feel as if nowadays devs are reluctant to create a grand supcom like rts because this design (being hardcore in nature) attracts a fairly small core audience compared to other "mainstream" rts titles. (Or at least as mainstream as they can get lol).
Out of the 3 friends I've convinced to try the game, 2 claimed that it was too complicated and time consuming for them to get really invested into and one had recently tried it once and was overwhelmed to say the least.
It's not that I think the game is too complicated for anyone to play, but for many the first impression discourages them from ever giving the game a fair shot.
One of the best RTS. Many unique mechanics, still love it!
Agreed - me too!
dat interview doe......you really stepped up the quality in this one. congrats my man
Crazy right! I still can't fully believe it lul. Cheers!
That soundtrack still gives me chills to this day
Man, your video was excellent. I`m from Brazil and Total Annihilation was the game that made me passionate with RTS and PC games. I bought TA even before had my first PC. I guarded the CDs (with the original magazine) more than 2 years before I could play it, because I played it at a friend`s and bought it as soon as I could hahahaha, was magical. Several years later I could play Supreme Commander, SupCom FA and SupCom 2... I`m a big, big fan of the series and of Chis Taylor. That guy is a true genius. I really don`t see myself not playing his games. Yesterday and today I played TA and SupCom 2 (steam versions) and I play every time I can. There are lots of players of TA at the world today.
TA Universe has a huge area for the fans and tons of projects ongoing. It`s a shame that people didn`t give these games the importance it deserve. I really can`t believe we don`t have big world championships of TA and SupCom. I play some of these ''famous'' games like LOL, StarCraft, CS-GO and others, but none of them worth more to me than TA and SupCom. Please, Chris, make a TA2 and a SupCom sequel, we need it :( and pls, never give up, the industry has to recognize your games. Players are kind of dumb. They prefer stupid games like CS-GO (a worst version of CS Source to me and full of cheaters) than intelligent games as TA and SupCom (are different styles of course, but nevertheless). Oh, you got one more subscriber for making that Master (Chris) appear, congrats!!!
At Brazil we had a great TA clan up to about 10 years ago (I`m 33 years old). It was called Anaconda`S. My nick was and still is SharkCode. Oh my, wonderful time at my life. We are a poor country and I remember when I played using a 56 bps dial-up connection to play TA with my teammates hahahaha... lags, crashes and other issues, but we never gave up. Patches, bugfixes, updates... thanks GOD that I live in these days. Thanks to all the players and developers who make everything on their range to make things improve.
Bring it on Chris, let`s make these games live FOREVER!!!
Thank you! Appreciate the kind words and your history :)
great video
loving your love of the games you show and the dedication to it even enough a developer interview
thank you
Thank you! Appreciate you watching :)
This was a really great video Zade, keep it up!
Thanks Sushi!
I have wonderful memories of playing TA with my brothers. Thanks for all your effort going into the making of this video.
Supreme commander and Warhammer are the games that really made me, watching as Supreme commander die so abruptly was genuinely sad to think that such a vast rts series was gone and that there wouldn't be a third installment of the series. It was truly gone too soon
Everyone should check out *Beyond-All-Reason* . It's a free to play fan made game heavily inspired by the Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander games. I was skeptical of it at first but it's actually a really amazing game! There's only two factions as of now but there are some 400+ distinct units in the game. The game is really well balanced and receives updates almost daily. The game looks beautiful too with many modern engine features that simply weren't possible back in the days of TA/SC. The game does have some rough edges (some of the UI in particular) but it's nothing that stops you from enjoying the game and I know the devs are always working to improve those aspects of the game.
I really hope some of you will try *Beyond-All-Reason* . You won't be disappointed!
so many fond memories of matches with 3 frames per minute xD This game will always have a special place in my heart
"How long have we been playing again? 4 hours? but the ingame clock only says 1h30min........ bah who needs sleep"
I have distinct memories of massive games doing a dreaded CTD after several hours of playing
Best RTSs ever. Total Annihilation was awesome, Kingdoms was strange but Zhon empire was really unique at the time, Supreme Commander was absolutely insane and Forged Alliance was a masterpiece. I look forward to his future projects and wish him well.
I got my first computer in 98 and Total Annihilation was included. I was young and didn't even understand English at the time but I got the basics off it and thought it was fun. Years later when I revisited it then I truly understood what a behemoth of a game it actually was, you had so many options and the scale was epic. When I started to play other RTS games then I finally grasped what a masterpiece it was, nothing came close it even many years later.
Best RTS ever made. Forged Alliance Forever keeps it alive nicely though.
Supreme Commander 2 is the best example that RTS games should not be developed with Consoles in mind.
If you can port it, that's good, but they are core PC gaming experiences.
I have had an intense love for this game since I first bought it. I knew when I saw it on the shelf those years ago that I was buying a gem that I would play for the longest time. Every now and then I take a break from my current games like Starcraft 2 and Total war games to play this beast of a game. The I find myself playing it for like a week or two or more before playing anything else again xd. The first Supreme Commander was my favorite. There really is nothing like that feeling of making a beautiful giant burst from the ocean waves to lay waste to your enemies, or sending in a fleet of troop carriers to an island with fighter and bomber escorts, landing them in the thick of battle to support a loosing engagement, bringing home a win. This game will live on for me as one of my great old homes to visit.
the box had great coverart inside showing an epic battle
Thank you for this video. I really wish Chris good luck on his journey!
Thanks for watching :)
Great video and interesting interview with Chris, I'm looking forward to what hes working on :D
Thank you!
Woha I saw 2 videos and you talked about my favourites games, incredible
I chose right then it seems! Thanks for watching mate :)
This was a fantastic video with great insight into the series. I was a long time total annihilation fan and launched into sup com as soon as it was released. It is the pinnacle of RTS in my humble opinion. What's great is that so many obviously share this sentiment. I really hope Chris Taylor can work his magic again someday and deliver a remake of this epic title.
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed
Bring me to tears the way you explained the things you can can do and the faction lol good musics too
Playing Supreme Commander Forged Alliance online in 2008 as been a wonderful experience, despite loosing most so many matchs ! it was brutal. It was easy to participate to community events, I even created maps.
This is art indeed, not a product. It is still relevant today ! Never forget.
\o7
You should play it again and return to that "amazing" times.
@@quigar3885 Actually I did. there's still surprinsingly a lot of people playing it. And the old maps have been saved. Though now a portion of the playerbase seem to play the same braindead ugly maps with one corridor or gap and barelly no texture these days which is weird.
You are right. Thats kinda wreid. But there is still lot of players who play the best map ever made-> Setons. Also its so sad, when people dont play map like 40x40km and bigger :/ .
Its almost 2020...and this video has made me go back and try the Supreme commander games that i never played back in the day.
(I was too busy with CandC...lol)
Hope you enjoy!
@@Zade_95 Hate to say...so far im disappointed. I started with the first supreme commander game and im finding it tedious and a bit boring. I feel more like the supreme mechanic than the commander. I hate how your character has to be the one to build and repair everything. I spend more time watching my slow as heck commander walking around building things than I do anything else. And then the building and the making of the units is painfully slow. For instance...I started playing first thing this am and I just now finished my second mission. I think as somebody who didnt play this when it came out I dont have the nostalgia glasses most do for this game. Its not horrible...but it in no way comes close to even the worst CandC game. (4 not included) I dont mind taking my time and building up defenses and my troops...but this game literally had me watching youtube while i sat for hours waiting for my units to be built...lol. Decent game so far...but painfully overrated....imho.
what you say about how long it takes to build units, you have to understand the way economy works in this game, which is unlike any CnC and most rts games, there is even another resource except for mass and energy in this game that no one mentions which is called build power (with build time being the cost of that resource for every unit/building) that every engineer and factory has different depending on tech lvl etc., it is even used in combat sometimes to reclaim enemy units with engineers if they are caught in open by some tanks with no units to help them
for example each t1 engineer builds 1 mass extractor in 12 seconds alone (and if you are not stalling resources) and uses mass and energy every second during its construction, but if 2 engineers build it they build it twice as fast for twice the resource per second cost (the total cost of unit is the same, but 2 engineers have twice the build power of 1, using twice as many resources per second to build it twice as fast), this goes for everything you build, with engineers assisting factories to build their units faster than they would alone, making it possible to build experimentals in seconds if your economy can support it and you have enough build power (engineers)
this is one of most difficult things in this game to learn and one of best and most beautifully designed that make it stand as the best rts ever, and once you learn it you will find every other economy system in an rts a joke compared to it
and btw forged alliance (standalone expansion) is simply better version, for example at start, in original you HAVE to build 3 power generators 3 mass extractors before anything else every match, in FA you start building a factory straight when it starts, original is more like a beta test of FA, with FA fixing all the problems and boring things like that, that they found (there are many more including balance of units), the thing that original is better for is campaign and music
@@delluminatis Agree completely......
Great video! Thx for making it!
Thank you for watching!
Excellent little documentary! And what a **GREAT** game - one of my all-time favourites! :)
Thank you!
Man, you are on a whole diferent level.I wished 1/10 of youtubes were so professional as you are. You make others content creators look like frauds.
You made a excent job on this video. Thank you and congratulations.
Hey I really appreciate the kind words - truly means a lot! Thank you very much for watching, and I'm glad you liked it :D
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is simply amazing.
Great docco! Really enjoyed watching the interview with Chris.
Cheers! Thanks for watching :)
if there was a supreme commander 3 you would probably find me glued to it