Reverse-Engineering a Frame of "Supreme Commander"

An anonymous reader writes: When Supreme Commander was released 8 years ago, it redefined the RTS genre, with its real-time strategic zoom and its epic battles involving several thousands of units at once, while bringing a whole generation of PCs to their knees. Today an article revisits the process of rendering a frame of the game by reverse-engineering the API calls made to the GPU. All the techniques and algorithms are explained in detail, many of them still used in current video games.

What I remembered of Supreme Commander...

[__aaclcg7560]

The easiest way to kill the enemy commander is have a large force storming the front line, drawing away the forces surrounding the enemy commander, and then send in a specialized force from behind to take out the enemy commander. After doing that a few times, I lost interest in the game.

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[ryanmetcalf]

Luckily the community has carried on the Supreme Commander franchise with new updates and a software set that does allow for saving multiplayer replays and even spectating others. http://www.faforever.com/ [faforever.com]

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[Eloking]

I'm surprised that you summarize this awesome game like this. Except for a few small and open map, you can't really use this strategy (and it's easily countered by any equally skilled player).

My personal favorite was always a map called Drake's Ravine (http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Drake%27s_Ravine). Basically two elevated base separated by a huge ravine that favour defense and where you need to control that ravine and it's resource to gain an edge. Again a skilled player the game almost always reach end-ga

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[__aaclcg7560]

I only play against the A.I., not human players. Otherwise, I'm the guy who gets wiped in the first 15 minutes of the game.

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[__aaclcg7560]

As Clint Eastwood once said, "A man got to know his limitations." Hence, I don't play against human players because it will be game over in 15 minutes. A lesson that I learned in Age of Empires.

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[Nemyst]

That's something you failed to mention in your initial post, giving the impression that the game had very flawed balance or mechanics and that there was no depth to the gameplay and strategy beyond this one, simplistic method. That it works against AI should surprise precisely nobody, but you've only demonstrated that you're smarter than your computer (and even then, only a tiny bit, for you repeated the same strategy over and over instead of attempting other fun strategies).

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[__aaclcg7560]

Good point. I thought I mentioned the AI. Then again, I only play against the AI in single-player mode and I never played multiplayer mode. As a professional video game tester for six years, the game is broken if I can use same strategy over and over again to defeat the AI. (i.e., not enough variety to keep the player off balance). Since I'm no longer being paid to play video games, I'm not obligated to slug through levels after levels of the same AI behavior.

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[__aaclcg7560]

Is that you, Caesar?

It redefined the RTS genre??

[Anonymous Coward]

How young are you? It was Total Annihilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (a close to 20 year old game) with nicer graphics.
Total Annihilation made the RTS world what it is. It was one of the very few Real Time STRATEGY games, in a world of misnamed Real Time TACTICAL games. You look at Star Craft and it is entirely about tactics.

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[rockmuelle]

Mod parent up. TA (done by the same people as Supcom) was the Ur-game in this genre. Still one of the best games of all time, IMHO.

This.

[waspleg]

Mod parent up. Supreme Commander is a shadow of TA's greatness (and the recent remake is very VERY distant 4th, I'm counting TA:Kingdoms as 2nd).

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[Chris Mattern]

First thing I thought of. "It redefined the RTS genre, with its real-time strategic zoom and its epic battles involving several thousands of units at once"? Total Annihilation did that, years earlier.

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[Chris Mattern]

Well, Total Annihilation 3. Total Annihilation 2 was Kingdoms.

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[Anubis IV]

Without fiddling with config files, you could boost it from the default of 250 to 1000 per side, as I recall. There was a secret hotkey to do it, just the same as there was a secret hotkey to enable skirmishes/multiplayer with up to 10 players.

Re:It redefined the RTS genre??

[CaseCrash]

I guess it would be stupid to say "Did you even read the article?" on slashdot.

"Total Annihilation" are literally the first two words in the article.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[rallytales]

Total Annihilation took RTS to a whole new level back in 1997 and Supreme Commander is more than just it's spiritual successor: the same designer was behind both games as well as the Dungeon Siege series - Chris Taylor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )

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[phantomfive]

If you think Starcraft has no strategy, you should watch this strategy guide [youtube.com]. That link really helps to see the depth of strategy involved, between units that are quick but weak (like cavalry), and an army that is powerful but slow. Different army compositions, etc.

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[mjwx]

How young are you? It was Total Annihilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (a close to 20 year old game) with nicer graphics.
Total Annihilation made the RTS world what it is. It was one of the very few Real Time STRATEGY games, in a world of misnamed Real Time TACTICAL games. You look at Star Craft and it is entirely about tactics.

Those of us who are old enough to remember know that SupCom was essentially a modern day remake of Total Annihilation.

TA suffered from some huge, glaring UI problems (specifically around hotkeys, which are essential when playing an RTS). However for proper stratergy you need to look beyond RTS to turn based strategy. Games like Civ make SupCom and TA look minuscule in scope.

Spring (TA clone+)

[Anonymous Coward]

If you liked Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, check out SpringRTS (springrts.com). It's an open-source engine that has a number of games, several of which are very similar to the original TA (e.g., Balanced Annihilation and Tech Annihilation), and a few others that are a little different (e.g. Zero-K).

RTS...

[EmeraldBot]

C&C was my bread and butter series, Red Alert 2 and Generals are among my favorite games of all time. Red Alert 2 in particular was pretty well balanced multiplayer, and I'm sure there's still a community out there playing it competitively.

Warzone 2100 [wz2100.net] is a game you must check out too sometime, it's got an extremely interesting history behind it. Once a Playstation (not Playstation 2 or Playstation 3, just Playstation) game, it became an open-source PC game after the devs gave out the source code; I can't recall another game that's ever gone that route. Although it's in a bit of a slump in terms of development right now, it's got a small but dedicated community that's doing some fascinating work. In particular, since the game makes it so easy to change out the AI for an opposing side, it's got some extraordinary AI addons that actually play really well, and I haven't seen another RTS with the same focus on AI. I highly recommend you check it out if you ever feel bored on a weekend or so; it's definitely worth it.

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[desdinova 216]

it was originally released on the PC as well.

For those interested... Forged Alliance Forever

[maugle]

Forged Alliance Forever is a multiplayer mod and update to the Supreme Commander standalone expansion Forged Alliance. It gives the old game new life with community support, balance patches, and an online multiplayer lobby (the only one I'm aware of after the death of GPG),

Also, you can watch casts of some of the more interesting matches on YouTube. My favorite caster, who introduced me to FAF with his videos, is Gyle [youtube.com].

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[Shadow of Eternity]

Having been on the GPG forums I don't know if I trust them any more than the original developers to put out balance patches. They're as obsessed as TFC and Tribes 2 players were with their arbitrary "gentleman's rules" about how the game ought to be played.

Tried SC, tried FA.

[ThePhilips]

Tried SC, tried FA.

Was somewhat disappointed, and in a sentimental rush came back to the original - TA (and TA Kingdoms) - which are still are fantastic games even by modern standards.

P.S. Also, proportional unit sizes suck.