Supreme Commander beta

[snedger]

Been reading the gaspoweredgames forum for soupcomm and it is very nasty in there.
It must be receiving posts from multi parallel universes as there are an incredible diversity of reported minimum specs.
e.g. core 2 boosts of over 300% on BIG matches.

Smells very much like the Cavedog forums when TA: Kingdoms came out and even the toppest machine of the day could only barely run the game. Took a couple of major patches to fix the game. By that time nearly everyone had abandoned ship and the game died.

[The Boy]

saw the trailer on sunday for this, looked amazing! I decided to bring my computer upgrade forward from june to friday. Byebye degree.

[Steve B]

I decided to bring my computer upgrade forward from june to friday. Byebye degree.

[GeorgeTuk]

You owe Smokey21 £10.... Try play 3v3, 1000 unit limit ona 20km x 20km map. Your PC will beg for mercy.

It's like this. You need a decent CPU (read dual core) to play a 2v2 or more game on a decent scale (20kmx20km 1000 units each), same with RAM. 1.5Ghz minimum.

Videocard if you set details to low is acceptable to be fairly low these days. A X800XT would suffice on low details with shadows off. It would still be a slide show during large battle though.

A slow CPU slows the game down, ie game time 5 minnutes, real world time 25 minutes. Like everything's moving in glue.

A slow Graphics Card and fast CPU, the game runs more or less real time, but the FPS will be low during intense scenes (although I think a graphics card is more negociable than a CPU and Ram in this game as far as I'm concerned).

A major increase in performance was implemented in the latest beta build and I doubt it'll increase much more I sense that was the optimisation mostly completed. My specs outlined above are based on this more improved version.

Before no network of super dooper PCs could run a 4v4 acceptably.

Are you quoting this on the final product + 1 patch? The game is not released yet and I believe Spud1 based the bet on the final product not on its current build. Thanks for the info though.

[redsky009]

They are probably working out the specs now and will publish them in a week, either that or you only have two weeks to wait to fidn out the official specs. Absolute min probably wont be that high, but if you want it pretty at high res you'll need a beefy machine.

anyway not long to wait now. the PC Gamer with the review should be out in a few days and the specs could well be in their review...

[Veles]

By that time nearly everyone had abandoned ship and the game died.

TA died? Theres still a massive TA community.

From my experience of the beta, my PC can run it adequately.

I run it, dual monitors, both at 1280x1024, max settings, but no AA (I don't see the point, huge performance drop for very little improvement at that res) on my rig;
X2 3800, 2Gb RAM, 256Mb 7800GTX.

Worked perfectly fine on one monitor with that, but I havn't been in any big battles with 2 yet.

Smokey, I think your being a little optimistic about running that game on your PC with those settings and resolution, but we'll see, your res is very high. You will be able to play it though, and thats the main thing that matters really.

But anyway it doesn't really matter, hands up anyone who could play Doom 3 and HL2 on max settings and high res when they were first released. I'm guessing not a particularly high percentage of Hexus' members could claim that, and an even smaller percentage of all the people who played the game could say it either.

Multi-core machines will make a big difference with this game, it IS optimised for them in mind, even if the majority of the gaming population don't have one. Thats the way it's always worked, thats why we had the stupidly high settings in Doom 3, which at that point in time, most gaming PCs had little hope of playing it at those levels of quality, but now they're laughable.

[snedger]

TA died? Theres still a massive TA community.

No not TA, my post states TA: Kingdoms, which never really caught on.

[cptwhite_uk]

My single core Athlon @ 2.7Ghz was just about acceptable for a decnet 2v2 game. That should give you an idea of performance.

There's two things we're talking about here: FPS and game speed...

A decent FPS won't be too hard to achieve even on a modest system. Like I said medium/low settings will give a decent framerate on a X800XT or equivalent, and a half decent CPU and amount of RAM naturally (3Ghz P4 . Athlon 64 3000+ / 1Gb RAM)

What the above outlined system will not cope with is a 2v2 game with lots of units. The processing power required to calculate 3000+ units in real-time will over-stretch the system and the game will slow down as a result into "slow-mo mode". This may run smooth (although frame rates would suffer anyway on a medium sized game with that system), but it will not run quickly. To keep the game at a decent speed on larger games, you need dual core, I'm not being funny it's just true I've seen both sides of the coin on decent PC's have so I know I'm pretty much right on this one you'll just have to trust me. A high spec single core will run a 2v2 game, but is certainly not up to playing a 3v3 at a decent speed.

Edit:
Let's also remember a X800XT is a two and half year old card! The pentium4 3.0Ghz even older....this is pretty low end spec by today's standards so expecting anything more than the bare minimum on a cutting edge game is being a bit rediculous. If you've still got a system around this spec and you're playing new PC games, you really should be looking to get yourself an upgrade anyway. An Athlon X2 4200+, 939 motherboard and 7900GS can all be yours for about £230 these days. Not big bucks if you're a PC gamer...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=499273 = £107 7900GS 256Mb
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=505239 = £94 Athlon X2 4200+ Retail (dual core @ 2.2Ghz)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=434319 = £31 Asus A8V-VM-SE

[Veles]

No not TA, my post states TA: Kingdoms, which never really caught on.

Whoops, didn't read it properly I personally prefered TA: K over TA actually. Never really liked TA that much for some reason.

[Fatboy40]

Did we have to soil this thread by mentioning TA: K ?.

I feel very dirty now (stinking pile of **** of a game).

If SC comes even marginaly close to matching the gameplay and longevity of TA then I'll be a happy man, I wonder if they'll bring out modding/development tools for it ?.

[snedger]

Did we have to soil this thread by mentioning TA: K ?.

I feel very dirty now (stinking pile of **** of a game).

I was just noticing how similar the soupcomm threads are now to the TA:K threads then.
And how it seems to be shaping up that perhaps Chris Taylor has spawned another too ambitious project.
But, there are so many contradictions out there - check out the specs that wikipedia have divined for the beta - they are very low.
BTW I still like playing TA:K - totally mindless RTS fun. I think that the prismatic mirror is the best weapon ever invented for RTS.

[Smokey21]

Spud1, i seriously doubt you will run it at acceptable frame rates at that resolution, infact im expecting 10quid soon.

Of course the game 'will work', but it will most likely be so slow when plenty of units start to appear, that it will be unplayable. When you zoom in things can get hairy.

Ill be sure to pump this thread, when SC owns your PC's. A P4 at 3Ghz is gonna cry.

[Nigelz]

£18 pre-order, great price!! Looks like my PC upgrade will have to be sooner than I thought, may just get by.

[redsky009]

If SC comes even marginaly close to matching the gameplay and longevity of TA then I'll be a happy man, I wonder if they'll bring out modding/development tools for it ?.

Chris Taylor has said in a few interviews that they have built the game with modding in mind and should be releasing mod sdks and the like after the games release... should be all good

[redsky009]

Cool, the demo is coming out today at 17:30 GMT

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/s...clk=newlyadded

[kalniel]

Nice! Will wait for the US to fall asleep before downloading it though, depending on the size.