There's plenty of cause for celebration at the Washington-based Uber Entertainment today, as the Monday Night Combat developer's recent Kickstarter project has just become the third highest-funded game in Kickstarter's history.
The studio's campaign for its new RTS, Planetary Annihilation, has concluded with more than $2,200,000 earned – putting the game well above its original $900,000 goal. It's also the fourth game on Kickstarter to earn a full seven figures.
The other games that have reached the seven figure landmark are Double Fine Adventure ($3.3 million earned), Wasteland 2 ($2.9 million earned), and Shadowrun Returns ($1.8 million earned). The upcoming Ouya console, while not technically a game, also passed that threshold with more than $8.5 million earned.
As for Planetary Annihilation, Uber says the game will launch on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and will focus on large-scale battles and interstellar combat. Many Uber veterans also worked on Cavedog Entertainment's Total Annihilation, and the studio says this new game will serve as a spiritual successor to that 1997 classic.
Since Uber's game has earned more than double its initial Kickstarter goal, the studio has promised to use those extra funds to further expand the game by adding more units, maps, and a full orchestral score.
But you can see why it's raised that amount just by watching the video, it looks like the kind of game I would want to play, fun/retro style but 3D, strategy, what's not to like. The only issue is going to be how good the GUI is to control all of it, it could live and die on how easy (or not) it is to make all that fun stuff happen, also personally I would of preferred to of seen it on the xbox.
I donated a dollar to this project but no more because I prefer to play on console and wont actually buy the game when it releases unless I can get a console version.
The GUI is one place Im confident they will get right. TA practically invented massive queuing in unit commands and structure building. Supreme Commander improved it in every way and had a brilliant multi windowed easy zoom views of the battle field. After playing it for any amount of time all other RTSs feel claustrophobic.
My major worries would be on skirmish AI, supcoms wasnt the best though it did get much much better. Also the galactic war setting I hope works for single player quite well. I know theyve said more than once single player isnt something they are concentrating on too much but I still hope for a pretty decent experience on that side of things.
The problem is it's by the same devs who worked on supcom and demigod, both of which were broken on release. I have serious doubts given the kinds of projects they've worked on. They hope to do this in a year on ~2 million? That's just not going to happen. Supcom had 10 million, supcom 2 had 5million. This game is not going to be very deep.
Supcom had tactical zoom but it also put too much management on the player and not enough time was spent enjoying the audio visuals. There is such a thing as too many units. Many of the decisions in traditional RTS are redundant, all you can do is tell scripted units to move and build buildings. It's obvious why RTS has been pushed to niche status while DOTA and League of legends rose to power doing more numbers then tradtional RTS (outside starcraft) could hope to ever achieve.
SupCom wasnt broken on release, it was criticized for needing a beast of a computer to run (Which was true but my ol system still got me through alright.) but it wasnt broken.
(SupCom2 was, its efforts to streamline itself for the console market pretty much broke its resource system which would tie itself in knots and was later patched, that wasnt actually designed by the same people.)
Incidentally Total Annihilation is there finest works and was made while they were in a smaller studio without the resources that they had in SupCom so your financial evaluation is meaningless.
As for the rest of the post... If you want to have a close up view of pretty units, play another game. If you dont want macro RTS, play another game. If you think there can be too many units when the fan base and mods for every predecessor has aimed for thousands _more_ units, play another game. If you want to play DOTA and League of legends you go do that. This isnt constructive criticism, its just inaccurate whining about games you clearly dont like.
2.2 million dollars worth of people want this, why on earth would you feel the need to tell them the game they want is crappy? Personally Im not a fan of point and click adventures but I didnt go and complain on articles with regard to Double Fine Adventure because I know a lot of people do like them and Im glad they got the funding together for the game that they want.
Supcom was broken on release, the factions were mirrors of each other and the build times for things were atrocious. Not to mention the massfab spam.
You are a completely and totally ignorant TA fan who never played these games obviously. The multiplayer community was a ghost town because the game was so broken in so many key areas no one wanted to play it.
TA was a good game for the time it was released, but supcom/fa? you have to be smoking crack to believe that nonsense. As for your insult "if you want a close of view of pretty units". Think of how much money is spent on graphics that will never be seen from high up. In TA they were stretchin it but had unique art style (for the time). In Supcom/FA you can't even see anything from a moderate zoom its all just icons. You're sinking all that money into the graphics when they become irrelevant. Why spend the money on graphics at all then if no one thinks graphics are important? You sound like a complete gaming illiterate.
This is just a news bit on them raising money, I have my doubts they can produce anything worthwhile on 2 million given complexity of RTS and the constant disasters these members have been involved in. Demigod had broken net play on release that is still awful and not fixed to this day. So please spare us your ignorance.
Wow... you really didnt take on board the be nicer thing did you.
Ive played all the games quite extensively thanks, and am aware of there flaws, SupCom just wasnt broken, it had minor bugs and some balancing issues that all RTSs see. Anyone can look up the history for themselves.
It wasnt an insult, but the point seems to have gone straight over your head. TA, SupCom and now Planetary Annihilation are not and have never been about being up close combat or any of the other factors you pointlessly lay in to. They are unashamedly about macro, large scale combat. It is not being gaming illiterate to think someone who has a lot of time to spread vitriol about games they dont like should leave it alone and go enjoy whatever genres they prefer.
Nor is it ignorant to think that your generally unpleasant nature should maybe be kept under wraps instead of needlessly spreading your hate here.
So try again, be nicer. Honestly, you might feel a little less venomous.
It's obvious you're clueless. I played these games at a competitive level and their multiplayer communities were ghost towns a month after release. To have such a small multiplayer community SAYS SOMETHING IS WRONG with the game fundamentally otherwise more people would be playing it.
You're just so wrong its not even funny. You're a casual player so you can't even begin to understand the issues.
I'm not really sure what you talking about, because lots of peeps still play FA to this day, competetively, including sponsored tournaments and such, there is pretty active moding/maping community too. Afaik GPG dropped it's support for the game, so fans had to come up with their own multiplayer system, and that truly shows their dedication.
SupCom: Forged Alliance is probably most played RTS with friends for me. While 1st SupCom had initial problems, and SupCom2 isn't even something worth comparing to Total Annihilation, Forged Alliance was excelent with everything it did, I hope these guys will release excelent game with the scale that rivals FA's.
My major worries would be on skirmish AI, supcoms wasnt the best though it did get much much better. Also the galactic war setting I hope works for single player quite well. I know theyve said more than once single player isnt something they are concentrating on too much but I still hope for a pretty decent experience on that side of things.
Supcom had tactical zoom but it also put too much management on the player and not enough time was spent enjoying the audio visuals. There is such a thing as too many units. Many of the decisions in traditional RTS are redundant, all you can do is tell scripted units to move and build buildings. It's obvious why RTS has been pushed to niche status while DOTA and League of legends rose to power doing more numbers then tradtional RTS (outside starcraft) could hope to ever achieve.
(SupCom2 was, its efforts to streamline itself for the console market pretty much broke its resource system which would tie itself in knots and was later patched, that wasnt actually designed by the same people.)
Incidentally Total Annihilation is there finest works and was made while they were in a smaller studio without the resources that they had in SupCom so your financial evaluation is meaningless.
As for the rest of the post... If you want to have a close up view of pretty units, play another game. If you dont want macro RTS, play another game. If you think there can be too many units when the fan base and mods for every predecessor has aimed for thousands _more_ units, play another game. If you want to play DOTA and League of legends you go do that. This isnt constructive criticism, its just inaccurate whining about games you clearly dont like.
2.2 million dollars worth of people want this, why on earth would you feel the need to tell them the game they want is crappy? Personally Im not a fan of point and click adventures but I didnt go and complain on articles with regard to Double Fine Adventure because I know a lot of people do like them and Im glad they got the funding together for the game that they want.
Or in a nutshell, be nicer.
Supcom was broken on release, the factions were mirrors of each other and the build times for things were atrocious. Not to mention the massfab spam.
You are a completely and totally ignorant TA fan who never played these games obviously. The multiplayer community was a ghost town because the game was so broken in so many key areas no one wanted to play it.
TA was a good game for the time it was released, but supcom/fa? you have to be smoking crack to believe that nonsense. As for your insult "if you want a close of view of pretty units". Think of how much money is spent on graphics that will never be seen from high up. In TA they were stretchin it but had unique art style (for the time). In Supcom/FA you can't even see anything from a moderate zoom its all just icons. You're sinking all that money into the graphics when they become irrelevant. Why spend the money on graphics at all then if no one thinks graphics are important? You sound like a complete gaming illiterate.
This is just a news bit on them raising money, I have my doubts they can produce anything worthwhile on 2 million given complexity of RTS and the constant disasters these members have been involved in. Demigod had broken net play on release that is still awful and not fixed to this day. So please spare us your ignorance.
Ive played all the games quite extensively thanks, and am aware of there flaws, SupCom just wasnt broken, it had minor bugs and some balancing issues that all RTSs see. Anyone can look up the history for themselves.
It wasnt an insult, but the point seems to have gone straight over your head. TA, SupCom and now Planetary Annihilation are not and have never been about being up close combat or any of the other factors you pointlessly lay in to. They are unashamedly about macro, large scale combat. It is not being gaming illiterate to think someone who has a lot of time to spread vitriol about games they dont like should leave it alone and go enjoy whatever genres they prefer.
Nor is it ignorant to think that your generally unpleasant nature should maybe be kept under wraps instead of needlessly spreading your hate here.
So try again, be nicer. Honestly, you might feel a little less venomous.
It's obvious you're clueless. I played these games at a competitive level and their multiplayer communities were ghost towns a month after release. To have such a small multiplayer community SAYS SOMETHING IS WRONG with the game fundamentally otherwise more people would be playing it.
You're just so wrong its not even funny. You're a casual player so you can't even begin to understand the issues.
I'm not really sure what you talking about, because lots of peeps still play FA to this day, competetively, including sponsored tournaments and such, there is pretty active moding/maping community too. Afaik GPG dropped it's support for the game, so fans had to come up with their own multiplayer system, and that truly shows their dedication.