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by ThrowawayR2
2724 days ago
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> I see this time and time again. Game developer runs into one of the difficult subjects in computer science/programming. Dismisses the difficulty. Gets themselves into trouble. Blames the library/product/platform. Members of this particular team worked on the highly acclaimed Total Annihilation (1997) and Supreme Commander (2007) so inexperience or lack of technical expertise seems unlikely to be the cause here. |
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- In a 16-player game, each player can operate thousands of units across multiple planets orbiting a star, and afterwards, you can replay the match exactly within your own copy of the game.
- The planets themselves were mobile battlefields which could be destroyed, moved, and weaponized.
- The path-finding for those thousands of units crashing into an opposing army of thousands of units is smooth and there isn't total chaos on the field.
But the team also made some really questionable bets that ultimately doomed the title.
- Then, for some reason, they used an out-of-proc UI compositor to draw the 2D elements that would fork one process per layer IIRC and drop interaction events, and broke the tool that the players use to interact with the wonderful simulation.
- Then, for some worse reason, they launched it like this, and reaped the terrible early reviews that doomed the title. Even after patches resolved the issues, the long-term damage was done.