[roenxi]

Opinion time! Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game but was held back by its ambition to be a novel engine. The one that got my nerves on edge was they have a zoom mechanic where the strategic map was a weird shape - there were multiple worlds and each world was spherical rather than a 2d grid. It did terrible things to the gameplay because suddenly orienting the map was a challenge. It was really well implemented and impressive visually; but unfortunately it made it remarkably easy to get lost. It was a great case study for why so many wargames go with the unimaginative "rectangular table" setup.

Things like that coloured my view of PA. They have an interesting engine but the consensus back when it was released seemed to be that they didn't manage an engaging game. I got the impression the engine was consuming too much of their attention.

[forrestthewoods]

> Planetary Annihilation was close to being a good game

PA: Titans is 85% positive on Steam with over 10,000 reviews. It's objectively a good game!

> I got the impression the engine was consuming too much of their attention.

I think you have the order of operations wrong.

Having multiple, spherical battlefields was arguably a mistake. It absolutely limited the game's audience and made controlling things much more confusing and difficult.

But you have to remember this game started as a Kickstarter. We didn't have a prototype, just a vision. The game was sold on multiple planets of combat. There was no way we could have possibly changed the game from multiple spheres to a flat 2D plane after raising $2.2 million on KS.

In fact I'd argue there were multiple "bad ideas" that we were forced to ship because the community decided they were PROMISED those features. Sometimes those promises were things like the core vision sold on KS. But sometimes the features were small things casually mentioned as ideas being considered. Managing community expectations is very difficult!

PA 1.0 was a bit a flop for reasons. But PA: Titans was quite good. The game was shipped on a custom engine in just 2 years, or 3 years for Titans. In hindsight it's one of the most impressive team achievements of my career. I don't know how we did it.

[jfjdkfnjrhr]

I bought grew up with Total Annihilation and tbh Planetary Annihilation is a step backwards...

I still play TA ...

[zbrozek]

I also still play TA from time to time. It is kind of annoying that if your screen resolution is big enough to display the entire map at once that it crashes.

[Buttons840]

I have two perspectives on games:

1) Games are meant to trigger the imagination which is fun. In this sense, Planetary Annihilation looks successful.

2) Games are a computer interface that should be fun to interact with. In this sense, Planetary Annihilation looks like an extreme failure. Managing battles on multiple planets in real-time sounds incredibly frustrating and the often overlooked aspect of actually interacting with the game would be horrible.

I always found StarCraft limiting, it didn't excite my imagination. I couldn't understand why Starcraft 2 was (and still is?) the most successful RTS game. You fight with 10s of units and you can't zoom out; where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination? Then I realized StarCraft was an game about user interface, and the user interface is pretty good. Select units, click them around, watch and click the mini-map, keep it simple and responsive. It's under appreciated how fun it is to simply select a few units and click them across the screen.

StarCraft isn't my favorite, but the subtle user interactions in the game are limited but not frustrating. Whereas Planetary Annihilation always looked like a game where user interactions have fewer limits, but a lot of frustration.

[rcxdude]

One thing that SC2 gets right which is endlessly frustrating when trying to play most other RTS games is how the units react to repeated similar commands: if you click a destination and then adjust that command slightly, the units don't miss a beat in their movement, and just adjust their course slightly (SC2 being the kind of game that it is, SC2 players will often just spam that command with only minor adjustments). In most other RTs games I've played, that second command will often recalculate the movement of the selected units sufficiently differently that it at least slows them down, and spam clicking will just cause them to derp out completely, making unit movement a frustrating task.

(To say nothing of Supcom's annoying habit of units setting off in the opposite direction. Especially irritating for your ACU when trying to beat a hasty retreat, which arguably shouldn't even have the vehicle movement mechanics which causes this)

[chainingsolid]

"where's the spectacle to trigger my imagination" Please see Supreme Commander. Its a regular 3D rts map so its easy to navigate, you get ALL the zoom, and most stuff gets bigger (in size & qty) as the match goes on till either someone wins or no one in the map can mentally manage it all!

[Buttons840]

I've played it. I prefer the open-source game Beyond All Reason which runs better on my computer.

And yeah, that was an implicit comparison I was making, I would look at games like SupCom and wonder why StarCraft was more popular, and thus my previous comment.

[wormlord]

It was definitely lacking in depth and strategy. Battles took so much effort to manage, that for normal skill level players the game was more about turtling up your planet and hitting an exponential growth curve so that you were basically invincible, then using a super weapon to end the stalemate. Either that or ending the game within the first few minutes with a well-optimized rush.

However, I don't think I have seen a dev team flex their engine-developing muscles as much since in a game. It's clear that a team of Uber-talented (pun intended) people with a passion for their craft set out to use a lot of cool technologies, and I think that's worth something by itself.

[ickyforce]

> each world was spherical (...) suddenly orienting the map was a challenge

The other downside was the fact that it was possible to assault arbitrary points - e.g. drop units from orbit in the middle of enemy base. It required much more awareness about the whole map. In 2D game one could mostly focus on front lines and choke points.

[InDubioProRubio]

I can imagine the discussions to be had in the dev-kitchen - between we go natural on zoom out - or we start a projection war right there, right then..

MentalGen choose your weapon: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/977:_Map_Projecti...

[scotty79]

Dyson Sphere Program after Dark Fog Update is halfway there. It has only flying units and static defense.