Planetary Annihilation Plans To Come To Linux

[Loafers]

linux client is out

download

[Kamikaze]

Very excited to see how this game will turn out.
If they can make the interface simple and fun enough to use even with all the functions they're building into the game then this might just become my new favourite RTS!

Oh and I love how seriously Linux users are considered as an audience for gaming projects on kickstarter. So awesome

[elanthis]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts/posts/295069

Congrats, Phoronix managed make it on the list as the 17th most supportive site on the 'Net for Planetary Annihilation so far!

[elanthis]

Yes, Total Annihilation and the Supreme Commander series are basically the same games. TA is essentially SupCom 0. AFAIK, what happened is some or at least one of the developers working on Total Annihilation transferred over to making SupCom 1. You can tell because they used the exact same AI code, I'm sure modified a bit. If you played both games as much as I have, you can easily tell.

There is no code shared between TA and SC. Also, completely different people designed and wrote the AI for each game.

History lesson time!

Cavedog created Total Annihilation, designed by Chris Taylor. Chris later formed Gas Powered Games and brought some other folks from Cavedog. As the rights to TA were not held by GPG, they made Supreme Commander. The rights to SC were sold off to Square Enix some time back, hence why SC2 was published by Square. A very large portion of the folks at Uber are ex-GPG employees, some of them having been at Cavedog as well. It's worth noting that a lot of the Cavedog folks were also ex-Square employees from back before they closed their Seattle offices.

SC was a completely from the ground up new engine. SC2 also used a completely different AI engine than SC. The lead AI engineer for SC (who was not part of the AI team for TA) is currently at Uber, although he's still working on Super Monday Night Combat rather than on Planetary Annihilation, last I heard. PA will of course share zero code with TA, SC, or SC2, as Uber does not own rights to any of those games or codebases.

[Yfrwlf]

I've never played TA, but I love Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance which is apparently somewhat of a spiritual sequel to TA. If that's even slightly true, I'll be putting my money into this kickstarter.

On a semi related note: I'm soooo sick of all the FPS games in Linux... I'm far more of an RTS man. There are some FPS's I like a lot, and fortunately L4D2 is one of them.

Yes, Total Annihilation and the Supreme Commander series are basically the same games. TA is essentially SupCom 0. AFAIK, what happened is some or at least one of the developers working on Total Annihilation transferred over to making SupCom 1. You can tell because they used the exact same AI code, I'm sure modified a bit. If you played both games as much as I have, you can easily tell.

I'm sick of FPSs too, Linux needs the best FPSs (like L4D2, Serious Sam, etc), some more RTSs like this one to join Oil Rush, and some goddamn RPGs. I know FPSs are easier to jump into because there is basically no complex gameplay involved, but I like deep, complex, and involved games, if done right.

[Yfrwlf]

Pledged $100 for the super collectors edition box thingy as fast as I could.

i.e. I did a

too

[GreatEmerald]

Being able to donate funds is not the point. That is already possible with Amazon Payments (see here: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/amaz...ts-and-us-only). The point is being able to start campaigns to receive funding. As long as non-US citizens cannot do this, the whole system seems a bit unfair. We're allowed to give, but only a priviledged few are allowed to receive.

I don't see much of a problem there. What they are doing is more or less equal to export. You can pledge worldwide - and you get the products, also worldwide. That's exactly how international companies based in the US work, after all.
That said, it would be nice if anyone could start projects there - but then there is nothing stopping people from creating local kickstarter-like services. Set up a company, create a webpage offering the same services in your continent, and there you go, problem solved.

[curaga]

The more I think about it, the more I think the reason lies somewhere else. As long as the company itself stays US only they shouldn't have to worry too much about other nation's laws (unlike Amazon, who have local subsidiaries everywhere). However, they would potentially be sending large sums of money to places outside the US. Which means they might end up funding the wrong kind of people. Oh hay, have you heard about my suicide squad Kickstarter?

Or god forbid, some evil terrorist organization like *cough* wikileaks. Now that Uncle Sam wouldn't like at all.

[Wildfire]

This is just an educated guess, but taxes and upholding region-specific laws is one big possible reason. It's a pain in the freaking ass to deal with, and they could get royally screwed if they mess up at all. Especially for something like Kickstarter, which I believe (could be wrong) is taking donations on behalf of others rather than directly selling a product, and hence have a lot more crazy regulations and such to deal with.

The more I think about it, the more I think the reason lies somewhere else. As long as the company itself stays US only they shouldn't have to worry too much about other nation's laws (unlike Amazon, who have local subsidiaries everywhere). However, they would potentially be sending large sums of money to places outside the US. Which means they might end up funding the wrong kind of people. Oh hay, have you heard about my suicide squad Kickstarter?

[plague]

Being able to donate funds is not the point. That is already possible with Amazon Payments (see here: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/amaz...ts-and-us-only). The point is being able to start campaigns to receive funding. As long as non-US citizens cannot do this, the whole system seems a bit unfair. We're allowed to give, but only a priviledged few are allowed to receive.

There are ways around it..

Three Gates is a Swedish game company, based in Visby on the small island Gotland, and they successfully created a kickstarter campaign by having their marketing officer who lives in the US set up the campaign.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ash-action-gam

So all it takes is having one individual on the team that lives in the US.
I know it's still not completely "fair", but atleast the possibility is there.

Btw: I'm from Sweden myself, and I still think Kickstarter is great. If international alternatives arise, great, but that doesn't make Kickstarter any less great or important.