Supreme Ruler 2010

[Urban Ranger]

RTS? Pah!

[Trifna]

No, you didn't read enough
It can be completely TBS or go "RTS" a bit like EU I think, with pausing possible. Basically, a time goes on at the speed you chose while you command moves that go on with time.

[George Geczy]

Hi all - this thread was pointed out to me, I thought you might not mind if I add a few thoughts - I'm one of the developers of Supreme Ruler 2010

Some interesting comments above, I thought I would first tackle the issue about our graphics. Yes, we know we will not win any awards for graphics (though I certainly hope we'll end up with a better opinion than "sickly" ) Very early on we had to make a decision about where our major development priorities were... we chose (in approx order):
1) A comprehensive, "deep" design that included diplomacy, economy, and military all well developed;
2) Features that would allow enjoyable gameplay for both micro-managers and absent-managers;
3) A rock-solid implementation - as stable as we can possibly make it;
4) Good performance even on 'average' hardware;
5) Good graphics.

We didn't ignore graphics, and in fact much of our final development month will be tweaking a lot of the cosmetic appeal of the game even further - but we feel strongly that a good game with a long shelf life and replayability should have good gameplay first, good graphics second.

Sure, I'd love to have particle-based explosions, smoke effects, artillery units that have guns that recoil when fired, etc - but is that what you guys are looking for in a game?

We do have hundreds of military units and buildings that were 3D rendered and look pretty darn good, we do have graphics and icons designed by profressional artists, but we on purpose don't have the latest 3D engines you see in games like Warcraft3 or the latest Command&Conquer. But we also don't have the performance-hogging problems of those games - one of our internal test systems is actually a PII-400 notebook, and by keeping the game running adequately on that platform we make sure that 99% of our potential players will be able to run the game without problems.

Another challenge for our design was our decision to use real-world satellite imagery. The photo-imagery is cool, but it makes it hard to have on-map features that blend in nicely; we chose on purpose to make industries and cities 'stick out' a bit, some people like this approach, some don't.

While our graphics don't make for the most impressive screenshots, we are finding in our beta test so far that people generally are satisfied with the look; no wild raves about it, obviously, but nobody so far has said the graphics have turned them off entirely.

On the other hand, our priorities in other areas are working nicely - so far in a month of beta testing we have not had a report of a single crash-to-desktop. The worst 'bug' in our latest beta version is a complaint that a single sound file plays garbled under Windows 98 on one user's system... Maybe we were wrong to pick stability over ooh-ahh graphics, but I hope not.

I'll pop back tomorrow to discuss some of the other comments made above, of course if you have any questions before that please feel free to post 'em and I'll try to respond.

-- George.

- George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios

[Urban Ranger]

BattleGoat? Hey, that may not be a bad idea for a novel game

[asleepathewheel]

cool, nice to see the developers making the website rounds

I see that you have a forum, I'll check that out.

[Protra3211]

Thank you George Geczy for the information.

I have been reading the updates to this game for awhile now. Hope it does well. Looks like alot of heart and soul went into this game.

Supreme 2010 has a multi threaded AI-does this mean that the AI will think on your turn and does it have a learning AI?

[General Ludd]

Yeah, graphics should pretty much be last priority to a serius strategy game. (Although the building and unit graphics are a bit 'cartoonish'.)


I'd like to hear more about diplomacy - what kind of depth is there to that part of the game? Is it the usual barebones peace, war, and trade - or is it more?

[asleepathewheel]

Is this game only scenario based, or can you manipulate the entire world? If the former, how large an area geographically can a scenario cover. I saw it mentioned that it was somewhat similar in philosophy to the rise of nations conquer the world or whatever that was called mode, vs. a civ whole globe game.


to the low system spec requirement

[Space05us]

George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios

the fact that the man bothers to stop by and speak with us makes him holy, I must buy this game now regardless of flaws. and no Im not being sarcastic

Is this game only scenario based, or can you manipulate the entire world?

thats the big question on my mind too.

[BattleGoat]

Hi, I'm also from BattleGoat Studios...

I know George was planning posting a discussion about our AI, so I will leave the response on that to him...

That brings me to the question about Diplomacy... This is one of the design features of the game that I'm most proud of! There are two concepts I wanted to incorporate in our game;
1) general agreements that nations are either signatories to or aren't and
2) fully flexible agreements between two regions.

The General Agreements a player can sign are treaties posted by the World Market (our equivalent of the United Nations). This includes such military agreements as "Nuclear Non-Proliferation", "Land Mine Boycotts", or more societal agreements such as "Postal Accord", "Free Skies Treaty" etc... As long as you abide by whatever treaties you have signed, the opinion of you on the International Stage is enhanced. You can choose at any time to withdraw your region's name from a treaty and although it may be detrimental to your reputation, it won't be too serious. Get caught breaking an agreement that you are still a signatory to though, and you could face more significant consequences!

Then we get to the agreements between regions... Probably the closest thing I've seen to what I wanted was the diplomatic system in Galactic Civ. But even this wasn't quite flexible enough... Essentially you can trade virtually anything between regions. Money, Technology, Treaties, Units, Research, Unit Designs, Product, and even Land are all up for grabs.

I'll demonstrate what I mean by a few examples...

- If you are the strongest player in a scenario and you want to extort money from another region to keep the peace, simply offer a Peace Treaty to them in exchange for $x per Month for 5 years!

- If you're losing a military battle and want to make peace, offer the attacking player your Oil Fields in exchange for a Ceasefire.

- Player A produces a surplus of Petroleum while Player B has more Coal then they need. Use the Diplomacy Interface to Exchange X Barrells of Oil per month for X Tonnes of Coal!

- You can also use the Diplomacy Interface to handle loans between regions -- Player A provides a lump sum payment of $1 Billion to Player B in exchange for $100 Million per month for 12 months plus a lump sum payment of 1Million Tonnes of Food.

- Player A is at war with Player B. As Player C, you want to support Player A, but can't afford to go to war with B. Use the Diplomatic Exchange screen to send Player A Units, Money, Petroleum, Missiles, anything you can think of that will help them against B.

- Player A has successfully researched Nuclear ICBM's. Their ally, Player B, also wants this design so provides them with 10 Battalions of Leopard Tanks in exchange for the knowledge.

Treaties themselves can provide tremendous advantages to a player... Shared Line of Sight, Transit, Mutual Defense are just a small sample of what's available...

Hope that helps demonstrate how flexible we've tried to make the Diplomatic component of our game.

- David Thompson
Lead Designer, BattleGoat Studios

[Space05us]

will the AI be able to effectivly handle such negotiations though?

[George Geczy]

"Will the AI be able to handle such negotiations"?

While the AI will probably not get overly adventurous, it will certainly be able to handle diplomacy with human (and other AI) players. The AI also watches the 'integrity' of the players it deals with - don't expect to have it easily accept a peace treaty from you if you have a poor diplomatic record. AI regions will also follow their 'personalities' - some will tend to be aggressive, some passive, and some unpredictable.

To answer the earlier questions on the AI, yes the multithreaded AI will certainly be 'thinking' all the time. When playing in Real-Time mode, the AI threads are always active and monitoring the situation; when played in Turn-based mode, the "ruler" AI will follow the same rules as the human player, and think (and give direction) between turn resolution phases.

One thing about way we've done the AI is also that it is 'layered' - there is the ruler AI, which is 'opponent' to the human player, at the top layer. Below that are cabinet ministers, and the thing about Cabinet AI is that you get them too. You have the ability not just to use or lock-out your cabinet ministers, but you also have the ability to give them 'priorities' which they will then try to fulfil (ie "Balance the Budget", "Stock Military Materials", "Build up for an Attack", etc). At the bottom level is Unit-AI, where individual military units can be given an initiative level and will use that in deciding how to fulfil their orders (or whether to attack targets of better interest that come along).

Your cabinet ministers even 'talk' to each other - tell the Finance minister to cut spending, and he (or she) will send details to the Interior minister to cut social programs. The result of such 'discussions' often depends on which ministers you pick (liberal, moderate, or conservative-leaning). If you give your ministers conflicting priorities, you'll end up with conflicting results, just as in real life.

The AI design in Supreme Ruler 2010 is quite unique, because it has to operate in both "Real Time" or "Turn Based" modes depending on how the player started up the game. The use of multi-threaded design means that in turn-based there is no delay while the AI "takes its turn", etc; and in real-time mode, the AI keeps up, even in multiplayer LAN games.

-- George.

- George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios

PS - didn't get a chance to talk about our scenario/world design today, but the quick answer is "yes to both" - in fact, you can play single scenarios, or a campaign of scenarios that starts from anywhere in the world, or just a "world level" scenario that covers the whole world at once. More on that later...

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Hello George and Battlegoat,

its good to see you guys make the effort to come here and answer peoples questions like this

many other developers could learn something by your example.

I agree that graphics are of secondary concern to gameplay, I play mostly Civ3 but also like GalCiv and the CTP games. The Total war games are great also and the Paradox series is also a favourite of mine. So I hope you can see that my choice of game does not depend first and only on graphics etc.

Strategy is the key for me in whether I enjoy a game, and from what you chaps have said this should have bucket loads of just that. This is all good to hear and I will follow with interest this games development.

I do hope you have time to take a step back and look at graphics before release, they are a bit garish and cartoonish at present, I think its all those really bright colours that does it. I do hope you are right in that this wont detract from the gameplay, and you could always give out free sunglasses with every boxed copy of the game

Im looking forward to seeing more on this and I applaud you for what sounds like a complex and groundbreaking diplomacy model. Could you guys drop Firaxis a line and give them some pointers for Civ4

Best of luck with this project

[George Geczy]

Though of course I'm biased, I actually think our military unit graphics aren't too bad... for example, these are unit renders right out of the program:



Except for the fact that the above have been jpeg-compressed, this is what the game uses (of course, the unit graphics in the game are 3-D renders so they can be at different rotations as well); However most people zoom out on the map out and don't get to see much detail, so things obviously become a bit more difficult to make out at that point.

The upgrade graphics (factories, bases) have been more of a dilemma for us. For instance, here's the Air Base graphic:


Yes, it is a designed somewhat cartoonish, but the fact is that you want to see where these things are on the map when you're playing; if they are more photo-realistic, they'll blend right in to the imagery. We've gone through a lot of graphics samples for the on-map facilities, and this style has worked best so far.

-- George.

- Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Well the proof they say will be in the pudding, I think you have a convert in me and I will follow the games development with interest.


EDIT

your points on the diplomacy model are the most interesting to me. Civ 3 is my most played game and its biggest shortfall is the diplomact options. I think many civvers would like to see a great deal more options in this aspect ofthe game.