New Tiberian Sun info
I know it's been a while since PC-gamers preview of Tiberian Sun, but now
I will write a story about it. It will cover everything, from graphics to gameplay
and my own thoughts about it. This story is quite long so you might want to disconnect
while you read it.
Graphics
Why don't start with something witch interests a lot of people, graphics.
During the latest year we have seen many rts games with superb graphics
making other games look old. How will Tiberian Sun match up with them?
Very well actually, Westwood has chosen to use the Voxel technology, as seen
in Blade Runner, for Tiberian Sun. For those of you who don't know hat a
Voxel is, i can tell you it's a volumetric pixel. A pixel with depth with
other words. The reason for this is they want to keep the system reqs a low
as possible but still add the advantages of a 3d-terrain.
The only disadvantage of using voxels is that you can't use 3d-acceleration, since
no 3d-accelerator supports it. This isn't a great problem since voxels are very fast
anyway and wouldn't benefit to much from a 3d-accelerator.
With voxels you can design very detailed objects. With traditional polygon
based rendering you would need to keep the complexity down to get good
performance on low - mid range systems. With voxels the objects can be
how complex they want without affecting performance.
Tiberian Sun will feature 16-bit coloured lighting and full light-sourcing
which will make it look very nice. But it isn't just a cool feature. It will
affect gameplay too. During night missions, you have to build lights to lit-up
your base. Your enemy can destroy the lights and attack under cover from
the darkness.
The conclusion is that Tiberian sun will be the best looking rts game availible
Units and Structures
Westwood doesn't believe in making huge amounts of different units, they
believe Quality goes ahead of Quantity. Therefor we want see 50+ units per
side as in Total Annihilation. What we will see is about 20 unique units
per side with very different features.
Let's start with the most important units, tanks. We will probably see
3 - 4 different tanks in the game ranging from small light tanks to heavy
mammoth tanks. Westwood has skipped the advantage in speed when building
multiple production facilities, probably to prevent tank rushes. But
westwood says tank rushes is an effective strategy in Red Alert and will so
be in Tiberian Sun. I don't think tank rushes is any problem, you can't
prevent players from building tanks, it's up to the opponent to stop it.
The most unexpected decision Westwood made for Tiberian Sun was to not
include any naval units in the game. In Red Alert we saw that the ships
got isolated, and split up the maps in a non-good manner says Eric Yeo
of Westwood studios. (This wasn't his exact words, it's translated from
a Swedish magazine). Instead of ships it will be hovercrafts in the game
with the ability to travel on both water and land.
In the air we will see three types of orca-choppers. One with bombs, one with
missiles and one transport which will be able to carry vehicles and probably
infantry as well.
What else is it. We will see a Flame tank, infantry with jet-packs, a heavy
disruptertank and a Mech-bot. We will also see the usual infantry types like,
minigunner, grenader, bazooker and engineer. Of course we will also see
specialized infantry units like medic and spy but we don't know anything about
it.
AI
One of the most underdeveloped aspects of rts games is the artificial
intelligence (AI). You computer opponents and even your own units has
to act smart and intelligent otherwise they are easily killed. For example
should infantry units avoid to be overun by tanks automatically. But the
most important AI aspect is the computer opponents who has to be as flexible
and unpredictable as a human player.
In Tiberian Sun we will see a far developed AI. It uses a combination of scripted
formations and strategies plus analysis based on earlier experiences.
If Westwood suceeds with this AI, it will be the best thing that happened
to the rts genre since C&C.
Multiplayer
How good the AI might be, it will always be much more fun to beat "real"
players. Tiberian Sun seems to be a great multiplayer game.
Westwood chat will be integrated into the game itself, and will finally
support more than 2 players. It will also support battle clans, probably
something like the Quake-clans. Of course you can still play over IPX
network and head-head by modem or a direct serial connection.
User interface
The user-interface is by far the most important factor in an rts game. If
you want to combine real-time action with turn based strategy it's important
to have a clean and accesible interface. The C&C series has always had a
very good interface, with a sidebar there everything can be built without
selecting a structure first. Total Annihilation has a great UI, but for some
reason I still prefer C&C. I hate to select a structure before I can build
anything. But now over to TS.
As you have seen on the screenshots, the sidebar doesn't look exactly the
same. There is only one row of things to build and you have some small
squares under and one big square to the left of them. I'm sure it isn't
a very big change, a C&C interface with queuing would be perfect. It
will probably support waypoints and formations also.
Overall C&C 2 Tiberian Sun seems to be a great game. I hope they can get it
out soon, since we've been waiting for it for two years now. I have heard
something about september which probably turns out to be somewhere around
christmas. we all remember what happened to Red Alert.
Mammoth
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