In its way stands The Cybran Nation, a race comprised of human-machine symbionts, who are fighting for their freedom from the UEF. Supreme Commander's campaign tells the story of the United Earth Federation, or UEF, and its struggle to reassert terran control over the galaxy during a devastating war. Plus I wanted the asymmetry that came with the three different races, not too different, but different enough to really keep the experience fresh." Things are proceeding nicely in this base - it won't be long before a few offensive units appear. "And the extra faction was because of the overall idea that the game just wanted to grow and be a much larger experience. "Those guys did a phenomenal job of working to put together a completely outrageous backstory," says Taylor. Jeff Petkau and Jon Mavor took lead roles here, on architecture and graphics respectively, while the elaborate plot, now encompassing those three factions, was worked on by a separate team. "So we paced ourselves and worked closer to normal days of between eight and ten hours, compared to the 12-14 hours we did on Total Annihilation." As with all of his games, going way back to Hardball II and 4D Boxing in the late Eighties/early Nineties, Supreme Commander was designed from the ground up, with its central engine built from scratch. "We knew it would be a marathon, not a sprint," says Taylor. Looking back, I think that approach worked out pretty well," Nevertheless, much of Total Annihilation's original team, including Jonathan Mavor, Jeff Petkau and Jake McMahon were on board once development began in 2003. For each of the three factions, the player takes control of a giant mechanoid called the Armoured Command Unit (ACU) - the Supreme Commander - using it to build units and structures, harvest resources and develop technology tiers.Įxplains Taylor, "We didn't have the rights to Total Annihilation, so the best we could do was to come up with a brand new game and call it the spiritual successor. Set in the far distant future, Supreme Commander would once more focus on a fractured human race, driven apart by a cybernetic fight for independence, with a mysterious band of aggressive religious zealots thrown in for good measure. A commander's first task is to construct vital mass generators. "I'd been thinking about another RTS since leaving Cavedog and starting Gas Powered Games," he begins, "but it wasn't until I was completely wrapped on Dungeon Siege that I began to really think deeply about what would become Supreme Commander." Gas Powered had enjoyed reasonable success with the technically-ambitious Dungeon Siege games, and these to a certain extent influenced Taylor's next project - but more on that shortly. I interviewed its designer and coder, Chris Taylor, a few years ago to discuss this trailblazing game now we're chatting again, only this time to celebrate Total Annihilation's spiritual follow-up, Supreme Commander, released just over ten years ago. They namechecked Cavedog's futuristic adventure, Total Annihilation as a far superior game thanks to its huge battles, terrain-based tactics and imaginative units. And when it came to RTSs, the one name on most people's lips was Command & Conquer. First-person shooters burgeoned as a result, and their combination with the real-time strategy genre conspired to make the humble home personal computer a powerful commercial gaming platform. The mid-nineties was an era when PC gaming began in earnest, kick-started by the mighty Doom's release in 1993.
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