Information

The information on this page is fact. There is a chance that some things will be slightly different than what is said when the game is released, but excepting those few cases the information on this page is good to go by.

What is Supreme Commander? - Posted by El_Castro
Supreme Commander is an upcoming Real-Time Strategy game for the PC, currently in production by Gas Powered Games. The game is due for release in early 2007, to be published by THQ.

Who are Gas Powered Games, and what else have they done? - Posted by El_Castro
Gas Powered Games was founded in May 1998 by Chris Taylor. They have successfully released three major titles, Dungeon Siege in April 2002, the expansion pack, Legends of Aranna in November 2003, and the sequel, Dungeon Siege 2 which was released in August 2005. They are also working with Vierte Boll Kino Beteiligungs-GmbH & Co. KG on the Dungeon Siege movie, In the Name of the King, which has finished filming and is currently in post-production. Gas Powered Games is based near Redmond, Washington State, USA, and has brought together a team of professionals from diverse backgrounds. Nearly all GPG staff have a history in games, and several of them worked with Chris Taylor on Total Annihilation at Cavedog, or at Humongous Entertainment.

What recent PC titles has THQ distributed? - Posted by El_Castro
THQ was responsible for distributing the popular and innovative RTS Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War, and its expansion pack, Winter Assault; S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl; The Incredibles - When Danger Calls; Full Spectrum Warrior, and its expansion, Ten Hammers, to name just a few.

What connection does Supreme Commander have with Total Annihilation? - Posted by El_Castro
As stated, several GPG staff-members worked on Total Annihilation or one of Cavedog's later projects, however, SUPCOM has no official ties to TA. GPG CEO, Chris Taylor, was the project lead for TA, which is still considered by its fans to be one of the best RTS games to date. Because of this, many fans waited in hope for years for a sequel to TA, which, despite several false-starts, never came about. Thus, Supreme Commander was at one point dubbed a "spiritual successor" to TA.

Spiritual Successor? What does that mean? - Posted by El_Castro
Supreme Commander is not a sequel to TA. It is a new franchise, and it has a completely new storyline. Through a complex sequence of business deals, the TA title and intellectual property is now owned by Atari (the company formerly known as Infogrames), while Gas Powered Games is a completely independent gaming house, who manage all of their own intellectual property. What is meant by the term "spiritual successor" is that SUPCOM will be the same sort of game that TA was, and GPG are hoping to deliver to the fans of Cavedog's work a game worthy of taking the place of the sequel they never got. Supreme Commander will succeed or fail on its own merit alone: TA is simply one of the team's credentials.

What part will I, the player, take in Supreme Commander? - Posted by El_Castro
Exactly what it sounds like! You will play the part of the Supreme Commander of one of three opposing factions who are locked in a bitter pan-galactic conflict known as the Infinite War, which rages across more than a thousand star-systems. Supreme Commander promises a rich, immersive storyline, set more than 800 years in the future, the outcome of which will depend on your performance as the Supreme Commander. The three races you may choose from are:The United Earth Federation: The human faction who originate from the ancient human home world, Earth. The UEF hope to conquer their enemies, and in so doing, restore order to the galaxy, re-establishing the once proud Human Empire to its former glory, with Earth at its centre. Human technology tends to be fairly utilitarian, but aesthetically reminiscent of traditional military designs.
The Aeon: The Aeon were formed as a result of humanity's first contact with sentient extra-terrestrial life. Shortly before the peak of human expansion, an exploration team encountered a mysterious alien civilisation on an outer world called Seraphim. The scouting team soon found themselves at odds with the Seraphim, and ultimately destroyed their entire race. In a dying bid to keep their unique powers of futuresight and telepathy from dying with them, the Seraphim integrated their collective consciousness with the minds of the humans, passing on some of their powers, and creating a new race. Aeon technology tends to be elegant, sleek, and stealthy, making good use of flight and hover technology.
The Cybran: The Cybran race was formed by a group of rogue scientists who rebelled against the Human Empire's government on Earth after moves were made to halt the group's medical research. Their studies had yielded revolutionary advances in neuro-science in humans through a combination of cybernetic implants and new advances in computing technology. The cyborg products of this research were resilient beings of super-human intelligence. The Cybran race, centered around an outer world called Pluto II, tends to make heavy use of tracked, wheeled, and other mechanised transport, and is characterised by an intelligent, cold, rational philosophy: Their logic dictates an approach that lacks subtlety, and perhaps borders on brutality, to get the job done.

What are the minimum specifications for Supreme Commander? - Posted by Oracle
Chris Taylor had this to say: It will be something north of a 2GHz CPU. There will be a fairly wide range of video cards, probably north of 128MB cards. I would say that there will be a suggested system spec of somewhere closer to 3GHz machine with 256MB of video RAM or more. But we have got rendering detail settings and so forth, such that if you've got a lower end machine, you'll be able to play the game, you'll just have to dial it in so that it doesn't look as pretty. The game's CPU is dedicated to simulation of the very comprehensive gameplay. Because of the fidelity of the simulation, that has to be there no matter what. In multiplayer, we use a fully synchronous multioplayer model, which means everything that happens on your opponent's machine happens on your machine in lockstep. So, our choices are generally in visuals since it has no negative impact on gameplay. At the end of the day you'll get the game running on a 1.8GHz or an AMD 1600+, but the ideal experience is going to had with a state of the art gaming rig.

What about sound effects and music? - Posted by El_Castro
The music score will be composed and arranged by Jeremy Soule. Jeremy has an impressive list of other video game titles to his name already, including three Harry Potter games, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dungeon Siege, Unreal II, Icewind Dale, and Total Annihilation, to name just a few. He has also done work for both television and cinema, and has been awarded and nominated for dozens of awards. He is one of the leading composers in the industry. As stated, we do not yet have any technical specifications for Supreme Commander, so whether we can expect EAX and surround implementations is not yet known.

What features can I expect in Supreme Commander? - Posted by El_Castro
Gas Powered Games have released a few details about what we can look forward to in Supreme Commander, however, details are sketchy on some subjects, and as the game is still in development, subject to change. But we can at least run through what we know:
- Full 3D terrain, units, and environment.
- Newtonian physics and shot trajectories: No "dice rolling" for damage modifiers or "chance to hit" mathematics.
- Full 3D roving camera, with full control over tilt and direction, ranging from top-down view, to totally horizontal.
- Massive maps on a range of different terrain types.
- High production values including storyline-crucial cutscenes, and a game which will utilise the full complement of modern (and possibly future) video-card technology. Based on available screenshots, it is clear that the game already takes full advantage of Direct-X® 9.0c features and effects.
- Advanced zoom functions: The player can zoom out to a "strategic level" where whole masses of units are represented only as tiny radar blips, effectively eliminating the need for a mini-map. Player can then zoom right in on the smallest unit and see it in full detail, right down to rotating radar dishes, and tracks left in the dirt. The levels of zoom are a smooth transition, optionally controlled with the mouse-wheel, as opposed to using a few set levels of zoom.
- Huge variations in scale: A great battleship need not be representative in size as the engine allows for some units to be twenty or thirty (or more) times larger than others. A light tank really IS tiny when compared to a battleship. Smaller units will be able to walk under or between the feet of giant ones, being swept aside or crushed should they get in the way.
- A powerful interface has been promised, and while unconfirmed, we expect a high level of customisation available to the player.
- Well developed multiplayer capabilities.- As well as a single player campaign, we expect 2-player "co-op" mode for the campaign missions.
- High level of modding support.
- Three unique, but balanced races.
- Giant "experimental" super-units.

Will Supreme Commander be released on any console systems? - Posted by El_Castro
No. :-)

What is this panic click feature I keep hearing about? - Posted by Gnome
To quote PC Gamer Magazine:

"Supreme Commander will use your mouse-click frequency as an active aid in prioritizing attack strength. In other words, when you're panic-clicking over and over again on the one target you really want to destroy, the game will take note of your intensity and will earmark all available units for an all-out assault on that target."