Sins of a solar empire 2 (sequel)

Yup.

Not publicly. The studio that made Sins and owns the property rights, Ironclad, is making a new game called Sins of a Dark Age, but it is more like League of Legends than this Sins. My bet is we won't hear anything until that game is complete.

Ohh, 

 

Well I'm hoping Ironclad come around afterwards, perhaps do a Kickstarter and get the community involved and get a sequel to this absolute blackhole of a game! (my time seems to disappear playing it).

 

I unfortunately will be skipping their new game as it doesn't interest me in the slightest which is a shame.

 

I'm curious now who would actually support the Kickstarter for Sins 2? I would definitely do it, I think it's a brilliant option  as it does bring open feedback from the community through out development (rather then it being behind closed doors and the only feedback is during Alpha/Beta). I'd slap down £80/$80 to get the game and any expansions coming, maybe extra for a limited edition physical copy. 

The question is do they even need a kickstarter?

Ironclad is an established studio with a publisher (Stardock) very willing to support their efforts for SoaSE 2 I would assume. Especially considering SoaSE is one of the most successful games for Stardock as a publisher probably.

They more than likely don't need a Kickstarter with Stardock more than likely willing to support anything they do. 

 

However I would like to see them do one, get more acclaim and interest in the game, boost profits, get community involvement. There is a huge potential in Kickstarter which people don't realise. 

 

This game definately needs a sequel, if not just a reboot on the engine itself to make it run better. 

 

How much work is involved in upgrading the engine it uses to make it run better on 64bit systems/use more system resources?

I had a big game today, 5 solar systems, 10 players, I ended up giving up because it got too slow. My CPU was only 25%-ish on performance, 1GB of ram was being allocated out of my 15GB i have remaining (1gb goes to operating system).

The issue is not 32/64 bit, the problem is the game is single threaded. Your game chugs down but only uses 25% because you have a 4 thread CPU but Iron Engine 1 only runs on one core at a time so the others just idle. Therefore, your max speed is limited entirely to your IPS (clock/pipeline.) Optimizing something to be multithreaded is hard enough, retroactively adding it to an existing engine is much harder. If you want to play large games, try setting small fleet size and/or overclocking your CPU (at risk of damage and warranty loss if done improperly.)

You will need a pretty hefty clock on an efficient CPU to manage the scale of this game if that would be the case. (so no intel pentiums at 10GHz). 

 

I would absolutely love to see someone do the rework for the engine, I can't imagine it would be superbly time consuming since the assets, ideas and programming for damage and ai etc... is already there. It would just be how it's implemented (I'm by no means a coder) and how the engine utilizes it's resources.

 

Can we get some developer voice to tell us what would be the issues involved?

We have. As the above poster said.

This is indeed the case. Ironclad first started making this engine around 2005 with a team of less than 10 people, I doubt they'd think their game would still be so popular that expansions would keep the title in active development until 2013. I'm pretty sure a dev said at one point that the amount of work to make Sins multithreaded would be almost as much as making a new engine from scratch, I.e. we may as well make a sequel. I'm a novice coder myself and I am not surprise, nor are most people I know with coding experience.

I've brought this point up before, and I"ll say it again, Stardock Entertainment co-developed Rebellion.  They're also still sitting on a lot of capital from the sell of Impulse.  They could very well be doing the same thing on whatever the next "proper" Sins entry is while IC is working on Dark Age.

As for Dark Age, I honestly don't see the point in trying to develop another MOBA in this environment with DOTA 2 and LOL having 85% (or more) of the marketshare.  I believe Smite may be the very distant 3rd in all of this (at best).  I don't see how they expect to get much success out of this.  Demigod didn't do well, and it had a multiyear jumpstart on LOL and DOTA 2.  The only real competition it had was on the original DOTA.  We all know how well that ended up.

IC should have followed the same path Stardock did with GalCiv.  As soon as Stardock realized they had a successful IP, they just about went straight to work on the next incarnation, making it bigger and better.

 

Maybe the have that market share because of lack of credible alternatives.

 

 

 

You do realize of course that is the exactly the path EA follows? Is this now the 15th or the 20th Need for Speed?

 

If you also follow a post made by Frogboy a while ago, he said that the large amount of people still running 32 Bit are a significant hinderance for programming an all new engine in 64 Bit just yet.

 

 

Last but not least, it is always a good business decision to focus on more than one thing. Sins 2 could fail and that brings the developer into significant trouble quite quickly. Much easier to talk with your bank or publisher about more money when you have something in your portfolio that currenty does work.

 

Part of GPGs downfall was the failure that was Sup Com 2. A desaster on any accounts. Old fans seething, and an average RTS on a highly competive market.... the results are that now Wargaming owns GPG.

I hope they make another Sup Com game, I absolutely adore the first game however it's plagued by a similar issue to Sins where late game becomes an absolute chore because of game performance.

 

With Sup Com the AI keeps giving dead units orders, so obviously this adds up and starts slowing the game down. (thats what I've heard anyway, seems pretty legit seeing as it does slow down). 

 

I'm really going to keep an eye out for a sequel, maybe we could have a big vote page for it and make the developers/publishers see the prospects!

I'd definitely help out for sins2 game.

 

we need 64bit mechanics (far fewer 32bit players now then a yeear ago),

better multithreaded engine and AI.

3rd dimension - homeworld way?

coop modes - emperor, admirals, commanders...in one team, and same other team.

That when done good would bring pure awsomeness to the series.

 

New single and coop campaign. Even multiplayer campaign?

 

I think stardock could pull it off.

 

Add a bit of tactical fights in RTS on planets, reduce and punish use of superweapons, make huge tech tree that noone can reach during normal multiplayer games, add a chance/race specifics into tech trees, improve diplomacy and binding agreemens in it like territorial and area opf control agreements, bring a bunch of resources linked to technologies, like Endless space has, add intergalactic and system trade markets like Hearts of iron and EUniversalis have,

add genetic manipulation into tactical units development,

add new races, thing David Brin's Infinity shore books or something,

add living ships, stations, (Thinking like Hamilton's  Neutronium Alchemis saga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neutronium_Alchemist)

diversify races and add genus of races, so that intermingling can be possible and enabling races progress if geneticaly manipulated by player,

space monsters and random fenomena

more exploration (get us to the point of no return if like dwarves we "delve too deep...." awakening a space biatch that hunts all of our race to extinction),

add non playable NPC monster race like Antarans that require all players coop to kill even if it's a FFA multiplayer game - or they all die.

 

Add unstable space lanes as natural phenomenon, add lanes destabilisation engines, add planetary fight options - shields, phase rellocators, arcade (for coop MP) orbital cannons and fighters....

 

Gawd, I can't stop dreaming, can I?

 

Stardock, we love oyu.

 

No 3rd dimension. Evil...Eeeeevvvvviiiil.