ColaColin

You'll also need those 45$ to play the game anyway ;)

That is html. If you remove the text and only put in the html it is a broken looking listing of the file. Dunno what purpose it has.

Well if a hundred ton floating unit bumps into another hundred ton floating unit I don't see why not? ;)

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="4" id="3532349"] I was going to make a Terrans vs. Protoss comparison. Except I hate hate HATE the Protoss. [/quote] I decided on which faction I will play first the moment I realized the TvP relation. Having played practically nothing but Protoss in SC2 xD

[quote who="Ticktoc" reply="54" id="3532350"] Well, going by their hover lore, which is reasonable, then if a hover unit went over another hover unit then it would probably send the underneath unit crashing into the ground. I think it would be more like slight edge or corner overlap when turning etc. I worry about the difficulty of giving hovering units a weighty look. If they look toy like and can knock each other a bit and slide like in SupCom2 then that won't be g

Sounds great to me. So Terrans vs Protoss eh? ;) [quote]We will be making it available to those who join the Founder’s group as part of the “Friends and Family” beta this Spring. Early access will probably be this Summer but we haven’t decided for certain whether we’ll be doing early access outside the Founders or not. [/quote] So founders get in the beta in spring. (Hey spring started five days ago :p) And then in summer there wi

[quote who="Adridos" reply="52" id="3532318"] It's a pretty common thing in 3D movement. [/quote] Yeah but who expects units that move on the ground to move around in 3 dimensions? xD Sure with spaceships it makes sense. With hovering units... well we'll see how it looks like.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="50" id="3532296"] In a pinch, a unit can hover over another unit (or building). [/quote] I've had discussions about this before and it was said that pathfinding is easier with hovering units and I was only able to understand it to a limited point. The conclusion I came to was "units that hover don't look weird when they go sideways or turn in place, which makes navigation of them easier". I didn't consider you would a

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="16" id="3531361"] TA had no zoom whatsoever and I doubt anyone in the beta will h [/quote] Yeah, but the community behind it wanted it so bad they found the magic to add in something that comes pretty close via a community patch ;) We'll see once the game is in the hands of more players, my bet is something like a zoom will quickly be decided to be really helpful to get an overview. Not saying that people will do everything zoo

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="11" id="3531241"] Right now, we navigate with the mini map mainly and we zoom in and out as well. I like Strategic zoom. After all, Stardock was the first studio to make a game with it (Galactic Civilizations II) and Sins and the Elemental series have it too. But Ashes isn't purely a macro game. It plays a bit more like a combination of Company of Heroes and TA. There are plateaus and a lot of elevation involved that wou

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="9" id="3531235"] game to be played with the player zoomed out to the whole map and manipulating icons. For one thing, Meta units have special abilities and that will require the player to be reaosnably close to the map to make intelligent decisions on what to target. Total Annihilation is probably a closer comparison [/quote] TA's community patch by now has something that gets as close to a strategic zoom as it can get in TA.<

I really think all that zoom out needs are a few icons so it becomes possible to judge what is what more easily. If your "minimap" does just that, can I just play on the minimap? xD

[quote who="The_Gear" reply="30" id="3530735"] Wow, crazy stuff ColaColin, thanks for bursting my bubble. Back to the question of why make them hover at all, well, it seems like they would be able to make more ground if they hovered vs using wheels/tracks. It is a video game after all [e digicons]:P[/e] [/quote] true flying is better than walking, but if you fly/hover you look like you could go over water. Well I guess for balance reasons it may be helpfu

[quote who="The_Gear" reply="27" id="3530672"] To the best of my knowledge, the hovercraft would need something solid underneath it(considering the weight of a tank for example), where as with a liquid, you wouldn't gain the resistance needed to stay hovering. The pressure between the craft and the liquid wouldn't be enough. That is just my un-scientific opinion though. [e digicons]:D[/e] [/quote] Sorry to burst your bubble then, hovercrafts can easily go over wate

[quote who="ChungasRevenge" reply="2" id="3530013"] The landscape looks quite bare. Will there be trees, other environments, water? etc etc [/quote] Somewhere frogboy said something like "this is pre alpha, we don't even have trees yet!". So I guess the game won't stay like this :)

Hmm it seems I can't open the pptx with libreoffice. Any chance for a pdf version for people who don't have ms office installed?

I saw that offworld trading company uses coherent UI. It's only the same publisher, not the same developer, but I guess asking won't hurt: Does ashes also use coherent UI or plan to do so? I like how moddable the UI is with it ;)

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="28" id="3529224"] Re multiplayer: The plan right now is to have it be client/server with a migratable host. We are building a trusted server system (hosted servers) but will be evaluating early access to determine whether they're needed (i.e. if there's e-sport potential, we'll know during the beta). [/quote] Migratable? Does this mean one of the players is host and that "host" can move to some other player if

[quote who="scritchy__" reply="5" id="3528558"] A minimap is better than zoomed out because it is always visible on your screen. If you are zoomed in on one area, you can still keep and eye on the other battles going on and quickly change locations if you need to address another location. Without a minimap, you will be zooming in and out an awful lot to try to keep an eye on everything. Having the minimap and then fully zoomed out to be a full screen minimap would

on tech trees: Will teching require something like a building of a specific type to be made? An issue I see with tech trees is that you cannot scout into which direction your opponent techs until it is "too late" because your opponent has the stuff on the field. So that could be fixed by requiring you to make some tech buildings, depending on what direction you want to tech.

Can you split meta units at will and remerge them at will? For match length as a 1v1 multiplayer focused person I would say 30 to 60 minutes. So it a map is so incredibly big that it takes a unit 60 minutes to go from my base to the base of my opponent that is a problem. I doubt many people have time to play 5 hours matches on a regular basis. So I'd hope for "smaller" maps in 1v1 ladder (I think I read somewhere you want to have that?) games. Or you could h

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="2" id="3528525"] Actually, in Ashes we plan to rely more on the mini map for that sort of thing and the Empire tree. Because of the sheer volume of units, turning them into icons would be largely useless. You'll want to see your meta units on the mini map (think of a war game where you see the 1st army in location X, and so on). [/quote] So turn the meta units into icons. I can't see why a minimap would ever be better than a zo

Supreme Commander was a lot about base building as well though and I am not quite sure how much base building ashes is supposed to have. Only a "units magically spawn in and you go and control spots on the map" would be kinda .... well dunno I like basebuilding.

[quote who="Wintercross" reply="6" id="3528258"] Of course thats not to say you shouldn't be able to micromanage units if you want... guess what I'm saying is I do not want Starcraft on a larger scale. I want something more akin to Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. [/quote] I see that makes sense. I think FA worked great as a competitive RTS, it obviously wasn't as big as Starcraft, but aiming to be that big is bound to fail anyway.

So this looks really interesting to me as a fan of RTS games in the spirit of Total Annihilation. There are a few thoughts I have in mind: What will the stance on the UI will be? Is the UI considered part of the gameplay? Many RTS, like starcraft, consider the UI a part of the gameplay that sometimes limits players in what they do. This means fighthing the UI is part of the game. That is fun in it's own right, but I hope ashes (if I want to play a game that is about