Postmortem: Stardock and Oxide Games' Ashes of the Singularity

[Bacon1]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._and_Oxide_Games_Ashes_of_the_Singularity.php

Good read about how Ashes came around for those who care more for the development side of things

 

[Dribble]

As a game I hear it's just not that good - which is not surprising as it sounds like a bunch of techies wanted to play with new ideas for graphics engines and the game itself was an afterthought.

 

[guskline]

Was a very interesting read. Very fair. I own AoS.

 

[Mercennarius]

As a game I hear it's just not that good - which is not surprising as it sounds like a bunch of techies wanted to play with new ideas for graphics engines and the game itself was an afterthought.

Its not a bad game. In fact it can be a lot of fun playing with friends. If you like most RTS games you will like AOTS.

 

[Azix]

As a game I hear it's just not that good - which is not surprising as it sounds like a bunch of techies wanted to play with new ideas for graphics engines and the game itself was an afterthought.

the game is not an afterthought. They seem to talk a lot about how to make it better and why they made certain decisions. More than the tech stuff I think.

Fact is that not every take on a genre will appeal to everybody. They had things they wanted to do in the game and some folks like it, others don't.

 

[thesmokingman]

As a game I hear it's just not that good - which is not surprising as it sounds like a bunch of techies wanted to play with new ideas for graphics engines and the game itself was an afterthought.

Talk about troll bait...




Nothing good to say in the thread?

Then don't post.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[Dribble]

Talk about troll bait...

Only troll here is you.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ashes-of-the-singularity

68 or 6.8 for users on metacritic says it's ok, but not that good.

 

[antihelten]

Only troll here is you.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ashes-of-the-singularity

68 or 6.8 for users on metacritic says it's ok, but not that good.

Brad Wardell actually mentions metacritic user reviews in the article:

Moreover, the media defining Ashes as a SupCom successor offended a lot of Supreme Commander online communities who found Ashes lacking in the areas they cared about. As a result, the game received a lot of…shall we say…motivated negative reviews online (looking at you, Metacritic user reviews) from these communities.

 

[cytg111]

Yea, Supreme Commander is one of those titles thats going to be hard to follow. They should do a redux of the exact same game. (hard to follow like master of orion).

 

[thesmokingman]

Only troll here is you.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ashes-of-the-singularity

68 or 6.8 for users on metacritic says it's ok, but not that good.

You admit to not having played it but that doesn't stop you from blasting it. Did you even dissect the link you posted? Look at the distribution. 40 loves, 6 mixed, 19 hates. That shows that ppl liked it really liked it and those that disliked it really dislike it. Read the hates/dislikes. Complaints run the gamut from nit picking, it's not SupCom or Starcraft, to being made for AMD... The core of this game is that it is a sandbox RTS, so ppl complaining about the campaign... they are missing the whole point, much like you are. Hell even the complaints about the game from the dislikes contradict each other lol.

 

[master_shake_]

As a game I hear it's just not that good - which is not surprising as it sounds like a bunch of techies wanted to play with new ideas for graphics engines and the game itself was an afterthought.

isn't this the same story as assassins creed?

just throwing out a few ideas make a game and look at what it has become.

 

[xthetenth]

It's pretty good at what it does, but it is pretty clear it's a small budget game. I'm hoping they can go bigger on a sins successor with the engine.

Also lol @ NV fans taking out their team's failures on people with the temerity to advance the state of the art.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

It says in this postmortem there's no "main" thread, and should scale with any number of cores, did any site test the launch version with cpu's? I can only find beta stuff from august.

Anyway, I liked supreme commander so will probably give this a try when I've upgraded my gpu. This game wasn't meant for gtx 670's.

 

[Triloby]

Very good article. The developers definitely understood what they've done right and wrong. I hope they get a bigger budget for their next game.

Right now, they're the only ones who are actually taking DirectX 12 seriously, building a game from the ground up to actually utilize it. Not just slapping it on as an afterthought like Rise of the Tomb Raider or that godawful Gears of War: Ultimate Edition port.

I wonder how AMD's new Zen CPU's will perform on this game once they're launched?

 

[TheELF]

It says in this postmortem there's no "main" thread, and should scale with any number of cores, did any site test the launch version with cpu's? I can only find beta stuff from august.

Anyway, I liked supreme commander so will probably give this a try when I've upgraded my gpu. This game wasn't meant for gtx 670's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le5zNn5dEpI
There most definitely is a main thread,but it also should scale with any number of cores,thing is your GPU will max out with a very small number of cores unless you have the weakest cores known to man.

I wonder how AMD's new Zen CPU's will perform on this game once they're launched?

CPU won't make any difference once you are over the threshold to fully utilize the GPU...and it doesn't need much for this.

 

[Timmah!]

It's pretty good at what it does, but it is pretty clear it's a small budget game. I'm hoping they can go bigger on a sins successor with the engine.

Also lol @ NV fans taking out their team's failures on people with the temerity to advance the state of the art.

This. Ashes may be technologically superior, and i commend StarDock for doing the pioneer work in this regard, but Sins in its refined "Rebellion" edition is IMO so much better game. Granted, at this point Ashes is in its vanilla state and may get there with more additions. However, as a massive Sins fan i would prefer all the potential money to be poured into Sins: Rebellion 2 instead.

Good article though. Seems Frogboy is aware of the gameplay related downsides of the game, which is a good thing, even if some of those are down to budet constrains.

 

[Elixer]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._and_Oxide_Games_Ashes_of_the_Singularity.php

Good read about how Ashes came around for those who care more for the development side of things

Hmm, I suppose two threads are better than one.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2471444

Yeah, budget seems to have played a big role in this, Brad didn't want to put all his eggs in one basket--and it shows.
That is why this game is depressing. So much potential is there, it just goes unused.

The game itself is around average for a RTS, it can get really dull really quick and, it doesn't help that lots of the eye candy is only on the battles themselves, not the units, not the textures, not the terrain, not the buildings, not even the UI.
I am hopeful this will be fixed in time, and they don't drop it like they have done on some of their other titles.

For the benchmark weenies, this is cool for them, they have lots of stats to show off their $1000 gfx card.

 

[Bacon1]

Yeah I posted in that other thread, it was in the AMD section and had a title that didn't deal with the post itself though so figured not many people would see / read it.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Very good article. The developers definitely understood what they've done right and wrong. I hope they get a bigger budget for their next game.

Right now, they're the only ones who are actually taking DirectX 12 seriously, building a game from the ground up to actually utilize it. Not just slapping it on as an afterthought like Rise of the Tomb Raider or that godawful Gears of War: Ultimate Edition port.

I wonder how AMD's new Zen CPU's will perform on this game once they're launched?

Sure you can excel at technical side of game development, but fail on the artistic side of it and you are done.

 

[krumme]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._and_Oxide_Games_Ashes_of_the_Singularity.php

Good read about how Ashes came around for those who care more for the development side of things

Thanx super read !
Honest talking and detailed interview. Brilliant.

 

[AtenRa]

It says in this postmortem there's no "main" thread, and should scale with any number of cores, did any site test the launch version with cpu's? I can only find beta stuff from august.

Anyway, I liked supreme commander so will probably give this a try when I've upgraded my gpu. This game wasn't meant for gtx 670's.

I can confirm up to 8 Threads.

First one with A10-7870K + HD7950

Second one with FX8350 + R9 390

 

[Bacon1]

Someone did a test in the old Ashes thread that got upto 16? Cores on his 24(?) core machine.

 

[PhonakV30]

Yes.18 threads.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38088143&postcount=1304

 

[Raduque]

I'm interested in this game, it looks great and I miss old-school RTS gameplay, but I'm not putting any money on it till they give it a better campaign.

Edit: Is the benchmark freely available?

 

[TheELF]

Edit: Is the benchmark freely available?

Nope,got to buy the game.
But you can try the Star Swarm Stress Test demo/benchmark free from steam,it's the same engine.