Stormrise upcoming RTS game

[Modelworks]

The game looks great but the developer has stated the game will be DX10 only. While I applaud them for trying to move the tech forward I have to wonder if that will severely hurt the games sales.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com...th-Lead-Designer/News/

Back in September PC Games Hardware interviewed Artem Kulakov about the technical aspects of Stormrise. Now we contacted the game's Lead Designer once again to see what new details are available. And the information we received almost blew us away. Getting right to the point, let's just start with Artem's short summary: Vista only. DX10 only. No fallback option. We have never suggested this or hinted at it, so it shouldn't be a surprise. This crystal clear statement had been a follow up to our second technical Q&A, which you can read below. Our first interview can be found at: Exclusive interview about Stormrise DX 10.1 support.

PCGH: You announced that the PC Version of Stormrise will support DX10 and even DX10.1. Is that still the case or did you cancel the support for DX10/10.1? If you cancel the DX10/DX10.1 support what were your reasons to do so?

Artem Kulakov: From day one Stormrise has been designed as a new type of RTS for next generation consoles and PCs. Stormrise has been designed for DirectX 10 and Vista only right from the start. Integrating DX10.1 was an opportunity to increase performance and improve visual quality even further.

PCGH: If there is DX10/10.1 support how do you leverage the API? How can you utilize the advanced feature Set of DX10/DX10.1? How does the API simplify the rendering process?

Artem Kulakov: DX10 has offered a lot of advantages over DX9. First of all, DirectX 10 allowed us to simplify the rendering engine. It matches capabilities of next generation consoles better than DX9, which is important for us considering that Stormrise is a multi-platform title. We had fewer driver-specific compatibility issues with Stormrise compare to our previous games released with DX9.

http://www.sega.com/stormrise/stormrise.php

Stormrise is an upcoming game being developed by Creative Assembly. Stormrise is a post-apocalyptic real-time strategy game from the makers of Total War, with the ability to control units in the air, on the surface, and underground. Stormrise picks up the popular post-apocalyptic theme, presenting a civilization that has begun to once again emerge after a catastrophic event. Two warring factions arise from the rubble: the Echelon, a technologically advanced race that endured the planet's fallout by way of self-induced hibernation, and the Sai, a tribal society that adapted to the new environment and evolved.

A change in scenery won't be the only divergence, however. Rather than Total War's detached, general's-armchair view of battlefields, players will assume the role of frontline commander. The Creative Assembly will also introduce an element of "verticality," where units can be deployed in the air, on rooftops, at ground level, or below the planet's surface.

 

[Elcs]

Overall: Not sure...

Personal Opinion: Thank God for that!!!! Flagship Studios by the time Hellgate: London was nigh on dead had an absolutely phenomenal DX10 code worked into it. 1920x1080 with everything maxxed was perfectly playable on a 512mb HD4870 and blew DX9 away completely. From what I have seen graphically from DX10 in certain games, I have been impressed and a game without wasting time fiddling on with DX9 code in addition should be a pleasure to see both visually and a step forward performance-wise.

For all intents and purposes Vista, especially Vista 64 is becoming the OS of choice for gamers as games are starting to run faster, take advantage of extra memory (DoW2 requires 64-bit OS and 4Gb to use Ultra settings, except via commandline which causes OOM crashes) and offers DX10 for those of us with DX10 cards and ones powerful enough to make use of them when the opportunity arises.

I feel a little shot in the foot as a casual gamer with a reasonably powerful PC as if Vista was not rather flawed and given such a poor reputation in its infancy, we may have seen the migration to DX10 a little sooner and maybe 64-bit would have been taken advantage of a little more.

As regards to whether it will hurt games sales.... it might for the PC platform but a significant proportion of people who are turned off by a DX10-only PC version will buy it for their console. I do not think the company will lose much money all-round in this move, just may lose out on some PC sales to the consoles.

 

[chizow]

Fiscal suicide really. Maybe in a year from now it would make sense once Win7 has a few months to gain some traction, but right now the numbers just don't make sense to release a DX10-only game. Off the top of my head I think Steam was showing 45-50% of discrete GPUs being DX10 capable-which is excellent, however only like 25-30% of all polled CPUs are running Vista. The number of DX10 machines (Vista + DX10 GPU) was something like 80-90% of that number which is good, but still only ~25% or so of the total market.

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: chizow
Fiscal suicide really. Maybe in a year from now it would make sense once Win7 has a few months to gain some traction, but right now the numbers just don't make sense to release a DX10-only game. Off the top of my head I think Steam was showing 45-50% of discrete GPUs being DX10 capable-which is excellent, however only like 25-30% of all polled CPUs are running Vista. The number of DX10 machines (Vista + DX10 GPU) was something like 80-90% of that number which is good, but still only ~25% or so of the total market.

If its cross platform its likely that the PC is a small portion of their predicted sales.

Even if they sell less units they might make more money because of the simplified development life cycle. Depending on the number of devsxtime it would have taken to the dx9 portion, they may well come out ahead.

I think the biggest issue will be people buying it somewhere like BB and then taking it home where they discover that not only can they not play it, but they can't return it, either.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn

Originally posted by: chizow
Fiscal suicide really. Maybe in a year from now it would make sense once Win7 has a few months to gain some traction, but right now the numbers just don't make sense to release a DX10-only game. Off the top of my head I think Steam was showing 45-50% of discrete GPUs being DX10 capable-which is excellent, however only like 25-30% of all polled CPUs are running Vista. The number of DX10 machines (Vista + DX10 GPU) was something like 80-90% of that number which is good, but still only ~25% or so of the total market.

If its cross platform its likely that the PC is a small portion of their predicted sales.

Even if they sell less units they might make more money because of the simplified development life cycle. Depending on the number of devsxtime it would have taken to the dx9 portion, they may well come out ahead.

I think the biggest issue will be people buying it somewhere like BB and then taking it home where they discover that not only can they not play it, but they can't return it, either.

Yeah but RTS on the console is balls, i cant see the console sales of any RTS game being all that great, the PC is still the platform of choice for RTS games. Plus the steam hardware survey, id have to check again but arent a lot of the DX10 GPU's like 8600's etc? Im on an 8600GT and i cant see it running a next gen RTS game, it dosent cope too well with current RTS games as it is (on settings above medium anyway).

Plus sega are the publisher? Ive got nothing against sega but according to people who played that universe at war RTS game sega were partially responsible for its failure along with GFWL. Although petroglyph havent really put out anything that spectacular anyway so ill reserve my judgement for when stormrise is released... but i still see the DX10 exclusive being an insurmountable barrier.

 

[aka1nas]

Most of the Dx10 games that have been released so far have had their Dx10 mode somewhat artificially enhanced to showcase it and justify including it alongside Dx9. AFAIK, no one has bothered to release a game that offers both modes with the same level of detail (in which Dx10 should be faster).

A native Dx10 game might scale down settings well enough to play passably on lower-end Dx10 hardware in that case.

 

[ZzZGuy]

RTS for next generation consoles and PCs.

That alone killed all intrest I may have had for this game (first I've heard of it).

Odds are good that the dumbed down, simplified and general "consolish" fell will be transfered over to the PC and not be worth playing. There are exceptions, but I don't feel this is one of them.

For the DX10 thing, I am NOT touching vista for one game. I'm using vista right now as I type (relatives computer) and I hate using it. I'm placing my hopes on windows 7, they have to be retarded to make the game only work with vista if the MS's next OS will be using DX10 as well.

 

[Zenoth]

I have a strange feeling that they will change their mind and will make a DX9-capable mode.

Most PC gamers still use Windows XP, I'd be extremely surprised to learn that Vista holds even half of the PC gamers crowd at the moment and even in a year from now. I'm pretty certain that Windows 7 will be the favored choice when either the RC build or the final version is released, but even that will take a while (the transition time). But making a game DX10-only and intending to release it when DX9 is still the king of the hill in gaming is indeed financially/fiscally idiotic, even if it is indeed a very daring move, which I ironically usually support in gaming, but in this case...

In the end however time will tell, and upon release it may well become very popular and used as a Golden standard and exemplary move for other developers in the future. And to be honest I do wish them the best about that. I just think from a mere gamer point of view that it won't succeed due to the early nature of it, the market just isn't ready for that, from what I can see.

 

[blckgrffn]

At the last LAN party I hosted, of the 16 PC's only four were running XP, and one of those was an imac w/bootcamp

*shrug*

I think that enough people are running Vista now and will be running 7 by this fall that it won't be too stupid.

 

[Arglebargle]

Steam survey shows 35% of their users on Vista, but only 25% of the users have fully DX10 capable systems.

Lots of early adopters got the OS, but I am waiting for the fully beta tested version: ie, Windoze 7.

Perhaps the manhours going into XP compatibility are wasted, from the companies view. I know that I won't be buying the game til its on deep discount. And that's only if it has had at least a partially successful consolectomy....

 

[nosfe]

it really depends on where you live, here in Romania if you go around a college campus you'll still see a ton of people with Geforce4 MX440 playing CS1.6

 

[BenSkywalker]

Sega is publishing this game, that means the fact that a PC version exists at all is surprising. Spend time working around the messed up shortfalls of the DX9 API, or take the easy port route and simply require people upgrade from Windows 3.1? I don't think Sega will care if the PC version sells much, this game will be judged on a financial basis based on how it does on the 360 and PS3, DX10 required means they likely spent a rather small amount of time getting the 360 version to run on the PC and calling it done. It was likely either that, or no PC port at all.

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Sega is publishing this game, that means the fact that a PC version exists at all is surprising. Spend time working around the messed up shortfalls of the DX9 API, or take the easy port route and simply require people upgrade from Windows 3.1? I don't think Sega will care if the PC version sells much, this game will be judged on a financial basis based on how it does on the 360 and PS3, DX10 required means they likely spent a rather small amount of time getting the 360 version to run on the PC and calling it done. It was likely either that, or no PC port at all.

:thumbsup:

Hopefully they spent some of that development time they gained from just using DX10 to port the interface over to the PC more elegantly...

What they are probably still keeping in there cap is that you are going to need 3+ processors to play it well too, ala GTA IV If they can't be bothered with DX9, why change the threading or optimize for different CPU's

 

[Genx87]

Depends on their target market and what hardware requirements it needs. If they are making this for the high end gamer that has 4-8GB of ram and an E8400 or better CPU with the latest generation of graphics. Then DX10 is a no brainer. These people should be running Vista64.

 

[acheron]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Depends on their target market and what hardware requirements it needs. If they are making this for the high end gamer that has 4-8GB of ram and an E8400 or better CPU with the latest generation of graphics. Then DX10 is a no brainer. These people should be running Vista64.

It's a console game. Their "target market" is 15-year-old boys who like to teabag their opponents in Halo while calling each other lovely human Mexican Jew Lizards. This is Creative Assembly we're talking about; they already have a successful PC game series in Total War, but those games require more than a 10 second attention span, so they can't sell them to console gamers. As BenSkywalker pointed out, they probably don't even care about the PC port for this one.

 

[jonks]

Red Alert 3 and C&C3 also had console and PC releases, and the PC versions played like PC RTS's, so I don't think that just b/c an RTS is multiplatform it automatically sucks. Guess we'll have to see about Stormrise, but Clancy's RTS was geared towards consoles with the PC as the afterthought, as we saw how well that worked out for the PC version. Still, limiting your audience to 25% of the market still sounds dumb on its face.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Sega is publishing this game, that means the fact that a PC version exists at all is surprising. Spend time working around the messed up shortfalls of the DX9 API, or take the easy port route and simply require people upgrade from Windows 3.1?

I doubt that's the case. The 360 is DX9.

Microsoft probably forced them to make it DX10 only.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Sega is publishing this game, that means the fact that a PC version exists at all is surprising. Spend time working around the messed up shortfalls of the DX9 API, or take the easy port route and simply require people upgrade from Windows 3.1?

I doubt that's the case. The 360 is DX9.

Microsoft probably forced them to make it DX10 only.

That is the part I didn't understand when they said it was easier to develop it in DX10 only. I'm thinking what we have here is a game developed in DX9 with DX10 features added on and the option in the compiling to make it work only on vista. But then the developer specifically says it was DX10 from the start.

Will be interesting to see.

 

[jonks]

HAHA! Gamespot gave it a 2.0! And the console versions 2.5! I guess they get the superior version hehe.

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: jonks
HAHA! Gamespot gave it a 2.0! And the console versions 2.5! I guess they get the superior version hehe.

Lmao just read the review, what a shit game- shame on Creative assembly

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas

Originally posted by: jonks
HAHA! Gamespot gave it a 2.0! And the console versions 2.5! I guess they get the superior version hehe.

Lmao just read the review, what a shit game- shame on Creative assembly

"under no circumstances should you waste your time or money on it"

OUCH!

 

[Red Storm]

Moral of the story: RTS games are made for the PC and the controls that come with it. It's like playing sport games with a keyboard & mouse; it just doesn't work.

 

[Elcs]

Link for the lazy

EDIT: Just sheer embarrassment. Words cannot descrive how badly even Gamespot ripped it. If they paid anything to get a good review, it didnt help

 

[TehMac]

Serves them right. Halo Wars did well because Halo fanboys are incredible tools, as they just demonstrated.

 

[Modelworks]

There is nothing redeeming about this game. It is sad really to see a company that we know can do better make such a pile of crap.
If they expect this game to make people want DX10 then DX9 will reign for a thousand years.