Supreme Commander 2 Hands-on: Better graphics and performance
In Supreme Commander 2 you will once again fight huge battles with thousands of units on vast maps. In matters of gameplay Supreme Commander remains true to itself, but enhanced the game mechanism.
At the presentation of Supreme Commander 2 Chris Taylor, boss of Gas Powered Games, didn't just explain the gameplay enhancements but also the technical improvements. The maps for example are even bigger than before and sometimes offer spectacular terrain and instead of 9 up to 27 Experimentals can deliver heavy firepower. New units like an artillery cannon that fires tanks or heavy infantry directly into the battle or jumping ground units have been integrated, too.
The primary technical enhancements and adjustments are primarily related to the path finding A.I., which had already been quite good in the preview version, and the lighting. Besides Global Illumination the visual appearance is enhanced with Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Soft Shadows and Unit Self Shadows. The pure mass of particles as well as huge blast waves that interact with any object make the massive battles visually appealing. Dual monitoring is still natively supported and a Freeze'n'Free Cam Mode can be used to take impressive screenshots.
According to Chris Tailor the new multi core optimized engine is running much faster than the old one. During the presentation Supreme Commander 2 was running was running smoothly almost all the time at 720p, regardless of the units of four parties and screen filling explosions. According to the latest information Supreme Commander 2 will be released in 2010.
[futuremark]
