Ashes of Singularity - a.k.a. the game that sprung from that Mantle demo.

[Deleted member 13524]

By Stardock and using the Oxide engine:

And here's a video:

Seems to put Planetary Annihilation to shame in terms of unit count.

 

[iroboto]

Selecting my next processor is going to be time consuming. I guess waiting for Skylake makes the most sense for now, unless I need more cores than 4.

 

[sebbbi]

Reminds me about Supreme Commander

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Selecting my next processor is going to be time consuming. I guess waiting for Skylake makes the most sense for now, unless I need more cores than 4.

Actually, it doesn't look like it will. In the video, they're using a Kaveri with a Radeon 290X and they say the 290X is the bottleneck.
So if a dual-module Steamroller can take it, it doesn't look like Mantle/Vulkan/DX12 games will be very demanding on the CPU.

 

[iroboto]

Actually, it doesn't look like it will. In the video, they're using a Kaveri with a Radeon 290X and they say the 290X is the bottleneck.
So if a dual-module Steamroller can take it, it doesn't look like Mantle/Vulkan/DX12 games will be very demanding on the CPU.

You could be right. I'm still likely to go for a 4 core Skylake though. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning, as impressive as it is, it will require higher scaling over time.

 

[AlNom]

Reminds me about Supreme Commander

Total Annihilation!

 

[willardjuice]

I loved Supreme Commander! The second one was such a let down. Here's hoping! :smile:

 

[sebbbi]

Total Annihilation!

Yes, and Total Annihilation. Awesome game

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The demo has over 5,500 units and it's the smallest map size.

5,500 units! O.O

Regards,
SB

 

[hoom]

Doesn't especially look like 5500 units there...
I mean, presumably they have a unit count that isn't bugged & I'm all for TA/Supcom/PA type vast scale games.

But its not like PA can't handle thousands of units.
eg there has to be like 5k at least in this game

Edit: unit count 5181 near the end with 3868 being mobile (others are buildings, don't think walls count) & the sim is still running pretty fast.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yes, but the graphical detail there is significantly less than in Ashes of Sigularity. And it's pushing the CPU significantly harder. IIRC, the Ashes of Singularity demo was running on a Kaveri. With CPU to spare which could be used for better AI.

Smallest map size. Implication being that it can run a lot more units than that.

Regards,
SB

 

[swaaye]

Gamasutra development post mortem written by Brad Wardell
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._and_Oxide_Games_Ashes_of_the_Singularity.php

Fun tidbit

AI is usually the weakest part of an RTS. In fact, it’s so assumed that real-time strategy games will have bad AI that it has caused us some grief in our reviews because some reviewers (you know who you are) barely bothered with the sandbox game, focusing instead on the scripted (and relatively bare bones) campaign. It didn’t occur to them that the single player sandbox was the meat of the game.

In Ashes, the AI operates on multiple CPU cores at once (a minimum of 4) and does so asynchronously from the rest of the game simulation. This is important because you can watch, in real-time, the AI adapt and counter your strategies. It also matters because as we get better at the game ourselves (or ahem, watch others) we can keep making the AI better and better.

I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. Hope someone else here is as well.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Gamasutra development post mortem written by Brad Wardell
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._and_Oxide_Games_Ashes_of_the_Singularity.php

Fun tidbit


I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. Hope someone else here is as well.

Yeah I'll eventually pick this up when I eventually migrate to Win10 (waiting until last possible moment for the free upgrade as I still can't stand Win10 compared to Win8.1).

Looked at some people doing co-op multiplayer and the computer AI is just brutal at adapting to their strategies and countering them.

Regards,
SB

 

[swaaye]

It runs better in D3D11 mode on some configurations so don't get too caught up on needing Win 10 for the game. You choose API when you launch the game.

Yeah the AI is crafty indeed. I've seen it change strategies. It uses everything and it notices what you are weak in. You have to cover all the strategic possibilities or you probably die. And of course since it's an AI it can scarily out-micromanage you. It's fine managing 8 fronts at once. There's a scenario included called Overlord that is nuts to keep up with, even with 2 AI allies.

They just put out v1.1 with some new maps, units, and other improvements.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

It runs better in D3D11 mode on some configurations so don't get too caught up on needing Win 10 for the game.

Which configurations? Kepler with Core i3/i5?



EDIT -
From that article:

The bump in performance from DirectX 11 to Mantle was so substantial that it caused some marketing headaches for AMD. For example, during the prototype tests on an AMD 390 we saw performance gains of over 60 percent. However, marketing materials would go out that indicated only a 20 percent boost, because there was concern that no one would believe such a massive jump.

 

[swaaye]

Which configurations? Kepler with Core i3/i5?

Well apparently my notebook with GM107 and i7 4820QM is faster with D3D11. Not only slightly faster, but there are occasional visual glitches in D3D12 mode. When I ran the benchmark test in "Low" preset without vsync, it even appeared to be rendering frames out of order, giving a strange rewind judder effect.

I get the impression that their D3D12 mode is intended for Maxwell 2 and later GCN cards. The cards everyone is using for those D3D12 performance generalization website traffic booster articles.