Sudden Strike 4 News / Updates Übersicht

[HeinrichBhaal]

What is going on behind the lines in MP?
- there are reinforcements routes, they must be secured (vs enemy paratroopers etc.)
- "secret" movements of army
- small parts of defense - AT and AA guns
- occupy cities, buldings
- lay minefields and build roadblocks
- artilery + amunition
- repair and oil trucks assembly point
- airport
- some players there holds most of its troops (but it's not very effective)

Battlefront is in RWM mostly 2 - 3 screens wide (1 screen = cca 800 tiles).

I don't know what is Ransombolton trying to say - in Sust4 with 10x lower number of units will be 90% of map empty? Haha, I understand the impassable forest now

Btw. if this is the maximal zoom so: (based on infantry size)

Which mod/map is that? Look interesting. RWM8?

[Last Soldier]

Yes, RWM 8. Practically all multiplayer maps. Some have no airports (mostly smaller ones) and artillery is maybe only in cca 1/4 of maps.

Multiplayer battles have their order, I think that over the years it's been verified. Mapmakers did a great job, as well as modders.

Of course you can. The Unity engine is even able to render units detailed like this.

It looks amazing, they made great progress with lighting and materials.

How many Unity games looks like this? You played any? And why all Unity RTS games looks so bad or have max. 100 units per map, when you say that it is possible? Blitzkrieg 3 is created in Unity too, low number of units included.
It just seems that this is the maximum what can be done.


.....

I check Sudden Strike 3 today and oddly enough, the game view shows the largest area of map - image here
Sust4 shows only cca 1/4..

Btw. Infantry was trained by Monty Python - Ministry of Silly walks

[ransombolton]

Hallo,

ob der Inhalt einer Karte genutzt wird, liegt

a) an der Kompetenz des Kartenerstellers
b) an der individuellen Spielweise des Spielers.

Wo soll der Vorteil sein, von vornherein die Kartengröße und damit die Intelligenz des Menschen vor der Bildschirm klein zu halten?

Mit der Einwandbearbeitungstechnik, den schwächsten Punkt des anderen zu treffen, um sich damit selbst positiv abzusetzen, so muss ich sagen, dass du, ransombolton, mit dem Holzhaus nun wirklich einen Aspekt angesprochen hast, den man individuell anpassen kann und der von Mod zu Mod verschieden ist.
Warum deswegen Sudden Strike 4 besser sein soll, erschließt sich mir nicht.

Gruß Ente

Hu? Versuch ich doch gar nicht. Ich hab doch gesagt, das ist awesome! Wollte nur herausstellen, dass jede Version so seine Vor- und Nachteile hat und man nichts zu sehr verklären sollte. Ich bin nächste Woche im Studio. Dann nehme ich einen Koffer voll mit euren Wünschen mit. Und dann sehen wir, was geht, was nicht geht und was erst später geht. Ist doch fair, oder?

[ransombolton]

Multithreading and the low lvl API DX12(no draw call limitations like in DX11) are crucial to achieve tens of thousands of units. The speedup per additional core is almost linear.
If you don't believe it, try playing AoS on one or two cores. Old low poly single threaded RTS with much less details fail at so many units.
AoS-Units are not low poly like they used to be in old RTS. Instead they have curved surfaces and (like the terrain) reflect lighting.

This is also crucial: http://i.imgur.com/f6GPoyh.jpg - scene with very low variability. Total War use some form of instancing too but with 1000x more details.
You can render tanks and infantry in same (curved) way?

Of course you can. The Unity engine is even able to render units detailed like this.

I also find the Adam demo stunning. But while, yes, it is rendered in real-time, one must say that it does not take into account any changes to the setup that might for example, occur with player interaction, etc. It is just the graphics and models, no other real-time computations. Like a CGI rendered in real time. So anything that would be a real game would have it hard to look exactly like that. But yeah, it looks stunning.

The AoS developers consist of only 50 Stardock and 6 Oxide Games employees. I can't see why Unity with its 1000+ employees would not be able to achieve a similar effective multithreading and DX12 implementation in thier engine.

+AMD. They will add it: https://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap but performance and universal engine? And you still need expert for new API in your team?
It just does not work together in my opinion, but maybe I'm wrong.

Unity already supports DX12 and they "cannot wait to give" Vulkan "into the hands of our users".
Part of the support by Unity is to train the developers how to use thier tools and "Continuous updates with new features, platforms and improved performance."
Unity 5.4 supports "Fewer draw calls with GPU instancing" and "Better multithreaded rendering".

Pretty easy explanation: Because Stardock/Oxide are creating their engine for a very specific kind of game on a very specific platform. Large-scale strategy games on PC. Whereas the Unity team needs to, as Last Soldier already said, create a universal engine. One that works for a multitude of game concepts and on nearly every platform (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Browser, etc.). Hardcore strategy games are not a focus there. That is why I said we are kind of pushing the boundaries there. And it will help improve the engine itself as well.

With DX12 or Vulkan the number of draw calls can be increased in Unity engine games, too. According to Unity they already increased performance by using DX12. This feature and multithreading is not limited to a specific engine. AoS is only an example for that. Another example is this benchmark with an increase of ~500% in the number of draw calls.

Granted, yes. Multithreading not bound to any engine or platform. It is actually necessary on consoles.

AoS has missiles with smoke trails and lighting from lasers and plasma bolts is being reflected by terrain and units. Also there is vegatation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZepjUuYEjmo

Yes all the weapon effects are really nice. But if you look closely, they are just effects. They are not projectiles being calculated, etc. It is an effect that has effect on the surrounding (refleciton, etc.) and a clear effect on the target. Laser goes from a to be and does x damage.

Of course, in Sudden Strike 4 such effects are not necessary because usually in WW2 there are no fancy lasers and plasma projectiles flying around(except in alternative time lines in Star Trek ). When a WW2 tank gun is firing you only see the muzzle flash, a small smoke cloud and the impact. So there is no need to draw costly projectiles. Something similar like the current effect for MG projectiles in Sudden Strike 4 would be appropriate. Lighting effects would only be suitable for MG tracer rounds at night and smoke trails for missiles.

Currently Sudden Strike 4 tank gun and artillery projectiles and bombs cause a smoke effect like a rail gun from a FPS. Why?

I am not talking about the computation costs of actually rendering/drawing the projectile on screen but about the computation costs of calculating the impact, ricochets, trajectories, etc. Creating an effect (laser, smoke, projectile, muzzle flash, etc.) is one thing. Having these actually reflected as impacts in models, damage calculation, etc. is another thing. So those calculations take much more computation power in realistic/WW2 games such as Sudden Strike than in scifi settings.

As for the trail effects: They are done to give information to the player. What projectile is flying towards me? Where approximately does it come from? How big is it? What do I need to watch for and what do i need to counter it? It also makes for a very cinematic experience. But we heard that the hardcore community does not like it and sees it as unrealistic. So we will insert a switch in the options menu to turn them off. Good news?

No probabilities or armor repercussion, etc. Also, yes there is vegetation, there are some trees and bushes. But so far, I do not see them having any effect on gameplay or being affected by units.

That is not a reason to limit Sudden Strike 4 to a small number of units. Such calculations can be done in a separate thread and occur only at impact. Also WW2 tank guns are only firing at a slow rate.

I am not saying it is worse. Ashes of the Singulariy is a great game. It just has a different focus and I am wary to compare it to Sudden Strike 4.

AoS is an example on what is possible with multithreading and a modern low lvl API. Those are crucial to achieve tens of thousands of units. If you don't believe it, try playing AoS on one or two cores. The points is, there is no need to ignore todays technical possibilities to achieve at least thousands of units and limit the number of units to much less than known from Sudden Strike.

Again, Ashes aims at displaying thousands of units and makes that the top priority. Everything else is put under this premise. And they are working on their own engine for a very specific and powerful set of machines (DX12 or not). That doesnt make it less impressive. I just think it is not really comparable to what we are trying to achieve with Sudden Strike 4.

[kackspecht]

How many Unity games looks like this? You played any? And why all Unity RTS games looks so bad or have max. 100 units per map, when you say that it is possible? Blitzkrieg 3 is created in Unity too, low number of units included.
It just seems that this is the maximum what can be done.

I assume because they do not use instancing and multithreading.
On a quad core CPU you can check whether Blitzkrieg 3 utilises all cores in the taskmanager.
Also you can use the taskmanager or BIOS to make it run on only 1 or 2 CPU cores and then check the framerate(with Fraps).

I also find the Adam demo stunning. But while, yes, it is rendered in real-time, one must say that it does not take into account any changes to the setup that might for example, occur with player interaction, etc. It is just the graphics and models, no other real-time computations. Like a CGI rendered in real time. So anything that would be a real game would have it hard to look exactly like that. But yeah, it looks stunning.

"Adam runs at 1440p on a GeForce GTX980. Attendees at Unite Europe were able to play with it in real time, and we’ll make a playable available soon so everyone can check it out."
http://unity3d.com/pages/adam?utm_sourc ... -AdamFulll

It would be interesting to know the used CPU and its utilization.

I am not talking about the computation costs of actually rendering/drawing the projectile on screen but about the computation costs of calculating the impact, ricochets, trajectories, etc. Creating an effect (laser, smoke, projectile, muzzle flash, etc.) is one thing. Having these actually reflected as impacts in models, damage calculation, etc. is another thing. So those calculations take much more computation power in realistic/WW2 games such as Sudden Strike than in scifi settings.

I already wrote that such calculations can be done in a separate thread and occur only at impact. There is no need to put such calculations in the main thread and needlessly decreasing performance. Also WW2 tank guns are only firing at a slow rate.

You wrote that such calculations in Sudden Strike 4 are less detailed than in WT. Taking into account the current range between firing tanks in Sudden Strike 4 apparently range and gravity is being neglected in those calculations. Obviously the calculations are far away from a simulation level.

How much time does the CPU spend in Sudden Strike 4 on subtracting hitpoints based on where the projectile hits? What is the increase in FPS after disabling those calculations? 1%? If it is more, may be you should use a faster algorithm instead of decreasing the number of units. Todays quad core CPUs achieve between 50 and 100 GFLOPS. That is plenty of FLOPS to subtract hitpoints.

As for the trail effects: They are done to give information to the player. What projectile is flying towards me? Where approximately does it come from? How big is it? What do I need to watch for and what do i need to counter it? It also makes for a very cinematic experience. But we heard that the hardcore community does not like it and sees it as unrealistic. So we will insert a switch in the options menu to turn them off. Good news?

I already suspected that this is because you want to make the game easier for players. But even in casual arcade style games like CoH this type of assistance looks more subtle/transparent .

To make this effect optional is good news.

Again, Ashes aims at displaying thousands of units and makes that the top priority.

It is tens of thousands of units.

Everything else is put under this premise.

It also looks very good (no low poly units, lighting effects with thousands of light sources never seen in RTS before) because they are using efficient rendering techniques.

And they are working on their own engine for a very specific and powerful set of machines (DX12 or not).

Thier recommended system requirement is comparable with Sudden Strike 4.
A quad core CPU without HT or even a cheap 2-core with HT is sufficient.


With the help of instancing it is possible to draw thousands of units even on very old systems. It is an old DX10 technique from 2007 used by already released games.

"With this technique, we are able to realize almost 10,000 characters, independently animating with different animations and differing meshes at 30 frames/sec on an Intel Core 2 Duo GeForce 8800 GTX system, as shown in Figures 2-1 and 2-2."
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGem ... _ch02.html
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/SD ... ePaper.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB2kkWkfJtw

That doesnt make it less impressive. I just think it is not really comparable to what we are trying to achieve with Sudden Strike 4.

That the lower number of units(than known from Sudden Strike) is intentional and not a question of technical possibilites was already my impression. Thank you for clarifing this.

[Mother Goose]

Hi,

vor einigen Wochen berichtete ein Freund, dass Suddenstrike 4 angekündigt wurde! Erwartungsvoll habe ich mir instantan das Video bei Gamestar angeschaut, doch die Enttäuschung war groß - und mit dieser Ansicht war ich nicht alleine: Einheiten stehen viel zu dicht bei einander, scheinbar werden nur wenige Einheiten befehligt und das ganze wirkt wie ein anspruchsloses Kinderspiel, bei welchem das Nachdenken eine untergeordnete Rolle spielt.

Wir haben "damals" beide lange Zeit Sust RWM gezockt eben weil es die Diversität an Einheiten gab, Realismus eine gewisse Rolle spielte, viele Einheiten befehligt wurden und die Atmosphäre oftmals super war....

Das einzige Spiel was mich heutzutage in diesem Genre reizt ist Wargame Red Dragon (wobei es auch hier starken Optimierungsbedarf gibt) und ich wette, dass noch weitere ehem. RWM Spieler heutzutage dabei sind, da gewisse Parallelitäten zu Sust nicht von der Hand zu weisen sind.

[Ingwio]

Mit dem Sudden Strike 4 wie es zur Zeit dagestellt wird haben viele Leute Probleme mit. Missionen sind eigentlich komplett unflexibel, soll heissen erinnert mehr an einen Sudden Strike 2 Arcade Modus mit verbesserter Grafik und sehr wenig Einheiten. In meinen Augen ist derzeit Sudden Strike 3 noch wesentlich besser als der kommende Sudden Strike 4 Teil und wie wir alle wissen, war der Teil ein kompletter Flop. Lag zum Teil aber auch wohl an Fireglow, die anscheinend in einen "Dauerwodkakoma" gestrandet waren.

Irritierend finde ich auch den Werbeslogan "Größere Karten" und "mehr Einheiten" !!! Wenn ich die Diskussionen hier so verfolge und mir dann Sudden 1 und 2 und Ressource War anschaue, dann muss ich sagen, das die Herren von Kalypso noch Lichtjahre von den ersten Teilen weg sind. Nicht von der Grafik, sondern vom Gameplay!!! Viel schlimmer finde ich eigentlich das die Herren anscheinend garnicht wissen was Sudden Strike ist und welcher Mechanismus das Spiel taktisch gesehen so unberechenbar macht...genau Massenschlacht !!! Das was Kalypso so hochpreist, gab es doch schon alles bei Sudden Strike.... ahhh OK die Sandsäcke nicht, die gab es bei Blitzkrieg... passt aber zum unflexiblen Arcademodus.

[ransombolton]

Hallo Leute!

Sorry für die Stille. Ich ware in paar Tage in Budapest im Studio, gerade auch, um viele eurer Fragen abzuklären. Gebt mir nächste Woche in paar Tage, um die Antworten zu ordnen. Ich denke, ein paar Sachen werden euch glücklich machen.

Schöne Grüße und ein erholsames Wochenende,
Chris

[Hoch]

Hello Chris,
We also expect that you bring us good news because at the moment
the game is far from our expectations of a sudden strike that bears his name.
I agree with Gen. Lammers, graphics seem ok unless the size of maps and gameplay is not good.
For me, the gameplay is "codename panzer" gameplay.
I hope you will make me change my mind . It's weird, we don't see you on our forum ? A problem ?
Hoch

[-Barbarossa-]

Hallo Leute!

Sorry für die Stille. Ich ware in paar Tage in Budapest im Studio, gerade auch, um viele eurer Fragen abzuklären. Gebt mir nächste Woche in paar Tage, um die Antworten zu ordnen. Ich denke, ein paar Sachen werden euch glücklich machen.

Schöne Grüße und ein erholsames Wochenende,
Chris

Wir sind gespannt! Ein paar motivierende Ansagen, die die angestrebte Richtung vorgeben, würden hier wohl allen gut tun!

Ebenfalls schönes Wochenende!

[HeinrichBhaal]

Hallo Leute!

Sorry für die Stille. Ich ware in paar Tage in Budapest im Studio, gerade auch, um viele eurer Fragen abzuklären. Gebt mir nächste Woche in paar Tage, um die Antworten zu ordnen. Ich denke, ein paar Sachen werden euch glücklich machen.

Schöne Grüße und ein erholsames Wochenende,
Chris

Ich wollte ja schon die anderen zurecht weisen, dass sie sich gedulden sollen. Aber es ist schon fast eine Woche her und immer noch keine neue Nachricht. Und ich selbst werde schon ungeduldig.

[Strelokben85]

Hallo Leute!

Sorry für die Stille. Ich ware in paar Tage in Budapest im Studio, gerade auch, um viele eurer Fragen abzuklären. Gebt mir nächste Woche in paar Tage, um die Antworten zu ordnen. Ich denke, ein paar Sachen werden euch glücklich machen.

Schöne Grüße und ein erholsames Wochenende,
Chris

Ich wollte ja schon die anderen zurecht weisen, dass sie sich gedulden sollen. Aber es ist schon fast eine Woche her und immer noch keine neue Nachricht. Und ich selbst werde schon ungeduldig.

Warscheinlich gibt es mehr schlechte alls gute Nachrichten und man wartet so lange bis das Spiel draußen ist, um wenigstens ein paar Exemplare zu verkaufen.

Bin sehr skeptisch von dem was ich bisher gesehen und gelesen habe.

[FIGHT-NimRoD]

Hallo Leute!

Sorry für die Stille. Ich ware in paar Tage in Budapest im Studio, gerade auch, um viele eurer Fragen abzuklären. Gebt mir nächste Woche in paar Tage, um die Antworten zu ordnen. Ich denke, ein paar Sachen werden euch glücklich machen.

Schöne Grüße und ein erholsames Wochenende,
Chris

Ich wollte ja schon die anderen zurecht weisen, dass sie sich gedulden sollen. Aber es ist schon fast eine Woche her und immer noch keine neue Nachricht. Und ich selbst werde schon ungeduldig.

Warscheinlich gibt es mehr schlechte alls gute Nachrichten und man wartet so lange bis das Spiel draußen ist, um wenigstens ein paar Exemplare zu verkaufen.

Bin sehr skeptisch von dem was ich bisher gesehen und gelesen habe.

Hi

Bin einer der Alten Garde vom Fight-Clan von vor über 10 Jahren.
Und wenn ich das, was ich von SS4 so sehe und lese dann.

Muss ich dir Recht geben das wird nichts mit SS4


mfg

[-FG- Task Force]

Bin mal gespannt was es für Neuigkeiten gibt, nachdem was ich jetzt alles gesehen habe an Screens und Videos, ist das derzeit kein! Sust Nachfolger, mich stört auch die Werbung mit "noch mehr Einheiten" usw. was wenn man es derzeit betrachtet absolut nicht der Wahrheit entspricht , wenn man sich schon als "Nachfolger" bzw. es wieder aufleben zu lassen anpreist, sollte man auch dann bei der Wahrheit bleiben und nicht mit falscher Werbung die Leute in die Irre führen, sonst wirds noch ein grösserer Flop wie Sust 3 wo wir ja wissen woran es lag. Das Spiel hatte definitiv das Potential als "Nachfolger" aber dank der volltrunkenden Bande von Fireglow selbst kaputt gemacht wurde, und ist nur durch eine geringe Anzahl Spieler am Leben gehalten worden, die sich die Mühe gemacht haben und tolle Maps bzw. Kampagnen gebastelt haben wie auch der Batus Mod.

[Tyketto]

Was soll man da noch sagen?

Schlechte Informationspolitik bedeutet meist auch schlechtes Produkt!!!!!

Für mich ist der Hype schon gelaufen. Kann mir nicht vorstellen dass das Produkt auch nur annähernd an die Vorgänger heran reichen wird...