Holy Fracking Thanksgiving
Hi, all! It's been a good one, with lots of family and friends and marvelous food. BUT - something truly important has happened.
First, a bit of background: In 1997, a marvelous game that goes by the name Total Annihilation was released. It had been under development since early in the previous year under the direction of creator and lead designer Chris Taylor, and was heralded as an instant classic. One of the finest Real-Time Strategy games ever made, it is still very widely played and is a frequent favorite among the folks I regularly game with. Its impending release was one of the driving factors behind the first PC I ever built, a decade ago, and I have never tired of its rich and satisfying gameplay.
Early next year, Chris Taylor's Gas Powered Games will release Supreme Commander, his long-awaited follow-up to TA. I have been following its development with great excitement since details started leaking last year, and signed up for the subscriber-only closed beta test of the game last month through Fileplanet. And I can tell you that this game, even in its beta stage of development, absolutely ROCKS. If you enjoyed the original TA, you'll love Supreme Commander.
And now, as of today, the beta is open to everybody.
You have to have at least a basic Fileplanet account to sign up; you can create one here for free. After that, go here to join the beta and download the software. Be advised - you will need a broadband connection to get the program in less than a week (and to play online after installing), as it's approximately 1.5 gigabytes in size; also free users will have to join the download queue while your machine waits its turn, which could be hours for something huge and popular - like this. As far as system requirements go - your machine should have at least an Athlon XP 1800 or 2 GHz Pentium 4, one gigabyte of RAM, 3 gigs of open hard drive space, and an adequate Direct-X 9 video card (on the ATI side- at least a Radeon 9500; on the Nvidia side- at least a GeForce 6200) for decent gameplay. [Disclaimer - no official system requirements have been published for SC; the specs I have listed above are my own best estimates based on what other people are running and the performance of own system.] Most PC gamers I know out there have machines at least this good, so you're set.
For frack's sake, what you doing still staring at this blog entry? Go get the beta of this game! Now!
First, a bit of background: In 1997, a marvelous game that goes by the name Total Annihilation was released. It had been under development since early in the previous year under the direction of creator and lead designer Chris Taylor, and was heralded as an instant classic. One of the finest Real-Time Strategy games ever made, it is still very widely played and is a frequent favorite among the folks I regularly game with. Its impending release was one of the driving factors behind the first PC I ever built, a decade ago, and I have never tired of its rich and satisfying gameplay.
Early next year, Chris Taylor's Gas Powered Games will release Supreme Commander, his long-awaited follow-up to TA. I have been following its development with great excitement since details started leaking last year, and signed up for the subscriber-only closed beta test of the game last month through Fileplanet. And I can tell you that this game, even in its beta stage of development, absolutely ROCKS. If you enjoyed the original TA, you'll love Supreme Commander.
And now, as of today, the beta is open to everybody.
You have to have at least a basic Fileplanet account to sign up; you can create one here for free. After that, go here to join the beta and download the software. Be advised - you will need a broadband connection to get the program in less than a week (and to play online after installing), as it's approximately 1.5 gigabytes in size; also free users will have to join the download queue while your machine waits its turn, which could be hours for something huge and popular - like this. As far as system requirements go - your machine should have at least an Athlon XP 1800 or 2 GHz Pentium 4, one gigabyte of RAM, 3 gigs of open hard drive space, and an adequate Direct-X 9 video card (on the ATI side- at least a Radeon 9500; on the Nvidia side- at least a GeForce 6200) for decent gameplay. [Disclaimer - no official system requirements have been published for SC; the specs I have listed above are my own best estimates based on what other people are running and the performance of own system.] Most PC gamers I know out there have machines at least this good, so you're set.
For frack's sake, what you doing still staring at this blog entry? Go get the beta of this game! Now!