Universe at War

[Spock]

AW: Universe at War

Die aliens sehen mir zu "harhar ich bin abstrakt!" aus.

Ich denke, das ist auch genau das, was PG beabsichtigt hat. Denn die Menschen sehen ja ganz normal aus. Geschmackssache.

Hab mal irgendwo im Petroglyph Forum gelesen, dass UaW ein Remake eines
Sega Dreamcast Spiels names Alien Front Online ist,
da sahen die Aliens ganz genau so aus wie die in UaW
Man kann also definitiv sagen das die Alliens so beabsichtigt sind

[Faramir-souldrive]

Re: AW: Universe at War

Haha. Du hasts mal voll NICHT drauf!




Das Spiel sieht seltsam aus. Mal sehen was daraus wird.

LOL ziehen wir uns doch mal dieses typische Beispiel für unentdeckten Spam rein.


zuerst kommt ein provozierender Satz , du hasts mal voll nicht drauf,....

...doch dann merkt Narloxon, dass es wohl auffällt und gelöscht wird wenn er nicht noch 2 MINIMALsätze hinklatscht und auf unterem Niveau antwortet


Narloxon, das nächste mal musst du deinen Spam intelektueller verstecken


Sooo was anderes:

Das sepzielle Basismanagement

Fällt mir auch auf..für mich sieht das ein bischen wie die IDEE von Schlacht um Mittelerde aus...also dieses Kreisrunde Menü das sich öffnet wenn man auf ein Gebäude klickt usw....mit dem man dann ausbauen kann.

An sich reizt mich dieses Game aber wenig, da ich rein fiktive Games net sooo mag. Sie sollten sich auf irgendwelche Nachvollziehbaren Konflikte stützen. Ich ,mein eine Alien Invasion im Jahre 2012,....da muss ich mir ziemlich viel vorstellen um es überhaupt so ähnlich aussehen zu lassen

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

Ein Admin von der Seite: http://gamereplays.org/uaw/
hat Petroglyph einen Besuch abgestattet und dort UaW angespielt. Seinen Erfahrungsbericht könnt ihr euch hier durchlesen.




GameReplays.org is proud to present a community exclusive report to Petroglyph Games and their game in progress, Universe at War: Earth Assault. GameReplays Admin, Elegy, goes behind the scenes to test out the game.


April 10th

I arrived at the Petroglyph office at around two o'clock. After entering and waiting in the lobby, I met up with Petroglyph’s community manager, Kevin Yu (SAGEKING). First thing, of course, was to sign the NDA, with all the usual clauses. With the legal work done, I finally got to see Petroglyph itself.

Entering the main hallway, I was introduced to most of the major staff members there, starting with the concept artists and graphics work. Among these was Kevin Prangley, lead concept artist, who showed me a great deal of Universe at War concept art for the three different factions. Prangley answered all of my questions happily and was very excited to show me the work. In addition to UAW art, he did some of the work for Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, namely the Consortium. After promising that I could have any piece of art I wished, SAGEKING and I headed onwards.

Walking along the hallways, I was introduced to more Petroglyph staff, mainly more artists and then some of the producers and the like, including Adam Isgreen, the brains behind Universe at War. After introductions, Adam told me to have a fun and productive visit and bade farewell. After Adam, Kevin and I met up with Frank Klepacki, the man who composed and played the music for the Command and Conquer series, Red alert games, and many other big titles. Frank played two different songs that he said were the theme songs of two different factions. Both tracks were extremely impressive and truly reflect what each faction is about. The Hierarchy theme, for example, is all heavy rock and metal and sets the tone perfectly. Based on what I heard in Frank's office and what we've already heard in the Petroglyph Podcast, the music in UAW will be truly excellent.

By this time, I was extraordinarily pumped up and ready to play. Everything I had seen during the trip was coming to a head as I came closer to finally playing the game. After touring the rest of the staff, Kevin and I moved onto the testing room, which consisted of 5 individuals all playing the game. After all this, I sat down for my first game of Universe at War, a 1v1 with one of the testers.

Kevin thought it'd be best if I played Hierarchy in this game, something I accepted gladly.

The Game

We got the game running after a bit of trouble. Tim told us that the game is being updated daily, so the different versions need to be matched up for us to play. Kevin took me into the menu, selected LAN from the list of multiplayer options, and into the game lobby. I selected red for Hierarchy, my opponent blue for his faction, and we began. Note that for NDA reasons the second faction will not be described.

Needless to say, I was a bit nervous. From what I had seen of UAW, it was radically different than other RTS games (at least, the Hierarchy as a faction is). My initial starting building, the Landing Site, appeared after a moment. Selecting it, I built a Glyph Carver, the standard building unit from the Hierarchy. After a bit, the Glyph Carver was finished and I selected it, scanning over the various options of what to build. Looking at the tooltips, I decided on a Reaper Drone to get my economy running. The Glyph Carver builds by starting the unit with a construction laser and then is free to build other objects once the initial portal is down (similar to Protoss from Starcraft, except the Reaper has to spend some time constructing the building first). With the Reaper finished, I looked around for some resources and spotted a large pile near my base. After placing my cursor over it, I saw that it had $30,000 in it. Sending my Reaper over to it, I made sure to set the unit to auto-gather, mainly because I had no idea as to the gathering rate of the unit.

Switching back to my Glyph Carver, I looked at what else I should build. I decided on a Habitat Walker, a massive unit that functions as a mobile fortress and a barracks. Once the Glyph Carver built the initial portal and the unit was summoned in, it appeared in a massive explosion and fireball. Selecting it, I hit the queue for 3 Grunts, the standard Hierarchy infantry soldier. Grunts are equipped with a plasma shotgun-type weapon and seem to be effective in groups.

After some fiddling around, mainly reading the tooltips to find out what builds what and what counters what, an enemy attack loomed nearby. My opponent sent some light units to harass my Reaper Drones. Selecting my Reapers, I ran them toward my Habitat Walker and the Grunts nearby, but it was too late and one of my Reapers exploded from enemy attack. My brave warriors defeated the attack and I sent some units east to see what I could see while I focused on building up my economy.

Next up was some expansion. I sent my Habitat Walker and my small force of Grunts east in the direction of the enemy, along with a Glyph Carver. I had my Glyph Carver create a forward Radiation Spitter (defensive turret that only attacks ground units) to fend off enemy attacks from that direction and to judge the effectiveness of defenses in the game.

Exclusive screenshot depicting Hierarchy units
including a Walker, Grunts, and the previously
unrevealed Hierarchy Radiation Spitter
An enemy force was defeated by the Spitter and some Grunts- from what I saw, it seemed that the Spitter had an area-of-effect attack. Upon sending some troops east, they encountered a large enemy base and were wiped out. At this point it was too late for me and an enemy strike force consisting of flying units wiped me out, as I had no anti-air units and no money to make them. My Habitat Walker at my base did well killing off the enemy, but it went down eventually.

In the second game, I decided to crank it up a notch. With a little bit of experience under my belt, I felt that perhaps I could take it to him a little bit. After asking Kevin, he suggested that more Reaper Drones would be better, so I started off with a build of 4 of them. Moving up an extra Glyph Carver north to another supply pile, I started construction on two more Reapers and a Radiation Spitter to protect against enemy raiders. After building a Habitat Walker, I selected the build nodes on the Walker and found out how to add extra weapons, more armor, more production options, and other things to it. Following Kevin's advice, I built two production optimizers on the legs that lowered the cost and build time of units in the Walker. This new Walker annihilated an enemy strike force of small attack units. That was satisfying.

Back up at my northern supply pile, my Reapers were finished, giving me a total of 6 units collecting cash across the map. My Assembly Walker (another huge walker that builds vehicles) finished and I immediately built several Saucer units that fly around and shoot balls of plasma that do damage over time. These plasma balls stick on the target unit the unit dies, the plasma ball is destroyed, or the Saucer is switched to repair mode. They can also repair other units- mixing both attack and repair Saucers together is an effective tactic. Back at my Habitat Walker, I built a Lost One Mutator, an addition to the Walker that allows it to build little Gollum-ish infantry units that can drop Plasma Grenades.

At this point, Kevin showed me the tech tree screen and how to select one of the three trees. Each tree has a different hero attached to it and the hero is built from your initial landing site structure. I pumped out a hero named Kamal Rex, who had a few powers that were quite new, namely the Force Wall. When activated, the player selects on the map where he wants a large Force Wall to appear that blocks enemy damage. This was very interesting, but I unfortunately never got the chance to try it out.

Perhaps taking a note from the Battle for Middle-Earth series, the player’s heroes are all displayed on the bottom of the user interface and can be clicked and selected. Also, when multiple units are selected, the pictures of each of them are displayed, making it easy to switch units quickly and efficiently to maximize each of the units' special abilities.

After exploring the three different tech trees, which all have different benefits and can be mixed and matched, I prepared for attack. Think of Company of Heroes, except that one can use parts of the different tech trees together.

I upgraded my Assembly Walker the same way I had my Habitat Walker and also built an addition that can create Defilers- tall mechs that spread radiation. With an attack force of Grunts, Saucers, a Defiler, and my two Walkers, I began an attack. My force marched along merrily; everything was going well until fire erupted on my force and I had no idea where it was coming from. Realizing that my enemy was using a cloaking shield of some sort, Kevin told me to build a Scanner Walker, a radar drone that has a scan power similar to the one from Starcraft and the Command and Conquer: Generals GLA Radar Van. Scanning the area, my troops finally returned fire but most of my units died by that time. My hero unit, Kalmal Rex, fought valiantly but succumbed to enemy weapons. Kalmal’s attack on a nearby enemy unit was particularly satisfying- he seemed to have a force ripple out from him that sent the enemy flying away, similar to a Jedi-push move.

Although my attack in the south was faltering, my attack in the north with my Assembly Walker and supporting air units began dishing out damage to enemy towers. However, superior enemy numbers and weapons that I had no idea how to counter slaughtered my force and eventually only my Assembly Walker was left fighting (my base had been wiped out by an enemy assault. My Walker was nearly destroyed, so Kevin and I went over to my opponent to see his faction for a bit. However, something was wrong... my Walker wasn’t dying at all. It turns out that the Walker had glitched and was not taking any damage whatsoever Fine with me, I thought. We decided to take this opportunity to test out the superweapons of the opposing faction. Impressive, to say the least.

In my short time with the game, I didn’t get a chance to explore the other tech trees of the Hierarchy, nor did I get the chance to fully use my hero and his powers. However, from what I saw of the various abilities and powers available to each unit, there will be plenty of room for advanced tactics and micromanagement tricks.

The Interface

The interface in UAW is very efficient- no space is wasted on needless things. There is a bottom bar area where you can select the different construction options for your units and where your heroes are displayed. For the Hierarchy’s Walkers, the player double clicks on one of the build nodes and a selection menu appears around the node, similar to Battle for Middle-Earth's build plot system. Along the left side of the screen is the player’s radar which, for the Hierarchy at least, is turned off until the player builds a Scanner Walker. The Petroglyph developers did not have hotkeys activated in the build I played but they are, of course, in the game.

An interesting feature is that when multiple units are selected, a mini-portrait is displayed near the bottom of the screen so that they are easily selectable. From what I understood, the units on the bar will be hotkeyed according to their location (e.g., the unit on the leftmost side would be F1, next would be F2, etc.). Note that I am simply using the F keys as an example; they are not the official keys themselves.

Near the bottom left there is an icon that, when selected, brings up the tech tree screen with the three different branches to choose from. Each branch is divided into more levels that each have different benefits.

The Economy

In the build I played, the economy of the Hierarchy worked by sending Reaper Drones out to nearby resource piles and sucking them up. The Reapers do not need to head back to a resource building, which means that the Hierarchy will always need to be on the move gathering resources and protecting their Reaper Drones. Other objects around the map (most notably cows, which were worth $500 if I recall correctly) were available for consumption. However, SAGEKING informed me that nothing at this stage is final, so we definitely see many more changes to the game.

Post-Game

Following the gameplay session, we headed back to Kevin Prangley’s office and took him up on his offer. He showed us some amazing artwork and I eventually decided on taking a high quality miniaturized version of a poster featuring one of the unnamed factions, signed by Kevin Prangley himself.

With my time with the game finished, Kevin and I decided to do a video interview about the game. You can download it from Petroglyph Games here. The video mainly consists of Kevin and I talking about the game and first impressions. In my short time playing it, I couldn't really say much, but I do think that this game has room for a great deal of micro and macro tricks. Force Wall, Plasma Grenades, dancing your Reapers away, microing troops to avoid Walker fire...it goes on and on, and the faction that I played against seems to have many more, different micro opportunities then the Hierarchy.

Following the video interview, it was time to leave. We grabbed a drink and said our farewells in the lobby. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the Petroglyph staff, my visit there was extremely fun and a great experience.

Overall, I believe it is safe to say that Universe at War: Earth Assault is shaping up very nicely. The graphics at this stage are impressive and the game has yet to go through polishing and more graphics work. The music, thanks to Frank Klepacki, is unparalleled. The gameplay is amazing- the factions are incredibly diverse, the unit abilities are new and refreshing while maintaining ease of use, and the user interface is clean, polished, and minimal, yet still retains all the core functions. If what I have seen so far is any indication, UAW is shaping up to be one of the best real-time strategy games released in the past years. With the many changes and optimizations that are happening to the game, the community can fully expect a masterpiece of Real Time Strategy.


I would like to thank the entire Petroglyph staff for not only making a quality game, but also for opening their doors for a community representative and being so welcoming and courteous. To Kevin, Adam, Frank, Kevin P., and everyone else that I met in my visit- thank you!

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

Es ist jetzt offiziel, dass es 3 verschieden Alien Rassen gibt und keine Menschen.

Außerdem hab ich hier ein paar Scans aus der PC Gamer für euch.

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/5...an10006sa2.jpg

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/8...an10007vm8.jpg

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/4...an10008jj1.jpg

Auf den Scans sieht man die ersten Bilder der 2. Alien Rasse.

[Tomy Tom]

AW: Universe at War

Bin mal gespannt wie es wird, allerdings hätte ich von Petroglyph erwartet das zuerst einmal EaW und EaW FoC richtig gepatcht und balanced werden.

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

Bin mal gespannt wie es wird, allerdings hätte ich von Petroglyph erwartet das zuerst einmal EaW und EaW FoC richtig gepatcht und balanced werden.

Petroglyph ist nicht für das patchen von EaW und FoC zuständig, sondern Lucas Arts.

EDIT:

Hier noch ein Preview:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/783/783588p1.html

[Tomy Tom]

AW: Universe at War

Wäre mir neu das ein PUBLISHER für die Patches verantwortlich ist und nicht der HERSTELLER.

Auch EA stellt keine eigenen Patches für Spiele her, welche von anderen Herstellern entwickelt und programmiert wurden, sondern verteilt diese nur.

Beim Supermarkt bekomme ich auch nicht die defekte Ware neu hergestellt, sondern nur den Ersatz bzw. die neue Ware.

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

Wäre mir neu das ein PUBLISHER für die Patches verantwortlich ist und nicht der HERSTELLER.

Ein Mitarbeiter von Petroglyph hat in einem Foram aber gepostet, dass sie nicht für die Patches verantwortlich sind, sondern Lucas Arts und ich glaube, dass Activision der Publisher ist. Habe ich auf jeden Fall irgendwo mal gelesen.

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

Auf www.pcgames.de wurden heute 22 neue Screens von Universe at War veröffentlicht.

Link zu den Screens:

http://www.pcgames.de/?menu=browser&...mage_id=651867

Hier noch eine kurze Vorschau:

http://www.pcgames.de/?article_id=600550

[HQ|francebunkerer]

AW: Universe at War

Mon Dieu, das gibt ja Augenkrebs, diese Farben. 8[ Das graphische Design ist allgemein einmal schrecklich und irgendwie tönt nichts an dem Spiel originell.
Ne, also die Graphik ist ja mal sowas von iiih und zusammengewürfelt und die Aliens sehen allerhöchstens dum aus.

Und mit den Erinnerungen aus der EAW-Demo, ne danke, Petroglyph scheint wohl nicht so toll zu sein.

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

Mon Dieu, das gibt ja Augenkrebs, diese Farben. 8[ Das graphische Design ist allgemein einmal schrecklich und irgendwie tönt nichts an dem Spiel originell.
Ne, also die Graphik ist ja mal sowas von iiih und zusammengewürfelt und die Aliens sehen allerhöchstens dum aus.

Und mit den Erinnerungen aus der EAW-Demo, ne danke, Petroglyph scheint wohl nicht so toll zu sein.

Das ist alles Geschmackssache, dem einen gefällt es dem anderen nicht, da kann man nichts machen.

[Tomy Tom]

AW: Universe at War

Ein Mitarbeiter von Petroglyph hat in einem Foram aber gepostet, dass sie nicht für die Patches verantwortlich sind, sondern Lucas Arts und ich glaube, dass Activision der Publisher ist. Habe ich auf jeden Fall irgendwo mal gelesen.

Klingt mir eher nach allgemeiner Schuldzuweisung !

Naja ich kenne die Verträge nicht, aber als Publisher würde ich auf solche Sachen definitiv schauen, denn immerhin ist der Hersteller besser mit dem Quellcode vertraut als Leute die das Spiel nur verkaufen.

[iceman775]

AW: Universe at War

Ein Mitarbeiter von Petroglyph hat in einem Foram aber gepostet, dass sie nicht für die Patches verantwortlich sind, sondern Lucas Arts und ich glaube, dass Activision der Publisher ist. Habe ich auf jeden Fall irgendwo mal gelesen.

Komplette Fehl information. PG macht die Patche, Lucas Arts gibt die Frei gabe, Lucas Arts ist der Puplisher aber Activision war für den verkauf und der Lokalisirung für Deutschland zuständig.

UAW ist ein sehr gewagtes Spiel. Dadurch das man keine Menschen spielen kann und das merkwürdige Design wird viele Käufer abschrecken. Bin mal gespannt ob dieses Spiel jemals dieTop Ten erreicht.

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

UAW ist ein sehr gewagtes Spiel. Dadurch das man keine Menschen spielen kann und das merkwürdige Design wird viele Käufer abschrecken. Bin mal gespannt ob dieses Spiel jemals dieTop Ten erreicht.

Die Menschen werden zu 99.9% in einem Add On kommen, denn Andeutungen gab es dazu schon von den Mitarbeitern. Die Einheiten sind sehr abgedreht und das gefällt mir extrem gut, das ist halt nicht jedermanns Sache.

Optimismus an
(Ich bin mir sicher, dass UaW ein großer Erfolg wird. )
Optimismus aus

Mission München:

http://www.pcgames.de/?article_id=573557

Hier ein neuer IGN Artikel über UaW und neue Screens.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/785/785284p1.html

[Darthschlott]

AW: Universe at War

UaW gameplay footage:

http://media.games.ign.com/articles/...80/vids_1.html

Hier noch ein weiterer Link für das ign Video:

http://www.gamereplays.org/community...c=233878&st=20

Meine Meinung zu dem Video:

Teilweise sieht das Spiel schon echt gut aus, besonders der "Conquer the World" Modus sieht verdammt geil aus, dass das Spiel noch in der Alphaphase ist sieht man an den vielen fehlerhaften Animationen der Einheiten. UaW könnte echt ein sehr gutes RTS Spiel werden.