Rant: Supreme Commander II killed Total Annihilation.

When Total Annihilation came out, it made me look away from every other RTS games for good. Many reasons for that, not the least of which was killed by Supreme Commander 2.

I thought TA, and later SC, was putting the strategy in RTS, while Starcraft and others focused on quick-clicking micro-management. I call typical RTS games "clickfests". It's not so much about having a good strategy, as it is about clicking on the right unit with the right timing to unleash the right power. You're not the general of a competent army, but the mom of a bunch of 2 year-old who won't do a god damn thing unless you tell them to.

Where TA and SC shined was in production management. Factories had orders: Build this, deploy there. All of that packed in a nice queue, which could become endless in SC with queue looping. Once a factory is set, you can forget it for the rest of the game, and focus on strategy instead. As is it in real life, nothing is prepaid. You must supply as units are built. If supply is insufficient, production pauses and then resumes automatically as resources become available. It's very streamlined, very realistic and very good.

Now Supreme Commander 2 comes along, and all of a sudden I'm staring at a generic RTS which I thankfully bought on sales on Steam and not full-priced. I will most likely not play it again after mission 3. In SC2, everything must be prepaid. So if, for example, I want my air factory to make 5 fighters, then 1 bomber, then loop, I have to pay for all 5 fighters and 1 bomber IN ADVANCE. But it's ok right? Once you can afford 1 iteration of the loop, you can loop it and it's set for the rest of the game right? Nope. If at any time you run out of resources, the factory will shut itself down, never to resume production again unless you get off your general's chair and start wearing your industry leader hat, personally walking into the factory and flip the fucking on-off switch yourself.

TA and SC, contrary to all other RTS, made me focus on strategy and planning instead of constant click-festing and micromanaging a bunch of children. It was about shifting battle lines. Now all of that is gone.

And when the enemy punctures through your eastern front and leaves you scratching your head as to how they could have succeeded, you'll realise with horror all your factories have been shut down for 10 minutes and you're sitting on the biggest pile of money in the universe. All useless. Because you were busy taking care of your western front (the actual strategic warfare portion of the game, the fun part), and because the factory heads are complete retards now, you lose.

I don't know if it's the bad influence of Square Enix, but it appears in trying to bow down to pressures to go mainstream, the franchise has killed what made it special.

San Francisco 2010, debriefing.

Here are a few bullet points about my trip to San Francisco. Will elaborate on each in future posts.

* Air Travel: This was my first shot at air travel. Found out there's really nothing to it. Though I did miss my transfer to Montreal at Toronto, it was no big deal. Flew United to go and Air Canada on the way back.

* The City: San Francisco is probably one of the best city on the continent. Perfect climate, no freeze, ocean close-by, decent public transit. But lots and lots of hills.

* The GDC: With the rise of portable technology and social gaming, the GDC is more relevant to my job than ever before. Learned a lot, will make a presentation to my colleagues later.

Few things to note:

- Became sick with the cold 2 days before I left. This was (and still is) the worst cold I got and I dragged it all along my trip. Rested more than I wanted. Was less social than I would've wanted.

- Did not have time to rent a car and go North. Would've needed an extra day.

- Of course I tried the In-Out Burger.

- Tried to go to Cheesecake Factory on Geary. It was way too full.

- Best Tourist Moment: Visiting an actual in-water WWII submarine anchored in the San Francisco Bay.

- Best GDC Speak: Realtime Metrics by Zynga, the makers of Farmville. Holy smoke!

- Purchases: Didn't buy much. A DVD in Japantown and a set of action figures in Chinatown.

New shirt designs for Tales of the USCA

I rushed quite a bit yesterday getting those designs ready. Will have to order them rush to get a few of them in time for the GDC. Enjoy!

The 2 updated classic logo designs:
The United States Colonial Authority
Bolivarian Commonwealth

The 3 new character designs:
Jake Dallas
Selena Vargaz
Anton Leary

Thinking of moving from cafepress to printfection so I get one store for all designs. But right now they couldn't deliver in time (I found out kind of late I was headed to the GDC) so I'm sticking with cafepress for the time being. Let me know what you think of the designs. Cheers!

Buying from the Playstation Store in 13 easy steps!

Step 1) Create an account.
Step 2) Log In.
Step 3) Find the game you want, which is harder than you'd think as they're horrible sorted out.
Step 4) Be told you need to install Media Go!
Step 5) Install Media Go!
Step 6) Try to buy again.
Step 7) Be told that you need something called "PSP Downloader" from Sony.
Step 8) Download PSP Downloader.
Step 9) Try to buy again.
Step 10) Be told you need to upgrade your PSP firmware.
Step 11) Update Firmware.
Step 12) Try again.
Step 13) It works.

Hurray for Sony!