Video Blog #22
by Chris Taylor on Jul.09, 2010, under Design, General, Programming
Formation editing anyone……? You know you like it 
43 Comments for this entry
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July 9th, 2010 on 5:24 pm
YaY i’m FIRST XD, hey chris it would be cool if you made the humans units enter inside the building and destroy it from there, like burning and looting it.
and can the dragon have like a evolution inside the game?
like he starts as a baby/young dragon and then he grow up automatically until maturity or peharps elderly age
(elder dragons are know to be really powerful so it would be cool, peharps it can go to maturity age, and then you kinda buy the elder age, so he continues to grow untill it reachs a awesome overhelming power, really really cool, it would be xD)
July 9th, 2010 on 7:17 pm
GPG is obviously one of the highest quality RTS producers around.
Will we be getting a demo for this before release, or only on release day?
Thanks!!
July 9th, 2010 on 8:04 pm
Hey Chris
In both SupCom games it was possible to convert energy to mass. Are there any plans to implement a similar mechanic (using magic to spontaneously create stone etc). While I would love to see magic find its way into every corner of the game if possible (it’s magic! it can do anything! Mages enhance any endeavor!) I know many SupCom players have felt that mass conversion was and is a particularly unbalancing mechanic which discourages aggressive map control.
July 9th, 2010 on 8:10 pm
Gustaph’s Dragon idea sounds awesome!
ultra excited for the release/demo(?)!!
July 9th, 2010 on 8:22 pm
To what extent is this game about castles as opposed to armies that fight around them? Would it be possible to see a persistent world where upgrades to your castles are built up across games rather than built during the course of a single game (similar to the favor items from Demigod)?
What do you intend to do about differentiating the factions in this game? While SupCom 2 improved over SupCom 1 in this regard, I’d still like to see a push to distinguish the factions even more.
July 9th, 2010 on 9:37 pm
CT, we know you were born in Canada! :p
July 10th, 2010 on 1:19 am
Woa ! Formation Editing !!!!! if you can make this possible …
… Yep GPG is indeed the most inovating company when it comes to RTS mechanisms. Thanks again for getting in touch with us through this weekly video blog 
July 10th, 2010 on 2:27 am
I can’t wait to sned messages to aliens with my formations
. scotchtape622, we all know it. In fact we know everything, whatever wiki does. 
July 10th, 2010 on 4:17 am
Lol you could write taunts for your enemy in Multi using your troops!
July 10th, 2010 on 4:32 am
:WOOHOO: Formation Editor. thank you guys
July 10th, 2010 on 4:53 am
Very exciting to see how seriously our feedback is taken, although…
What exactly will formation editing be adding to the game? Seems like a bit of a gimmick to me…
July 10th, 2010 on 4:55 am
If people want customization an army painter I imagine would make more sense – they both seem like aesthetics.
(Apologies for the double post… isn’t there a comment editor?)
July 10th, 2010 on 9:57 am
This makes me proud to be an American.
July 10th, 2010 on 11:25 am
I’m a big Fan of SupCom and my question is: How will the economy system be? The same way like in supcom 1? That would be awesome:)
CT yeha!
July 10th, 2010 on 1:51 pm
I dont wan’t to just burst out some stupid “just” answer bubbles, but here they ar: ( ;( )
Will the King be the only “officer” unit be?
Because when I saw the trailers there was the King those “Superunits” and the normals Soldiers. But never did I saw some kind of General or Lieutenant which also provide Auras or Support to the normal Soldiers.
By the way is there some variation with the Soldiers?
), Crossbows, Longbows or some kind of fancy magical weapon?
Like there are Soldiers with Spears/ Lances, Axes, Shields and Swords (which we allready saw in most trailers
And my last thing I would like to see/ ask: Are there diffrent types of Kings or do you have the option to costumize your King to your liking with “skill loadout” and some fancy armors, weapons and horses?
Sry about that little wall of text but those are things I would like to see or ask about ;D
July 10th, 2010 on 11:06 pm
3:08, NEEDS to be in future blogs.
July 11th, 2010 on 2:59 am
Something that would be really cool is to be able to edit & save different formations and then during assault, being able to quickly switch between the different formations for a single squad so that you can really micro manager your combats and get the best from the formation ability
July 11th, 2010 on 10:01 am
Again … wonderful work so far! I keep watching more then writing cause some ideas I get the other guys have already posted, =P
But I remembered something from and old rts game called Z that when your army was outnumbered your soldiers did not want to fight and get scared.
Could something like this be aplied to Kings and Castles! Something like when dragons attack soldiers they start to fell panic and needed their king to give some moral.
Another thing about dragons as the guy said in the first post is that would be more original that the dragon grow up as the same time he killed units.
Like back in TA: Kingdoms, units used to have bronze/silver/gold shields when they got strong, so maybe the dragon could grow up as he get many units killed.
July 11th, 2010 on 10:14 am
Wow, formation editor? Sounds awesome. Assuming formations MATTER, that will really allow a lot of optional depth to combat. I love customizable things in games, and DOUBLY so if customizing affects gameplay in some way. It’s part of the reason why RPG’s are popular – the element of customzing something to create or do what you want.
It’s also why I love Mechwarrior as a kid, you can customize your loadouts which drastically affect the gameplay. Having a formation editor is a great way to allow users to customize their combat experience and play with different solutions to try and get the “best formation” for a given situation. Love it!
And I’m glad to hear you guys are doing a more “AoE” style econ with it’s own twist – I always thought that the econ of that game was perfect for what it did.
July 11th, 2010 on 4:35 pm
This is great! a formation editor!!
You talked about mages who can create a magic bridge (Great idea!!), but long ranged units, like catpults, will be able to kill these mages easily, aren’t they?
Maybe you could add an active skill, that create a shield arround the mage and can deflect these kind of attacks, but it’ll cost magic over the time.
Is it possible to make traps on bridge? like eplosive in order to destroy it when you want, or damage it.
Thank you for thse videos, and sorry again for my bad english xD
July 12th, 2010 on 8:58 am
Hi Chris!
This game looks exciting, I just hope that you will return to real strategy once again, like in TA or Supreme Commander, instead of the “who clicks faster”-action of Supreme Commander 2.
I would also love to see the old economy system of continuous building like in TA or SupCom back, maybe with some (configurable) priority system to prevent beginners from stalling their economy.
This allows players to focus on the actual war instead of having to wait for the right time to order a new unit.
(maybe one could overthrow the traditional build system altogether and just order units to specific places on the battlefield, that are automatically produced by the nearest factory when resources are available)
And please, keep micro-management as low as possible, the people who want to have an arcade strategy game will choose Starcraft 2 anyway and you’ll loose your SupCom and TA fans for good.
I hope you will produce another great strategy game that is about strategic decisions instead of fast reaction rate in the spirit of TA and Supreme Commander (not 2!)
July 12th, 2010 on 1:31 pm
Hey!
Awesome video blog. A friend of mine tells me I’m “as disturbed as Chris Taylor”. Feels great!
Anyway, I actually had something constructive to say.
YOU NEED SHARE BUTTONS ON YOUR BLOG. I’m too stupid to copy and paste links. Really. (or too lazy)
That would be all.
July 13th, 2010 on 4:49 am
Game looks great, a lot of people I’ve talked to are looking forward to it, and we just have one request: Castles must be a key element! Castle walls should be STRONG and not destroyable in minutes like some games, otherwise the game might as well just be called “Kings.” Everyone I’ve talked to agrees on this, because in a sense castles are focal points of the game, and thus they should be sturdy and offer significant defense capability. Also, you’ve probably already done this, but extra castle defenses such as hot oil would be great additions to the game.
July 13th, 2010 on 5:38 am
Ah, I had a dream about Chris, and when I woke up I felt the need to go check out the latest vlog.
Kudos to the formation editor, sounds rad.
July 13th, 2010 on 8:08 am
As a long time fan of all your games, the lack of a map editor in Supereme Commander 2, really was a huge disappointment, please tell me you are not going to be doing that again.
July 13th, 2010 on 10:46 am
^^ second that about castles..moats and hot oil! and lots of castle options as someone said. thanks chris, i’ve loved your past games
July 14th, 2010 on 2:24 am
hey Chris, love the site. this is how all games should be made. was watching some of your vids (when i should be going to bed), and i really like the idea of mixing the medieval and fantasy themes. my one concern, however, is that in one of the vids it looked like the castle walls get knocked down really easily, almost like they’re just run-of-the-mill RTS walls, being destroyed in seconds… some people have commented about the need for real “castles” and i completely agree with them- a big part of the strategy needs to revolve around the castles themselves- both on the offense and defense side. a main part of the strategy should be about how best to defend your castle, and then on the flipside how best to seige the opponent’s. other than that the game looks great, and maybe i’m just missing something cause i did only watch a couple of the vids, but i’m just concerned that if the castles are just “walls” that get torn down and then the attacker just rushes in, then it just becomes a normal battle and “castles” become basically irrelevant. i like the idea of a lot of ways to upgrade your castle, both in different types of defenses and in strength of the walls. i also like benjis idea of moats and hot oil, and i was thinking maybe also some kind of “turrets” or corner towers that shoot fiery things like arrows or javelines or something like that? just a thought..anyway i’m really looking forward to it and should get to bed before i keep rambling..
July 14th, 2010 on 8:30 am
Here are just a few ideas and stuff that I hope will be integrated into the game:
1. No visible health bars. I know I have said this before but it ruins games completely when health bars hover around units like gnats, plus no one wants to know if some of his foot soldiers have lost some health while fighting an enemy dragon. Instead I think it would be better if when you selected a unit / group of units it would show you the AVERAGE health of each type you selected at the bottom of the screen: 100 Swordsmen health 50%+20 Archers health 90%
It would make the battles 10x more Epic.
2. With small units like the foot-soldiers in the E3 trailer make them able to kill other foot-soldiers in one hit as critical hits and block attacks and stuff (it is depressing when health bars just go down at a steady rate until a unit dies), some units should die straight away when you charge. To put it plainly make melee as realistic as possible.
3. Do not make legendary units like the war boar too big. Epic is fine but it looks silly when some arrows hit a huge beast and its health goes down loads because the game needed to be balanced. I think the war boar should be the biggest units get, any bigger and the game looses its epic feel.
4. Make walls strong enough to absorb quite a bit of pounding before falling down. If they are too weak they are pointless.
5. Are there going to be buildings that create magic? If there are there should be a limit on the number of them that you can build (if not people will build loads of them instead of making armies) or maybe you could have special magic resource points? A cool idea: if your evil you have to sacrifice troops to perform all the really big evil spells.
I hope you think over these ideas!
P.s This game is going to be awesome!
July 14th, 2010 on 9:53 pm
Professor Taylor! Just found your website, and I’m happy to see GPG is coming out with another big title. I remember playing TA when it first came out and I still play it from time to time. Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance were also superb, and I still get a lot of enjoyment out of them. I thought I’d make a few suggestions for Kings and Castles, and I know most of these are probably already in the game, but here I go anyways:
-long-range archers and other ranged units
-archers that can shoot flaming arrows, perhaps with a chance that certain parts of a castle will catch fire, which may spread if it’s not put out.
-EPIC castles, and I agree with some of the previous comments about castle upgrade options and an array of defense possibilities (hot oil, etc…)
-the presence of the King offering morale and strength bonuses to other units within a small radius of him
-perhaps different weather conditions which can affect the game (such as rain making it less likely that fires break out, etc…)
These are just a few ideas, and I’ll probably bother you with more of them in the future now that I know about the site, but I’m a big fan and I am greatly anticipating this game!
July 15th, 2010 on 12:41 am
hey chris, the formation editor looks sweet! i feel the need to chime in here about castles, since the topic’s been brought up. i think there are some things about the castles that we can pretty much all agree on:
a) they should be epic, otherwise it pretty much defeats the point of the game (hence the game’s title)
b) castle walls should be strong
c) there should be defenses available such as hot oil, moats, and various outposts/turrets/bombard towers, etc.
d) castles should have upgrade options, in both size and strength
anyway i know i’m repeating what ppl have said, but oh well i felt the need to emphasize this point. game looks seriously awesome chris, cant wait til it comes out!
July 15th, 2010 on 12:55 am
How will the formations editor work? In Battle for Middle Earth (BfME) formations could be edited in a minor way by dragging both mouse buttons into a specific direction and length, but this only aligned the selected units. Will the formations editor be able to f.i. place the pikemen in front?
Gustaphsum41’s ideas sound great. On the idea of soldiers entering building: this would be a great and realistic addition to the already realistic movement of melee armies merging together when entering combat.
July 15th, 2010 on 4:10 am
Hey guys, been watching from the start, looks awesome. I think it’s great that you are trying to listen to your fans so much. Appreciate it.
I’m just repeating two points that are important to me. 1) I am personally a defensive player and would love to see varied and strong castles, also what’s the possibility of moving archers onto the walls?? (Black and White II). 2) I love battles with different and sometimes strange units, but find micro management for epic battles frustrating. Small amounts like the King, Mages and Epics. But for every unit…no.
Finally, making the formations effective is a must. If there is little difference between a column and a wedge(ability to target between archers and footmen, then slaughter the archers..muhahahaha..ahem), I feel the editor would be a waste.
Splendid work, keep it up.
July 15th, 2010 on 9:29 am
Reading some later post I disagree with Tristan in only on point: I think that the game should have an option to show/hide the single unit health bar (like TA).
If units are going to have veteran points then I would hate to lost a good promoted soldier because I did not know the health.
I don’t know if this would be easy to do, but It could look great if we could manage to build the walls of the castle by ourselves.
And also put soldiers on these walls (like archers) to protect from invaders.
July 15th, 2010 on 11:00 am
Love the formations stuff! I can’t wait to try some of this stuff out!
One more thing:
Please don’t make stand-alone turrets a big part of the game. Its silly to cross a bridge and instead of an army to block your path there are a load of stone towers that shoot boulders at you for no apparent reason. Please make towers only placeable on existing walls and instead of shooting random stuff make them garrison-able, same with walls. Plus, if you give people too much freedom with wall and tower building people will just spam towers and walls to stop advancing armies.
July 15th, 2010 on 1:32 pm
just want to throw in my 2cents here:
1) i agree 100% that castles need to be strong and have a variety of defensive options/upgrades. i was thinking maybe like “ballista towers” on the corner towers like they had for the castles in some game, i can’t remember which game right now. also moats, burning oil, and all the other castle goodies (and archers should be able to shoot over the moats, just like in real battles)
2) this game should have a lot more hotkey options straight out of the box than SupCom did. i remember with SupCom having to eventually download a mod just to be able to have hotkeys for building structures, etc… other than that SupCom was a great game, believe me I loved it and still play it, so I don’t mean to complain, I just always wondered why it didn’t have many customizable hotkeys for buildings and unit production, since almost every other RTS has a bunch of hotkey options.
keep up the good work Chris!
July 15th, 2010 on 3:32 pm
please dont simplfy it to much like on supcom 2 keep it difficult and more like the 1st supreme commander
July 15th, 2010 on 8:55 pm
epic castles = epic game
July 16th, 2010 on 4:14 am
Tristan said: “Plus, if you give people too much freedom with wall and tower building people will just spam towers and walls to stop advancing armies.”
I think that’s not gonna happen when resources like stone are limited. I mean, you have to dig it up first and when quarries are gone, so is the stone. You could perhaps trade it for gold (like in Age of Empires) but that’s probably gonna cost ya.
So for me, lots of walls isn’t going to be a problem. It’s a great way to keep out those annoying early attackers (you can guess by now I’m a defensive player myself). That shouldn’t mean defenses should be unlimited though. Sooner or later siege weapons can take care of any wall.
July 17th, 2010 on 9:16 am
Hey why comments are not sorted counter chronologically?
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