Just one month after this declaration, a new ground-breaking shadow map technique was emerging: Variance Shadow Maps or VSM. We are not finished with the game graphically by any stretch at this point. The shadows in those shots are not finished and we do have a little bit of work to do on them yet. This is what Jonathan Mavor was saying 11 months before the game public release: When the units are rendered, the game actually tries to smooth-out the edges of the shadowsīut even with PCF, there would be no way to obtain the beautiful smooth-shadows we see on the screenshot, especially the smooth silhouettes of the buildings on the ground…Įven during the final parts of the development process of the game, it seems the implementation of shadows was still an on-going effort. If we stop here, we would just be able to draw hard shadows. SupCom supports much larger maps, up to 81x81 km.

A white color represents a high altitude and a dark one a low altitude.įor our map, a 513x513 single-channel image is used, it represents a terrain The heightmap describes the elevation of the terrain. On the left is a top-view of the entire map like it appears in-game on the mini-map.īelow is the same map viewed from another angle:įirst the geometry of the terrain is calculated from an heightmap. Here is an overview of “Finn’s Revenge”, a 1 versus 1 map. Terrain Structureīefore we dig into the frame rendering, it’s important to first talk about how terrains are built in SupCom and which technique is used. Since RenderDoc doesn’t support DirectX 9 games, reverse-engineering was done with the good old PIX. So let’s see how Moho, the engine powering SupCom, renders a frame of the game! Supreme Commander turned out to be highly praised by critics and players, with nice features like the “strategic zoom” or physically realistic ballistic. In charge of the engine programming and Jeremy Soule as the music composer (some of the main figures behind the original Total Annihilation), the expectations of the fans were very high. With Chris Taylor as the designer, Jonathan Mavor

It was with Command & Conquer and Starcraft one of the best RTS released in the late 90’s.ġ0 years later – in 2007 – its successor was released: Supreme Commander. Total Annihilation has a special place in my heart since it was the very first RTS I played

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