Chris Taylor talks Supreme Commander

CHRIS TAYLOR OF Gas Powered Games gave a really interesting speech about what it took to get Supreme Commander done. If you have never seen Chris talk, it is well worth it, no slides, no bull, just an interesting speech.

It helps that he is insane. No, not insane in a "cut your victims up and name the pieces" way, more in the "doesn't follow several expected social mores" way that makes most speeches so dull you want to chew your fingers off. The speech was not directly on topic it ran around a lot, but it was all tied in.

From his beginning selling plastic sewer pipes and cometary plots, Chris was destined for greatness. He went from pipes to Distinctive Software and then on to EA where he made some sports games and other things like Total Annihilation, maybe you have heard of it.

The problem was, working in a corporate environment like EA he had to repeatedly had to go against what he considered common sense. When you zoom in on a map, it goes in baby steps, stuttering along about as fast as a wounded snail. All the things you think should happen didn't, and there was no reason why they shouldn't.

Supreme Commander was shopped around in 2003 as a way to do things right, fix the wrongs of large corporate pasts, and in general, do right. OK, maybe it was not quite so philosophical, but the idea never was far from anyones mind.

The initial design document was done over a weekend with the good folk from Vivendi coming on the following Monday to review. Lets just say it got done but not much of it survived until the end. Chris Taylor was quite clear that a lot of the development is an organic thing, you test things, try things, and do them because they are right, not because they are in a book.

The scrolling and zooming was done like Railroad Tycoon, it zoomed in on the map around the cursor. It may seem like a 'well duh' thing, but no one did it, few still do, and others keep getting shot down by management. Supreme Commander did it that way because it was right.

The map scaling easily across several orders of magnitude of allowed them to fix another complaint, the relative size of units. When you have a battleship that is 3x as large as a tank, it causes problems. A tanks should not be able to kill a battleship, but a battleship should be able to blast a tank on a whim. Zooming allowed them to make ships and other capital craft correctly, and the game is much better for it.

This allowed them to make units called "experimental", basically big hulking and nigh invincible things, mainly because they were big, hulking and nigh invincible. Something that takes up 16 screens is not much fun if you can't zoom out far enough to see it, much less use it.

Making a game is one thing, but selling it and publishing it is quite another. Although no names were named, several war stories were told. One publisher had a fully written up contract on his desk for three weeks, and eventually Chris gave them a deadline of Friday to get it done or he would move on. On Friday he moved on, much to the dismay of the publisher who looked at it on Monday. THQ got it in the end, and in naming them, he also added that they were "fantastic".

One thing that helped the process along was a rethinking of work at Gas Powered, they instituted a no overtime rule. Work there is standard work hours, no overtime other than under extraordinary conditions, say crunch time at the end.

It worked out fabulously, people were not stressed out, kids grew up knowing who their parents were, and birds sang in a "Song of the South" way. If you are working 16 hours a day, you burn out and creativity decreases. If you come in fresh and rested, you will quite possibly get more done in less time, and be happier.

Chris Taylor ended up making the office less friendly to people so they wouldn't stay there. Candy bars and snacks were replaced with fruit, and people were encouraged to be elsewhere after work hours. The game came out solid and well done. Having played it, I can say Supreme Commander is a blast if you like RTSes.

That is not to say there isn't more to be done, there was a laundry list of things cut out, and many more that were not implementable with today's technology. In general, if you liked Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, there will be more and better things to come. There is a good chance that many of these will come from Gas Powered Games. Go buy Supreme Commander, you will be glad you did. µ