Ashes of the Singularity kicks off its first beta
Stardock is aiming for total, large-scale RTS action and is presenting that idea to the player base with a new playable beta.
It's been nearly a year since Stardock unveiled its massive RTS called Ashes of the Singularity. Now it's ready to give players a closer look at the kind of large-scale chaos that the game is looking to offer by releasing the game's first public beta.
As noted when it was first unveiled, Ashes of the Singularity will be powered by Oxide Games' new Nitrous engine. To make the most of this engine, Stardock has been working with both AMD and Nvidia to push their hardware to their limits. This includes making Ashes of the Singularity the first native DirectX12 game, which will allow each CPU core to command the player's GPU simultaneously, allowing for additional units to be displayed on-screen at once. Enemy AI will run across multiple cores, allowing for multiple AI strategies to be in place. With as many units on the battlefield as there are, players will also get to organize massive meta units to issue specific commands from across the entire world.
There are two factions at war in Ashes of the Singularity, so players will get to choose from either the Post-Human Coalition or the Substrate. The first beta will include single-player skirmish, co-op multiplayer, and ranked multiplayer. Beta access certainly isn't cheap, as the price on its Steam Early Access listing will indicate, but the public beta is available today. Players can also jump in through GOG.com and its new Games in Development system, so not only will users be able to pick it up for slightly cheaper, they'll also be entitled to a guaranteed 14-day refund, should the game not be up to snuff.
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replyOzzie Mejia posted a new article, Ashes of the Singularity kicks off its first beta
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"While Ashes has a strong multiplayer feature set, it includes what is arguably the most sophisticated AI engine ever devised for a real-time strategy game. Ashes of the Singularity requires a minimum of 4-cores on your CPU. In exchange, you get an AI that can create complex strategies and plays by the same rules as you do, providing a level of challenge never before seen in a single-player RTS. "
It's sad that we haven't seen this or more of this until now. It was the first thing I thought of when multi-core became a reality (beyond SMP quake). I assumed threading out the AI routine should allow for better AI, but that never seemed to happen. Or, at the very least, it was never marketed as a feature. Just the ai was better because npc had a full day schedule, but not running across multiple cores so it could do more complex things or react specifically to situations. BUT, if this is accurate, maybe we're finally starting to get there.-
That sounds awesome! Those Sins of a Solar Empire guys know what's up!
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