Based on the SpringRTS game engine, which itself started off by getting Total Annihilation into 3D, Beyond All Reason is going to be a standalone free RTS and it's coming along nicely.
The developers announced recently how they've been hacking away at the old Spring engine, to bring the performance up to modern standards. Some of what they've added in includes a whole new multithreaded pathing system, along with moving to modern OpenGL4 rendering. The result is impressive with better performance, and support for thousands more units and buildings in a single game.
A small showcase video was also put up:
Direct Link
When speaking to one of their team on Reddit, to see if they will be bringing their engine changes (which remain open source on GitHub) to the main SpringRTS project they said:
Hard to say, because core spring dev is not too active these days and the changes in this fork are huge. We tried to get through with a smaller PR few months ago but reviewing took too long for it to be relevant.
There is a possibility it will just become the new main Spring version, but time will tell.
As for when they expect Beyond All Reason to see a proper release:
We are aiming for mid 2022 with Steam release though the game is kind of fully playable and even now.
From now on we are going to mostly add content like a sp campaign and improve lobby experience.
In a more recent video they showed off thousands of units on a map with plenty battling and it does look pretty spectacular overall:
Direct Link
TheRiddick Nov 18, 2021
At least with unit count and performance.
ElamanOpiskelija Nov 18, 2021
Understanding something like the fact that a game like this is meant to show battles between huge armies, and that should perform well, and without crashes, I mean something that one would think of as a basic requirement... and yet for some reason there are so many commercial projects that miss it...
Seems like they've achieve more then what Ashes of the Singularity can do
Not so long ago (in RTS time) the BAR community organised a RTS triathlon event together with the communities of Supreme Commander: FA and Planetary Annihilation: Titans. Casters, top players and developers from the three games mixed to try out the others.
Besides bringing the communities together, it was excellent as a showcase. You get to see where each game is at, and what happens when you try to cast, stream, team play, coach others, etc. My sensation from that event was that Planetary Annihilation still takes the cake (for me), but I can see that it's just a matter of time that BAR catches up in quality and you can see how/why that will happen.
Last edited by sarmad on 19 November 2021 at 1:07 am UTC
No, seriously, I gotta' check this out. Hope we'll find an option to pay/donate to them for their efforts though, like a paid and free version on Steam, which can be identical but with one we have the option to support them.
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