Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Developer: Virgin Interactive
Release: 1993
 |
Supremacy (or Overlord in the UK) was a philosophical forerunner. |
Released less than two years before Master of Orion changed the face of 4X space gaming forever, Supremacy (called Overlord in the UK) can in many ways be considered that game's philosophical forerunner. A resource-management game par excellence, Supremacy combined VGA graphics with a simple technology table and varying AI to create a unique atmosphere that rivals that of Master of Orion. Four campaigns of increasing difficulty pit you against different computer opponents, each with a different skill level and style of play. The objective in each campaign is to take over the enemy homeworld, which is at the other end of the star system from your own. The simplest campaign has only eight planets, while the advanced scenario contains 32. To get to the homeworld, you have to fight through them all.
|
Supremacy demonstrated that representational graphics could serve gameplay. |
Supremacy still has vestiges of the "early years" philosophy of concentrating on numerical relationships rather than customization. For example, there is no ship design or real tech tree to research, and the combat is abstract and provides no visual feedback. However, the game recognized the need to overcome the blandness of earlier games and did so through the effective use of art. In a genre that had its beginnings in an entirely text-based graphical environment, Supremacy demonstrated that even decorative or representational graphics could serve valuable gameplay purposes as mnemonic devices. It's a lot easier to keep your combat armor levels straight if you can associate them with a picture and not just text.
Supremacy has a lot of the character, if not quite the clean gameplay, of Master of Orion. It's also one of the oldest 4X space games that can be considered playable and interesting by today's standards. But hardly--there were plenty of better games ahead.
Publisher: Stardock Systems
Developer: Brad Wardell
Released: 1994
|
Not many people have heard of or remember Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. |
Many people have probably never heard of Galactic Civilizations. There's a very good reason for this: It was released only for the OS/2 operating system. Even though it was the only space empire game available for that platform, GalCiv got rave reviews, and as it was fully 32-bit, it ran natively at 1024x768 in 65,000 colors. While colorful, it wasn't the prettiest game to look at (the game was designed on a low budget), but it had one feature that was completely new to computer games at that time: It was multithreaded, which meant that the game could multitask internally. While you moved your ships, built your bases, and planned your strategy, the computer could do the same. This led to a surprisingly strong AI opponent, which became one of the game's (and developer's) hallmarks, and also led to epic matches that could take months to complete. The ability to write the game as a multithreaded application was the main force in driving it to be developed for OS/2.
"We're empire-building junkies here, and one of the things we've always made a high priority in our games is to make sure that the game is superfun in the first hour of play and is still just as fun 10 hours into it. Many games of this genre really bog down in micromanagement after an hour or two of play. We don't rely on computer AI to handle that but instead have an onionlike user-interface design in which players can get as close as they want to the daily affairs of their worlds or take several steps back and macromanage chunks of their empire at once," said Brad Wardell, designer of Galactic Civilizations.
|
A remake of Galactic Civilizations is being developed for Windows. |
Galactic Civilizations introduced several other features, including a sophisticated diplomacy system as well as planetary governors. Furthermore, Galactic Civilizations actually monitored the way you played the game (attacking allies without warning and the like) and used this information to grant you access to either "good" or "evil" technologies. Even the interface changed to reflect the moral thrust of your civilization.
Despite being only on OS/2, Galactic Civilizations managed to sell more than 30,000 copies. Stardock is currently at work on a remake of Galactic Civilizations for Windows, which is scheduled for a late 2002 release. The new version will add features like a United Planets Security Council, where the different races can vote to change "galactic laws" and advanced political parties to liven up domestic politics. One thing Galactic Civilizations for Windows will not have at first is multiplayer capability (which will be added in a sequel). Wardell is adamant that the Windows release have the same stellar AI that was characteristic of the OS/2 version. For the moment, that is taking priority.
