Stardock have announced that their newest strategy game, Ashes of the Singularity, will be launching on Steam Early Access on October 22, 2015. Ashes of the Singularity looks pretty good as is, so you have reason enough to care for it, but since Stardock were also behind the excellent Sins of a Solar Empire, we have enough grounds to be suitably excited for the game.
Ashes of the Singularity seems to promise somewhat of a revolution for PC strategy games- it is the first native 64-bit 3D RTS, that also uses a new 3D engine (Nitrous) that fully leverages modern multi-core PCs. The game is also the first game to support Microsoft’s new DirectX 12 API. Besides being the first 64-bit RTS and being the first to use DirectX 12, Ashes of the Singularity also includes the first asynchronous multi-core real-time AI.
“Previously, RTS games had to choose between great visuals or lots of units, due to being limited to 32-bit and DirectX 9 based engines,” said Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock. “It’s one of the reasons that RTS games have kind of hit a wall these past few years. The RTS could be pretty or be epic, but not both. Thanks to the Nitrous engine, we can support tens of thousands of units acting independently as part of a worldwide battle with a distinct visual style.
Set in the distant future, the player starts on a contested planet with a single headquarters. In the vein of the Age of Empires games, or Stardock’s own Sins of a Solar Empire, the player must gather resources, build factories, research new technologies, manage a global economy, manufacture massive armies of machine-based constructs, and conquer enemies in combat.
“We are very excited to go into early access,” said Wardell. “Given how ambitious this game is, we’re going to need all the help we can get from our player base to reach our goal of making this the most epic, large-scale real time strategy game ever.”
“While we expect the game to have a strong multiplayer community, we are adamant that the single player game have intelligent and challenging computer opponents to play against,” said Wardell. “We have team games with friends versus the AI, free for all, and every other combination in place already to help begin testing this part of the game early. This isn’t one of those games where the AI is an afterthought.”
So, yeah. It looks pretty damn awesome, and is totally something you should look into, if you have a machine that can handle it.