Stardock has announced that its ambitious, large-scale RTS Ashes of the Singularity will launch on Steam Early Access this October 22, in the form of a limited Alpha.
You’ll be able to play as the Post-Human faction, and there will be several different planets to battle on, as well as fully implemented AI for both singleplayer and multiplayer.
For the unfamiliar, Ashes is the first game to support Microsoft’s DirectX 12 API, and is explicitly designed for 64-bit, multi-core PCs, which means both lots and lots of units, and lots and lots of explosions.
”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,” explains Brad Wardell, 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.”
Alongside the graphical and performance benefits gained by this new tech, the AI should hopefully be a lot smarter too - Stardock describes it as the first asynchronous multi-core real-time AI. I don’t really know what that means, but it certianly sounds good.
”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,” says 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.”
Come October 22, the game will be discounted at $39.99, 20% off its regular price, for a limited time.
