Stardock have announced that the alpha for their upcoming large-scale RTS, Ashes of the Singularity, will launch on Steam Early Access on October 22, 2015. This version will include several different planets to battle over as the Post-Human faction, in both the single-player and multiplayer.
We had a chat to Stardock about Ashes of Singularity previously, and how it plans to bring together thousands of units and create the feeling of battling over an entire planet
Ashes of the Singularity hopes to stand out by delivering “unprecedented scale” powered by the fact it’s the first native 64-bit RTS. It also runs on a new 3D engine called Nitrous that takes advantage of multi-core PCs and will be the first game to support Microsoft’s new DirectX 12 API.
“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, 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.”
In other technical bells and whistles, Ashes of the Singularity boasts the inclusion of the first asynchronous multi-core real-time AI.
“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.”
When it launches on Early Access on October 22, you’ll be able to grab it for the introductory price of $39.99 (20% off), for a limited time.