Draft:Beyond All Reason

Beyond All Reason is an open-source real-time strategy video game for PC, inspired by Total Annihilation. It runs on the Spring Engine, and began as a visual upgrade of Balanced Annihilation, introducing new models, sounds, maps and GUI.

The game is currently in alpha stage, but already receives a lot of positive reviews. and aims for a Steam release in 2022. It is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux

History
In year 2020, BAR has received a lot more interest from all around and quickly gained popularity within RTS player communities. A lot of new developers started contributing to BAR and it has seen a return of many legacy developers, most notably Beherith, who joined the ranks of the lead dev team. Since then, the developer team has grown to about 20 active contributors, assisting in all sorts of tasks, from engine development, 3d modeling, animation, sounds, lobby infrastructure, to map and other content creation. At the same time, the promotional efforts of IceXuick, PtaQ, and other team members have resulted in building a sizeable active player base and community of content creators.

Beyond All reason is still in development in accordance with a motto "It is ready when it's ready", aiming at the date of official Steam release around Q2 of 2022. Though many players already love how "Beyond all Reason is shaping up" Most of the work being done right now considers the infrastructure, optimization, single-player content, and lobby client improvements, while the gameplay itself is pretty much in its final form.

Development
While the Spring engine is written in C++, the majority of Beyond All Reason's game-specific code is written in Lua, making the technical barrier to entry for new contributors relatively low. Development is volunteer-based and partially financed by donations. Donations also cover the cost of servers and software licenses for volunteers. The whole BAR code spans over 15+ repositories with elements responsible for different parts of the infrastructure. Below you can see a summary of the development progress so far.

Gameplay

 * Rebalanced new pathfinding/movement system
 * Rebalance of all Naval units
 * Rebalance in general of bots & vehicles
 * 1000's of balance tweaks for practically all units in BAR
 * Added a totally new Game Mode called 💀｜Scavengers™ - as an addable random entity in PvP or as a full survival mode as PvE
 * Scavengers also controllable as a player (soon also Chickens)
 * New Loot box option for normal and Scavenger games
 * New Unit Printers option
 * Reintroduction of Control Point game-mode
 * Added a new Scenario system with over 20 Scenario Missions for solo play
 * Collaborated and extended the Circuit AI to the BARbarian AI

Graphics

 * Upgraded to PBR* for massively better looking units (*Physically Based Rendering)
 * Added CAS* for major leap in clarity / visibility (*Contrast Adaptive Sharpen)
 * Major upgrade to new OpenGL4 modern standard for 3-10x more performance (started back in 2019, released in 2021)
 * Big upgrade to multithreaded pathing for ±40% better performance
 * Upgraded all particle FX and added dozens new ones
 * Rotational particles now part of the engine
 * New water-wake FX for all ships, subs and hovercraft (+66% better performance)
 * Upgraded and added dozens of new textures (double or quad more quality)
 * New 3D waving grass
 * Greatly enhanced unit-texture atlases (added new tank tracks and camouflage textures)
 * Upgraded all alien chicken textures with complete new ones
 * Overhaul of all AA and smoke-trail weapons and effects
 * New fully animated cursor-set in 4 sizes
 * Low-energy icons
 * Team Colored parts of Buildings like Fusion Orbs
 * Complete new style-design for shields
 * New Building + Unit ground decal system upgrade to GL4
 * Extra real-time lighting system for awesome looking lighting for weapons, projectiles and explosions
 * Updated hundreds of weapons to look/feel better (muzzle flashes, sparks, shockwaves, water splashes, fire, flamethrowers, EMP clouds, bolts, dirt, debris, etc.)
 * Custom unit shading (CUS) for the new GL4 system for much higher fidelity and dynamic shading/rendering of units

Units

 * Designed, animated, and scripted over 60 units for Armada and Cortex (on top of all new 380+ models made between 2010-2014)
 * Over 100 new animations for all bots and alien chickens using inverse kinematics
 * New Scavenger units like Epic flying gunships, rolling nuke bombs, unit cannons, T4 flamethrowers, T4 super ships
 * Retextured all construction units to stand out better
 * Upgrading pathfinding to a Multithreaded version (WIP)
 * Graphics upgraded to PBR (Physically Based Rendering) for massively better-looking units
 * Added CAS (Contrast Adaptive Sharpen) for a major leap in clarity/visibility
 * Major upgrade to new OpenGL4 modern standard
 * Upgraded and added dozens of new particle FX
 * Upgraded and added dozens of new textures (double or quad more quality)
 * Added new 3D waving grass
 * Doubled texture atlas sizes and added new Cortex tank tracks and camouflage textures
 * Upgraded all alien chicken texture with completely new ones
 * Rework of all AA and smoke-trail weapons and effects
 * Redesigned full animated cursor-set in 4 sizes
 * Added low-energy icons
 * Fully Team Colored parts of Buildings like Fusion Orbs
 * Complete new looks for shields
 * Added extra lighting system for (real-time) lighting for weapons, projectiles and explosions
 * Updated hundreds of weapons to look/feel better (muzzle flashes, sparks, shockwaves, flamethrowers, EMP clouds, bolts, dirt, debris, etc.)

User Interface

 * Full revamp of in-game UI
 * Designed a completely new set of Strategic icons for each unit
 * New resorting by category of all build-menus (+ upcoming alternative new grid-menu)
 * Over 400 unique and custom-made new build pictures for each unit and Scavenger variant
 * Ally cursors lights and names
 * Lot's of tiny tweaks to improve the experience for color-blind people
 * Radar, jammer, sonar, and Line of Sight stenciled (real-time) range-rings
 * Radar-coverage live-preview
 * Unit Selection shapes and Teamplatter to GL4 for 10-20x better performance
 * Healthbars upgrade to GL4 for 10x better performance
 * Rank Icons upgrade to GL4 for 5-10x bette performance
 * Upgraded lobby to fit BAR with many additional features
 * Re-designed all in-game player colors/balance to be recognizable, unique, and different adjusted per game-mode

Maps

 * Exploration & Discovery of many better ways to make maps (World Machine, World Creator , Gaea)
 * Creation of over 60 new maps with over 4x higher quality (remakes and new ones)
 * Completely new atmospherics system for smoke, fog, rain, fireflies, clouds, day-night system, thunderstorms, etc.
 * Created/upgraded dozens of map objects (trees/rocks/mushrooms/plants/crystals/bushes)
 * Ambient Sound effects per map (integrated into around 20% of all certified maps)
 * New dynamic Lava/Acidic/Liquid shader (can rise/drop + fully configurable with new GL4 shading)

Sound and Music

 * A full-fledged Orchestral soundtrack has been composed by a collaborating artist - Ryan Krause
 * Created a fully new layered sound system for different categories, unit types, weapons, and commands
 * Remastered existing and created over a thousand new sounds
 * Added dozens of in-game voice notifications for intel and as tutorial help
 * Rework of sound 3D system + sound absorption/distance cut-off
 * Custom music player with fades + dynamic playlists that changes music tracks according to what's happening in the game.
 * Update of all UI interface sounds

Community

 * Setup and maintenance of Discord (currently over 6500 users)
 * Creating a website to communicate all sorts of things through news, guides, commands, Frequently Ask Questions, download
 * Setup for a proper way to handle Privacy for website / Game accounts (and opt-in/out for sharing data)
 * Setup of Code of Conduct
 * Setup of Donation system through the website
 * Setup of BAR Merch + design of the first collection
 * Active involvement and promotion on Reddit, Discord, other online platforms
 * Setup of BAR YouTube + creation of mini dev-videos
 * Setup of BAR Twitter
 * Been partner or host of 5 BAR tournaments - including fully pro-live-stream setup infrastructure
 * Built an entirely new online platform for real-time active battles, replays, and leaderboard (soon expanded with maps and units)
 * Created entirely new Server Platform Teiserver for extensive account-management

Infrastructure

 * Build an entire new online platform for real-time active battles, replays and leaderboard (soon expanded with maps and units)
 * Created entirely new Server Platform Teiserver for extensive account-management
 * Engine & Game updates building/compiling on Github
 * Automatic release of new versions to all server-clusters
 * 3 server clusters in EU, AU and US
 * Dozens of update for Spads
 * Schematized the entire infra-structure for comprehension of the whole infra
 * Cleaning up the entire code-base file-by-file since 2020
 * WIP new lobby + new Tachyon protocol