Plymouth, MI. – January 28, 2016 – Stardock, the company that brought players Sins of a Solar Empire, released the first public beta of Ashes of the Singularity today. This new real-time strategy game, which features the first ever native DirectX 12 support, aims to deliver planetary warfare on a scale never seen before in gaming.
“In Ashes of the Singularity, gamers aren’t fighting a battle, they’re fighting a war,” said Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock. “Players command thousands of units across a vast battlefield while building up their economic and technological might.”
The public beta for Ashes of the Singularity allows players to command their forces in a war that has spread across much of the galaxy in the 23rd century. Players have a choice of playing either the descendants of humanity, the Post-Human Coalition, or their bitter enemy, the Substrate.
“Over the past few months we’ve worked closely with AMD and Nvidia to fully leverage their hardware,” said Wardell. “Our alpha testers have reported substantial performance gains, which is allowing us to begin lowering the hardware requirements.”
Ashes of the Singularity has some notable features, including:
● The first native DirectX 12 game allowing each CPU core to command the player’s GPU simultaneously, which allows for more rendered units to be displayed on screen at the same time – by an order of magnitude – than in any previous RTS game to date.
● A multi-core, real-time strategy AI that allows for excellent single player RTS gaming.
● A new native 64-bit 3D engine called Nitrous that makes full use of the features of DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, allowing for thousands of light sources on screen simultaneously.
● A new type of unit group organization known as a “meta” unit that makes it easy for players to manage potentially tens of thousands of units across a world.
● Advanced Nitrous 3D engine allows players to zoom out on the map without having to transform the map into a simplified view of the battlefield.
“Our goal with Ashes of the Singularity is to help introduce a new generation of gamers to real-time strategy games,” said Wardell. “We want to make a game where players can invite their friends in and be up and playing relatively quickly without a lengthy explanation about how to play.”
To that end, the mechanics of Ashes of the Singularity are relatively straight-forward to learn: metal and radioactives that are spread across the planet are captured by players and used to build up armies, research new technologies, and develop a powerful economy. From there, players formulate complex strategies to defeat their opponents.
Beta 1 is now available in Early Access on both Steam and GOG. It includes single player skirmish, co-op multiplayer, and ranked multiplayer.
Next month, Stardock expects to release Beta 2, which will include multi-GPU support (including mixing AMD and Nvidia cards together), along with a new 3D benchmark mode. The final release is due out this Spring.
To learn more about Ashes of the Singularity visit www.ashesofthesingularity.com.
Stardock releases beta 1 for Ashes of the Singularity
