zomgwtfbbq awsome mp RTS for pandora.


pbostrom

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evening, il start with go right on topic.


short story:

i am planning on starting a project for a 3d wc3 like RTS(but bettah!) for the pandora.
so i will be using this topic for some general ideas of what u like in an RTS, or what could be better with those that already exists.



long story:

and to more general stuff, which will actually be more fun reading:

Hiho, I am a student here at GAME on Gotland University(sweden), and i am studying as a gamedesigner/programmer, but lately ive had the role as producer, and i am starting to like the planning parts of gamedev alot.

anyway as topic states, i am planning on making a project group consisting of 5-7 people working 50-100 hours per week for a year making a game for the pandora.
this will become a student project, but i wouldnt call it an unserious one, we got the attitude to make it really great, and the resources to back it up(did i mention we got a twin of the mocap studio used to make the matrix movies?, so expect some highly awsome cinematics) that is if this project starts, aswell as consultants such as Ernest Adams who have something around 30 years of game designing experience, and much more!.

and to end this i am going to say that this is still in the planning phase, no current concepts are written yet, anyhow instead of just reading of tha intrawebs i am going to ask you people:

What do you like with RTS?
What makes RTS good?
Could you mention something that could make a current RTS better?
What would you prefer: Fantasy?, Space?, Modern war? or maybe historic?,

maybe something like timewarps between all kinds of era? having everything from the biomechanic gruggs(dunno, just made it up, but something like a green orc-murloc-goblin type of fella,) all with super awsome biological warfare vs the all mighty imperial elven race(im thinking northern mythology here, fairies n such) this in a timeconquering era.

oooh, anyway i hope you get the point.

i just got some inspiration of a book i read a year ago, or several, if any1 has read glen cook's the black company; the world got a big wheel with different kinds of worlds, all the same but with different outcomes.


anyway you could expect a definite answer if this will go live at the end of summer when i get to evaluate the pandora abit. and some more planning.
 
What do you like with RTS?

I like Rise of Legends and Lego Rock Raiders. I like themes that aren't medieval and aren't based directly in space. GOOD THEMES: Alien planets, steampunk, clockwork, and Mayans with advanced alien technology.
I like 3D graphics, even if they're low detail. Don't confuse "I like 3D graphics" with "I only play for graphics". I like good graphics, but I'd rather have low-quality 3D graphics with a free-moving camera than high-quality 2D graphics that limit you to a single viewpoint and no perspective.

What makes RTS good?

Being in control. Rock Raiders had one or two levels where you had to fight off slugs by dropping noisemakers, waiting 5 seconds, and hoping that the slug was still on the right side of the noisemaker. And the damn slugs never left you alone, no matter what you did. I had to use a really weird tactic to work around this, and I still can't believe that such a huge glitch slipped through QA.

Could you mention something that could make a current RTS better?

Don't use the medieval theme or World War theme again, I've never been interested in it, and I'm still not.

What would you prefer: Fantasy?, Space?, Modern war? or maybe historic?,

Fantasy, but not medieval.
Space, but not IN space. I want to be on a planet or moon or something.
 
lulzfish said:
What do you like with RTS?


Don't use the medieval theme or world war 2 theme again, I've never been interested in it, and I'm still not.

Complete agreement
What would you prefer: Fantasy?, Space?, Modern war? or maybe historic?,

Fantasy, but not medieval.
Space, but not IN space. I want to be on a planet or moon or something.

In space is fine as long as that's not the -only- thing. If you've got starships and traveling through space carrying trade goods, fighting off pirates and whatevernot, it's necessary to be able to -land- and explore planets, wander through cities, explore precursor ruins, etc. Otherwise it's same-ol, same-ol (Freelancer, Privateer, Etc.). It shouldn't be that difficult to combine good planetside "individual Character" play with a good space-trader style play.
 
By "World War Two", I meant, "Any recent war such as WWI, WWII, Middle Eastern war, Vietnam, Korea, etc."

Future wars are acceptable [Crysis], past wars are right out.
 
What do you like with RTS?
I like lots of variety of units so that it doesn't just become a game of rock, paper, scissors. I'm also quite fond of defensive play and base building.

What would you prefer: Fantasy?, Space?, Modern war? or maybe historic?,
Either historic or sci-fi would be my preference.. Or something something more arty like Darwinia

My Personally favourite RTS is Warzone 2100, which also happens to now be open source if you want to port it and have a poke about

Source Code : http://sourceforge.net/projects/warzone2100/
Community Project : http://wz2100.net/
 
lulzfish said:
By "World War Two", I meant, "Any recent war such as WWI, WWII, Middle Eastern war, Vietnam, Korea, etc."

Still in agreement, though a caveat, some 'alternate history' concepts like the "Gaslamp Fantasy" of Girl Genius or the 'Alternate WWII' of "GearKrieg" or "Maschinen Krieger ZbV 3000" might be interesting.

Future wars are acceptable [Crysis], past wars are right out.

Hmmm... Fallout-style post-war. Mad Max with an angry penguin logo (Please don't use Tux as an actual character, it's been overdone and usually inappropriate). Tech tree to rebuild and re-purpose old equipment like cars, farming tractors, military weapons. Seed the battlefield with concealed caches of old pre-apocalypse gear and equipment.

Feature request:
Persistent military. This is mostly for single-player campaigns, but it's always bugged me that I work hard to build up an army/navy/air-force/tech-tree in one mission, just to have to do it all over again in the next one, even though the two missions are on the same patch or neighboring patch of land. Perhaps a multiplayer "Campaign" mode that links missions to a larger map.
 
sweet, well now Gotland Game Awards 2009 is over and i have started planning on this game, thusfar we are leaning towards scifi,

with the fall planned for designing, writing and planning the game and creating the engine for it, in the spring we will start putting it all toghether...

since this will be a game on exhibition at gotland game awards 2010 we will try to make it as simple as possible with a very fast learning curve and then gradually make it more advanced. designing an RTS is hard ;)
 
hansfranz said:
keep deaming.... better than wc3? arse!

well its called marketing, how does, "sort of like wc3, but not as good." sound?
trolls...


anyway, its hard to compete with multi million projects that takes 3-4 years to develop. but we will do our best.
 
pssst... I'm actually not supposed to be here, as you know if you've been reading all my posts recently (as if anyone has!) I'm supposed to "be away from the surface of the Earth". So don't tell anyone that I found 5 minutes of free time to post here, I'm really REALLY busy :- )

I find an idea like this to be very interesting...

As you might or might not know, the spacerts project is another RTS currently being worked on for the Pandora (go to gp32x to get more info about it).
And although it has many innovative ideas, it's not very "mod friendly".
It uses a map system and a world layout/resource system that makes it very difficult to do anything else with the game other than playing RTS games with other people. What I would like to see is something inspired by Warcraft 3 or Starcraft where you can make your own maps, script events in that map, and make completely custom games (Tower Defenses, Defense of the Ancients anyone?, RPGs, whatever) very easily with a very well-defined and easy-to-use system.

Hmmm... maybe, just maybe, it would be possible to add that possibility to spacerts? It would require certain layout changes but it would be possible... Maybe.
As it looks now, however, this idea seems much more approachable, plausible and doable than the spacerts game.

Anyways, if you end up actually making a game similar to what you have proposed, I might as well add my suggestions (and some of these are a must, otherwise it won't work) :

  • If you make the game either steampunk-themed (as proposed already) or something like DaVinci-themed (you know, wooden/cloth mechanical machines that look very similar to animals or very organic, and have that DaVincian feel to them), it would make the modding and balancing of the game MUCH easier.
    Why? Because:
    1. DaVincian or steampunk machines don't actually exist, will never exist and have never existed, and can therefore look like anything and have any attributes/traits you want them to.
    2. they aren't hypertechnological. If you think about it: in year 3132, shouldn't ships/planets/fighters already have black-hole-warps and time/space deluders, making combat with lasers/mechanics horribly deprecated? With DaVincian or steampunk structures, you really have a plausible situation going on, since those kind of structures actually have limitations and can't make the enemy implode and send it to another dimension.
    3. they haven't been overdone (or done at all, really), making it possible for the game makers to define a new genre of RTS's. World War units already exist, and we already know what they're good for, so you can't innovate, and you can't balance the game at all since you have to stick to the actual IRL numbers for the units.
  • Use open and expandable technologies. The RTS has to be as modifiable as possible. Make a very defined (model-, building-, unit-)resource system and map system, preferably using Java (preferred because of speed while still being portable) or Python (because all maps have to be open-source then), or even Scalascript (both of the previous :p) - not LUA! LUA is not extensible enough! - and a comprehensible level editor with "triggers" and easy scripting tools, so as to enable a community to work on the game. If it isn't extensible, then the community can't work on it (as seen with spacerts; no one wants to work on it because there is only one way to approach the development of it: you have to be a core developer or nothing at all)
  • Make the game "lean". If the game is to be extensible, make the core as small as possible. Don't even define a list of "gatherable resources" or "standard set of buildings"; make it possible to add your own resources or buildings through plug-ins/map resources. Just make the game into a tool to play maps, nothing more.
  • Don't add too many features that make the game impossible to develop. Stay with a really small feature set and make it possible to add more features through plug-ins/maps. Same as above applies. This makes it possible for only a few developers to develop the game.
  • Make a well-defined world/story first of all (à la WC3 or SC). This makes it possible to actually make campaigns and similarly-themed maps. If you don't set a theme, completely different universes will emerge.
  • Use the 2D plane map layout that everyone is used to. This means having a landscape defined by a height map and a tile set, with buildings (that per definition only can be placed if aligned with tiles, and have the ability to change the collision map of the terrain) and units (can be placed anywhere, aka on floating-point places, and do only contribute to the terrain hitmap with a limited collision radius). That approach makes anything possible.

We'll see what this thing evolves into...
 
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Cool. I really like themes like Steampunk, far future, after-apocolypse (fallout style world), mayans with alien techonology (so its actually just mayans, because they were in contact with aliens seriously), or african rebellions (thats just one awesome never-used RTS setting).

What I like about RTS games are: Base building, many troops who all have weakenesses and maps with awesome tactis-possibilities.
 
Hmmm... Fallout-style post-war. Mad Max with an angry penguin logo (Please don't use Tux as an actual character, it's been overdone and usually inappropriate). Tech tree to rebuild and re-purpose old equipment like cars, farming tractors, military weapons. Seed the battlefield with concealed caches of old pre-apocalypse gear and equipment.

Feature request:
Persistent military. This is mostly for single-player campaigns, but it's always bugged me that I work hard to build up an army/navy/air-force/tech-tree in one mission, just to have to do it all over again in the next one, even though the two missions are on the same patch or neighboring patch of land. Perhaps a multiplayer "Campaign" mode that links missions to a larger map.
I think the Fallout rts idea would be an absolutely stellar idea. As well, the persistent military would be awesome. I do believe that the Rise Of Nations has that feature (correct me if I am wrong...?).
If the Fallout RTS idea came through, I think that it would be awesome to have it kind of in a fantasy future, where different nations with different abilities have arisen, and which you could steal from. As well, it would be awesome where you could take control of your characters individually, so if you were to, for example, go into a guarded cache in a cave, you could fight them with your own skillz. The setting would be kind of like the book "Empire of the East" by Fred Saberhagen ( If you haven't read it, do so right now- really good book), with various creatures and powers ( magic and such). This could be merged with steampunk in a Rise Of Legends style ( with three races etc.) I think that it would be awesome to be able to customize your characters to be individual.
 
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