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Or what makes a great RTS game?
Made for Ludum Dare Mini #66
Off the top of my head these are the only RTS game types I’d still play:
Call to Arms / Assault Squad 2
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (SC2 throws most that I liked about SC:FA out of the window again)
Total War (I only really played Total War: Attila)
None of them are within solo-dev scope, so I suggest to look for something really innovative. What would make people care about your RTS?
Creeper World was a fun take on RTS that didn’t require the efforts of a massive studio.
On your RTS, there is definitely some bug fixing to do. Input didn’t work half the time. My units didn’t auto attack some of the time. Physics was buggy. But this is all polish stuff.
As to the actual game design, at the moment there are no interesting choices. The standard FOO strategy for RTS games works. Build a bunch of workers. Cut off your opponents access to resources. Win. Where I attacked felt like it made no difference. Tanks felt just the same as troopers. The terrain made no difference, there were no natural choke points to battle over. Nor was there any real time pressure.
Consider implementing a paper scissors rock strategy, where different unit combinations matter.
Lol thanks for reminding me about game, that was fun and apparently made with unity.
Also your last profile photo was better, was so high poly and with much better shading ; )
Anyway about the game, the controls are buggy and unusual, I find the way selection works to be weird.
The game in general lacks stuff you can do. A variety in troops would be nice.
The map kinda reminds me of Warcraft, you could try map styles that would differentiate your game from others. By this I mean like maybe make buildings that you can enter, floors on witch snipers can go… Btw the map is very small atm.
And as boredmormon said, it would be more fun if you had resources that you had to fight for. Currently they are easy to reach.
Also you need letter spacing, it’s annoying that unity doesn’t have this by default, but you can google the script for this.
My last photo was developed in RealWorldEngine. It has amazing graphical fidelity. But lacks some real basic features, like the ability to save state and reload.
This one is unity built.
3 Likes
I’ve been wanting to make a RTS would like to work with you on this, I’ve been thinking of one that progresses through time and allows you to attack and defend against friends
the game has a fun core but it desperately needs polish. I like the simplicity. what makes a great (rts) game is mostly refinement:
- a win condition would be nice (i’ve destroyed all enemies on the map but nothing happened).
- unit selection is clunky and slow
- unit movement is clunky, which is fine but id like to see a response so I know my command worked.
- the game needs multiple unit selection (or a working one) and command
- improve the AI, the game is very easy.
I will have to try the game later when I’m not at work.
I’ve always been terrible at RTS games I am not good at multi tasking. I’ve always felt like it is two different games going on at once. playing a city builder game and a tactical game. So I think I just came up with a way to make an idiot like me interested in an RTS. take a look at Company of Heroes. in this game your resources are based on territories you have taken over. I would divide a map into regions and each region provides you with resources or a type of infantry you can spawn. I wish that that was the only part of the game I had to pay attention to. maneuvering and holding down capture points. instead I always neglect my main base and forget to upgrade a type of ammo or armor. what if those were things you could do while out navigating around the playing field.
you know how in RISK you get a certain amount of infantry to deploy each turn based on regions you capture. then you place them in any region you wish. You could make a spawn rate based on how much of the field you are controlling then you can deploy your troops at any region you have taken.
There is a WIN condition in the game but due to LD constraints and 3 CPU players I did not test it thoroughly.
You can drag to draw a bounding box over selected units.
Good point on the command feedback.
OK There must be a bug as I found the simple AI did provide a basic opponent, can I ask what you did to defeat the AI so quickly and easily, e.g. what is your strategy, rush, block resources?
This depends on the scale area and time frame of your game, all RTS games tend to work in a world where you can produce a fully grown and trained soldier / assembled and crewed tank or plane in a matter of seconds.
But it’s an interesting take on how resources/units are provided within the scope of a game.
I just continously made workers and soldiers. I spread out the workers to gather from all the reasonably close nodes. I used the soldiers to attack choke points and around the center area. I only cut worker production around the time the soldier building was up and I stopped making workers at around the time i was able to build tanks and then I steamrolled everything with them.
Basicly I just spend my money and attacked constantly.
The boxing of multiple units didn’t work for me. I had to click every unit individually, I did it fast enough apparently but It was a bit of a hassle.
Did the click and drag work for you at all? Brower?
The game was drawing a rectangle. But I didn’t see a clear indication of wether the units are selected, nor did they move to the place I clicked after. I’am a firefox user if that indicates anything.
It took me about 10 mins to win. AI stucks in their base if I kill all of their workers.
Also drag box’s not working.
Sorry, I know that this probably isn’t what your looking for. I just want to write this down somewhere while I’m brain storming. I’m continuing with the idea I presented.
lets say you take over one region just outside your main base.
the region will have a buffs like +2infantry, +1jeep and +1Building materials per30/sec. And +5 Unit Allowance Points
UnitsSpawned/CurrentAllowance/TotalGameAllowance
Unit allowance = 5/5/200
instead of going back to base to find the right building to start training another unit, you have a Table console like the one bellow. I’m taking inspiration from the game Banished at the trading post. from this console you spend your resources as you earn them. in this example because I’ve only taken 1 region I only have space to spend 5 unit points.
I would predetermine how I want those points and credits spent from this console.
You have 0 Allowance points to spend
(Allowance cost/Credits cost)
(1/1)infantry - Buy - 3 Units : 10 Credits
(1/1)demolition
(1/1)flame thrower
(2/2)anti armor
(2/2)jeep - Buy - 1 Units : 5 Credits
(3/3)tank
(3/3)bomber
(2/2)fighter jet
Then 30 seconds after I have taken the first region I would have 2infantry and 1jeep in my “inventory”. 30 more seconds I would have 1 more infantry in my inventory. Units in my inventory would count toward my Unit Allowance whether or not I have diploid them. it would then stop buying units as my purchase order is filled. How ever you would continue to earn credits for as long as you control that region. then just click on any region control point and chose which units to spawn immediately. and maybe each region control point has its own console that say something like anytime I have a tank in my inventory spawn it here. that way acting as the general of your army, you’ve given your orders and that position should manage its self. you could come back 5 minuets latter and it would have a platoon of jeeps and infantry ready for you to command with having to micromanage all the little productions.
building materials wouldn’t have a cap. they just get used to build walls, bunkers, fox holes. OR the building material could represent Oil for vehicles. etc…
obviously I haven’t taken any thought of balancing. I would have to play with it to see what the correct cost of units should be or how many of each type of buff could be found on the playing field.
then… just to be unique I would re-skin the game. there are tons of army style games. maybe I would call the game King of the Jungle and you pick a species at the beginning of the game. Like Monkeys and your different units would be the different types of monkey. this will allow you to break away from the constraints of reality and be creative and cartoony and try to appeal to kids, because lets face it. kids control the wallet in all house holds.
then you could monetize it with cute skins and animations for your monkeys, cats, birds, reptiles, … bovines
- “Idea Guy” strikes again.
Every game developer needs you.
There are RTS games to match just about any style out there. Age of Empires, Starcraft, Warcraft, Comand and Conquer all have a pretty good mix of base building and combat management. Supreme Commander and Dawn of War tend to treat bases as something you set up and forget about, and focus more on combat management. Stronghold, The Space Game and Factorio work the other way, the game is primarily about base management and combat is set and forget.
Then of course there are odd balls like Dune 1. You can only give orders to troops within a certain distance of your commander, so the focus is on travel and communication. Its an old game, but an interesting one in terms of making a different RTS. Creeper World is another odd ball, its network system manages to incorporate base building and combat into the same task.
Apparently I spend too much time playing strategy games…
2 Likes
Well there RTS games too that are more indirect play, like Settlers, Pharaoh, Metal Marines in SNES, etc,where you only command the place of building and your civilians or robots do the rest, in settlers you only command military units the rest is indirect, where place and build the resource houses, food house, etc.
later for me was great in PSX was Warzone 2100 total 3D game with realistic trajectory of arty and the battle was focus in close quarter or arty that always supported by Sensors that make the artillery or Anti Air units more precisely shoots, the mission where focus outside of your base and call to the transport where only 10 units at time is posible to call, so you need to make a good plan of what type of units go first.
Another good RTS for me was Kohan: Inmortal Sovereigns was good combination of base building and combat management where the units was builded around squad and the squad leader was 1 hero. The city the main focus of resource where depends of the location where you placed get more gold, stone, wood or population if i remember well beside have a limit of upgrades chooce get improvements in get more resource but are weaks and easy to destroy or capture, or get walls and barracks to train from that city but they loose the ability of get resource and only consume from the others city…