Finally I get around to part two! I’ve had a number of thoughts lately, perhaps inspired by the recent announcement about a possible 2010 release of Supreme Commander 2, to do with RTS games – more specifically; units, command management / control, and user interface. I’ll continue my rant about units in this post but try to tie in the other aspects as I go along.

Upon reflection, what most strikes me and sort of disappoints me about units in Supcom, as opposed to say, TA, is how ‘light’ and unsubstantial they feel. They appear to slide about the terrain as if skating across ice (yes, especially the hover units but not only those) and don’t bump into one another in the manner you’d expect giant metal tanks and robots to do – it’s all soft and bouncy and well… it just doesn’t feel right.

Total Annihilation felt adequately clunky, mechanical, heavy and powerful and industrial and all those wonderful adjectives I’d associate with futuristic intergalactic robotic warfare! There is something about the physics and unit behavior in Supcom which leaves me feeling a bit empty after a long battle. Which is a shame, because the graphics, concepts and overall gameplay is quite superb. I think wreckage piles play a large role, too. For obvious pathfinding/CPU reasons the wreckage piles in Supcom do not interfere with the movement of live units. There are no epic ‘pile ups’ and consequent tactical changes as a field of battle becomes clogged and units struggle to move between and shoot over their fallen metal brethren. Supcom units also seem to slide right through eachother once in a while, like mechanised ghosts, and when coming into contact there is no solid abrupt halt or ‘bang!’ – only a gentle ‘bounce’, as if they were made of cheap plastic parts!

When I discussed this at length in my previous post about this, I mentioned the term ‘deconstructible units’ and, in short, my idea was to dispense of health bars and arbitrary unrealistic ‘hit/damage points’ altogether – and have units contain actual physics, via component parts (or ‘modules’) which had certain features or properties and were physically ‘malleable’ or ‘breakable’ in battle.

I’d like to talk this time about the ‘modules’: what they are, how they might work – and the possible types, their properties and affect upon gameplay at large. I’ll also hint at a more recent idea I’ve had about unit AI or behavior and how this could be tied not to a generic unit/class AI, but instead to the individual module components themeselves. Thus, in effect you’d not only design, research or build your units but also shape their individual or group behavior – how aggressive they are, the way they react to other units or components, their special properties under certain cicumstances, etc etc.

If the AI were tied to components, then one could create very specialised, or just very simplistic units designed for a certain purpose. They may only react to certain things, or be pre-programmed to follow a ‘command’ unit, or have a specialised role, to repair battle-worn units… etc. It’s really open to endless possibility. Of course the opposite is true also, they may have a great many layers to them and react any number of possible ways. The reason for doing this though, is more subtle. I have a wider goal in mind. By linking AI routines to components/modules, you basically create module types for the game with a specific ‘behaviour’ or general effect in mind. So a module – rather than having certain technical specifications (which it also has – more on this later) it simply has a name such as ‘defensive porcupine spikes!’ with certain physics and AI parameters attached.

So …

More to follow… stay tuned… (having to type this up via scribbled notes!)