Rethinking RTS Commands & U.I

Well it has been some time since I last posted something on this blog. My time has been spent on my OU studies, work and various hobbies. RTS and game/UI design never really leaves my mind for more than a day or two at a time, however.

One of the issues surrounding around RTS games as they rapidly evolve is how to deal with their ever increasing complexity and scale. Many RTS’ have chosen simply to stick to old tried and tested formulas, tweaking the graphics and interface here and there but generally sticking to the same old boring micromanagement formulae. Supreme Commander is certainly different in this regard but there have been other attempts to reshape RTS gaming. Homeworld was one of the first to attempt to forge a totally new direction, for example.

Units (part I)

Traditionally, RTS units are non de-constructible. What I mean is that the actual units themselves, in almost all RTS games I’ve played, live a short ‘0 / 1′ alive/dead existence, with a certain amount of damage points (shown as health-bars) to represent damage in a fairly abstract way. Most RTS games display diminishing health/damage of a given unit with some kind of cute preset animation. For example, in Total Annihilation the units billow an ever greater amount of smoke. Upon actual death they possess a variety of explosion animations to represent their demise, such as breaking apart or full blown explosions with flying debris!

In Supreme Commander we see pretty much the same system but with fancier deaths or damage animations. The experimental units in particular go out with a real bang. I’m going to propose a more modern and importantly, more fun system in terms of actual gameplay mechanics. It is also, I think, a more realistic way of doing things and fits in with my RTS concept.

The Single-Resource Model

Those of you brave enough to browse my scrappy notes may have noticed that I was brainstorming a resource system for my futuristic RTS concept. I am still adamant that the more logical option, despite being a HUGE fan of T.A and Supreme Commander, is the single, not dual (energy/metal) resource system. The main reason for this is that it fits in with my ideas for linking the expansion of ones empire very directly to resource income in order to promote (but not insist upon) continuing growth.

This single resource which could be regarded as ‘energy’ or ‘finances’ etc, then links into two main areas of the game; research and production. Research is centered around the classical turn-based Space Empires-esq ‘tech tree’ system. Production is of course, anything to do with the actual building, maintenance, repair or reclamation of items within ones empire.

As much as I love T.A, I want to get away from its reliance on good eco-management skills and make RTS even more action packed and strategy/movement centered. The building of energy-metal converters and so on is a fine concept but it does detract slightly from the core notion of warfare and expansion of empire.

The Supreme Commander

I know this article has been floating around the Supcom/TA community for some time but I had to link to this interview with Chris Taylor, for two tantalizing reasons.

We’ll return to the SC universe again, but we’ll just have to see when that day is. Maybe when everybody has 64-bit processors…

and…

I’d like to develop something casual, but a little more sophisticated, not just a one-play session type game, but one that persists online, something where you get a score you can track over time like an MMO.

Blabbing away…

I was chatting to a friend today after a game of TA, about some ideas concerning the future of RTS games (check out my messy notes if you haven’t already.) Anyway I actually started to openly blab on about some more ideas I have had recently and what I perceive to be flaws in current games like Starcraft, C&C, Supreme Commander and even TA.

I waffled on about balancing, UI concepts, features, multiplayer etc and came up with an interesting brainstorm which follows on from some of the multiplayer concepts proposed in my notes. I thought I’d just paste part of the chat log on this blog because I haven’t updated it recently.

So, go read the horribly edited Skype chat transcript here. If you dare!

Links fixed!

OK I have updated the links to the BFTA pack as I realised it was broken. Now fixed (see right hand side). Please try to use the torrent if you know how and have some upload/time to spare

PS - There is also a new section: ‘RTS Concept’ which features some old notes of mine about a futuristic RTS/RTT and how it might work in a post-Supcom or TA2 world. I have a storyline to match which I’ll add when it is more complete, it was originally written as a small kids book but fits the concept well.