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Genesis of an RTS game
Genesis of an RTS game
| Name: | Geom |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Feb 10, 2006 | |
| Rating: |  4.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Geom |
Blog post
I started work on a simple, casual RTS game about 3 months ago. So far, development of this game has been immense fun. Already the GUI works, players can harvest resources, build new bases, and the computer players can do the same and even attack the player. Here are a few screenshots.
Next feature on the to-do list is pathfinding. I've already got some crude pathfinding working thanks to this little gem, but there's still a lot of work to do to get it polished. (Beware though, micropather uses STL which is difficult to get working with the rest of Torque).
I'm planning on keeping this game fairly simple, with the goal of quick development time and the hope of appealing to some of the more casual gaming types. Then, with this experience in hand, I'd like to start on the RTS I really want to make. I think there are all kinds of cool innovations that could go into RTS gameplay. But, one thing at a time.
Overall I've been really happy with Torque. I'd never made a game before with someone else's engine, so I was a little apprehensive as to what the learning curve would be. But it hasn't been bad. It's a big engine, but I've found it has been pretty easy to learn one aspect of the engine at a time, depending on what I need at a particular moment. I am now way farther ahead in development than I thought I would be after three months. Thanks, Torque!
(edited urls)
Next feature on the to-do list is pathfinding. I've already got some crude pathfinding working thanks to this little gem, but there's still a lot of work to do to get it polished. (Beware though, micropather uses STL which is difficult to get working with the rest of Torque).
I'm planning on keeping this game fairly simple, with the goal of quick development time and the hope of appealing to some of the more casual gaming types. Then, with this experience in hand, I'd like to start on the RTS I really want to make. I think there are all kinds of cool innovations that could go into RTS gameplay. But, one thing at a time.
Overall I've been really happy with Torque. I'd never made a game before with someone else's engine, so I was a little apprehensive as to what the learning curve would be. But it hasn't been bad. It's a big engine, but I've found it has been pretty easy to learn one aspect of the engine at a time, depending on what I need at a particular moment. I am now way farther ahead in development than I thought I would be after three months. Thanks, Torque!
(edited urls)
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| List: | 10/04/08 - RTS game features and when to tie a bow 01/02/08 - Old fonts, new fonts 11/29/07 - Tab Control WIP 11/11/07 - OVM Beta1 test! 07/11/07 - Orcs vs. Martians 05/31/07 - work on programmatic DTS billboards 02/14/07 - Recoloring DTS shapes 01/24/07 - Orcs vs. Martians alpha |
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Submit your own resources!| Todd Pickens (Feb 10, 2006 at 06:58 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Chip Lambert (Feb 10, 2006 at 13:56 GMT) |
| Vashner (Feb 10, 2006 at 14:54 GMT) |
| Geom (Feb 11, 2006 at 03:27 GMT) |
Thanks! Yeah, I've been regarding pathfinding as a "risk" area in the development of this game. Marc Currie, who wrote the RTS Trash, mentioned in the Indie Gamer forums that pathfinding took a significant bit of development time for Trash. I want to jump into it as soon as possible, just to know how big a task it's going to be. Currently my pathfinding is implemented as a big grid of potential waypoints on the world, and all paths are at right angles or diagonal angles. Obviously that doesn't play too well :)
@Chip
My AI is really simple. But it's adequate to fight and beat the human player - so it makes for a real game! I use a separate state machine for each base building, soldier, and worker. Workers just harvest stuff, and soldiers just shoot at enemy units when they come into range and line-of-sight. The base first builds four workers, and then soldiers after that. However once a base has at least four soldiers, it starts considering whether to go into a "saving mode" where it saves up resources to build a new base. There's just a random test to decide wether to do that or to keep building more soldiers. Once the base has 6+ soldiers, it also randomly decides to send a group of them to attack some other player's base. Pretty simple stuff, but it makes for a playable prototype. (it even beat me once - grr)
@Randy
Thanks. I'm looking forward to improving the terrain textures, I think that will help the units be more visible when viewed from a distance. With the current textures they tend to be hard to see. I'd also like to try replacing that flesh-colored sand texture that comes with Torque, with something more like Florida beach white sand.
Edited on Feb 11, 2006 03:35 GMT
| Todd Pickens (Feb 11, 2006 at 03:34 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Not to self promote, but since your are interested in textures, and since it's support for RTS developers in the community, here is a link to my RTS Environment pack that was just released today. www.garagegames.com/products/82
Please keep me posted on the progress, I am very interested in this.
| Todd Pickens (Feb 11, 2006 at 06:06 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Killer Game Studios (Feb 14, 2006 at 13:28 GMT) |
Even finding out how to create a new unit of your own is pretty damn hard :(
any help on how to accomplish this??
thanks alot
Ross :)
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