This post is mostly for fun. Has anyone noticed that (For those of us who like RTS''s)RTS on portable systems have major problems, mostly with the interface. Is this because we use old and proven design paradigms and try to cram them into a portable device that doesnt encapsulate the designs well. For instance the idea of using a mouse to select and move...um.... on the GBA all we have is a D pad, and thus its clumsy as hell to do such things... What kinds of RTS''s would translate well to a protable system such as the GBA...id think a space one of some sort...wouldnt have terrain and much path finding to worry bout. I would say also having an intelligent targeting system for the units u control... like you have a small command set that can do many things...like the L button would pick a target (keep pressing cycles targets)..then the a button would mean all units attack target. So all units on screen attack target, B buttion would say: all sub units attack target. if you keep pressing B button it toggles through all the sub groups of units on the screen. There are just some random quick thoughts...i guess all this comes from playing a 2 hour game of adavance wars last night. While I love the game, even multiplayer it just takes fooorrrever to play even a "quick" game on advance wars..none of this is helped by the fact that the game provides nothing for you to do while its not ur turn. Anyone else as bored as I and have thoughts to post on this matter? -Shane

See Advance Wars. Perfection.

While I agree its good, its far from perfection. Like for instance you have a good 4 player battle going on...fun while its ur turn not so fun while you wait for ever for others to make their moves. Why couldnt they of let u rove around on the map and get intel on ur units or something? nope completely locked out. heck even like this small side mini game against the other palyers would be cool while they waited as well...no such thing. So instead your left with having ur thumb up ur butt while the other person (who may take much much longer than everyone else) makes his or her move. So what just dont invite the slow people to play?
Another thing is, gameboy advances usebattery power, some of them have lights further using battery power. What happens when you play a long game of advance wars with three others and your the first one out in 2 min due to something stupid...u have to keep your gameboy on the whole time doing absoultely nothing while the others duke it out. waste of resources and un fun.

Still love the game, but its not perfect.
-Shane

why not go the way of the old battle isle system? one player takes movement turns, the other issues attack orders. or let players input their turns simultaneously, then the results get played out by unit initiative.

GBA is meant for FPS or Drivin. das about it

I was thinking about this a while ago. I think a really cool RTS-type game would be in a style similar to Desert Strike and Jungle Strike for Genesis and SNES. Anyone remember those games? Anyways, I was thinking that it would be cool to be able to choose from various units; ground troop, apache, f-16, etc. Anyways, you could switch between your level of involvement. You could direct missile strikes and direct ground forces via satellite. Or you could go in and take control of an individual unit and take orders from AI. I think it could be really cool if done properly. Not only that, but you could have two maps, a homeland map, and warfront map. That way you could manage both your home economy, and you could distribute them to different warzones. Think about it, having two wars at a time, and you have to distribute resources accordingly. Imagine having two multiplayer wars going on at the same time with two different friends? And if your friends weren''t there, you could spend the time working on your economy and training soldiers in order to send them back over to your friends country. It may seem like a bit much, but you could always keep it really small scale and representative. Like, only have a few units, like 5 helicopters would equal about 20. Something along those lines. Anyways, sounds good to me.

Divinus Entertainment
Land of Relics Art Director
http://divinus.net

I think a good design would, firstly, avoid having the player move the cursor over the map for over a screen''s distance, and probably less. Moving a cursor precisely is fairly clumsy and slow on a D-pad compared with mouse control; menus, zoom-level options and "next unit/target/etc." buttons are preferable.

Second, to keep things fast-moving and easy to understand, the number of units actually controlled would be kept down, preferably to a dozen or half-dozen "leader units" whose status can all be kept on the screen at one time. Good strategy would probably then require allocating leaders between defense and offense...which really isn''t so much different from the reality.

Third, the fighting would avoid any intensive micromanagement; spells and special abilities would use AI settings instead of direct control.

What I described sounds sort of like Ogre Battle actually, and it certainly has scenarios you can play in a good half-hour or so. There''s enough room for variation to make our own RTS game play differently, though, since in that game there''s pausing and the battles require a seperate sequence too.