Quote:Original post by Dauntless
Flarelocke-
Didn't like my RPG-type posts? :) What can I say, I like PnPRPG's, and like my strategy games, I want to make them different. Hence, I wanted to create something that was more deep and profound. |
Well the honor thread was interesting, but the rest of it seemed like the usual, "Will you guys still like me if my art is meaningful" stuff that plagues artists in every medium.
Quote:| But I haven't forgotten about my strategy game. I'm still trying to decide even what exactly the GUI portion of the interface would look like. Obviously the interface can't take up too much screen real estate, but since it's the most critical aspect of control for the game, I'm envisioning something that's somewhat large. |
I'm suddenly reminded of Pax Imperia. The map was accessible by hitting F2, research by hitting F3, a list of fleets by hitting F4, a list of planets by hitting F5, espionage by hitting F6, and a closeup of a planet with F7. The interesting part for this discussion, though, is what happens when you go from one to another. If you select a planet in the planet list (F5) and press F2, the map shows the system the planet is in. If you select a planet and hit F7, it zooms in on the selected planet. Same kinda thing with the fleets. Select the fleet in the fleet list (F4), press F2 (system map), and it displays the location of the fleet, with the fleet selected. Finally, the galaxy map (which systems connect with which others) was visible on those screens where you needed it, such as the fleet screen, so you could order ships to move to a specific system (although nowhere specific within that system) without using the map. I guess I forgot to mention that when you selected a ship or planet in the lists, it highlighted your location with a lovely pulsating blue circle, and that when you selected a system in the galaxy map to visit, it highlighted your path on the way there, both of which are important to an effective user interface.
The only downside to this interface was that it's not intuitive, and that the galaxy map isn't shown on every screen. They made a token effort to fix this by implementing a lobby (F1) where you can get to each of the screens by clicking (and learn the hotkeys with mouseovers), but in practice, this is not ever used. On the screens without the galaxy map, you're afraid to do much work for fear of losing touch with the situation.
Now, in a ground-based RTS, you'd need to replace the galaxy map with a minimap, of course, and you'd probably want a way of bringing up more than one list or hierarchy at a time, so that you can order one to do something to the other, but I think the principles are sound.
Quote:| My initial vision has mini-icons or banners representing the top-level chain of command and another set that represents your resources. |
You're going to have to be more specific. In what context are these mini-icons or banners displayed? I'm picturing something like an org chart -- how about you?
Quote:Now, in my game, you don't have factories per se, but instead have allocation request pools, and you have Distribution Hubs to worry about. So in a nutshell, you've got Commanders, Allocation Requests, and Logistics.
Because communication links as well as transportation links are vital in my game, you can lose contact with any basic entity (I define an entity as any game object which can be given an order either directly by the player, or indirectly by an AI Commander), up to and including top-level Commanders. Jamming equipment, poor terrain or weather may cause an inability for some part of your armed forces to be cut-off from your control. Just ask the British 1st Airborne during the battle for Arnhem bridge how sucky it is when an entire division can't communicate with headquarters, nor the regimental or battalion commanders between each other.
To model this, if communication is cut off, they simply become "greyed out" on your interface screen, and on the main map itself, you lose any information that only those entities would have been privy too. In other words, although those units are still alive, they're now no longer under your control, and hence, the re-establishment of communications should be a top priority. |
Increasing priority as mission objectives are resolved, but I get the point.
Quote:| Obviously, the AI has to be robust enough to recognize and handle this, and it should be a "hard encoded" rule that if any of the C3 links are broken, it should make it a top priority to fix them. |
Different battle plans call for different priorities. If you're holding a strategic location, communication links are not as important as when you're part of a coordinated assault.
Quote:So communications is relatively easy to implement. The Command and Control aspect is a bit more tricky though, mostly since it relies on very flexible and adaptable AI algorithms. The Command and Control aspect is also less influenced by the actual Interface screen, since the Interface screen is used more to set certain Order parameters, which in turn are used by the AI Commanders to set the Control scheme. For example, determining aggression levels or standing orders would be done through the interface and used as guidelines for the AI. As an example, you might order a Company Commander to hold a certain position and set the priority to high (maybe this company is on the flank edge, and if it folds, then it will threaten the rest of the battalion, hence the high priority). You can set these through the interface, but the actual Command of the Company falls to the AI Commander who implements the defense given the priorities that you input.
I'm still working on how to implement Orders vs. Motivations. Orders are the set of actions along with their conditions and parameters that you give to a Commander (and hence to all the basic unit types under his chain of command, and ergo, this means that depending on the Rank of the Commander, different Order types will be available). Motivations on the other hand are the messy real world conditions that people in battle must face. It is a blend of psychology of the troops, tactical considerations, and morale. |
Wanting to follow orders is just one of many motivations...
