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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by Daniel Miller Quote: Original post by Oluseyi *snip* Come on, you know that logic is aweful! There have been countless RTS games over the span of the last 10 years. It is painfully clear which strategy game out of the dozends that have been released has been far and away the most popular. While it is good to try something new, most of the ideas here have been used in some a past RTS -- a past RTS which has come and gone. You can't discount living proof of what gamers like. No, his logic is fine. There are also massive communities of people who still play Total Annihilation, Warcraft III (admittedly a lot newer), and the popular Command and Conquer series (I count this series as the changes from game to game are often small enough that they may as well have been a patch to an older version) among many others. Dark Reign is still incredibly popular. Yes, Starcraft was (and is) a well made game, but it's not the be-all and end-all of RTS. Many other games in the genre have vastly different designs, and are still incredibly popular. While your perfectly entitled to your opinion that Starcraft is a brilliant game (hell, I'm quite fond of it myself), you can't just ignore all the other games out there, or the idea of doing something different.

I feel like I am repeating myself, but the popularity of TA is tiny compared to SC. The closest thing to SC is WC3, which also has (albiet muct smaller) televised matches.

You probably think I am just a fanboy trolling for my favorite game, but SC has a tremendous following. Here is the most recent final (there are five other leagues like this, but I can't find the other videos):

[watch the movie iside of the rar]
http://www.ingame.de/filebase/index.php/?action=download&fid=2179&cid=446

EDIT: I removed the older video because it isn't nearly as cool ;)
EDIT2: Everything is all cleaned up now

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Original post by Daniel Miller I feel like I am repeating myself, but the popularity of TA is tiny compared to SC.

Which tells us what? Which is germane how?

So StarCraft is the most popular RTS of all time (allegedly). And? We should simply make StarCraft clones? Considering that I didn't like it, I don't much care if a million fanboys did/do. This thread is about selecting a design philosophy and approach; your last few posts have not addressed that question at all, and you've ceased even using your rabid advocacy of StarCraft to respond to the matter at hand.

Stop.

We're not going to agree with you, and it's off-topic. Respond to the topic (grouping and command strategies in an RTS) or start your own topic, probably in the lounge.

Sorry, I'll shut up, but I would think that you would want to make popular game design choices, not ones that you think would be cool.

[Edited by - Daniel Miller on March 19, 2005 3:32:16 PM]

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Original post by Daniel Miller Sorry, I'll shut up, but I would think that you would to make popular game design choices, not ones that you think would be cool.

a.) Wouldn't that result in every game, eventually, playing the same?
b.) How did the designers of the "popular" game arrive at that design decision?
c.) "Popular" is relative: there are more people in the US today who have never played a video game than otherwise.

Food for thought...

d INC, you said you were going to have all the units available from the start of a campaign. Will the player be able to reassign the individual soldiers to different teams? If I have four four-man teams, each of which suffers three casualties, and the remaining four men each represent a different team role, can I tell them to group up and fight together, or will I be stuck with a grenadier, an automatic rifleman, a rifleman and a team leader each floating around all alone?

Will it be possible to request reinforcements at any time during the campaign? If you can call in a dropship/truck/boat full of guys, then will you be able to request specific teams or units?

I hadn'tconsidered what would happen if teams were nearly wiped....I suppose I would want to be able to re-group them. however, I don't want 4 man teams to be able to detach themselves from a group (I'm going for realism, but suspending disbelief enough to have fun). The only unit I had considerd that about were the sniper teams. The spotter would default to the long range scout class if the sniper died....and the sniper would....well.....stay the sniper but take a serious attack cooldown hit wihtout the spotter to find targets.

A friend told me that the more automated I envision things the more difficult to get the AI working. And since I don't yet have a dedicated programmer....I'm going to shoot for simplier is better.

And to whoever noted that I ought to make design choices based off of current popular trends (can't recall who and don't want to press the back button and retype this) the entire impetus for writing my design doc was to make the type of game I wanted to see.....with controls that I would find intuitive...this isn't a commercial exercise, but rather, a test to see if I could make a fun game and in a genre I generally hate. We'll see if I can pull it off. :)

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Original post by MikHaven I think a game like Starcraft with it's Marine's and Medics is one of the best tatics, but the game handles it all wrong. In our design of a rts, we talked extensively about unit behavior and control. For instance if you have a group like the previous poster suggested and add medics in them, I would love to see a strategy game, with more strategy, but more fun like starcraft, with units facing offensive points, and medics staying behind the line of fire. I find everytime I have a group of units selected in Starcraft the medics always run forward ahead of the marines to 'attack' the units. Which is really what you want to avoid.

First thing, your medics runnig forward is just poor commanding. Thats why you have command grooups. With some practice medics do exactly what you want them to do.(Though I admit SC could use somewhat more advanced AI).

The other thing I wanted to point out is this. You say you'd want to make it so that the medics always stay in the back. That's OK, but you need to leave an option to not doing it the designers way. Ussualy you would want that, but check out this little strategy.

Your marines and medics are at a chocke point (i.e. a narrow passage) and some melee units (like zerlings) are charging from the other side. Instead of putting the medics in the back you form what is called a medic wall. Put the medics at the choke and hold them. Now you have medics healing themselves, zerlings can't pass and medics firing away safely from behind the medic wall.

What I'm trying to point out you should try to make as few as possible strategy assumptions in order to allow the player to think out of the box.

Sure micro has its place. Its place IS in the ____craft series and IS NOT in the Total War series. But Total wat wen't all the way. The main difference in which way you'll go is do you wan't to make it so that each unit can make a difference. If yes you must make it so that you have the option of controling each unit separately, and if the answer is no stick to squads.

Take a look at this. If you'r left with one squad and it has four men in it(your game) ofcourse I'll want to control each unit separately, but if your left to one squad and it has 100 units in it (Total War) I might wan't to split the squad in two squads but that's it.

grouping in squad is a good thought, but every aproach has it's advantage and disadvantage. In cases where the disadvantage reveals themselves, some player maybe wish to have the possiblity to disband the squad and instead to control the units themselves.

of course the perfect solution would be, to make as many solutions for cases what can happen and to make a squad act differently depending on the situation, but i think everyone would agree that this is just impossible.

therefore, a good aproach i think is to leave the possiblity, at least as a option which can be set by the player at the game starting, or as a local game flag, if he whishes to have this possibility. and if yes, also to make that possible.

I know this is kind of off topic....but I've been spending the past month or so trying to get a small group together to work on this project.....and still haven't found a programmer willing to hammer through the AI with me. I was wondering if the ideas presented in this topic sounded interesting enough to any programmers out there to want to try and actualize the concepts in an actual game. The entire team currently resides in Southern California.....and ideally we'd like someone who was local to take on a leadership role from a programmatic standpoint. We've decided on Torque as the engine of choice (mostly because it seems user friendly and has an add-on pack that takes care of a lot of the base rts functionality). If this sounds remotely interesting please post here and I'll send you my email. Thanks.