Comments on: RTS Game-play Part 3: Build Options

By: rishi

rishi — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 08:07:59 +0000

I play age of empires 2 at high level and I can relate everything that is stated here in my gameplay.
cheers

By: JademusSreg

JademusSreg — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:00:09 +0000

Part 2 of this series was more descriptive, while this article is mostly prescriptive. It is less useful because of these “design imperatives”. Their correctness is not the issue, but rather their assertion does not illuminate anything mechanics. Admittedly, there are not many (if any) examples of well-executed alternatives. The next best thing would be to provide examples of both poorly-executed alternatives and failures of these staple mechanics.

Also, this article generally lacks reference (although these mechanics aren’t exactly unheard of).

By: this is good

this is good — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 22:49:37 +0000

ok this is good but I need a rts engine to make a free games
i love to make it and it is my pleasure
but I have no experience I need a simple software to make it
if you wont to help me help if dont thanx
sorry for my bad eng langunage

By: admin

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:55:29 +0000

Addendum:

I’d like to point out that these articles are intended for the kind of RTS games that actually include resources and buildings. Games such as Total War and Ground Control are vastly different (more like real-time tactics than real-time strategy), so I’m not trying to cover these.

/jeb

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:09:11 +0000

Yeah, you are right. If the tech tree is linear, the complexity could come from choices about *when* (and maybe “how much”) you want progress in the tech tree. Kind of like Zerg vs Zerg in Starcraft.

I know there are assumptions in my articles, but that’s because I must make a point somewhere, or else the discussion would be watered down and meaningless. I know which RTS games I enjoy, which games I think have “problems” and which games I don’t like, and I’m attempting to pin-point the source to this.

But as you say… it’s more interesting to “Oh that worked really well in that game, now I’m going to do the exact opposite and see how that plays”

/jeb

By: brog

brog — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:15:26 +0000

“Obviously you don’t want it to be completely linear”
Wrong! The “tech tree” can be completely linear if there’s somewhere else that interesting complexity comes from.

In general, I’m finding these articles to have a few too many implicit assumptions about what RTS gameplay is like for my taste. But that’s okay, most RTS games do fit a certain mould and it’s perfectly sensible and interesting to write about it. I’m just more interested in exploring what’s outside of that myself. (Incidentally, the thing I liked about Harvest was that it explored a bit outside of the standard RTS mould as well.)

By: Urre

Urre — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:49:19 +0000

Very interesting point there about the rock-paper-scissors build orders. This is why I personally believe entirely non-linear tech-trees are the best, or simply giving many (while weak) possibilities early on, (like Total Annihilation, or that new but less cool “spiritual successor”)