Troopers - Real-time Strategy Game

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

I'll have to implement a simple system that tries to find a spot that is yet unoccupied and the closest to the factory.

What about moving the first soldier after it's created so it's out of the way?

Well, then I'll still have to find a spot for the unit to move to... I'll see what I can do, though. It's no biggie.

Are you adding hotkeys as well? Or is it all point and click?

There will be hotkeys. At the moment, grouping units is already supported (select a bunch of them by drawing a selection-rectangle, then hit CTRL plus a number and they will be grouped, a small number next to the unit, if selected, will indicate the membership; pressing a number selects that unit or group of units). There will most likely also be hotkeys for build-commands etc.

dirk delshire: Yep, AI is very important in RTS games, however I'm really not that far yet. I think it's going to be one of the hardest tasks to realize.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Just a tiny little update to show that there is still some progress.

The tank is back on the ground where it belongs, and a new real air unit is implemented. At the moment it functions as scout mostly (fast moving air-unit with little damage), but that function will most likely soon be taken by a dedicated, smaller scout-unit that actually looks more like a scout. The unit above will then most likely be transformed into a heavy air-unit, maybe an air-superiority fighter or something along these lines.

Concerning the unit-design, I have now finally designed to go the "Blizzard"-route where every unit will be counter-able. Some examples:

Code: ags

Unit Name       Position        Countered by    Additional Notes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Worker          Ground          N/A             Unarmed, builds new buildings, gathers resources
Marine          Ground          Bike            First fighting unit player can build, cheap, harmless alone, dangerous in groups, can hit both ground- and air-units
Bike            Ground          Tank/Air        Very fast, moderate damage, good against marines, can only hit ground-units
Tank            Ground          Marine Mass/Air Expensive, slow, high damage (with splash), good against bikes/buildings, can only hit ground-units
Heli            Air             Marine          Fast, little damage, good against Tanks/Bikes, can hit both ground- and air-units

Or, put in a graphical way and showing the way it's going to be soon, I guess:

Arrows indicate "are good against" or "smashes [whatever the arrow points at] right into the ground"...

This will all have to balanced, but I think it's just the way to go for a RTS-game. This will allow different strategies and actually mean that players have to scout the enemy in order to find out what he/she is building in order to counter that. Remember that nothing is final in that list above, I will be open for suggestions as well as try to play around with different unit-concepts as much as possible before calling it final.

[Alarconte]

I'm having an orgasm.

It seems like original DUNE 2, and I loved.

My best wishes to your game.

I'nt know if your are already making this, but you have thinked in merge the RTS with adventure-like scenes? (As interactive cut-scenes to make trougth the military campaign)

Or campaing-map with enemy territory selection?

That was incredible!

Go forth!

[ThreeOhFour]

I feel the "paper, scissors, rock" idea (as I've heard it called) is a very good route to take - certainly makes sense and helps balance gameplay. A quick few questions from my end:

How exactly are you planning to implement this? Will it simply be a case of the weapon doing more damage? Generally, I think unit speed could come into play here as well - perhaps the tank might do more damage against a bike, but if the bike has longer range and can move faster, a tank will not be able to touch him (I recall certain Starcraft matches in which I was able to take out hordes of zealots with just a few dragoons simply because the zealots hadn't been upgraded and I could move so much faster).

With the case of marines being more effective in groups, is this just because of numbers superiority? And will you balance costs of units to show this? Say for example, a tank by itself can take out up to 5 marines max - will a tank then cost the same as 5 marines? It seems to be a very fine thing to get balanced correctly - If a tank can take out 5 marines, but costs the same as 4 marines, who is going to be building marines? If a tank costs the same as 5 marines, how will you calculate the helicopters costs?

Things like this seem to me to complicate the balance necessary for a standout RTS, or we'll just all tank rush one unit and be done with it  .

The game looks and sounds great, and I do not mean to deter you at all - I'm just very interested in the "how"s of what you're working with.

[DoorKnobHandle]

I'm having an orgasm.
It seems like original DUNE 2, and I loved.
My best wishes to your game.
Go forth!

Thanks, will do. By the way, I've not played very much of Dune (maybe first 2-3 scenarios), so I can't promise that it'll be very similar apart from the graphics (which mostly appear similar because of the strict top-down perspective and the sand-tiles which most of my screens are on).

I'nt know if your are already making this, but you have thinked in merge the RTS with adventure-like scenes? (As interactive cut-scenes to make trougth the military campaign)
Or campaing-map with enemy territory selection?

The story-mode is still undesigned. I'll think about different ways of implementing it. It might be a simple picture-background with scrolling text (DUNE-like), might be briefing-rooms (StarCraft-like) and it might be video-sequences (C&C-like) or a combination. Mixing RTS with adventure elements is unlikely at the moment, nice idea though, might be something for a next game with the "engine"...

The game looks and sounds great, and I do not mean to deter you at all - I'm just very interested in the "how"s of what you're working with.

Thanks for the feedback, you're not deterring at all. I appreciate your thoughts and they help me get a clearer picture of what I'm trying to do here too!

How exactly are you planning to implement this? Will it simply be a case of the weapon doing more damage? [...]

Yeah, this is a very important part of the game. The rock-paper-scissors-scheme (by the way, there might be a few more units around that scheme to make it a little less obvious) will be implemented by these unit-factors:

* Damage (as you said)
* Attack frequency
* Moving speed (as you said)
* Attack abilities (ground only/air only/both)
* Price and build-time
* Attack range (some units shoot further etc., there might also be minimal ranges for some units, tank for example)

Let's take your example of one tank vs. a group of marines. Now, first of all, this is very micro (short for micromanagement, meaning: having exact control over your units, like in an action-game almost) comes into play. With bad micro, you would have all your marines (take 4-5) in one group very close to each other approach the tank. The tank would fire and kill most marines (due to splash-damage) with the first shot. Say two marines survive with half hitpoints, they'll be able to come into gun-range and fire a bunch of rounds damaging the tank slightly until the slow-reloading tank fires again and possibly again and that's it. Not much danger there.
If we go through that again, with good micro this time, the attacking player would attack the tank either from multiple angles or simply spread the marines out a bit so they are not running/standing next to each other, this time the tank could only hit one marine at a time. The attacking player would not attack until the marines a very close to the tank, so close that it can't hit the marines anymore due to the minimal attack range. The marines now have a good chance of killing the tank.

Another, shorter example, marines versus the bikes. With bad micro, the bikes would engage the marines in a standing position, without making use of their phenomenal speed. Still, the bikes are infantry-killers, but if there are enough marines and few enough bikes, they might at least take some serious damage. Good micro would mean exactly what you describe in your post (where good StarCraft players will kill zealots with goons simply be letting them shoot once and then move away, because they are faster as long as the zeals are not upgraded), so the bikes would shoot and then quickly move a few tiles away, only to hit again quick, reloading on the way.

If all the factors above are not enough to ensure that the system works, I will also include a damage-type. Much like in StarCraft, there would be "normal", "concussion" and "explosive". Weapons with "normal" damage would give 100% against all units, "concussion" means 100% against small units (marines, workers) and only 50-75% against bigger ones and "explosive" means only 50-75% against smaller units and 100% against bigger ones. Tanks would have explosive damage, meaning big units (bikes, buildings, other tanks etc.) take full damage, but marines (small units) for example would not be damaged as much, in fact they might survive one hit, making them even more dangerous. Bikes would get "concussion" damage, dealing full damage against infantry, but not nearly as much against tanks/buildings etc.

It's my ultimate target gameplay-wise to not allow successful massing-one-unit-strategies.

This is the plan so far.

Again, thanks for the continuing feedback, that's very inspiring - keep it coming!

[ThreeOhFour]

Excellent reply - you've clearly thought this through very clearly.

Micromanagement and having it as an essential part of the gameplay is an interesting thing - I find it can deter new players, but on the flip side it does add a lot of longevity to a game as players try to find new strategies/master established strategies. After playing Revelation, which I found difficult first but very enjoyable once I had the hang of it (and sadly short[yeah, level editor, I know]), I'd say this is not a bad thing.

The idea of the different types of damage covers how you can help specify the units a unit is effective against, which is excellent. I never took into the consideration that you could use this sort of thing against buildings to define your primary base destroyers (silly of me, I know) so it sounds to me that all bases are covered.

I am just very glad that I am not the one trying to program this

Good work thus far, good luck for the continued development, and consider me one who is rather excited about this project of yours .

By the way, the graphics look excellent, good stuff!

[DoorKnobHandle]

Micromanagement and having it as an essential part of the gameplay is an interesting thing - I find it can deter new players, but on the flip side it does add a lot of longevity to a game as players try to find new strategies/master established strategies.

That's absolutely true, I find it's best described by Blizzards game philosophy of making their titles easy to play, hard to master. This effectively means what you said there above - that you don't HAVE to micromanage your units in the most effective way in order to win, but once you start playing the game a little more, you actually notice the advantage you get from doing so.

After playing Revelation, which I found difficult first but very enjoyable once I had the hang of it (and sadly short[yeah, level editor, I know]), I'd say this is not a bad thing.

Heh, awesome, another one to play the game. Yep, it's real short unfortunately, I'm planning a second version though...

The idea of the different types of damage covers how you can help specify the units a unit is effective against, which is excellent. I never took into the consideration that you could use this sort of thing against buildings to define your primary base destroyers (silly of me, I know) so it sounds to me that all bases are covered.
I am just very glad that I am not the one trying to program this

That part isn't all that hard actually, I define an enum eDamageType which contains all three possible states and an enum eUnitSize which contains all possible sizes (big, medium, small for example), then assign both enums as variable to each unit, set it according to what unit the instance actually is (on init of unit, a tank for instance gets the medium-size and explosive-type or whatever) and then, in the unit-function that handles dealing damage, I divide the damage-total according to the units that shoot/get hit.

Good work thus far, good luck for the continued development, and consider me one who is rather excited about this project of yours .
By the way, the graphics look excellent, good stuff!

Thanks!

[23-down]

looking good, and sounds good.

but don't forget to add some trees - bushes - cliffs - water - civil buildings - car wrecks etc. on the maps.

Many freeware rts games forget those things and are then really ugly to look at.

i wish you luck how ever..

[DoorKnobHandle]

@23-down: Heh, thanks a lot for the feedback. The maps are probably the thing that's (graphically speaking) the most behind. I will add lots of stuff there, I will redo the cliffs and add objects (houses, holes, you name it), possibly water and similar stuff, don't worry!

Graphical update:

The old GUI that you were able to see in most old screenshots was never made to stay, really, so I used the last days to whip up a new design in Paint. It's not yet implemented, just a mock-up so far, but I don't want to keep this from you:

The new redesigned GUI - this is still early work in-progress and will change most likely (colors will definitely change on some parts)...

Note that the middle part of the interface (the black space below the currently selected unit's class-name) is not filled yet, I'm still working out ways of how to display the unit's health (better called hitpoints) etc., I like those green wireframes from StarCraft, but I don't want to copy just ANYTHING from there, in fact, I really want to stay away from it as much as possible right now. If anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears. Also, I'll use the space to show possible upgrade-levels etc.
Also note that the resource-icons (currently blue and green minerals) will definitely still change once the actual in-game resources are decided and set in stone.
Oh, the cursor is updated as well and the new GUI effectively takes exactly 60px away from the on-screen battlefield which should raise the frame-rates slightly!

Additionally, I can announce that in the near future, I will be able to launch some more news and insight about the different races, (in addition on the former) the story,
the resources (and how to gather them) and additional information on the game-play. And the name of the game is finally going to be changed once the story is established (because I'd like the title to actually reflect the story a bit if possible). Stay tuned and let me know what you think of the GUI.