Troopers - Real-time Strategy Game

[DoorKnobHandle]

DO YOU REMEMBER A PROJECT CALLED...
[size=9]T[/size]ROOPERS?

INTRODUCTION

Three years ago I started my first project with AGS that wasn't a simple adventure - no, it was going to be a real-time strategy game. I didn't know all that much about programming back in the day, but the project got some pretty positive response (every now and then I still get a message about how it's doing), but in the end it came what had to come: I couldn't finish it.
      So much for the past - now I have decided to pick up the old horse again and take a good ride on her: it's back! But not only have I matured and learned in the meantime, AGS has done, too. Only with the more recent feature-additions of AGS 3.0 have I been able to build up the courage to give this another try. The feature list is similar, although I'm currently taking more influences from StarCraft as opposed to the heavy Command&Conquer-ness that was going on in the old version from 2005.
      I have a pretty decent working tech-demo pretty much done right now, which implements almost every single feature that is going to be in the game, so that's pretty good progress already done (I waited quite some time with this thread in order to keep the interested from having to wait for years - and to follow the forum-rules, of course). The majority of work now has to go into developing content (because if I learned one thing from my previous little doodad, Revelations, it's that a game can not appear well to a big audience if it's only technically impressive, it has to be a good game as well - well, duh, could've figured that one out myself in retrospect, but I guess I just didn't) - speaking of content, here is the list of features, which helps you to build your own picture up of how the game is going to look and feel like, it's followed by three screenshots to take the picture you just build up in your mind and rip it into pieces:


LIST OF FEATURES

• Build units and structures, select them, move them and let them attack - just like in most recent real-time strategy games (includes features like queuing build-commands for units, grouping units into teams using numbers 0-9, selecting units by drawing a rectangle and adding or removing single units by holding CTRL when clicking)...
  
• Use workers to gain resources to pay for new units, structures, upgrades and technology...
  
• Play against a computer-enemy that will hopefully act remotely intelligent...
  
• Get a quick overview of the battlefield on the radar-map, it not only shows you units and structures, but also the general shape of the terrain underneath them, so that you can successfully lead your troops through those narrow canyons...
  
• Different terrain-types, lots of different units and buildings (exact numbers are not clear yet)...
  
• Fog-of-War effect to make the game-play a lot more interesting...
  
• Music and sound-effects (format of music is not yet decided)...
  
• Editor to create own levels...
  

SCREENSHOTS (PARTIAL AND FULL SHOTS)

Newest:

Older:

Please keep in mind that nothing is final yet, that means the name might be different, there might be more than one resource, the graphics may change and - as you read above - the exact number of unit- and structure-types isn't yet fixed either. Please use this thread to comment and criticize constructively, tell me what you think, suggest units or technologies...

[Nikolas]

Not anything remotely constructive to say but:

YAY!!!!!!!!!!

This looks very very nice. Having seen your previous efforts at games which are NOT adventures, I know you can pull it off!

So the main advice: Stop school, leave your family and girlfriend, hook up with some serious food that will not need cooking, get some water by you side (around 10L) and sit to finish this game really really really really quickly!

CAUSE I WANT TO PLAY IT!

[thebaddie]

wow this was my dream of a project when i played for the first time command&conquer

great one and good luck

edit:
i hope it will not be a simple construct&destroy, but a real strategy game in wich you have to plain things

[ThreeOhFour]

An RTS in AGS? A difficult project to create, I am sure, but perhaps further proof of the flexibility of the engine...

Best of luck - the screenshots and provided information look brilliant, and there is little doubt that this one has risen towards the top of my "AGS Games I Wish To Play" list.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks a ton for the motivation so far!

I will be updating this thread with additional information, short essays or something regarding the development, new screenshots and maybe a tech-video showing progress so far.

[m0ds]

Looks superb, very well done Jan!! Can't wait to give this a play! Let me know if you need any music. Now, get to it!!!1

[TheJBurger]

Wow, this already looks super awesome. Good luck, and I hope you finish it.

[Snake]

Holy, shmoly! This looks fricken awesome! Can't wait for this one, man!

Glad to hear you picked it up again.


--Snake

[Jon]

Looks brilliant! Can't wait to play it!

[Indie Boy]

I can't wait, it looks amazing!

[Rd27]

Heh, it was just few days ago when I read the old production thread for this game and thought, this could have been a good game.  And now you started to do it again!

It looks great! Good luck for finishing it!

[Mozesh]

Good show, good show!

[Ghost]

That somehow reminds me of the original Dune. Brings a tear of nostalgy to me ole eyes... Best of luck for making this!

[Da_Elf]

something like this better win for best programming next year

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

My god!

Best of luck to you, this is a truly awsome project.

[SSH]

something like this better win for best programming next year

Only if Yahtzee doesn't rehash an old game again

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks for the thumps-up so far.

Okay, as promised, I want to keep you guys informed with brief essays or something - concerning the progress of development or technical details, just information that I deem interesting to share with you game-creators.


TECHNICAL ESSAY#1: The Radar-Map

This essay will explain the radar-map in the project. Now, you can already see it working in the screenshots in the first post, that means I've already implemented it and that's true (I didn't fake or photoshop it), but there's a slight problem with it: it tends to run slow.
      That's not something you wouldn't come across when you program a game like this, in fact, it'll always slow-down here and there. Too many time-expensive algorithms are necessary at every corner - all you need to do is find the bottle-necks and optimize the hell out of everything: try or invent tricks for improving performance - which might boil down to using smart math, like keeping away from too many trigonometry-functions (sin, cos, tan or similar) or too many square-roots, but sometimes more is necessary (some quick examples: frustum-culling, which means I don't draw any tiles that aren't on the screen at the moment, or just effective drawing, which, in my case, means I don't draw tiles that are in the fog anyways).
      But let's get back to the radar-map: it's easy to do a map like this with a simple background-color (roughly representing the terrain) and then to plot all units owned by the player green and all enemies red. But what I wanted was a map that actually showed you the terrain. As I put it in the text-part of my original announcement, I wanted the player to see all the objects and terrain-elements on the map (could be water, hills, cars, houses, slopes, canyons, you name it) that aren't traversable (at least by a unit on the ground, flying units are possible, not yet implemented though), so that he or she can plan the way he or she is going to take when commanding his or her units. This is not necessary (one could move the camera by placing the cursor close to the screen-edges or holding the cursor-keys down in order to find out a good way, but that wouldn't be very comfortable), but I wanted to take that problem from the player - plus, every recent real-time strategy title featured this. Additionally, if you imagine building a base in a safe corner, surrounded by steep slopes that are not traversable, you'll feel all safe and cozy - you'd probably want to see those barriers (and the respective openings that you'll have to block with your strongest units, because that's where you're gonna get attacked) on your map; how would it feel if the map didn't show that tactical situation?
      Okay, so I implemented this feature. And it ran slow, which is no wonder. The radar-map is 100x100 pixel sized. Every pixel on that map has to be checked against the "real" map, that means 10000 calls to a somewhat expensive function every frame. Runs at one or two fps, way, way too slow.
      Now, first I implemented a variable that determines the sharpness of the map. As you can see in the screen-shots, every pixel on the map-background that resembles terrain is actually 4x4 pixels big. This means four times less action and a much faster game. People with faster computers could up this variable to 1, which would give them pixel-clear radar-images, people with less computing power can change it to a higher value and run the game nicely, still.
      This works easily, but isn't beautiful, which is why I'm working on the best solution right now: since terrain is not destructible, I'll load the map into memory (array) and not recalculate it at all. I'll report back when I have that working...

[nihilyst]

Sound like something I couldn't get to work -- ever.

Great work. I hope you won't get too frustrated with it. I'd really like to play this game.

[Ubel]

I'm utterly happy to see this project launched again. Good luck with it!

[m0ds]

something like this better win for best programming next year

Only if Yahtzee doesn't rehash an old game again

Hey, no spoilers!! lol