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Awesome! I keep hoping RTS will make a comeback in popularity
by daveidol 4y ago
Awesome! I keep hoping RTS will make a comeback in popularity
- pjmlp 4y agoActually they are ideal for touch devices.
- DizzyDoo 4y agoAre they? A traditional RTS like Age of Empires 2 or a Starcraft requires quite a lot of accuracy in quick-selection and movement orders, it would drive me nuts to try and do that on a mobile screen with no mouse. I know MOBA-style games are popular on mobile, but there's only one unit to control there. The only non-keyboard-and-mouse RTS I can think of is Tooth and Tail[0], designed to play nicely with controllers (in a similar way that that Halo Wars was back in 2009), and while I'm sure high-level play in those games was indeed very high-level, the whole experience nonetheless just doesn't work for me, it feels 'dumbed down' still. [0] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/
- pjmlp 4y agoGame design is the key here.
- DizzyDoo 4y agoCould you expand? I'm a video game designer myself, so I enjoy thinking about these things - how can you get around the hunt-and-peck nature of a mobile phone screen, where your thumb or finger covers up the unit you're selecting? And then how do you ensure accuracy in the exact spot they move to?
- thanks4tip 4y agoOne way is to decrease the granularity possible, so a finger can easily pick the “exact spot”. Basically make movement discrete (maybe not the animation, but the locations you can be at from a game logic perspective).
- epups 4y agoOk but you're losing complexity, and still need accuracy in that case. I think your suggestion would work for a turn-based game, I just don't think mobile is a good media for RTS.
- thanks4tip 4y ago[flagged]
- citizen_friend 4y agoI don't think the poster was suggesting porting Starcraft to a touchscreen. It's a design challenge to figure out what changes need to be made to accommodate the genre for touchscreens. It's not obvious because people haven't put in the work yet. It was a also a design challenge to make the genre work in the first place for mouse and keyboard.
- epups 4y agoI would argue you cannot port any RTS game, not just Starcraft. Mouse and keyboard are not a constraint, they are excellent for RTS, which is why the genre is also not so strong in consoles.
- pjmlp 4y agohttps://www.androidpolice.com/best-rts-games-for-android/ https://www.androidpolice.com/best-rts-games-for-android/
- epups 4y agoYou can play Doom on your phone as well. That's not an argument that it is a suitable media for FPS.
- citizen_friend 4y agoAnd none of us are saying anything about "porting" we are talking about adapting the medium to a new format, but you seem convinced the only way to see it is exactly how it was designed in the 90s.
- Nahtnah 4y agoCheck out Line War, fwiw
- sdwr 4y agoTooth and Tail really did it for me. The granularity of eco vs army, and the targeting micro, added up to a perfect mini-RTS imo.
- animuchan 4y agoI guess 40K Dawn of War–style squad-based RTS would work decently with touch, as there are no individual units to select (with few exceptions, but e.g. Ork builder is also a squad), and there's way less micro compared to e.g. Starcraft. That said, I'd still prefer keyboard and mouse over a touch screen.
- zwirbl 4y agoOne might assume that and it is mostly true for round based games, but for real-time you just cannot achieve the actions per minute needed on touch. A game like Starcraft or similar is barely playable
- pjmlp 4y agoSure, my remark was about controlling, how the game is designed is another matter.
- epups 4y agoControls essentially define game design.
- ianlevesque 4y agoYeah there’s so much skepticism but you’re right on that this genre can thrive on mobile. It’s a way more natural fit than FPS for example.
- mirker 4y agoHardcore “competitive” RTS (StarCraft/Age of Empires) can’t since it’s not competitive enough if you can’t hit a meaningful 300+ actions per minute, which is impossible without hotkeys. Even IF they could, I am skeptical you’d get converts. Even IF all of them converted, hardcore RTS is not thriving right now. You’d have to create the perfect game and you’d be rewarded with less players than a Minecraft clone. Some numbers: AoE players 16k https://steamcharts.com/app/813780 https://steamcharts.com/app/813780 SC2 players ~100k https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=c&sx=a https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=... Minecraft ~178M https://activeplayer.io/minecraft/ https://activeplayer.io/minecraft/
- Ygg2 4y agoYou're comparing apples to oranges. StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty sold 6 million, but only small fraction of the playerbase is interested in competitve aspect. Minecraft is just an online sandbox. Most people will play it like that. Plus a gamedev doesn't need to take into account what sells, but what kind of competition you have. How will your Minecraft clone exist in market with Minecraft vs how will your M RTS live in a market with StarCraft 2.
- hgs3 4y agoI could see a casual RTS working, one where you select groups of soldiers rather than individual units.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoCompany of Heroes works like that and it's on iPad.
- ecshafer 4y agoI do not think that is the case for traditional RTS games. At first glance, sure you touch the unit you want and you touch where you want them to go. But there is a reason why single button mouse to two button mouse was a huge improvement for RTS. You don't always want to do one thing or have it be context aware. The other is that RTS games typically involve you dealing with hundreds of units, all across a map, so things like hot keys to build additional units, or control groups to manage different unit groups is critical. Mobile seems like it could work for some casual RTS games, with small numbers of units. But not for a traditional RTS.
- mxkopy 4y agoThe best game I've ever played on mobile is Eufloria, which is an RTS. I wish there were more games like it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ForgeableSum 4y agoBack in ~2016, I spent a year of my life trying to make this happen. I ended up with a very cheap looking version of age of empires, which runs in the browser... It's still up! http://feudalwars.net/ http://feudalwars.net/
- mirker 4y agoIt looks interesting, honestly. Shame the RTS market is relatively small.
- dopeboy 4y agoAs a die hard command and conquer fan (I play exactly one game these days, C&C generals), me as well. I have a recurring dream of creating a successor to C&C. What obstacles do you see to the RTS genre? Any reason why the big dogs (EA, etc) have not gone back into the genre?
- icemelt8 4y agoHello fellow Generals fan! Truly an amazing game, the gameplay videos of the unreleased Generals 2 game make me really sad.
- dopeboy 4y agoJust finished a match. GLA demolition vs China nuke general. I've seen that video - looked really nice. Disappointed as well.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y agoThe market's moved elsewhere, developing a triple-A game of any genre takes roughly the same amount of effort, however strategy has a small overall market share compared to FPS, RPG, mobile, etc. FPS games might have around an 8x larger market, but don't take 8x as much effort to build, so that's what gets approved. https://www.statista.com/statistics/189592/breakdown-of-us-video-game-sales-2009-by-genre/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/189592/breakdown-of-us-v... Couple that with studios (or publishers...) often preferring to re-skin their existing IP and you get Call of Modern Warfare XVII: Rehash Edition, or Skyrim for your Smart Fridge.
- dopeboy 4y agoMakes sense. Do you think there's space for an indie shop to make a successful RTS? Successful being, say, $1M in sales?
- SturgeonsLaw 4y agoYeah I think that an indie studio would be best placed to thrive in that genre. If they could create an RTS that scratches the itch just right, the lack of big name competition would probably be an advantage that would make it easier for them to make a splash.
- c54 4y ago+1 to this. I've been learning Supreme Commander FAF, which has a cool little community and open source matchmaking servers. I read this blog post recently which piqued my interest: https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/the-most-beautiful-game-how-supreme https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/the-most-beautiful-gam... Might be worth checking out!