4 ms·
Are 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
by DizzyDoo 3y ago
Are 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 3y agoGame design is the key here.
- DizzyDoo 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago[flagged]
- citizen_friend 3y 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 3y 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 3y agohttps://www.androidpolice.com/best-rts-games-for-android/ https://www.androidpolice.com/best-rts-games-for-android/
- epups 3y agoYou can play Doom on your phone as well. That's not an argument that it is a suitable media for FPS.
- citizen_friend 3y 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.
- citizen_friend 3y ago[flagged]
- Nahtnah 3y agoCheck out Line War, fwiw
- sdwr 3y 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 3y 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.