Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 12:09 am Post subject:
I'm making an RTS game
Subject description: Hey!!!!
Hello everyone, I'm algerian general and i'm new over here, and i began to learn programming.
i did work before as the lead designer and lead graphic designer in a 4X strategy game called "Empires" the game was very similar to Civilization BTW, i stopped working with them because the development was very slow, so i decided to start my own thing.
So i decided to make a real time strategy game, something similar to Command and Conquer Generals or Supreme Commander,and for that i need a team , currently i have a decent concept, the game will be a classic RTS with huge maps as the ones in Supreme Commander (max size was 81x81km) the game will include all kinds of warfare: Aerial,Naval and the ground warfare.
The game will be set in 2016, you can play skirmishes (later we will add a dynamic or a regular campaigns) and you can play as any major country :(Russia,USA,France,China...) and you will get access to all their moden arsenal such as the fearsome T-90MS to the reknown F-15E "Strike Eagle" without forgeting the Admiral Kuznetsov Aircraft Carrier
Of course later, there will be a WW2 Expansion, and perhaps a Cold War one as well.
The game of course will have graphics slightly improved then the ones used in Supreme Commander (i like that water tho )
the game will be easy to mod, as the game will come with an in-game map editor and all data (units, buildings , factions ...) will be stored in either INI files or XML (preferably INI in a very similar way to how modding works in C&C Series) BTW, i am a modder of the C&C Series for about 4 years so i know how things would work.
currently We have a 3d artist, but we need a senior programmer
if you want to help:(ideas, suggestions...) feel free to contact me,i'll be more then happy to reply and listen to all you're ideas and take them in consideration.
For more informations PM me or send me an email: algerianmajor31000@gmail.com
have a nice day everyone
P.S : I hope i posted in the right place QUICK_EDIT
Still making ambitious plans I see, well I hope this works out better then all your other projects that died when you couldn't find other people to do all the work for you. _________________
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:47 pm Post subject:
Doing all the work??? No, maybe in the past but not now.
I made most of the coding for my mod, all I need is voxels which is something I suck at, if I could make 3ds2vxl make the turret separate then I would continue my project, it seems the problem is with blender, idk what you guys use as a 3D software.
For the game, it is ambitious indeed, but I worked on other ambitious projects and they are a success (empires is a good example, a 4X strategy game)
For the current development, I made the framework (I began learning C# since a week )
I finished the camera, it's currently similar to the one in World in Conflict with the ability to rotate the camera in a 360° and adjust the height of the camera.
Next I'll work on terrain and day night cycle. QUICK_EDIT
Still making ambitious plans I see, well I hope this works out better then all your other projects that died when you couldn't find other people to do all the work for you.
_________________
Quote:
Humans were born for two things: to pray and be productive.
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 8:40 pm Post subject:
Well, that was clear but making a mod takes time, after some time the game's community will still be shrinking (sorry to say this but it's the truth) so investing time in a huge mod is not a good idea, i prefer working on something smaller then a TCM QUICK_EDIT
So modding an existing game & making a game as part of a team requires to much time & effort. So your answer it to make a whole game on your own? _________________
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2016 3:00 pm Post subject:
Exactly! i worked better when I was the Lead Designer, currently i got contacted by multiple Programmers,i finished working on the water shader which look magnificent (i'll be posting later)
i don't want to make this game only to make my idea a reality, i was thinking about this since 5 years , the SAGE engine (Strategy Action Game Engine) is very limited even with projects like Ares for RA2 YR the game's engine is still limited which never encourages Modders, where Unity is a different story, so as I see this , the community needs to step up and do some noticable progress, making a RTS engine in unity will bring the Golden Age of RTS back, unity have no modding restriction (Kerbal Space Program is a wonderful example) where people will be able to make their own "Ares"
to add differnt mechanisms that didn't exist in the game before, for example a direct action mode a la Men Of War, this remains my point of view, if we look at this from a resonable perspective, we can clearly see that RTS genre is dying, EA has it's C&C series in cryogenic prisons,waiting for something to happens (Generals 2 was canceled for a reason after all, well since it was made in Cryengine i don't think modding was possible) so making an easy to mod Game might be the solution for all modders, i know that OpenRA exists but it still uses voxels, where in my engine (engine inside unity lol) it's planend to use .obj or something similar, to use a physics engine where every tank shell's ballistics are calculated (this was done in Supreme Commander which i got a lot of inspiration from)
so as a conclusion, since the community did nothing i decided to take the initiative, btw if you have ideas or suggestions just tell me i'll be happy to listen to them and take them in consideration.
Building an RTS engine is arguably a difficult step in any engine but:
You know Unreal Engine is a far better engine to place this on right? Unity has problems with high graphics rendering and while it can do a deterministic lock-step networking model, it's been proven that nowadays it's better to use fixed point integers for everything in the game engine as floating point can cause connection errors with physics and APS (actions per second) consuming a LOT of bandwidth.
See: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php
A client-server connection would be best, and Unity can't achieve that, but for an indie game I suppose it wouldn't be feasible.
Do not use OBJ models as they are obsoleted for games now; FBX is the new default as it can serve as a container for textures, bones, vectors, etc., guaranteed tri stability unlike OBJ, and more. It's basically FBX to OBJ as PNG to JPG.
Besides all this taken into consideration, don't build your own engine if you think modding a Total Conversion would be too much work and too much time, you're set up to fail and a months worth of C# knowledge is NOT going to get you anywhere anytime soon, even if you're a prodigy.
I've looked into making an RTS on several different game engines and believe me, none of them are set up for it, but Unreal Engine 4 has blueprints to make coding life easier and would be your best bet.
There's a thousand more things I could add that you need to know before building an RTS, but I'm not going to go into detail unless specifically about a function. _________________ "Don't beg for things; Do it yourself or you'll never get anything." QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2016 4:40 pm Post subject:
Thanks for the feed back, first of all i ain't the main programmer after all, the one we have is rather experianced and have a decent knowledge of both Unity and RTS games in general, i'll see about the UE 4 engine, but it seems that Unity can be a good start, for networking we could use photon networking which after testing it seems great ( during my previous work on another game called "empires" a 4x strategy game ) so for the client-server thing it's achivable if i get the support of microsoft bizspark ( we did get it when i worked on empires)
i'll put questions here if there is something i need
and i'll post the ocean shader we are using which i am very happy with
EDIT01: new development, i had a meeting that took hours, and it seems that there is multiple updates:
the game will be rather flexible and as moddable as possible,the game's data will be stored in INI files, the structuration is already planned , there will be a tool that comes with that game, where you can see the unit values,3d model... which i belive will make modding just a matter of draging and droping, adding values...
the 3D format is comfirmed to be FBX, and the game will have huge maps (current objective is 90x90KM ) naval warfare is confirmed and the locomotor for units will be custmizable (i.e the missiles/shells trajectory will be moddable via a bezier function so it's so customisable, same for aircrafts) simply the game will be highly customisable
the senior programmer i currently have is rather experianced (8 years of unity experiance)
the game will include 3 resources :
Money : clear
Oil : used as a source of money (sold) and as a fuel for vehicles
Power : clear
units will have advanced armor system (i.e tanks are more vulnerable from behind)
that's all for now, if you guys have suggestions just post them
btw, for the alpha we will have both russia and the US operational QUICK_EDIT
From what I understand, without too much inconvenience, you can make the turrets separate by editing the voxels in the community's voxel editor until the voxelizer gets patched.
Actually, it doesn't seem worth it to merely adjust the voxelizer to compensate for Blender's flaw in 3ds file turrets, when Blender has also apparently completely broken texturing in 3ds files now.
Are Blender 3ds files working with textures for you, and what version of Blender are you using? QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2016 12:24 pm Post subject:
@ViPr for your solution, thank you so much, I'll try that solution today and see if it works
@DonutArnold thanks, I'm glad to hear that some people have Faith in this project, I remember there was a community RTS project for unity but it was for unity 4, I'll try to fix and errors and read the code, then reverse engineer it , perhaps it'll me helpful , currently I need more programmers and mainly a senior one, it would be helpful if someone could tell me where to find him, I posted almost everywhere.
BTW, and this isn't just for DonutArnold, I am seriously thinking about using the RA2 INI structure with some improvements, so what are things that were missing in modding RA2 , fighters locomotor perhaps, or more then just 2 weapons...
And if you guys want to help in any given way (some programming, ideas, suggestions...) I would be glad to hear that.
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 2:31 pm Post subject:
Hey what's up guys, Algerian general here with some interesting updates.
I was away recently, and the reason is that I (and the team) were working on the game, BTW the only thing we need is a 3D modeler, or a textures artist, besides that we have a surplus of programmers.
The development is going in a steady pace, currently we have a base game: the camera changes it's pitch according to how far we are from the ground, the camera don't clip into the terrain no more, we have finished the pathfinding, units can actually move freely and with no clipping (finally, I was getting a bit irritated from that problem in RA2) our one and only 3D artist is doing a great job making the models, currently we have finished a M1 Abrams tank, a UH-60 black hawk transport helicopter, and the A. Burke aegis destroyer, in addition to the F-16C , we also have a basic building that spawn units, of course we are currently working on the unit and building classes, sadly INI will only be included in the next alpha, but the whole thing is designed and planned. The INI layout is similar to the one of RA2 but with a lot of improvements.
Just to tell you guys, maps will have a maximum size of 80x80km QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 7:42 pm Post subject:
well, pillbox20 i'll answer your questions, first of all everything is 3D, except for the UI of course lol. so even the terrain is 3D.
but, the game's modding is quite similar to Red alert 2, editing the INIs mainly, but instead of Voxels you use .fbx 3d models.
your second question about heavy guns, no we will use a tier mechanism. so you start in tier 1, you upgrade your general you get to tier 2 , and that's how you build T2 stuff (aircrafts,tanks...)
btw you start the game with a General inside a jeep, and a Dozer, losing the general means GameOVER. you can build a command center and put your general there. if you base is under attack and your defences are quite weak, you can retreat so take your general from the command center, load it in a Helicopter or a car or whatever and escape simply. lol ik seems to be quite fun, we tested it btw.
really want to know your opinion guys, that was my opinion on starting units , what's your ideas? QUICK_EDIT
I like the idea of how important the general is. Reminds me of chess. Baricades, bunkers will be perfect addition. Is the general going to have some purpose? Will there be generals to choose from?
How are you going to balance the units. The standart arcade mode (rock/papper/scissors) or sort of realistic?
Joined: 07 Mar 2015 Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin
Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 12:26 pm Post subject:
Seems that you are really interested Mr Pillbox and here are some answers for you:
Bunkers, baricades ... are planned to be not only civilian buildings but also buildable but your dozers/engineers the General's only purpose is that he is simply you, without him you can't control your units so game over, of course for people who don't like this "gameplay" there will be different Skirmish modes. The general can of course encourage the units around him, something like the propaganda tower from Zero Hour, but he will simply have a radius, boost the unit's Damage and health. Still think that there is something better, I’m open to hear suggestions. And i guess that your general will be customizable (perhaps different tactics= different bonuses?)
balancing the units is quite an interesting question, i guess that something in between realism and arcade, simply it's quite realistic to say that tanks actually beat infantry, but AT dudes will say differently, for weapon ranges then it will be realistic (map size won't be an issue) for prices, oil consumption, ammo ... it'll be something in between balance and realism, you can't spam 20 Super carrier, even the USA only have 10 Nimitz class carriers.
for the timespan i was thinking about modern so expect equipment from 2016, something that very rare strategy games have done, there will be a fictional terrorist faction (still unknown, perhaps i would love to hear some suggestions) later there will be some DLCs adding the gulf war, a cold war DLC and a ww2 DLC of course.
Since the game uses a modding mechanism similar to RA2, i would expect modding to be quite easy (it takes 5mins to add a unit for example) all you need is open the software, tweak the values, add the 3d model and you're done)
Perhaps someone will recreate the Red alert universe in that game
well if anyone want to give me suggestions or just have a chat here is my Skype: algerianmajor
No one expected that huh?
for the current progress, the work is going a bit slow since the main programmer is having exams, but around the 15th he'll get back to work at full speed, currently we have a basic unit class, a builder unit subclass and a building that can give birth to units (they just spawn from the back magically lol of course it'll be changed)
So i had couple questions to the community:
What kind of animations should be played while the building is being built? and how could that be moddable?
How flexible modding should be? We are trying to not hard code anything (of course the classes are hard coded unfortunately)
What kind of thing you wish to see in the game?
Since a lot of the modding/units abilities are inspired from RA2, what new stuff do u want to see? a jet fighter locomotors? more than 3 weapons (that's actually planed)
see you guys soon, i'll get back to work now QUICK_EDIT
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I'm making an RTS game
