View Full Version : Small project of mine.
Scorch621
02-03-2009, 10:03 PM
Well for several months now ive been working on a small game design,Its called Reclamation its supposed to be an RTS but i have no tech or game design experience whatsoever and only really working on concept art and storyboards etc.
so really what im asking is for some help if anyone has tech experience id would like some help...
Heres the story,
In 2068 a project was launched to send a Space shuttle to the far reaches of our solar systemin a matter of days,The project is sent into action and prototypes are being built
In 2069 The final product is made and is launched with a 5 man crew to orbit around jupiter and fly back within a week,contact gets lost with the crew after 3 days but the shuttle is still on its regular flight path,but after 5 days of being in space it starts to fly back and lands normally in the kennedy space center...the ship is investigated with no signs of the crew or struggle it is searched for months and months but nothing is found.
towards the middle of the year strange electrical storms scatter across europe and asia causing strange side effects in the population , Headaches,increased strength and awareness and small psycic ability such as telekinesis and precognition.
The Abnormal Recovery Company[ARC] is put into public knowledge and Project X* is launched.
towards the end of 2069,strange objects start heading towards earth and a strange signal is coming off the remains of The space shuttle,The shuttle is investigated again and the remains of the crew are found.
ARC is now on military standby as the objects start coming into earths atmosphere,and New York city is laid too waste from the objects in our atmosphere,a mass evacuation is initiated and Many lives are saved by ARC,but more and more cities are destroyed until the 1st of January 2070...then...then everything changed
Massive ships start coming out of the sky,and thousands of Alien Troops land and exterminate thosands of people.Earth was being invaded
ARC now stands and fights for humanity against the Aleins which have been dubbed the Immortals as they seem unkillible but in truth they are as brittle as us,just seem endless in number.
Several areas are not accessable to ARC forces so the local population has began to fight against the Alien menace they call themselves the BHRF,The Bright Hope Resistance Front.
The year is 2070..and can we reclamate our only home?
So there are 3 factions, ARC,The Immortals and the BHRF
ARC relies on its heavy weapons and powerful tech to surpass the enemy
The Immortals rely on Overwelming numbers and Biological warfare.
The BHRF rely on Guerilla Warfare and Stealth to Win.
so anyone intereseted on helping?
sorry for spelling mistakes,i type to fast...
dislekcia
02-03-2009, 10:24 PM
In any RTS game you need to know how your resource model works in order to ensure the players are going to be able to have a reasonably paced game... Just look at how long it's taken to get C&C3 balanced with regard to resources ;)
So. What is your resource model like? Are you going to use requisition points earned through combat performance? A single time-based resource? A location-based resource? Multiple resources? This is important... From there you can start designing the interaction that you want your players to have, what sorts of emotions they'll feel and what sorts of decisions they'll need to make.
Scorch621
02-03-2009, 10:30 PM
ahh yes i forgot too mention..you gather reources from civilians each faction has a different way in which they use them
ARC they need to build evacuation points,civilians are picked up here and each group brings in some resources
for the BHRF they build underground bunkers,civilians will come and seek shelter and bring in resources for each group..
and the immortals hunt civilians and gain resources from corpses...gorey yes but its all part of the game..
civilians come from nearby houses or apartments...
you can gether other resource points by capturing Supermarkets or cafes as well as banks.
HolyMackerel
03-03-2009, 07:45 AM
Progress planning is also very important. The insight you have given us into the game with your starting post is good, but you need to plan how your story is going to evolve. Is there a final boss / final alien base to destroy for example. Who are the protagonists? Is there going to be an ARC Campaign, BHRF Campaign and an Immortal Campaign?
With regards to resources, you might want to look at something like Age of Empires, where you have a Home City - In your case a Home Base / Hideout - where you can send resources every few minutes so as to make up for lack / scarcity of resources.
Evolution
03-03-2009, 09:28 AM
Does your military units gain experience from battle and become stronger like in C&C ?
FuzzYspo0N
03-03-2009, 09:43 AM
Does it have to be generic :) Not to sound like the party pooper, i love the concept so far but 3 factions is every other rts, etc. Perhaps there can be more to this than a normal RTS, while scaling the game design scope down , bringing good RTS gameplay with less intense years of development?
Keep at it, it can easily be a great design
Scorch621
05-03-2009, 08:31 PM
cool thanks ive been thinking of that age of empires thing with choosing your Safe zone and all but i thought it would count as plagerisum..still use civvilians though since as you guys said they are very scarce..
but otherwise yes units do gain experience...but ill have too think more on that..
the protaginsit is you...i was thinking of a RPG style make your own character and he/she has his own sqaud full of the rest of the Protaginists..but it kinda evolves as the BHRF are being slowly rescued by ARC and ARC eventually pushes the frontlines to Antarctica where if this is succesful the sequel would take place...
hmm i just thought of instead of evacuating civvies[civilians]for ARC
the ARC just sends in from the safe zone supplies etc.
Ramperkash
06-03-2009, 08:47 PM
So basically, your resources will in most cases be very limited? Or is the game going to play off in big cities (to justify a huge number of civilians). The only problem with the resources being extremely limited is that it would kind of eliminate end-game gameplay, or in general give the faction with the most expensive units a disadvantage. It does depend on how the factions are structured though, which brings me to the following:
I think you'll need to give a much stronger outline of the factions (so we could work on the gameplay concerning each faction) or say what kind of buildings/units etc. you want per faction, for example, the Immortals would have cheap, weak units, but lots of them, while ARC is the opposite, and the BHRF is a middle-ground.
I don't have much experience in making RTS games though, this all comes from my experience in playing them :)
Aval4nche
10-03-2009, 03:46 PM
Sorry to be finicky, but it sounds to me as if the ARC would be allied to the BHRF. They have no reason to fight the other faction. So will both factions oppose the Immortals and not each other?
They resource system sounds like that of Company of Heroes. Am I right? Also what do you want the visual style to be like. Gritty like Tiberium Wars or bright like Red Alert.
Scorch621
13-03-2009, 06:25 PM
The game centers around heavy Urban maps....ARC and BHRF are naturaly allied,but The BHRF are insurgenst if i could put it that way so there are many splinter factions,some agreeing with the aliens treating them like gods etc. so theat allows some parts of the BHRF too fight ARC...
Resources seem too be a problem....will have too work on it...what do you guys recommend..
Well okay ill give what i think is an outline...
ARC:
Using Advanced Technology and Tactics they are supposed to be Humanitys saviours,
they need too rely on smaller numbers and Special forces sqauds to destroy enemies and raid encampents...in other words using expensive units but very good ones with many different abilities..
BHRF:
Using standard issue gear and Stealth to destroy enemy units and raid encampments,
they have only a few light vehicles,No aircraft[unless stolen from civvie airports or landed enemy aircraft..] and no tanks which can be stolen with mechanics[engineers]
all infantry can go stealth and place booby traps on things.
And all infantry can hijack or steal vehicles[even civilian ones] turning enemy vehicles on their makers.
Immortals:
Using Adv. technology and Bio warfare too turn enemies agaisnt one another or utterly ending them..
They have heavy vehicles in the form of walkers and good aircraft...Infantry come in mass numbers with devastating abilities if somewhat Bloody...
With the bio warfare its usually in the form of mutation or acid or something in that sector...
Slavery is one of the main goals of the Immortals..
Ramperkash
14-03-2009, 12:41 AM
I have to say, yes I think the resources will turn out to be a very limiting factor, especially since, as you mentioned, the story pushes towards the antarctic, because the cities there will become much smaller, and as RTS stories go: The more expensive units become available further along the story, so the resource system, and overall gameplay theme is contradictory.
One possibility (to keep the resources very simple) would be to just have control points that generate X amount of resources (maybe depending on a level of some building built on it) per second.
I do think this layout you gave is something we* can work with, and it does look interesting, looking at the gameplay possibilities. When I have some free time I could try to create a structure for units and buildings for the factions, but I'm pretty busy atm with university etc.
All in all, this story seems to have potential in my opinion, and I hope someone with experience and skill can take this and work it through to the end.
*I mean whoever will help out, I'm not the most experienced to do this yet
Scorch621
17-03-2009, 07:58 PM
yeah control points would be the easiest...but id like to try something different...maybe civilian evacuation points or something....but thanks anyway..
BlackShipsFillt
23-03-2009, 02:21 AM
How about having an economy, no resources except the ones you build.
Don't know if it'd work in your game, but it might be interesting to build lots of civilian buildings to increase your building power. You'd still need to control allot of land to maintain all the buildings...
This could be made quite complicated, by having multiple types of buildings that require different conditions to be built and boost the economy (building power) in different ways creating various bottlenecks the player must monitor.... It could also be quite simple, like SimCity, where the player just marks areas for industrialisation and the game decides what's best.
This could create an interesting dynamic, the more building power you have the more land you would need to defend. You could also penalise players who over expand by making damaged buildings drain your building power until they are repaired, making it an defensive game, or make it easy to cover large areas with industry and lower the incentives for protecting it (making the game offensive heavy).
I've always wanted to build massive sprawling bases in a strategy game.
Ramperkash
26-03-2009, 11:11 PM
That actually sounds like a good system, I wouldn't go as far as to say you have to choose industrial or residential or commercial though. You could basically add an attribute to all buildings (that are otherwise useful) that increases income, and let it vary depending on the building.
It would create interesting gameplay strategies though, because in a lot of games you only try to whipe out the enemy units to prevent them from fighting back, while destroying buildings here would cripple the economy (not even depending on the building)
BlackShipsFillt
27-03-2009, 11:29 AM
I think there's a certain joy in building bases in strategy games.
If you watch a newbie strategy player they will sit around building a huge defensive base rather than attacking... more advanced players realise almost all strategy games favour aggressive strategies (crippling your opponent's progress early on). Players aren't given any choice about this style of play.
It's just a theory of mine, but I think the base building part may be more satisfying. If it were easy to build huge bases with massive fortifications and long range cannons/missiles it could favour expansionist industrial players rather than expansionist offensive players.
What I meant by the Sim-City reference is that I love the way in Sim-City you can just drag a selection on the ground to designate an industrial area and then the game economy slowly fills the area with the buildings by itself (based on certain conditions).
The Sim-City interface saves time for the player and the system that builds the buildings is allot more interesting than the standard Warcraft plonk a building from a menu and it costs you X.
Total Annihilation felt a bit like this, you could start construction on as many buildings as you liked, but you only had a certain amount of build power which was shared amongst all your ongoing constructions. Because of this (and also the constant resources and command queuing) Total Annihilation bases were much more impressive than Warcraft bases.
Though I'm not suggesting you take this route (but I will try someday)...
However, if there is one thing more fun than building huge, sprawling bases, it's decimating your opponent's huge sprawling base.
Scorch621
31-03-2009, 06:54 PM
YES that could work!!...could be like refugee camps or something....or soldier camps or whatever yes this could work...yes it could work....
Uranium238
06-04-2009, 10:00 AM
The next thing you have to think about is whether you're going to have a population cap ( please don't do that ) or not and how your unit construction is going to work. Will it be like C&C where you just build the production structure or will be the like the game American Conquest where you have to build a basic peasant unit and than have to send it to a specific structure to upgrade it to another unit. Lastly you have to think about how your structure construction is going to work. Will it be like C&C 3 where you just select an icon in the side bar to start construction or will it be like you have to build a worker which will build your buildings.
HolyMackerel
07-04-2009, 11:03 AM
You could also implement the costs of war. In other words, if an enemy attacks you, the costs of repairing and building increases, making the enemy AI a bit smarter. With other strategy games, enemies build units and attack you. If he attacks you his costs (as well as yours) will increase, giving him a choice to rather attack later when he has the resources to commit to war. That is a little something that I am implementing in my RTS project.
Ramperkash
07-04-2009, 01:39 PM
I've thought about implementing a building system similar to C&C (as in, you don't build workers) but when you build a building, an engineer has to run from your main building to that buildsite, to have construction actually begin, so the distance you can build from your base stays relatively limited (or you just need to protect the engineer on his way there).
Also you could get upgrades where he runs faster (or gets a vehicle, thus moves faster with more health) and the like, so it's a modular system, and allows for more complex strategies (take out the enemy engineers etc.).
I'm planning to use this in a RTS I started developing (but time is hard to come by), but I wouldn't mind if you want to use it... I'd be honored really. I'm a fan of C&C myself tbh, and would take tips from their structure.
Scorch621
08-04-2009, 08:19 PM
What i was originally thinking was that all bases were different,
ARC would have mobile bases but to create units would need to be set up and stationary[spelling] so you have to build add ons on the main vehicle which is this huge armoured tank like thing. and no there is no pop. cap
The Immortals would have stationary bases but can move with help of the mothership in space...it has a complicated way of being completly destroyed,you have the central link up building which is the main building,which is linked to the mothership in space now you have to destroy it in a special way to win by first taking down the sheilds[EMP,Fierce Harrasment]
then breach the outer wall and then get a small infantry sqaudron to perform a anti garrison
[any basic infantry can clear buildings] but while they are clearing out the building they will place and explosive of sorts and get out then the main structure is destroyed. seems a little too complicated needs work.
The BHRF have a small mobile convoy made of a school bus as the main vehicle[major RE:Extinction reference] and other vehicles such as a radio van to get upgrades and radar ,
Tour bus to create infantry and a very large monster truck to create vehicles,all these vehicles set up camps to make infantry and vehicles,
Fengol
09-04-2009, 10:47 AM
Is there a download yet? or some screenshots?
Ramperkash
09-04-2009, 05:42 PM
I don't think anyone is working on it, he posted his idea for a story and some general things about how the game would be, but since then we only worked out how everything of it would work. As far as I know... Nobody has said anything along the lines of "Ok I'll start coding".
I like most of it so far though :)
PS. I won't be writing this... yet... I still need to get a very basic RTS up and running, so I have experience, and then I'll probably first work on my own RTS project.
Scorch621
09-04-2009, 07:56 PM
i dont know crap about Coding and modeling and all that..i only know how to actually draw the things and make up the story and units etc....anyone here know how to make a picture into JPG format to be uploaded to photbucket?
Fengol
14-04-2009, 08:29 AM
use MS Paint and Save As...?
Ramperkash
16-04-2009, 01:06 AM
Scorch... if you're willing to wait (I don't even know how long) some time, for me to get the whole RTS thing under the knee. I could try to code this... Though my knowledge only stretches to 2D so far, (C++ and SDL graphics library mostly) so if that satisfies you, I'll give it a shot.
If anyone else feels up for the job, go ahead, since you'll probably do a better job than me, hehe.
Scorch621
25-04-2009, 07:34 PM
yeah sure go for it...lets start simple ill try to upload a few drawings...Im not a fully fledged trained artist okay so lay off the critizism.
This might at some stage be of use to you: MoonGate - XNA RTS Game / Engine (http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/19206/118500.aspx#118500)
Hello,
After several months of developing I finally decided to publish some info about my 3D RTS engine based on XNA. XNA looked very promising to me and after reading book Professional XNA Game Programming by Benjamin Nitschke I decided that this will be my Master Thesis topic - exact name of topic is "Application development for Xbox 360" (still working title). There were not many starter kits back then (one and something year ago), and let's face the truth - there are still not many today and from time to time there are questions like "How to make <insert feature> in RTS ?".
So I decided to learn more about XNA and shaders and improve my programming, 3d modeling and texturing skills :). I am working on this project alone so time available for MG has to be divided among coding, modeling, texturing, designing and learning.
Hi, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts source will be released - that is 100 % sure, the thing is that in current state there are not many comments and also structure is being changed. I do not want to release something that is not very useful right now, it is really Work In Progress. After the exams I'll clean it a bit and improve it. If you have questions about something specific ask here, but if you cannot wait and R*E*A*L*L*Y need it write me here, I'll send it but I warned you - it is WIP.
I quite like CrowdedCrane's work. I would recommend getting the things done in 2D first though
01DT!m3r
30-04-2009, 10:25 AM
Why don't you start a niffty prototype in GM7 first (I swear dis wrote an article about this)and see if the game works then think about knocking it up a notch.
and with yoyo's huge library of Niffty GM Stuff you should be able to get some RTS tutorials and code to get you started.
search around here http://gmc.yoyogames.com/
Ramperkash
02-05-2009, 06:13 PM
Like scorch said though, he's not really a programmer, he's just designing the game, and if I'm gonna code this thing I'm probably gonna do it in C++ (I'm used to it by now) and would start in quite a long while.
My studies and projects are keeping me way too busy :(
01DT!m3r
02-05-2009, 08:07 PM
Like scorch said though, he's not really a programmer, he's just designing the game, and if I'm gonna code this thing I'm probably gonna do it in C++ (I'm used to it by now) and would start in quite a long while.
My studies and projects are keeping me way too busy :(
I understand where you are coming from (and I wish I could program in C++,I'm stuck in delphi7 and C# at the moment(game programming wise)).But even if Scorch isn't really a programmer GM7 is a great place to learn and at least start something simple to display here and show his current ideas for his game .
it's better than the game not being produced at all or for him having to rely heavily on someone
else , and at the end of the day if he does need some help coding certain aspects I'm sure he can post his problem in the help thread . This way he can learn and get his game done while waiting for a better version that you are graciously making:)
and by him creating something and giving us to fiddle with(read "post source code")we can help him manage his dream game more easily .
Just my thought on the topic (not meant to be horrible or anything):)
Scorch621
02-05-2009, 08:31 PM
wow...lots of posts...sorry i havent been here in awhile im just rather busy latlely..doing CTA's..hate the maths one...otherwise the rest are easy...and i know normally we start the CTA's next term..buuut my schools doing them now...oops getting off topic...either way thanks guys..as soon as a fix a few details up ill post some of my art..now be warned when i put up the art try not to criticize[spelling?] okay im not the best artist in the world..
Cloud_Ratha
06-05-2009, 01:33 AM
ill post some of my art..now be warned when i put up the art try not to criticize[spelling?] okay im not the best artist in the world..
We're not that childish, besides im sure there are worse off people than you.
There's lots of people who would be eager to help you out :)
Looking forward to your post!
Scorch621
20-05-2009, 04:16 PM
sorry i havent been here guys, my mother passed away last week sunday[10th may] so i had to help my dad with everything and all but im back and continuing the project.
She died after a 2 year battle with cancer and i know forums arent at the top of the list of priorities but im still on the project and everything and it means alot to me...but now its time to get back up and carry on so lets get going.
dislekcia
21-05-2009, 12:14 AM
Sorry to hear the bad news Scorch, hope things are bearable on your end :(
Scorch621
23-05-2009, 02:32 PM
yeah just me and my dad now. me and him are the last of the bloodline...anyway im having trouble with the ****ing scanner it doesnt turn it into JPG format still trying to fix it.
Scorch621
19-06-2009, 07:03 PM
wow..its been awhile since ive been here..what were we talking about before I left...
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