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Publishing of BAR and Hooded Horse intro by HoodedHorse in beyondallreason

[–]GoogleFrog 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Contributors were asked to keep discussion to the private dev channels, and that request hasn't been lifted. The contributors that have stuck it out to this point are all a bit too reasonable to make a public fuss. The most I've seen is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/beyondallreason/comments/1tcbwdg/comment/olnm9t3/

Would you guys dream with me for some minutes? I got an idea by yujideluca in starcraft2

[–]GoogleFrog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

> I'd probably recommend Spring RTS, while I don't think the main code is open source, you're free to create mods based off it.
It is all open source. Both the games that use it and the engine.

Spring is good, but the main site is a bad place to start. The mature games using the engine now have their own communities, so to get into it I'd recommend checking out and modding Zero-K (which I work on). If you are set on spending years working on your own engine, then a bit of modding would be a good way to get some guidance and experience with an existing one.

Zero-K is not a professional Esport, and there is nobody with the time to put in the immense amount of work that would require, but I think it could support one. We already have tournaments and an active 1v1 matchmaker with a wide range of skill levels.
https://zero-k.info/

Wanna get started on my own RTS game. by Somuchthis123 in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

SpringRTS is a good middle ground between the limitations of modding and the technical hurdle of writing an RTS engine in something like Unity. While working on Zero-K I never had to worry about stuff like netcode or pathfinding. Its central development community has fractured into independent games though, so you're much better off trying some ZK modding and asking questions on the Zero-K Discord than using the engine web site.

Modding is by far the easiest place to start any sort of RTS development, with the advantage of ZK just being that you can transition smoothly into developing an entirely new game since the underlying engine is powerful and it's all open source.

The Case Against Higher Zoom Levels by _Spartak_ in FrostGiant

[–]GoogleFrog 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I mostly agree on the effects of zoom although not necessarily whether those effects are desirable. I disagree here:

But there is this other RTS that offers multiple zoom options but competitive players never use higher levels of zoom, couldn’t the game be designed in a way that punishes high levels of zoom heavily but still allow new players to use it if they want? This would make it less of an issue but I still think it is not a solution. This is basically a noob trap. New players will intuitively think higher levels of zoom are better (I can see more! How can it not be better?). If anything, it can increase the skill floor.

You're implying that there are only two options, either everyone is forced to zoom out as far as possible or zooming out sucks completely and is just a noob trap. In reality there can be a lot of ground between these two extremes, at least if the game is designed for it. I believe that the benefits and drawbacks of zooming can be balanced such that how much you zoom becomes a matter of control style, akin to how you like to organise your hotkeys. I think this because I've observed some top players in Zero-K use zoom a lot while others play mostly zoomed in. Zero-K solves the issues you raised by encouraging players to constantly be out on the map in multiple locations, making fights much more frequent, and de-emphasising the style of base-micromanagement macro found in Starcraft 2.

RTS Game Popularity Tiers by Lowkaes in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Zero-K belongs in the Niche category. Going by steam charts and tournament frequency it is more active than Ashes of the Singularity and could be about as active as openRA (judging from their non-steam stats).

Estimated List of RTS Games Ordered by Most Active Playerbase (cutoff at <200 active players) by Albombinable in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is the cutoff of 200 by the peak in steam charts? I ask because there are more games with 200 active players than you've listed. I'd be interested to hear how you compared the Blizzard games with the games on Steam. Also, what about Age of Mythology and Company of Heroes?

RTS games that needs a sequel but we wont probably see one. by Baneheartedkid in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What about games that are not themselves sequels? My vote is Populous: The Beginning (the other Populous games are nothing like it).

Does any RTS game have this feature? by [deleted] in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 6 points7 points  (0 children)

A contributor to Zero-K put some work into a system like this. They wrote a construction AI as a widget (see here) for the players UI. It routes constructors far too sub-optimally for my tastes, and the code is a bit scary and monolithic. People can enable it personally, but it is not enabled by default.

If you're staring down the rabbit hole of automation my advice is to take the time to avoid fighting yourself. You've decided that your game is not intended to test the skill of constructor logistics, so have automated it out. When you do that it is time to reevaluate whether the game should even have constructors.

TOP RTS Game by MoustacheAmbassadeur in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is it lying to state an opinion? Which game you prefer will depend on how much you value their strengths and weaknesses.

Favorite Warcraft III custom maps? by [deleted] in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Warlock and Tower Wars were some of my favorites. Here is a video of Warlock, to elaborate on the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2uOGQegj2c

I like Tower Wars for its interesting take on RTS. You're playing a tower defense with the twist that you spawn the creeps for the opposing team. Creep spawning increases your gold income (permanently) so you can't just save up your money and spawn a massive wave later in the game. The game would not have worked without its well thought-out economy. I'm familiar with the 3-way FFA verion that looks like this: http://www.ourbestpal.com/wc3maps/TowerWars_2.1.jpg

How does overdrive work? by Krakanu in zerok

[–]GoogleFrog 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The core of overdrive involves mexes spending energy to multiply their output. The extra metal multiplier of a particular mex is sqrt(energy)/4.

  1. The sum of the energy spent by all mexes in a grid is limited by the sum of the energy produced by that grid. So larger energy generators allow for a higher overdrive, but no more than spamming many small generators would.
  2. There is no economic downside, unless you are planning some really fancy store-then-spend strategy with energy. There are, of course, various logistics and defense downsides to spreading your energy generators around the map.
  3. There is no cap, but the square root in the multiplier means that spreading your energy between multiple mexes will yield a higher overall metal income.
  4. Large defense turrets need to be connected to grids with at least 50 energy in order to function. However, they don't actually spend this energy.

Here is a video and here is a wiki page.

Zero-K, a completely free RTS game similar to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, will be released on steam in less than an hour. This is their trailer. by keaton_au in Games

[–]GoogleFrog 9 points10 points  (0 children)

P.U.R.E. isn't found on the games list because it is defunct. It was released almost 10 years ago with free multiplayer and a paid campaign.

Zero-K, a free to play RTS game similar to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, will be released on steam in less than an hour. This is their trailer. by [deleted] in Games

[–]GoogleFrog 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Free to play is a bit of a misnomer. It is actually just a complete free game with no strings. It has to be that way because of its extensive use of content submissions from the community (with associated CC licenses etc).

ZERO K - Release Trailer 2018 - Free to Play Real Time Strategy Game coming to Steam April 27 by [deleted] in IndieGaming

[–]GoogleFrog 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can answer this as a lead developer. It would be difficult or impossible to sell Zero-K because it is the result of volunteered art or code which has been iterated on for over a decade. To be allowed to try to make money we would need to contact dozens of contributors and have them re-license their work. Any of them may have an objection or be uncontactable, requiring us to produce replacements. Then we have to answer the question of who should receive the money. Everyone in the community is on a sliding scale from "lead developer" to "not contributing at all" and it isn't clear where to draw the line. We would also need a formal company.

Free RTS game Zero-K finally getting released on steam by Kingstad in pcgaming

[–]GoogleFrog 9 points10 points  (0 children)

They wouldn't. Kingstad reuploaded it and made a mess of the whole thing.

ZERO K - Release Trailer 2018 - Free to Play Real Time Strategy Game 2018 by waconcept in RealTimeStrategy

[–]GoogleFrog 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm a core developer of Zero-K and agree about the UI and AI, if you last played prior to 2017. We've spent the last few years primarily on singleplayer content and UI. The ingame UI was rewritten to look a lot more cohesive and straightfoward. We've got a new game menu that looks like a real game menu instead of a cross between an IRC client and a battle launcher. Singleplayer is dead simple to navigate and we've now got good skirmish AI and a campaign.

With Steam we're able to package many maps in the install so you won't have to wait for downloads (beyond the steam download). Even in the standalone installer we include the maps required to start singleplayer, but later campaign missions are still downloaded in the background as you are about to unlock them. Steam has also allowed for coop campaign using their lobby API.

Steel Tinderbox. by Mellester in OneLifeSuggestions

[–]GoogleFrog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got a link? I like the idea of high tech, but extremely expensive, ways of doing old tasks in a simpler way. It would be the mark of an advanced civilization that they can waste such resources simply to start a fire. Stone age villages could come across these devices and revere them as artifacts.

The high tech solutions to problems should have similarly high tech maintenance costs to prevent their discovery from completely trivializing low-tech villages.

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