Bruce Shelley On Future Of The RTS

Thanks to GameSpy for posting an interview with Bruce Shelley of Ensemble Studios, talking to the strategy game veteran about his work on the Age Of Empires series, as well as the forthcoming Age Of Mythology expansion. However, Shelley also talks about the future of real-time strategy titles, suggesting: "There is a risk that gamers will become tired of the explore/build up/fight model for RTS games. The industry has now explored most of the good topics for an RTS game. Future excitement has to be generated largely by gameplay innovation."

Comments

Suggestions

[Henry V .009]

I am constantly surprised by how conformist the game industry is. Game companies have barely scratched the surface of RTS. Combat could be drastically improved. Most current games concentrate mainly on unit differences. A far more interesting system could be made using the elements of formation, terrain, and maneuver. Control is rarely explored beyond simple point and click directions to individual units. An interesting system would be to make a few computer commanders which the human player could direct. With even simple AI such a system could have real potential. And RTS elements could also be easily combined with a true RPG style game or with FPS games to make for an interesting experience.

Re:Suggestions

[August_zero]

You should check (if you haven't already)out the Total War series of games.(Shogun, Medeival and upcoming Rome) These games are all about tactics and formation. THere is no real-time resource management either, if your playing the campaign you have to manage you empire but when battles arise you must fight with what you have available. Two people playing with the same army could have the battle turn out completly differently everytime they play it just based on the tactics employed.

ANother game that took a decent and unique approach to RTS is the Kohan series; also fairly decent if not a little dry.

Re:Suggestions

[KDan]

I agree. That might take a lot of the tedium out of some RTSs too - if you can leave a base with its "commander" and expect to still find it standing and productive when you get back, instead of having to micromanage everything. Also having intelligent units, as you've almost suggested with "control expanded beyond simple point and click directions" would make it all pretty sweet. All they need is a good interface for giving complex instructions to units. Eg, convince your night elf archer to always stay out of range of enemies, only shooting arrows when it can do so safely, and otherwise run always - without you having to be there telling it what to do...

That said, I think Warcraft 3 has made a lot of headway in the whole tactical approach. If there's a future for RTS, it lies in the low-level tactical approach of War3, where battles are not by numbers anymore. I think a combination of Warcraft 3 and Warhammer: Dark Omen's much more terrain-influenced battles would be very interesting...

Daniel

Re:Suggestions

[Txiasaeia]

There's just too much junk in TW: Medieval. TW: Shogun was pretty good, tho... misinterpreting the parent poster or not, I'd like a RTS set in 300 BCE in China, where the difference between armies is negligible, and the game is all about tactics. You wage an extended war against an opponent (or not... whoops, another enemy with a grudge has attacked your home turf and now you need to retreat.)

When I play an RTS, I want to be the general, not the accountant. Let the computer worry about agriculture, trade routes and all that crap -- I just want to fight.

Re:Suggestions

[Henry V .009]

I played Shogun and I liked it a lot. Historical realism obviously limits what the designers could do with the gameplay. But at the same time that's a strength as well because it focuses conception. Beyond the paper-scissors-stone (or Janken Pow?--I recently read that children all over the world play that same hand game and have for centuries) of the unit types, the terrain was the most important part of the game. Gameplay revolved around the hills, bridges, and forests. I felt that it was unfortunate, however, that there were no objectives beyond the killing of enemy soldiers. The terrain was just important as a battlefield, and never as a piece of land that needed to be held. I haven't played Medieval War yet but I plan to.

I thought that the single most inventive thing about Shogun was a graphics engine that makes it look like you're fighting with huge armies when there is actual little individual troop action -- which is both realistic and fun.

Re:Suggestions

[Henry V .009]

Supply -- that was what I forgot to mention. Now, logistics is something that I wouldn't mind leaving up to the computer since it can count faster than I can. But supply makes holding ground important. In too many RTS games the map is just a place to fight. When you have supply lines however, you have to be much more careful with troop placement. There are certain areas that are vital to defend and any attack has to be carefully conducted so that it will not get cut off. Now, much of this stuff should be automated in a real-time game. I wouldn't want to have to send individual supply trucks where they have to go. But making sure supply lines stay open adds an important dimension to the game. I'm interested to see Conquest's gameplay now.

Re:Suggestions

[ComputerSlicer23]

I have read a number of your posts in this thread. It sounds like you really want a RTT (Real Time Tactics). What you're talking about isn't strategic in the military sense. I do like the concept of having to maintain supply lines.

Kohan, is kind of a push in direction you describe. Essentially, you can't control minute details of the battle, in fact, once a battle starts you have 3 options, rout, retreat, and keep fighting. Once you get within range, you start to battle. You can control formation, and relative positions of the different companies.

Some of the things you might like about Kohan, and that I wish got included in more RTS games, is moral is important. If you have been fighting non-stop for extended periods of times, eventually your units will just rout, run away, and you'll have no control over the situation. Even if they are crushing the opponents, at some point they have to rest. I like the concept of experienced units. I like that as long as the entire company doesn't die, you get to keep the experience (possibly that should be modified).

The other game, I haven't seen mentioned is the Myth series of games. They are strictly tactics games. Here's the force you have, accomplish objectives X, Y, and Z.

Another game is Warlords Battlecry I & II, have some concept of supply, and having to hold ground to keep getting your resources.

I think there are several problems with the game you want. First, the game you describe, you'll either have no control over the details (like Kohan), or you won't have enough time to deal with everything at once, or there will only be a single battle. The games style you are talking about is relatively common in turn based games, where people have lots of time to deal contemplate things like the terrain.

However, I've used formation, terrain, and maneuver to my advantage in WarCraft III. It's easy to tell how much attacking, from uphill works out better. I've crushed a number opponents that outnumbered me by hitting their magic support from behind.

The one thing I really, really wish I could get my hands on, is a scripting language that was very powerful to write my own scripts to deal with priorities, and input things into it. The concept of trading scripts, and downloading scripts. The problem of course, it could completely ruin the performance of the game. I just wish I had more control over each individuals units reaction to certain events, (kinda like I was the general who laid out the training plan for them).

Kirby

Re:Suggestions

[Henry V .009]

I think that most of my suggestions have both a tactical element and a strategic element, and actually I'm more interested in the strategic side of things. I don't mean for all of my suggestions to be combined into one game, either. I'd simply like to see attention paid to them issues in future game.

All issues of strategy have a tactical base. Formation is technically a tactics issue. But combined arms is a strategy issue, and in games without formation, it's hard to effectively use combined arms. Terrain is a tactics issue, but holding ground is strategy. Maneuver is the essence of tactics, but you can't have very much strategy at all if you are simply limited to clicking where you want your troops to go. (Or, more correctly, if you aren't limited in how you can order your troops to move.) Though terrain exists to some degree in Warcraft III, for example, there isn't a great deal of thought about strategic position. Rather, it is mostly about tactical position, quite a different thing.

I think that the most interesting improvements in regard to strategy might come from finding some way of limiting the player's knowledge and power over the battlefield. That was the impetus behind my idea of having individual AI generals.

Kohan sounds a little bit like Shogun, though you have more control in Shogun. I think morale is a realism issue, but it can add a dimension that provides a lot of fun.

I think your scripting idea is very good, and there are ways around the performance issue. The easiest would be to ration CPU time to player's scripts. That would mean that a more complicated script would take more gametime to execute. If a unit has 5 rules of engagement, it will react more slowly than a unit with 3, for example. I think that it would be very interesting to go up against a player with your own custom AI, to see how it does against his.

Close Combat

[SmallFurryCreature]

I recently played C&C Generals. It looked great. It played, well it played like the original C&C. The same idiocy of having to build a production center right near the frontlines. Still being asked to fight a war and a mining operation. Okay so the americans could build a structure wich actually seemed to give you money from the home country. But the units was the same rock-paper-scissors mix. And the AI seem to have all the faults that date back to dune.

In Dune, you had ornicopters wich went in and would fly damaged vehicles back to base for repair. This is the only time I have ever seen intelligent behaviour in a westwood game. It really helped out as you could launch an attack and then depend on the choppers to rescue the most endangerd units. In the C&C followups you can't even count on units in front of an endangered unit to join in the fight. Hell most often the unit underfire will just stand and take it.

Now enter Close Combat. It scaled down the units and grouped them together, but most importantly the units seem to react to things going around them. If you order a unit to cross a field and it came underfire it would seek cover and return fire. Other units you held back to cover them would supply covering fire.

It even went so far that units with nothing to do would advance on their own or seek better positions to fire from. It gave you the idea that you were a commander not a babysitter.

But AI seems to be the most difficult thing to code. We can generate graphics that would have dropped our jaws a few years ago. But has anyone of us seen the same increase in AI? I at least have not.

Sure in vietcong the enemy seems slighly more intelligent then those in say Doom but youre own team mates seem not able to keep up.

Sadly I don't think anybody cares. The sales figures for the more realistic wargames are pityfull next to the C&C and AoE franchises. Apperantly people like sheepherding braindead units.

Small Unit Combat Tactics

[TheRealGigabyte]

One new RTS im looking forward to is Homeworld 2. Its includeing the bundled unit system where you make one unit and it spits out a couple. You control the group together instead of the individual units. More groups you add together the more the AI will alter the tactics and formations for best effect. I think this will be the big new fad in RTS games. Small units with scaleing tactics and formations that respond dynamicaly to battlefield events and situations.

I do not think so

[LWATCDR]

"There is a risk that gamers will become tired of the explore/build up/fight model for RTS games"
Why it has worked for the last few thousand years. Why would it get boring now?

OMFG

[Canar]

Yes! Yes! Scripting support! Something good like that! Mod the parent up!

Seriously, with scripting support, you could automate all the trivial micromanagement away and do what you wanted to. I hate, hate, hate RTS's for not doing this. This single feature would make me buy a game, and I haven't bought a game since Tomb Raider 1.

Re:natural selection

[gtshafted]

man my grammar sucks... What I meant to type: "I'm surprised that there was no mention of Natural Selection or Savage when they were discussing innovation and the future of RTS gamming. I think having units are that real people that has been one of the biggest changes to the RTS genre."

Total Annihilation

[BinLadenMyHero]

For you looking for inovation in RTS, take a look at Total Annihilation. It's old, but rather unoticed game, by far the best gameplay and replayability in this genre. There are so many inovations, and the battles are much more realistic.