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Examining the Beginnings of the RTS Genre
Edge Magazine is running a story about the development of the real-time strategy genre. They credit Dune II: the Building of a Dynasty with establishing the basic concepts that led to more popular titles like Command & Conquer and the original Warcraft.
"[Westwood Studios co-founder Brett] Sperry describes Dune II's core challenge as 'combining combat, exploration and production at a particular pace and rhythm to make it all exciting and almost out of control. That was a key part of what made it so addictive.' Indeed, the experience was quite unlike more staid turnbased strategies, where success or failure rolled in slowly rather than rushing over sand dunes at the speed of an action game. 'You had to think and respond fairly quickly, and in realtime, or else your base and forces would all be overrun. And as we developed the game further, it became clearer how the pacing and battle scenario design were all a delicate balance.'"
There was an RTS on the Atari 800
(yes, REALTIME not turn based)
http://www.atarimania.com/zoom_frame.php?TYPE_IMG=D7&ID=1143&MENU=8&NUM_IMAGE=1
[citation needed]
The original C&C was huge though not just for gameplay, but because it was one of the first games to use full-screen video, you could play as the baddies or goodies (each with their own very distinct units), had an awesome soundtrack, and to this day had the best setup program ever!
Oh, and for the NOD missions you could choose your ending.
They don't make them like they used to!
throw new NoSignatureException();
I had played Dune II on the Amiga, I think the biggest difference between that and later games is you had to click over on the actions buttons ("attack", "move", etc) instead of it being context-based on what you clicked on next (e.g., enemy = attack, ground = move to).
But in terms of influence the second I played C&C I felt that their whole concept of the Tiberium resource was taken directly from the Spice in Dune II. It almost even looked similar...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Herzog Zwei came before Dune II.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran
X-Com is much less fun once you've memorized all enemy routes and spawn points and know how to exploit the AI. Multiplayer is always better, and multiplayer is more fun when you don't have to wait for the other player to finish his turn.
No offense, I'm not singling you out, but that is exactly the kind of attitude that has made the RTS genre utterly stagnant for so many years. A game like Pikmin makes most other RTSes look creatively bankrupt. There is so much room for innovation in the genre, but nobody seems to have the vision or intestinal fortitude to break the mold and move forward in new and interesting ways. Most RTSes feel like Dune 2.5 next to Pikmin. Shigeru Miyamoto looked at everything that all RTSes have in common and determined that those were the features that needed the most change in order to create a truly new game experience. I wish more developers would adopt that sort of design mindset, a philosophy which in retrospect seems incredibly obvious. Yet year after year, across all genres, we only see tiny incremental refinements of preexisting games because most mainstream developers refuse to embrace risk.
+0 Meh
Savage 2 always seemed very interesting and rather inventive, combining RTS with FPS, but I'm not much of a gamer and have never really gotten into the game. Can anyone here who has played it regularly comment? (It has a native Linux client.)
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I just thought this was a good time to remind people that for the 12th aniversary, Westwood started giving away C&C I gold edition free. I can't find the download on their website any more, but gamespot has it mirrored.
Yet year after year, across all genres, we only see tiny incremental refinements of preexisting games because most mainstream developers refuse to embrace risk.
And because gamers don't want something different. We want the same game (roughly), not a "truly new game experience".
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Yes and my wife and I both played Cytron Masters an even earlier game on an Atari. I looked it up in Wikipedia and it is listed as RTS. Someone below mentions Modem Wars and that was definitely RTS. It is so often that these origins types of articles completely miss the earlier examples.
That's why I love playing Spring -- you can pause a single-player game against AIs in midstream, spend several minutes scanning the map from all angles and queueing up orders, and then let it fly again.
Not only does it slow the pace down, but it helps to negate some of the reaction speed advantage that the AI players have. You can stop at any point and analyze the situation in great detail. :-)
Both Spring (and the game which inspired it, Total Annihilation) allow for enough automation and order queueing even in real-time to remove some of the micromanagement from the game. Makes the game a lot less hectic to run than most RTS games I've played -- it's nice to have units which already have orders to patrol a certain route, attack anything within range, and repair themselves automagically w/o my intervention, and they can be set up to do all of the above as part of a repeating build queue.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
One of the benefits of PC gaming is that, assuming you keep your mitts on all your bits, you can whip out old games and replay them years later. I did a full replay of CH:R about 10 years ago, and did a partial replay 2 years ago. I'm actually working my way though mechcomander 1/expansion/2 right now... great games. Always loved the whole idea of battlefield salvage as your primary resource, not to mention the fun in mixing-matching-and customizing mechs.
Also - you're right that its a shame about the real time. To this date the ONLY turn based AAA battletech title ever released was the Crescent Hawks Inception - a fantastic RPG/tactical wargame hybrid - one that I replay much more often than its sequel.
That's one part of the macro, obviously more troops = better. The other parts are when you get what troops since tanks aren't going to do you a whole lot of good when the enemy is going with helicopters, how you plan to develop your economy (invest a lot, possibly reaping huge growth but also being left defenseless if your enemy attacks before you got your econ going?), when you attack (try to off the enemy with an early attack but be pretty much fucked if he defends? Run a raid on one end of the map and while his forces move back go in and wreck the main?), etc. There's also the micro part that many weaker players revile so much because they want "more strategy, not a clickfest" but micro is what enables tactics which are the real reason the RT is in RTS. Encircle? Blow a hole into the enemy phalanx and rush to his heavy fire support in the back? Toss some special weapons in the right place to disable a lot of his firepower or try to deny him the ability to do so himself? Micro is what makes combat more than just numbers and rock-paper-scissors, it lets a skilled player use that skill even once the battle has started.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
RTS means you send units out to some location and let them sort it out while one plans the bigger picture of the war -- not the individual battles.
RTT is where you send units out to some location and micromanage each battle out. Most of the "RTS" games are really only RTT.
Also, Herzog Zwei predates Dune II and better qualifies as one of the first RTT games.
"Micromanaging units" is playing the game.
I remember when the first C&C came out... you could drag out a box to select multiple units!!! It was revolutionary.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as fun as Dune II...
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"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac