Castle is more of a tower defense game.
The reason I haven't worked on an RTS is because BYOND lacks the proper controls to support it. You need to be able to click and drag open a selection box in order to select multiple units.
If you were to emulate this behavior it would just come out slow and clunky. It would never look very good over a network. For it to work it would have to be a client-side thing which just sends the selection box coordinates to the server.
I liked it, but not to be too negative, I prefer the first one, this one felt less professional. It's like the many, many, other podcasts that people do where they just talk to each other and post it online, rather then a more structured discussion about topics of interest for the sake of the audience. It had a little of both situations, so it wasn't bad, I just liked the other format.
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@Megablaze: Yeah, we apologize for the quite "thrown-together" feel of this cast. We didn't have any time to put together a list of topics mostly due to me being too sick to record until Monday, and Tuesday was the event, and the cast had to be online midday Wednesday.
So, next time we'll definitely have a more structured feel to it. Thanks for your criticism! (: | |
actualy 2 of them were mine
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@Laserdog: That does explain a lot, then.
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SuperAntx wrote:
You need to be able to click and drag open a selection box in order to select multiple units. Says who? I assume you've never heard of Battalion Wars. A strategy game that gives you control of units without all the clicking, dragging, and selection boxing. | |
@EmpirezTeam: Battalion Wars was an amazing game. I loved it to death, but playing BW2 after beating BW1 so long ago has made me terrible at playing. ):
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Battalion Wars isn't an RTS. What I was referring to was a game like Starcraft.
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@Lige: Ahhh! You +yea'd, that is not true BYONDling love!
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SuperAntx wrote:
Battalion Wars isn't an RTS. What I was referring to was a game like Starcraft. You missed the point. There are other ways to control units besides click and drag selection boxes. Of course if you want to make a game exactly like Starcraft on BYOND, you would need to use it, but if the only reason you haven't made an RTS is because you haven't figured out a way around it, you might want to check out games like Battalion Wars and learn from how they did it. For instance, just give players HUDS for each unit type and clicking it would automatically select every unit of that type. Then you could click a spot on the ground or order them to attack from there. | |
No, I don't think you understand the point I'm illustrating here. I'm saying it's not possible to make an RTS with the proper controls, your answer is to make something other than an RTS.
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SuperAntx wrote:
No, I don't think you understand the point I'm illustrating here. I'm saying it's not possible to make an RTS with the proper controls, your answer is to make something other than an RTS. I'm not telling you to make Battalion Wars. I'm simply suggesting you borrow ideas from their method of unit control. An RTS doesn't stop being an RTS just because players can't click and drag a selection box over their units. | |
Not having a selection box in an RTS is like not being able to strafe in an FPS. It's a fundamental part of the control scheme which can't be ignored.
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Couldn't you just do clicking? The player clicks one point and then clicks another point and the game selects the players units within those two points. I mean it would probably be less choppy.
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That wouldn't work out too great when you have 20 units on screen. You could say, "what about unit type selections or selection groups?" but the reality of the matter is not having something stupid and simple like a selection box would cut out a large chunk of your potential player base because the learning curve is too high. Games, especially BYOND games, need to be accessible. A help document just doesn't cut it anymore.
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@SuperAntx: Not that I want to continue this argument, but you could easily make an interactive tutorial where it shows you how to do pretty much anything short of pro-grade game maneuvers.
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@SuperAntx - I know a version of Dungeon Master had unit selection(Click and Drag) and it wasn't to bad. There was only an issue if you selected the whole map for no reason.
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SuperAntx wrote:
Not having a selection box in an RTS is like not being able to strafe in an FPS. It's a fundamental part of the control scheme which can't be ignored. You only say that because no RTS ( like Starcraft ) has ever done it before. I don't see the huge drawback in a system where you could hit a hotkey for instance that selects all your Knights, and another for your Archers, Wizards etc. and from there, order them to move or attack. In my opinion it would actually be more convenient to just tap a key as opposed to having to drag a box over them. The only way this wouldn't be possible is if you had tons of different types of units. The reason it works in Battalion Wars is because there are, what, only 6 or 7 different units? So they were able to fit it all on the hud. But if you went for something more diverse like Warcraft and had around 20 units, that wouldn't work out. | |
Grrr. *clicks "Stop following this post's comment thread" link*
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Thank you...? Haha.
This was really my first time doing something like this. After some analysis of this and the livestream, I hope to improve my performance if I come on again next time.