I’ve seen a couple of articles that argue that real time strategy games (RTS’s) are “dying”. They’re not. They’re waiting. Waiting for the adoption of the hardware to implement the next generation RTS designs.
Hardware drives innovation
It is easy to forget how closely tied video game innovation is to the technology that it runs on top of. We didn’t even have “first person shooters” until Castle Wolfenstein 3D because the computing horsepower wasn’t there. The hardware drove the creation of an entire new genre of game.
Another hot market is “MOBA” (mobile online battle arena). This first got started as an RTS mod called Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). But this market only came into existence once low latency, high speed Internet became mainstream. It’s not as if the concept for MOBA had eluded game designers. Popular MOBAs like League of Legends, DOTA2 and of course the much anticipated Sins of a Dark Age are premised on players having high quality network connections.
We have done everything we can within 2 GB of memory and 2 cores
So what about real-time strategy games? Why has their design stagnated? The answer is that developers have pushed their designs about as far as they can go with the current hardware. We’ve been stuck with a 2GB memory limit for over a decade and limited to 2 or less processors (cores) for longer than that.
Strategy game designers regularly quip about first person shooters and MOBA game hardware requirements “Must be tough having to mange and render 4 units all at the same time…”
Demigod has amazing visuals because it can – as a MOBA, it doesn’t have to have as many units in the world
Gas Powered Games made one of the most ambitious RTSs of all time – Supreme Commander. They also made the first stand-alone MOBA – Demigod. The graphics of Demigod go far beyond what’s in Supreme Commander at a fraction of the budget. Why is that? Because Demigod didn’t have to deal with hundreds of independent units running around at once which reduces memory use.
The gorgeous visuals and detail in Ironclad’s Sins of a Dark Age also mean fewer units in the world in order to be compatible with most PCs
The bane of game developers: No matter how much memory you have installed on your computer, 32 bit games can only “see” 2GB. That’s a limitation put on 32-bit processes in Microsoft Windows.
Ironclad’s Sins of a Solar Empire series pushes RTS’s about as far as they can go on the current hardware
I think most gamers would be shocked at how quickly memory gets consumed today. The icon for your favorite game probably uses more visual memory than many DOS games did.
What would a next-generation RTS be like?
Are you an RTS fan? Imagine what a truly ground breaking RTS would be like. Huge scale? Lots and lots of units? Huge armies battling it out on screen with amazing graphical fidelity? Throw in some innovative features to make managing these units really intuitive and compelling? It’s technically possible to do it, you would just have a hard time making money because most of the market wouldn’t be able to play it yet.
As a publisher, I get to see a lot of really innovative game designs cross my desk. There’s no shortage of innovative RTS designs. They just can’t be made profitable yet – their design requirements revolve around a player with DirectX 11, a 64-bit Windows OS and 4 cores (minimum). They could do their innovative design with much lower visual fidelity and get most of what they want but then it becomes a “budget” title.
After all, can you imagine what would happen if you tried to make some sort of City simulation game today? People would expect to be able to zoom in on individual citizens and have breathtaking visuals but also expect it to take place on some giant map. The designers would have to either have to make the map you play on be really small or cut down the amount of detail or cut down the visual fidelity of the world/buildings (or a combination of all 3). It would be very difficult and expensive to pull off right…
Chris Taylor’s Total Annihilation, arguably still the best RTS ever made
Third Phase RTSs
We’ve been through two phases of RTS’s already. The first phase was the DOS and early Windows era games. Dune, Warcraft 1/2, Dark Reign, Starcraft. Sprite Based.
The first game of the second phase I’d argue was Total Annihilation. Even though it didn’t make use of 3D hardware, it was the first game to deliver real-time rendered units. Think of the second phase as the age of 32-bit, 3D RTSs. Supreme Commander, Warcraft 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, Starcraft 2.
In both phases, the hardware drove the design of the RTS. Nothing highlighted the difference between Phase 1 and Phase 2 more than real-time Strategic Zoom. Strategic Zoom gave players the ability to zoom out and control their armies in a truly strategic way or zoom in and take control of individual groups. If Ender’s Game was, ironically, an RTS. You can assume that players will expect these kinds of features at a minimum going forward.
The third phase games can be broadly described by the technology under them: 64-bit memory, massively multithreaded. And these 3rd phase RTSs will be breathtakingly beautiful to look at, have amazing scope and micro AI (sophisticated rules for units interacting with one another without human involvement) that is astounding.
Publishers aren’t approving these designs not because there isn’t demand. There is. The problem is you can’t make a game that only a fraction of the player base can currently play.
They’re coming…
According to the Steam Hardware Survey of January 2013 over 40% of users now have 4-core (or more) machines. DirectX10/11 is mainstream and almost 70% of users have 64-bit machines. Not good enough. Not yet. But almost.
Uber Entertainment is working on Planetary Annihilation which might be the start of 3rd phase of RTSs
Keep a close eye on the specs of games. Be looking for when games explicitly require a 64-bit PC and DirectX 10 or later as minimums. Once that has become mainstream, it’ll be a race by studios to position themselves.
The RTS game concept is compelling. It works as a single player experience and can be played as a multiplayer game. Gamers want these games. They’ll pay for these games. But they also have to be measurably superior than what’s already out on the market. To do that, the hardware has to catch up. The good news is that it’s almost ready.
What would you anticipate to be the minimum hardware / OS necessary to "be ready?" How can current PC/windows people best position themselves, in the most cost effective manner, to be ready, as well?
Cant wait for the game that combines Planetary Annihilation with Sins of a Solar Empire...thatl be the day.
RTS aren't dying - they just regrouping.
I indeed wait for game what would bring what we've seen in Wargame series to next level. Since Chris Taylor is now growing potatoes, I doubt we'll see Supreme Commander 3 in cooperation with Stardock (no need to tell me Wargaming made wargames first), but it could be quite interesting to see evolution of RTS genre, maybe finally they will be able to make a step than splits tactics from strategies, and we'll see something promised in early Operation Flashpoint previews - smooth scale from level of infantryman, to level of supreme commander.
What do you mean by CT growing potatoes? Was his company not "saved" by the Wargaming.net? One would expect they bought the GPG to get a chance to publish next Supreme Commander, or whichever other IP the GPG created and owned....
Or did i get it mixed and they got only the licenses for the GPG games, but not the company itself?
The only Outstanding RTS game I've ever played was Populous. I've tried countless others like Warhammer 40k, while entertaining, really don't hold up as well (for me) as turn-based or TB/RTS hybrid.
I agree with the central idea that improved computer resources, especially the jump to 64 bit and more cores, will benefit computer games in a lot of ways. But I just don't see it benefitting "traditional" RTS's that much. At least not by just adding MOAR UNITS. Sure, you have the technical capability to deal with more units. But is that really more fun? I don't know about you, but I generally can't manage that many units and it just turns into a mess - a supposedly strategic game has turned into an action game where I am just fighting to manage my units.
You know what I consider the greatest RTS? Myth 2. For those of you who missed it, it was an early tactical RTS where you didn't even build units - you got a small squad that you had to precisely manage. To me, MOBAs have picked up on this - it is fun to concentrate on managing a small number of units well.
I think that games will continue to evolve in this direction - you will see few "traditional" RTS's in the mold of C&C/TA/SC where you build a base and control hundreds of units, but more quasi RTS's where you control a smaller number of units well.
But, the technology mentioned by Frogboy will surely have great applications elsewhere.
And it's follow up: Supreme Commander.
Just a shame Supreme Commander 2 had other developers and tasted more like cow shit then honney.
Oh yes, I remember those days with horror. Seemed like only the Civilization-series was the last man standing those days, and the future looked worrisome indeed.
Excellent book (meh movie). Even better series. It would be incredible if you could play a game the way the command/control was used there. I personally can't wait for "third phase" RTS's. I've had a quad core, 8gb, 64 bit rig for years and would love to see a game that would require me to install more RAM to play with the thousands of units on screen. Seeing some of the things that AMD has shown us can happen with units having independent AI and rendering, it's going to be, maybe not a new era, but a new phase!
Thanks for writing this! Gets me all the more excited for new RTS's! (like Sins 2? )
And the third of the series: Planetary Annihilation. In beta now
That's exactly what I meant. Wargaming is company from Belarus, and Belarus cuisine is known for wide array of dishes using potatoes. Since cuisine is generally one of things presented to newcomers, and due lack of news about CT, I made friendly joke about him liking Belarus cuisine that much, so he decided to grow his own.
No need to tell me Idaho has potato too.
Other developers? Wasn't it actually Chris idea to rework units system in such ways so even starting units could be useful at late game?
I also don't see the point in MOAR units. But some people might like it. It certainly is something people want if we look at the demand for SINS II and the Total War series.
The old Command & Conquer/StarCraft era of massproducing units I believe is dead and I won't miss it.
Don't assume that more units = more things you have to manage.
Right now, we are forced to abstract a lot of things for the sake of computing power.
If I'm managing an army where my "units" are the equivalent of battalions, it would be nice to be able to see the units fighting it out rather than have 1 guy represent a battalion.
It would be like someone saying they don't need their first person shooter to show details of a building or a room because they aren't necessary. It's about immersion.
I dont think StarCraft was ever about massproducing. It was all about small armies, literally 10-15 units...
CnC at least had no unit cap, so if you wished so, you could actually play it big against AI, but obviously you would never see many units in competitive multiplayer.
So i do think there is a need for MOAR units, but at the same time i dont really think it has to be thousands like in the StarSwarm. As far as i am concerned, the likes of SupCom or Sins got it about right - you do get the feeling of controlling large armies without a feeling of being overwhelmed. Personally i would like to see maybe 2 to 3x higher unit cap in SoaSE 2 - no need for more IMHO, even if the engine allowed it.
@Krazikarl> i certainly hope that games wont evolve in that direction -> not when we finally have technical means to "simulate" things at big scale. I am not saying that concentrating on managing small groups of units at the expense of base building and literally whole macro- part of the game is not a viable alternative. But i am not fan of it.
To illustrate what i mean, one thing about Sins i love is bombing planets from orbit. I was literally "dreaming" about game like this since i saw all those glorious DS9/Babylon 5 episodes like "Die is Cast" or "The Long, Twilight Struggle." Now i guess you can perhaps somehow make things like that into meaningful fun exercise in a game like MOBA, but this still would not be good enough, since it would lack context. I mean, the preparations, building shipyards, constructing capitalships, researching massdrivers, jumping to enemy homeworld - in other words the narrative, the immersion. No MOBA has this, while Sins does - and thats why its in my eyes superior strategy game. Even if the battles are not as tactical.
That said, i absolutely agree with what you said about fighting the managment of too many units. But i personally see this more like a fighting the UI of the game than the numbers. I had rarely issues with Sins or SupCom, mostly thanks to the zoom and great UI. In Sins the units tend to clump way too much on occasion, then it starts to be annoying i guess. Still i had way more issues with the StarCraft 2, even with my mighty armies of 20 - all because the UI of that game was terrible, archaic mess. Not to mention terrible animation, units clumping into one giant clusterfuck, with their polygons literally occupying the same space - add the ligthing speed battles and it was a recipe for disaster to me.
We have chain of command for that, aren't we?
Have you seen http://store.steampowered.com/app/63900/ "Fantasy Wars" game? They used scaling for units figurines representation - when you zoomed out you could see just one big "figurine", easy to spot. Should you zoom in, you'll see natural unit of up to 15 figurines. And you could see them fighting with each other.
Of course, it's just 15 vs 15, not sure how you're going to show us 800 vs 800 in battalions fights.
Turn based for ever, and death to poxy RTS. Lets hope it never returns.
Real real-time strategy could be interesting experience, alas, all we have are real time pseudo tactics.
But yeah, turn-based all the way. Just imagine M.A.X.-alike GalCiv based game... Mmm. Sold!
"Ironclad’s Sins of a Solar Empire series pushes RTS’s about as far as they can go on the current hardware"
SupCom was the same team (mostly).
I liked TA more than SupCom mostly due to balance.
The two TA factions (ARM & Core) weren't that different from each other. So, TA is balanced mostly like chess is: one side gets the white pieces and the other the black ones. For example, the commanders had nearly identical upgrades, every unit has a fairly similar counterpart in the other faction, etc. Most playing TA in MP actually play[ed] TA:CC (due to maps) and the Krogoth experimental (added in CC) is anything but balanced being available only to one faction; see http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28753 for example. And frankly TA had way too many units. It's hard to even remember what half of them did. If you read a unit guide, e.g. http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33452, plenty of them were considered useless. I think people have some kind of rosy glasses for TA because of its indisputably innovative elements, but it had its turds too in the design department... Perhaps if it had more streamlined gameplay (including unit arsenal) TA would still be played as [the original] Starcraft is, but I think TA is mostly dead as MP today.
I'm not sure if the open-source remake http://springrts.com/wiki/XTA is still played. Based on the activity on http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCav1tI6arKsKcEghOa-bUwg it probably still is, though much less than faforever, I suspect. Zero-K (fairly TAish, but not a simple clone) also seems to have some following https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY4uWX_gO4ZYBsCO1wQcgmg and there are a few more at http://springrts.com/wiki/Games. One of these apparently got into Steam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmj2vwBedw&list=PLmJnvU5T53FlE1H7-zqN49fk_772K-KF4
I suspect Blizzard would crack down much harder on any [open-source] games too similar to Starcraft. Atari etc. don't seem to have bothered with TA clones or near-clones.
A lot depends on the game mechanics. With Sins' design it's possible for a relative simple AI [but not the one shipped with the game] to wipe the floor with any human player in a stand-and-shoot fleet match with 5 or more units with real-time play. It would be impossible for the human to pull of the level of micromanagement needed for a [nearly] optimal firing strategy, while it would literally be a couple of lines of code for the AI [same core applied to many units]. The computing power the AI would need to do that is negligible. See http://cobalts-die.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/showcase.html; it's a discrete event simulator I wrote reproducing the firing and damage equations from Sins, but not incorporating any ship movement.
Abstraction for the sake of gameplay is not always a bad thing. If you can't really manage individual units [in real time], the only advantage for simulating lots of them is usually graphics/immersion like the Total War series has in the mainstream. Although not even a RTS, Combat Mission (1.x) abstracted infantry at half-squad scale (while tanks and guns were fairly realistic) and was a pretty popular game in its niche.
Gameplay is actually a lot more interesting in the few games that try to simulate intermediate level of commanders between the God-like player [which sees everything and can command everyone directly] and the [more or less abstracted] grunt. But very few games have done this, and most are hardcore wargames that don't even sell on Steam but you can [and I did buy] directly from the manufacturer, e.g. HPS Simulations' Panzer Campaigns series, which are very time consuming to play alas, but for reasons unrelated to this aspect.
Alas, doing something like that in a RTS would require good "middle-management" AI, and given the kind of programming effort that the typical RTS puts into the AI, the outcome would be nothing but an exercise in frustration even for a semi-skilled player. You can read on this forum the complaints that "pro" gamers have with just the ship movements snafus in Sins; the fleet feature implemented in Sins is generally considered an anti-feature, etc.
I love both those games, and are still playing SupCom MP games. It's the best RTS game experience out there.
But the second Supreme Commander game, Supreme Commander 2, was worse then eating cow shit.... Especially when you think you are going to get a new excellent TA/SupCom experience and is just getting a mediocre ordinary small scale TBS.
You mean that the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War series are "realtime pseudo tactics"? What do you mean?
After looking at the financials of PA, I see why frogboy sounds envious of them.
Not only have they gathered twice the necessary Kickstarter funds (over $2M pledged, target sum was $0.9M), but also managed to sell alpha/beta access at $90/$200 a pop thereafter (even to those who took part in the Kickstarter phase), something that would make envious even AAA title makers, no doubt. The user reactions have been a little more than just skeptical on the latter:
Oh, and the $200 level is to get all the "stock" game content. $1000 [during the kickstarter] buys you the "customized" http://planetaryannihilation.gamepedia.com/Commander, whatever that means.
This is basically like some rich guy paying more to enter a chess tournament and the organizers letting him move his queen like a knight too. You be the judge whether the level of monetary contribution should change the rules of a MP game. I know it's commonly done with MMORPG and even SP games with gear these days; the uber-powered startup weapons that DoW2:Retribution came with for the pay-more-upfront editions were already a MOBAization/MMORPGization (pay-[more-]to-win) of SP, something that was unheard of some years ago for SP games. There has been some backlash against this trend, but insofar only few games that previously offered this kind of "gameplay" have taken the opposite direction: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/193520/Wargaming_kicks_paytowin_monetization_to_the_curb.php The AAA publishers seems to have embraced preorder and day-one DLCs [pay to win] however: http://pixelgate.co.uk/ea-continue-to-implement-pay-to-win-in-full-retail-games/
Neither Planetary Annihilation nor DoW2:Retribution gave you any boosts in multiplayer if you paid more. What are you talking about?
PS. I picked up Planetary Annihilation for $30 in march this year.
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