Turn-based strategy game?
by Mike Berg · in RTS Starter Kit · 01/13/2005 (9:39 am) · 3 replies
How easy would it be to modify the RTS engine to make a turn-based strategy game? For example:
Each turn, player 1 has the option to:
- Select a unit or group of units and assign an "action" to them, such as 'move', 'move and shoot', etc.
- Then go through all the units and decide where you want to have them move, and who they want to shoot at, etc.
- have the computer resolve the shots/damage based on the stats of the shooter/defender.
Then have player 2 follow the same steps with his army...
I'd like to be able to set a limit as to how far a unit can move per turn, and how far it can shoot, etc.
The scripts for the RTS unit seem limited to unlimited movement and instant reaction times for attacking, etc...
This is my first Torque project., so bear with me. I was hoping a project like this might be a little easier to break into than a full-blown rts... Any thoughts?
Each turn, player 1 has the option to:
- Select a unit or group of units and assign an "action" to them, such as 'move', 'move and shoot', etc.
- Then go through all the units and decide where you want to have them move, and who they want to shoot at, etc.
- have the computer resolve the shots/damage based on the stats of the shooter/defender.
Then have player 2 follow the same steps with his army...
I'd like to be able to set a limit as to how far a unit can move per turn, and how far it can shoot, etc.
The scripts for the RTS unit seem limited to unlimited movement and instant reaction times for attacking, etc...
This is my first Torque project., so bear with me. I was hoping a project like this might be a little easier to break into than a full-blown rts... Any thoughts?
#2
I'm working on a turn based vehicle combat game myself. I've been grappling with art pipeline issues and took a long vacation so I can't provide alot of concrete bootstrap kind of help/code advice. I'm just not that far along yet (nor all that good a coder - my advice may be worth less than you paid for it).
However Stephen makes some really good points (as usual) regarding the difficulty of building an RTS vs turn based game using the RTS kit. The basic RTS features and behavior are all coded for you. Missing bits like resource management are already available as community contributed code and resources so much of the work has been started for you.
From the research and design sessions we've had I'm going to need to do alot of turn management work to regulate the player's interaction with units, handle round robin style player turns and put hooks into the units so that they only act once per turn and only on command.
for me it's a skill development/learning project but I'm not sure it's the best or shortest path to a complete game.
I'm happy to discuss it more and share more of our design but I don't want to come off sounding like "you should do this and that" or send you down false paths that I may have talked myself into.
01/13/2005 (4:50 pm)
Great topic.I'm working on a turn based vehicle combat game myself. I've been grappling with art pipeline issues and took a long vacation so I can't provide alot of concrete bootstrap kind of help/code advice. I'm just not that far along yet (nor all that good a coder - my advice may be worth less than you paid for it).
However Stephen makes some really good points (as usual) regarding the difficulty of building an RTS vs turn based game using the RTS kit. The basic RTS features and behavior are all coded for you. Missing bits like resource management are already available as community contributed code and resources so much of the work has been started for you.
From the research and design sessions we've had I'm going to need to do alot of turn management work to regulate the player's interaction with units, handle round robin style player turns and put hooks into the units so that they only act once per turn and only on command.
for me it's a skill development/learning project but I'm not sure it's the best or shortest path to a complete game.
I'm happy to discuss it more and share more of our design but I don't want to come off sounding like "you should do this and that" or send you down false paths that I may have talked myself into.
Torque 3D Owner Stephen Zepp
In general, turn based games are simply a different top level design from real times ones, and there really isn't a lot of difficulty in implementation.
You would have to build storage structures of some sort to save off each of the input events (move, attack, defend, etc.) as the player goes through their turn instead of sending each command as it's finished to the server.
You would also need to create functionality to handle "order conflicts", since it sounds like you want your game to have two primary phases: Order Generation and Order Processing. This part might be a bit more complex, since you'll have to integrate and then analyze each of the player's stored input events, and handle cases where there are conflicts, but again this isn't a hugely daunting task if you put work into the design.
I would hesitate to say that the scripts are "limited" to unlimited movement, since it is simply a design decision. Yes, they are currently configured for an expectation of real time play (it is after all the Real Time Strategy Starter Kit!), but all you would need to do here is to add a variable or two to the units themselves "maxMovementPerTurn", or something similar.
Quite honestly, I would suggest that given the TGE and the RTS SK, making a turn based game is more difficult then a "full blown RTS". Obviously if you were starting from scratch (no engine at all) it would probably be easier, but with the RTS SK as a big head start in the real time aspect, redesigning it to be turn based is a lot more work than, say, tweaking the kit step by step to implement things you want your game to do.