Hello, I'm wondering what the steps to making a RTS are?
If any of you are making/have made a RTS, please tell me what steps you took.

If you were able to make one you wouldn't have to ask this question. Learn how to program and you'll eventually figure it out.

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Lal, I'm able to program, else I wouldn't post on this forum.
I am just curious how indies that have made RTS's have done it. What they have done before etc.

Anyone know some sort of arcade/easy game I could start off with if I'd like to get some training for making a RTS?

A mate of mine who was obsessed with making an RTS found this and I haven't seen hime since:

http://springrts.com/

Games look pretty good, I assume it takes a lot of effort and a team of people to make them, but it is a free engine...

If you don't have the necessary programming skills to make a RTS from scratch perhaps consider modding a moddable one? Or search the interweb for RTS engines and see if there is anything that makes sense that you can get a handle on.

Its a complex genre to leap into...

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Which is all I was trying to say. If you're looking for some sort of progressive line you can try pong -> tetris -> asteroids -> something ... -> then maybe have a go at some sort of tower defense game ... maybe ...

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In brightest day, in blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!
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You're right, that it is a difficult nut to crack.

From my own experience, I'd advise to start with the map definition. Not specifically the 3D graphics, but an abstract layer that can be used to do pathfinding with. But importantly, make sure this is compatible with the graphics and terrain features you will use, and also able to be modified on the fly.

Because there are two things you'll need to consider when you tackle the pathfinding:

(1) environmental features like cliffs and deep water being an obstruction, and
(2) stationary units / buildings / destructible doodads being an obstruction.



I think it's worth remembering that in all professions, there are people who are geniuses at what they do. Whether it's rocket science, or relativity theory, or writing software...

So I think it's fair to assume that even in computer games, the most cleverly engineered ones we see, do indeed represent the best that the human mind can produce.

Expecting to compete with those, would be... ambitious.

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Replying a bit late, thank you for your advice.

I am not at all familiar with nearly any other game programming than 2D RPGs, like most of the Idiots :]

I will look into map definition, that certaintly is important. I should surely do something like a "worldviewer" which lets you look at the map/world, without any gameplay yet.

And as someone clever said (on this forum?), I won't try to make a game engine if I ought to make a game

Well, as I would say, even your game you have scripted could be classified as "game engine" - as long as you have your own open source of it you can modify later on...

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Even this world is "programmed" by a Creator, the most skilled programmer of us all. What do you think of all that exists and all the environmental phenomena? He that maketh all had programmed it all and whenever needed, He can call one of the functions with input specified by Him.

Replying a bit late too, but maybe that can help someone...

I have begun a RTS game draft project using Ogre3D for 3D rendering, CEGUI for the GUI. I didn't do any game design for, and I've done this at the beginning with the framework tutorial given by Ogre 3D. I have deleted the framework after understanding how it works.

I thought RTS game are the easier game design, but I had lot of difficulties with the pathfinding (I think it's THE difficulty of this kind of game play). Ogre SDK offer you an animated robot and a generated terran to use for your little project.

My problem is: I didn't do any game design... So maintenance is very very difficult when your project begin to be big.

Otherwise, using a rendering engine like Ogre 3D can help you to focus on the gameplay and that's really cool!