Building an RTS game
I don’t profess to be much of a game developer, but I’m passionate about the subject and I do dabble as I can. I believe game development to be a lot harder than most business applications as games are required to give constant feedback to the player and immediately respond to input. Players have also grown up with an expecation of a certain quality from games which is important otherwise they are not fun to play.
Off and on, I’ve been working on an RTS, built using GameMaker (I prefer to use tools than write reams and reams of implementation code); and this weekend I upgraded my little baby with a lot of the graphics and I want to share it with you.
I built the original concept in about an hour as a demo for a friend who wanted to get into game development and build RTS games. I then left it to him but he didn’t continue with it and I was excited to add more features to the demo. I added a mini-map (which has been completely re-written to be faster in the long run) and did some more work on unit creation.
Recently I was at Danny Day’s house playing with some code entirely different and I happened to show him this demo. He and his housemate liked it so much I was encourage to spend this weekend (OK, only Sunday) working on it. I updated the graphics using Reiner’s Tilesets (free 2D game graphics), changed the mini-map and did some isometric implementations so that the building obstacles could have height.
My next job is to change the soldier unit and enemy soldier unit graphics (a lot of work because it’s animated and all the images have to be resized accurately) and fix up the selection of units. I then need to improve the radial menus (activated by right-clicking on your castle) and the unit selection methods.
The last task in the short term is to build an opposing AI which will build units and send them against you!
I’ve added a static page to my blog where you’ll be able to get screenshots, downloads and updates on this game; and I hope you’ll try it and leave me some comments.
