Sometime tomorrow, I'll pick up my pre-order of Culdcept Saga. One interesting feature of that board-card game is that you're able to see your opponent's cards. You know every card they draw and even get a glimpse of their entire hand each turn.
Some reviewers complained about this, because it definitely goes against expectations. But it's an interesting twist, I enjoy it in the CS demo, and I've been thinking how it might open up a new style of gameplay for many genres.
RTS games, for example. Imagine knowing at all times what your enemy is doing. What would it be like if the element of surprise was not present?
It's a little more common in mono-a-mono games. If an enemy spell takes 3 seconds to cast, the player might be able to recognize it in the first second and cast a 2-second counterspell. In Sid Meier's Pirates!, the same is possible in dueling.
Anyway, how do y'all feel about some games including complete transparency?
Showing posts with label RTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RTS. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Tactics versus Strategy
On the Isotx forums, there's an interesting debate between two developers about MMO design and which (if any) MMO elements require a qualitatively different production process than when producing a game of smaller scale and fewer players.
I'll be posting some of my thoughts about that on Write the Game tomorrow, but here's a copy of my response to a side-discussion which arose. What is the difference between strategy and tactics? Is one a subset of the other?
There is a difference between tactics and strategy, and it isn't scale; it's spontaneity.
A strategy is planned primarily before the encounter. A tactic is planned primarily during the encounter. The emphasis in strategy is preparation. The emphasis in tactics is reaction. A general can use tactics and a footsoldier can use strategies, though each profession generally requires more of one method than the other.
Say my football lands in my neighbor's fenced yard with his unfriendly Rottweiler. I might devise a strategy to distract him by throwing a nice, juicy bone across the yard... just enough time for me to hop the fence, grab my ball, and hop back over. So I throw the bone and the beast of a dog starts to run after it... but he stops and turns around when he notices me hop the fence. Uh oh. Whereas I could have taken hours to plan my strategy, I now have only seconds to decide how I'm going to reach that ball... or if I should just forget the ball and run for my life. That's tactics.
I might have anticipated this possibility in my strategizing, but the circumstances I now find myself in were not entirely predictable: How far is the dog from me? How far am I from the ball? How accurate was my throw of the bone? Why, oh why, did I not notice the second Rottweiler lying in shade behind a bush?! Because I am having to process new information and plan my response within an immediate timeframe, this might still be tactical situation, despite my planning previous to the encounter.
Strategy and tactics certainly exist along a continuum, but they are distinguishable from one another... just as there is no definite border between the colors blue and green, but that does not prevent us from recognizing the two as usefully separate terms.
I'll be posting some of my thoughts about that on Write the Game tomorrow, but here's a copy of my response to a side-discussion which arose. What is the difference between strategy and tactics? Is one a subset of the other?
There is a difference between tactics and strategy, and it isn't scale; it's spontaneity.
A strategy is planned primarily before the encounter. A tactic is planned primarily during the encounter. The emphasis in strategy is preparation. The emphasis in tactics is reaction. A general can use tactics and a footsoldier can use strategies, though each profession generally requires more of one method than the other.
Say my football lands in my neighbor's fenced yard with his unfriendly Rottweiler. I might devise a strategy to distract him by throwing a nice, juicy bone across the yard... just enough time for me to hop the fence, grab my ball, and hop back over. So I throw the bone and the beast of a dog starts to run after it... but he stops and turns around when he notices me hop the fence. Uh oh. Whereas I could have taken hours to plan my strategy, I now have only seconds to decide how I'm going to reach that ball... or if I should just forget the ball and run for my life. That's tactics.
I might have anticipated this possibility in my strategizing, but the circumstances I now find myself in were not entirely predictable: How far is the dog from me? How far am I from the ball? How accurate was my throw of the bone? Why, oh why, did I not notice the second Rottweiler lying in shade behind a bush?! Because I am having to process new information and plan my response within an immediate timeframe, this might still be tactical situation, despite my planning previous to the encounter.
Strategy and tactics certainly exist along a continuum, but they are distinguishable from one another... just as there is no definite border between the colors blue and green, but that does not prevent us from recognizing the two as usefully separate terms.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Better Controls for RTS Games
I don't play as many RTS games as I used to. I've got Age of Empires: III and love it, and was impressed by Battle for Middle Earth II, but my interest in RTS has waned after C&C: Red Alert...and I'm honestly not sure why. So maybe the following thought is out of ignorance, but it applies to the games I know.
RTS controls are in dire need of innovation.
MOVEMENT PRECISION
Positioning an army exactly how you want them in these games is like trying to parallel park with two flat tires. First I have to ensure my army is coming at the target spot from precisely the right angle, and then I have to be sure to click on exactly the right spot...not too far ahead or behind. A failure to position the army right where I want it means a gap in the valley or other zone I was attempting to block, or some other strategic fault.
Why can't I use the WASD keys to maneuver my army precisely, as if it was an FPS character controlled in 3rd-person view? Why can't I use the Numpad keys to quickly and easily instruct my armies to maintain a particular formation including mid-march, and not just when they reach the target formation? Wouldn't it be great to change their formation in reaction to a moment's circumstance with just the tap of a single key, instead of having to rush through a series of scroll options (like in BfME 2)? I seem to remember Sacrifice doing this to some success.
And wouldn't it be nice to have the option of preset strategic commands of a script beyond a single action?
BATTLE-SPECIFIC COMMANDS
Imagine having one hotkey for "fall back to the valley" and another for "fall back to the fort"...these points being selected by the player through waypoints.
TARGET-SPECIFIC COMMANDS
Imagine being able to direct each type of military unit (archers, pikemen, cavalry, etc) to focus its attacks on a particular unit type of the enemy's (ex: "my archers, aim for their cavalry first"). This could be selected before battles and would remain active until otherwise chosen, like character stances in some RPGs and fighting games. There could also be items or hotkeys to allow players to affect unit-enemy preferences on-the-fly.
This could also be applied in the other direction. The player might direct particular units to retreat only if they encounter a particular enemy unit.
CONDITION-TRIGGERED COMMANDS
Imagine if the player could issue orders that remain latent until conditions, chosen by the player, activate that command. Ex: "If > 40% casualties, fall back to the valley." That command could even be compounded with "If > 70% casualties, fall back to the fort"; compounded meaning that both commands were issued before the battle, but are merely activated separately (and automatically, in response to those conditions).
GUARDED RETREAT
It would be great if I could rank my units as hierarchal lines of defense. As games are now, in order to have my pikemen stay and guard the retreat of my archers, I must have the two types of units separately selected and accomplish the retreat manually. But what if I had preselected my pikemen as the first line of defense and the archers as the second line? So when I order the retreat, the pikemen automatically know to stay and fight until the archers are a safe distance away.
Controls like this, especially, would make RTS games ultimately more easy to manage. Of course, all of these simplifying controls require a learning curve, so it's debatable how much this lowers the initial learning curve. But certainly, more casual gamers could be allowed a fair gameplay experience without use of many of these features, while veterans and hardcore gamers could explore an extensive range of strategic possibilities and command prowess.
One of my favorite movies is Patton. I highly recommend that and other old WWII films to anyone interested in RTS design, because they help expose the many limitations of current RTS games and the avenues of potential growth.
RTS controls are in dire need of innovation.
MOVEMENT PRECISION
Positioning an army exactly how you want them in these games is like trying to parallel park with two flat tires. First I have to ensure my army is coming at the target spot from precisely the right angle, and then I have to be sure to click on exactly the right spot...not too far ahead or behind. A failure to position the army right where I want it means a gap in the valley or other zone I was attempting to block, or some other strategic fault.
Why can't I use the WASD keys to maneuver my army precisely, as if it was an FPS character controlled in 3rd-person view? Why can't I use the Numpad keys to quickly and easily instruct my armies to maintain a particular formation including mid-march, and not just when they reach the target formation? Wouldn't it be great to change their formation in reaction to a moment's circumstance with just the tap of a single key, instead of having to rush through a series of scroll options (like in BfME 2)? I seem to remember Sacrifice doing this to some success.
And wouldn't it be nice to have the option of preset strategic commands of a script beyond a single action?
BATTLE-SPECIFIC COMMANDS
Imagine having one hotkey for "fall back to the valley" and another for "fall back to the fort"...these points being selected by the player through waypoints.
TARGET-SPECIFIC COMMANDS
Imagine being able to direct each type of military unit (archers, pikemen, cavalry, etc) to focus its attacks on a particular unit type of the enemy's (ex: "my archers, aim for their cavalry first"). This could be selected before battles and would remain active until otherwise chosen, like character stances in some RPGs and fighting games. There could also be items or hotkeys to allow players to affect unit-enemy preferences on-the-fly.
This could also be applied in the other direction. The player might direct particular units to retreat only if they encounter a particular enemy unit.
CONDITION-TRIGGERED COMMANDS
Imagine if the player could issue orders that remain latent until conditions, chosen by the player, activate that command. Ex: "If > 40% casualties, fall back to the valley." That command could even be compounded with "If > 70% casualties, fall back to the fort"; compounded meaning that both commands were issued before the battle, but are merely activated separately (and automatically, in response to those conditions).
GUARDED RETREAT
It would be great if I could rank my units as hierarchal lines of defense. As games are now, in order to have my pikemen stay and guard the retreat of my archers, I must have the two types of units separately selected and accomplish the retreat manually. But what if I had preselected my pikemen as the first line of defense and the archers as the second line? So when I order the retreat, the pikemen automatically know to stay and fight until the archers are a safe distance away.
Controls like this, especially, would make RTS games ultimately more easy to manage. Of course, all of these simplifying controls require a learning curve, so it's debatable how much this lowers the initial learning curve. But certainly, more casual gamers could be allowed a fair gameplay experience without use of many of these features, while veterans and hardcore gamers could explore an extensive range of strategic possibilities and command prowess.
One of my favorite movies is Patton. I highly recommend that and other old WWII films to anyone interested in RTS design, because they help expose the many limitations of current RTS games and the avenues of potential growth.
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