JMoe: The Mastermind

During class recently, someone mentioned an article they read on Gamasutra about how Real Time Strategy games should really be called something else, like Real Time Tactics games. Being a big RTS fan, which should probably be apparent from my past writings, I decided to dig up the article and take a look. You can find the article here.

While an interesting article, I think that the premise is rather fundamentally flawed, for a variety of reasons. One is a misappreciation for the depth and complexity of strategy, and the other is a misappreciation for the depth and complexity of strategy games themselves. I’m going up against some tough competition here, since I can’t cite people like Clausewitz or Sun-Tzu, and I’m going on memory for my primary strategy source, which is the book Strategy by B.H. Liddell Hart. It’s an excellent book, and I recommend you check it out if you happen to be interested in strategy (now would be a good time to have an Amazon referrals account, but I don’t, so buying it won’t give me any money).

The rest of the argument after the cut.
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While browsing around the C&C community for interesting news, I happened across an article which includes a design for the “perfect” C&C game mode for Tiberium. For those who many not know, Tiberium is a first person shooter set in the Tiberium universe (created by the original Command and Conquer, along with Tiberian Sun, and Tiberium Wars). It’s not part of the C&C franchise, it instead shares the same universe setting-wise, but is a separate branch. This allows a lot more freedom.

While the game mode in the article is interesting, it has two major flaws.
1. It doesn’t fit with what the apparent design goals of Tiberium are.
2. It sounds an awful lot like Renegade.
For some people, #2 isn’t really so much a problem as a great thing, but Tiberium isn’t Renegade. Renegade was an attempt to create an FPS that was a C&C game. Tiberium is an FPS that happens to be in the same universe as the C&C games. They’re not really the same at all.

My own design for a team based multiplayer mode for Tiberium comes after the cut.
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About a year ago I said I would make a post about LinQ. Now that Visual Studio 2008 is out, and LinQ is a released technology, I think I can get around to it. I still haven’t built a project that makes a good use of LinQ, but I’ve got a fairly good understanding of it, and found some interesting ways to use it.

Now, you may be wonder what LinQ is, and what it stands for. The answer is that it stands for Language INtegrated Query. It is an extension to C# and VB.NET that allows you to use a SQL-like syntax for constructing queries against a wide variety of data sources. The most obvious example is XML, but you can also use most of the built in data structures in the .NET framework as well.

With that out of the way, on to an example or two of how I’ve managed to use LinQ, and what the challenges that I’ve run into are.
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During my work at the GAMBIT Games Lab, the topic of educational games came up. The question was whether or not educational games were a valid genre. That got me thinking, which led to this. My conclusion is that in fact, all games are educational. Some have a more explicit purpose, teaching concepts which are applicable outside the game realm (whether this be games like Number Munchers, Word Munchers, or Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing), but any time you are playing a game, you’re learning.
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This past summer, I had the opportunity of a lifetime (at least for me). I was working as an intern on an unannounced RTS at EALA. Suffice it to say, due to NDA, I can’t say much about what I did. I can say that I was doing multiplayer gameplay design. An example of the sort of thing I was doing can be seen in the various multiplayer modes for C&C 3 on Xbox 360. They have things like capture the flag, conquer and hold, and a few others. I was designing modes like that for the project I was working on.

The real reason for finally coming out about this is that I had the opportunity to do an interview with Aaron Kaufman, the C&C Community Manager at EALA about my experience. I think it makes a good read (despite my rather obvious bias), and even has a photo of me at the end, for those of you interested in seeing what this mastermind looks like.

I suggest you check it out if you happen to be interested in working in games, or even just what it is like behind the scenes of a major studio. I know that I really wanted to work in the games industry going in to my internship, and I came out knowing that I’d found what I wanted to do. I loved every day of it, and was terribly sad to leave. The guys at EALA were amazing, and I just had an amazing time. Peace through power!

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars launched in the US on March 27th 2007. I picked up a copy of the Kane Edition (aka the Collector’s Edition) on release day, and spent most of Spring Break playing the game. It’s time for a full review. I will try to avoid spoilers, but you might consider some of the full text a spoiler. I’ll put it as part of an exceprt so that you don’t need to read potential spoilers if you don’t want.

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Universe at War is a new RTS title being developed by Petroglyph Games. Petroglyph is composed of a fair number of the members of the former Westwood Studios, responsible for the Command and Conquer series, Dune, and various other games. I’ve been working fairly closely with them lately on developing their Community Site, which has involved things like setting up the forums, and building the website from an image concept. It’s been a lot of fun, and hopefully will continue to be an interesting relationship (I’m gearing up now to revamp the site with Universe at War content, and add a bunch of new features). If you’re interested in more about Universe at War, I recommend checking out the official site, or one of the many fansites.

Defense of the Ancients (All Stars) (or DotA for short) has been a recent hobby of mine.  DotA is a modified map for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, which changes the character of the game fairly dramatically.  It is a map designed for 10 player games, with each player controlling a hero.  Each of these heroes is unique, and has a set of unique abilities.  The map is divided into 3 “lanes” each leading to an entrance to a fairly heavily fortified base.  Each lane receives waves of “creeps” which are AI controlled units.  These creeps are given the goal of breaking into the enemy base area, and destroying the enemy Ancient.  The goal of each sides heroes is, obviously, to prevent this from happening.  You purchase items and gain experience based on kills (of both creeps and other heroes). For more information, I recommend the DotA wiki article, and the DotA Allstars wiki article.

The uniqueness of DotA comes from it being an RPG in an RTS package. It is a very short, fast paced RPG, that is a modification of an RTS game. The core gameplay mechanics are very much RPG based (leveling up, earning gold, buying items), but it is much more fast paced than a traditional RPG (such as Diablo 2). This makes it an excellent LAN party game, and an excellent game for experimentation. With the wide variety (82 as of version 6.40) of heroes available, no two games are ever alike. The RPG mechanics are quite simple, but surprisingly addictive. You always want to try just one more round to see if you can get more kills, or find a better way to build up your hero (or just play another hero with -random).

The gameplay idea of a fast paced RPG is quite interesting, and something that could be fleshed out further. Games such as Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D) are a pencil and paper (and or tabletop) version of this type of game, but often take much longer, and are much more involved. However, the idea of a fast paced RPG with player designed characters (heroes in the DotA parlance) could be very interesting. The challenge is to find a way to balance the various hero skills so that one particular combination is not overpowering. This is something I hope to expand on in the future, and will maybe try to do some basic design work on a game based on this idea. Stay tuned.