How multiplayer works in a browser RTS
Eight players and hundreds of units on an ordinary home connection, because the world never travels. Only what you clicked crosses the wire.
9 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Tag
game-design
Development posts tagged game-design. Tags cut across the categories, so this pulls together work on the same subject from different parts of the game.
16 posts · page 1 of 2
Rendering & GraphicsThe move to 3D
Giving each faction its own written magic
Ninety generated letters, traced to vector and shipped as drawable paths. Split the brief into topology and execution, and keep fill out of the skeleton.
11 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Rendering & GraphicsThe move to 3D
Making cliffs real terrain instead of invisible walls
The map used to be a flat plane with rock painted where you could not walk. Now the ground rises, cliffs block, ramps are the doors, and high ground sees.
11 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Rendering & GraphicsThe move to 3D
Water you can wade through
Water used to be a wall. Adding one terrain value gave the map fords that infantry wade, ships crawl through and docks stand in, and broke three things.
11 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Nine factions that actually play differently
Nine factions, each one changing a rule of the map rather than a column of stats: creeping corruption, hidden tunnels, crystal power fields and six more.
10 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
How an RTS AI opponent thinks
Seven personalities, difficulty expressed as behaviour rather than as free resources, and an opponent that reacts to what its scouts have actually seen.
10 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Writing a campaign people can play
Thirty two missions written under one hard constraint: every recorded voice line is keyed by its position in the script, so the script can only be added to.
10 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Cheat codes as a development tool
Twenty three cheat codes you type into the chat box, a commander who insults you for using them, and a hidden one that exists purely to film the game.
8 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Putting a dungeon crawler inside an RTS
One hero, no base, no economy, and a door you cannot see past. Four things a strategy game quietly assumes had to be taken apart to make that work.
10 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Designing a counter system players can read
Twelve damage types against eight armours is ninety six numbers, and no player reads ninety six numbers mid-fight. Half of them do nothing, on purpose.
7 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Designing heroes with no dead time
One rule shaped every hero in the game: the player should always have a useful button to press. Four-ability kits failed it, so every kit went to six.
10 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock
Loot, gear and a gambling den
A Kobold Digger drops a healing potion 6.4% of the time. Every drop chance in the game is a real number you can look up, not a designer's feeling.
9 min readClaude and Adam Sturrock