A lot of things go through my mind. From sword fights to accounting to gaming. Some call it weird but I call it a sign of intellect (Insert LOL here.)
One of my many ideas is a concept regarding a MMORTS. Before i even begin to go into some detail, it is important that you are familiar with the term. The term stems from two genres of games, MMO-RPG, and RTS. What they stand for respectively is, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and Real Time Strategy. An example of an RPG would be for example, Fable, Mass Effect, Runescape (an example of an MMORPG), Guildwars, and etc. An example of a RTS would be supreme commander, Command and conquer, Tom Clancy’s Endwar, Age of Empires and etc.
So using this knowledge, we can take the MMO part from MMORPG and combine it with RTS to achieve MMORTS, a Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy Game. Essentially it would be a “Resource collecting, base building, mass army battle” online against thousands of opponents. There are many technical, gameplay, and other issues regarding this genre however and over the span of this series of articles, I wish to cover most topics that come to mind including technology structures (In game that is), the concept of worlds, how to possibly achieve the creation and hosting of such game, what is to be expected and etc.
The purpose of this article is simple. To introduce you guys to the concept, to detail the situations in which I will present my ideas, and to lead you folk into the main body of this series.
First things first.
This may come as a surprise, but this project has no name whatsoever. It is a fact that usually early on in a project or even before commencing it, I have the name for it ready but in this situation I just simply dont have one. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that even if such a project could be realized, it would not be due to my actions i.e I wouldn’t be creating the game by coding/creating graphics and what not.
Second things second
So if one thinks about the potential size of a MMORTS, one can quickly reach the conclusion that Earth in itself is an unsuitable battle environment. Considering the size of the armies, the number of people playing and what not, we will need a bigger, a limitless battle environment. No other environment but space can fit this role.
The player will begin on one of the thousands of worlds created for the game. It is crucial to know that a player wont “own” a planet. On a planet, there can and will exist other armies, civilizations or whatever it shall be called. Though the ideal situation, and one most experienced players will achieve is to achieve total command of their own planet thus kicking out the other players. This planet struggle will be the first part of a young aspiring commanders experience.
The game will begin with the commander attempting to establish his army (For the rest of these articles, I will use the term army whereas the term civilization can be used interchangeably) and attempting to gain favours from the local populace centres (Neutral AI controlled cities.) Further more, while attempting to please the populace, the commander will begin fighting against other players for resources of the planet. Each planet having some sort of key “target” such as a rare artifact, access to a limited amount of a valuable resource and what not. The key target will play as the end game for that specific planet though the majority of the battles will take place over access to common resources such as power generating resources (For the sake of examples, lets assume this is coal), money generating resources (Minerals what not, oil?), and key passageways.
Once the end game is achieved, usually the player will have a strong enough force and will begin systematic erasure of other players from the planet (The concept of death in the game will be covered in another article, so make sure to constantly keep an eye on the ‘mmorts’ tag.) Once this is achieved, the player will have established total command of the planet and will now “own” it in the traditional sense. At this stage, the player will now begin the second stage of the game.
Third things third
There are many topics i can cover from this point on such as technology (both in game, and powering the game), the second and third stage of the game, the battles, and other intricate features of the game such as the civilisation elements, advantages of dealing with the local populace, clans and what not but for the sakes of this article, I will now describe the situation in which i shall write the other articles.
The aspiring commander I will refer to for examples sake will be myself, Scrinner. However, once detailing the true end game of the game, I will assume that being the first player of the game, I have allready established a massive army spanning several galaxies, and am the leader of a very powerful clan that the entire game is attempting to team up against. Also having created the tech tree to an extent (though not having developed it physically, or whatever you want to call it), i know how to create several high tech “Destroyer level weapons”.
Thus the situation will be that I am this feared titan in the game in which all the other clans of the game will attempt to team up against and over run my armies. Though its a theoretical situation worthy of a LOL (I know, etherealbyte is probably laughing himself to death somewhere right now), the situation is one where I can easily let my imagination flow into these articles while allowing me to write about all the intricacies of the game.
And so, to keep this long article, not too long, I will now end this with a note that this was just an introduction to the game. More articles describing the areas above will be written in due time. So I recommend either following the main page or to watch the tags to the side and click ‘mmorts’ time to time to find any updates you might have missed (assuming you are interested).
– The Mad General, In an attempt to establish true dominance
Scrinner
Gotei Thirteen 