Project RTS Revival, and the rest.

There's been a lot going on in my life, thus not too much time for projects.  So I've decided to push some things to the future and start fresh with something new.

The Voxel RPG project will be postponed til next year so I can have some time to either (A) find a coder to translate some of Ken's code (B) Figure it out myself (C) Ask Ken very nicely to release KV6 display code.

Then there was a pending Halloween game which I realized I would never be able to finish in time, but had a pretty good engine going.  So I'll be putting that one off to plan for next year's halloween.

Other projects were already put on hold...so -hopefully- now I'll just be focusing on this new project.  Now lets get on to that.

Last week I was bored, uninspired or other such depressing state, I was searching around on the net.  I was frustrated that at large I have little time to make art these days, besides some simple stuff.  However I can find time for map making and coding in general.

I decided to search for some free art to play with and stumbled upon lostgarden.com and a graphic set from a canceled RTS game ALA Dune 2/2000 style, called Hard Vacuum.

I've always enjoyed RTS games and have been inspired in the past to design one similar to Dune 2, much like they had.  Although are concepts of improving an RTS resource gathering style game differ,  I have some different approaches.

I've played quite a few RTS in the past, from C&C, Dune2, Warwind, and some newer ones like The Guild 1  & 2 and other variations.

Idealy I'll be going for more a Dune 2 clone with some parts of Warwind and Warcraft with upgrading parts of units and having a limit based on housing.

The game I've planned will be more resource hunting and securing your land.

Unlike most RTS's I plan on eleminating the fog of war entirely.  As it is a futuristic setting it makes no sense that they wouldn't have scanned the world.  However the catch is you can only see enemy or neutral units and structures if your own units can.  Structures will retain their visibility once you see them like in most fog of war games.

Additionally resources are all hidden underground and require units with special scanners to find them.

Three resources will be collected, Oil, Ore and Gas(natural)

Units will be used for mining ore mostly.  There will be a water unit that can mine all types of resources.
Wells must be built to collect oil or gas deposites.

The world consists of 60x60 120x120 tile sized maps connected and revistible.  I plan on bases retaining per map so players can revisit them.  Their upkeeps also transfer over as does their production.

I'm also trying to keep it as customizable as possible so that it can essentailly be converted or added on to so others can make their own RTS or simply expand this one.

All tile(terrain), unit, structure and some effects are from Hard Vacuum. I'll be making new interface graphics and possibly some additional pieces either altering or making new ones.  Some tiles need to be recolored.

This links to the current release of the map editor.  Still a work in progress and you can't do a few things yet.  It only saves and loads from one map file.  Requires OpenGL and has been tested on Netbooks running XP.
Current map editor

As of now the tile set is finalized at least in its ordering so if you want to make some maps they will be supported in the future.

A demo video with comments

A concept screenshot made up in photoshop showing the new interface and notes for what's what.