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Programmer/s needed to revive the RTS genre.

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Hello everyone!

For some time now I have thought about reviving the RTS genre. I feel as if the games today have lost the importance of lore and what it means to go through a story. I would like to find 2-3 programmers who are interested in creating this. We would learn Unreal Engine 4 and create the BASIC FRAMEWORK for the game as we go along the way. You should have some basic programming skills for this, but no Unreal Engine experience. After we have finished this, we will find more people who will join us. Please answer to this thread if you are interested in that. I believe starting this now is better than never.
 
That's so vague man.

There is a HiveWE open source world editor here on Hive, man, as a way to make Warcraft 3 style maps. There is also "view in 3D" button in the model download section to view models in 3D.

I read through these open source tools and stapled their code together into a game engine as a weekend hobby over the last two years, and I got to where I can just about play something akin to melee Warcraft 3 in a single player experience.


I want to invent this sort of "engine" reproduction of the systems I know, and invent and this hobby for myself so I can keep using the general feel and ideas of how it feels to mod Warcraft 3, but where I am not held back by the closed source unsupported War3 engine.

I do not doubt that for you what I am describing sounds goofy and ridiculous, when you know if I had any other goal I could have used Unreal or Unity and I specifically am not.

But I am telling my story because that's how crazy apart and dedicated to our own ideas humans become. I want my RTS thing, not yours. I want me in charge of my computer, not you.

What drives you? What is your vision?

My new system is going to revive my old Warcraft mods that I have backed up that only work on particular old Warcraft 3 versions. The menu simulator is able to preview the menu for Project Revolution and for TTOR:

I did not make any of this content, I just am doing programming to display it and try to recreate my childhood game so I can take modding to the next level and also maintain support for any old mods I want to try to support. So, that's my vision. I know I have black squares on TToR menu! It's a BLP parser issue to solve later. I know BillboardLockZ is pointing the wrong direction on the bullets in the sky in Project Revolution. I just have to rework how the billboard was implemented and fix it later. I am trying to make a system, maybe it can be like the RTS engine of the future, or maybe I will just play it alone in my parents' basement. But either way I know what I want to make and sometimes I feel like it's by some divine grace that I am even still alive and able to keep working, but as much as I can I want to try. And I am driven so crazy wanting what I want that even though I am probably from a certain mental lense the kind of person you want, honestly I can barely even imagine how it would be to make the decision to join you. I cannot see it at all. I feel manipulated as if by a machine so I only want my own, egotistical future where I have my own Warcraft 3.

Humans came from single celled organisms. Everything is based on survival. You have to be ridiculously rich in social support -- in people around you -- and well taken care of in order to make your RTS. Sometimes in a moment of passion like last night, I fire up my engine in Reign of Chaos simulator mode and I click Campaign on that menu and it goes to Thrall on his hut with the yellow circles of power, but I walk into the purple town and it does not load properly at all. The units there do not have their Aspect of Alliance set and they attack their own selves. Once Thrall passes through the town of units attacking their own, I reach a Gnoll and kill it. Then the second or third Gnolls kill Thrall because I have no Grunts because I have no triggers in my engine. Then the body of Thrall does not levitate into the sky, because my concept of hero is not finished yet.

And this life is simultaneously the most wondrous thing I have ever known while also deeply frustrating. There are so many bugs... so many bugs... and if I would simply forsake ideology and play Blizzard's game, the problems would all go away. I reach out into the void to grasp the power to make my own Warcraft 3 only to find that I am desperately alone and ignorant in a machine civilization despite being evolved to survive in some social human culture long past. Other people do not want to make RTS, they want to be consumers like they are told with their free time. And there is preciously little free time in a reality based so deeply on survival. At this point trying to code my own Warcraft 3 has me a little scared for my survival. And this is because it cannot be your all; making an RTS is an expenditure. It is like making a sand castle as a kid. You can feel very well accomplished, but if all you did was make sandcastles your whole life you would be a poor man and people would make fun.

You come here asking for programmers to make RTSes, but what if they cost your soul? How do you justify someone giving you their soul? What is your claim to fame, your aspiration? Mine is that what I actually wanted to be doing was modding Warcraft 3 but with better tools and engine support. It's simple, really, even if it's so complex. What is yours?
 
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That's so funny.

Funny, but perhaps it does end up being a bit off-topic. I read something on Discord where it seemed like @Undeadtaker was really bothered by my post here and how it doesn't help him and basically amounts to some elevated form of trolling. Although from my standpoint I felt sincere while writing the post, I can't really fault him for looking at things however he wants. From the standpoint of site management and moderation, should these last three messages be deleted or something so that he only has on-topic responses basically of people directly saying that they want to help him do whatever it is he's doing?
 
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some elevated form of trolling
I mean... Let's be honest - some of your posts, especially the longer ones where you get carried away, are quite weird :D

should these last three messages be deleted or something so that he only has on-topic responses basically of people directly saying that they want to help him do whatever it is he's doing
You didn't say anything wrong.

OP came here on a one post account offering to work together on making a video game from scratch, but didn't mention what skills or experience he has? What is his design vision? Is this a paid proposition? If so, how big of a budget he has? And if not, why would anyone dedicate hundreds of hours out of their free time to working with some random internet stranger rather than doing their own thing? And that's just the tip of the iceberg if he's seriously thinking about making a video game.

I'm sorry, but the 4 lines of vague text he provided instead is just not a reasonable pitch. If OP really wants to make his dream of reviving the RTS genre come true, he should spend less time on being bothered by forum posts and more on figuring out how to better sell people on his ideas.
 
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In accordance with MasterBlaster, I am unsure if it would worth the while given RTS is a gigantic pickle. Aside from paid or free work, there's the whole question for engine selection.

If I inquire, why Unreal? I have experience with Unity (and by extension, C#), and said engine has an RTS paid extension from a third party (costa $60 iirc). I have yet seens similar facility in Unreal (I do starting to use it but said engine seems a pickle for my head's taste for now), and if this is meant to be a gigantic project, it would be wise to have some Unreal programming experience for each of the programmer beforehand to level out the field. As gigantic project, funding should also be considered in the long run, at least to secure potential paid plugins to elevate development hurdles.
 
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pyf

pyf

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Hello everyone!

For some time now I have thought about reviving the RTS genre. [...] We would learn Unreal Engine 4 and create the BASIC FRAMEWORK for the game as we go along the way. You should have some basic programming skills for this, but no Unreal Engine experience. [...]
[...] there's the whole question for engine selection. [...]
@Undeadtaker: out of curiosity, are you aware of the existence of the Spring Engine, and of any of the projects that use it?


Spring RTS Engine - Homepage
 
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That's so vague man.

There is a HiveWE open source world editor here on Hive, man, as a way to make Warcraft 3 style maps. There is also "view in 3D" button in the model download section to view models in 3D.

I read through these open source tools and stapled their code together into a game engine as a weekend hobby over the last two years, and I got to where I can just about play something akin to melee Warcraft 3 in a single player experience.


I want to invent this sort of "engine" reproduction of the systems I know, and invent and this hobby for myself so I can keep using the general feel and ideas of how it feels to mod Warcraft 3, but where I am not held back by the closed source unsupported War3 engine.

I do not doubt that for you what I am describing sounds goofy and ridiculous, when you know if I had any other goal I could have used Unreal or Unity and I specifically am not.

But I am telling my story because that's how crazy apart and dedicated to our own ideas humans become. I want my RTS thing, not yours. I want me in charge of my computer, not you.

What drives you? What is your vision?

My new system is going to revive my old Warcraft mods that I have backed up that only work on particular old Warcraft 3 versions. The menu simulator is able to preview the menu for Project Revolution and for TTOR:

I did not make any of this content, I just am doing programming to display it and try to recreate my childhood game so I can take modding to the next level and also maintain support for any old mods I want to try to support. So, that's my vision. I know I have black squares on TToR menu! It's a BLP parser issue to solve later. I know BillboardLockZ is pointing the wrong direction on the bullets in the sky in Project Revolution. I just have to rework how the billboard was implemented and fix it later. I am trying to make a system, maybe it can be like the RTS engine of the future, or maybe I will just play it alone in my parents' basement. But either way I know what I want to make and sometimes I feel like it's by some divine grace that I am even still alive and able to keep working, but as much as I can I want to try. And I am driven so crazy wanting what I want that even though I am probably from a certain mental lense the kind of person you want, honestly I can barely even imagine how it would be to make the decision to join you. I cannot see it at all. I feel manipulated as if by a machine so I only want my own, egotistical future where I have my own Warcraft 3.

Humans came from single celled organisms. Everything is based on survival. You have to be ridiculously rich in social support -- in people around you -- and well taken care of in order to make your RTS. Sometimes in a moment of passion like last night, I fire up my engine in Reign of Chaos simulator mode and I click Campaign on that menu and it goes to Thrall on his hut with the yellow circles of power, but I walk into the purple town and it does not load properly at all. The units there do not have their Aspect of Alliance set and they attack their own selves. Once Thrall passes through the town of units attacking their own, I reach a Gnoll and kill it. Then the second or third Gnolls kill Thrall because I have no Grunts because I have no triggers in my engine. Then the body of Thrall does not levitate into the sky, because my concept of hero is not finished yet.

And this life is simultaneously the most wondrous thing I have ever known while also deeply frustrating. There are so many bugs... so many bugs... and if I would simply forsake ideology and play Blizzard's game, the problems would all go away. I reach out into the void to grasp the power to make my own Warcraft 3 only to find that I am desperately alone and ignorant in a machine civilization despite being evolved to survive in some social human culture long past. Other people do not want to make RTS, they want to be consumers like they are told with their free time. And there is preciously little free time in a reality based so deeply on survival. At this point trying to code my own Warcraft 3 has me a little scared for my survival. And this is because it cannot be your all; making an RTS is an expenditure. It is like making a sand castle as a kid. You can feel very well accomplished, but if all you did was make sandcastles your whole life you would be a poor man and people would make fun.

You come here asking for programmers to make RTSes, but what if they cost your soul? How do you justify someone giving you their soul? What is your claim to fame, your aspiration? Mine is that what I actually wanted to be doing was modding Warcraft 3 but with better tools and engine support. It's simple, really, even if it's so complex. What is yours?
Ah the post started so well and then turned into philosophy about life 🤣
It's nice to have an idea and be passionate enough about it to go and post about wanting a team, but what Undeadtaker wants seems to be a small team of people who don't know much, but will share the same goal and learn along the way for years to come and stick to that one project, which is not something realistic.

As someone who started learning UE4 I can say he'll soon realize a single game is made out of many parts. The engine part is taken care of, now for the models, sounds, animations, effects, music, art, UI art etc.
Then you realize that most, if not all, of these have separate jobs in the real world, meaning all of them can be taken to the extreme levels of expertise.
In the end the scope of the RTS game would have to be lowered and taken one step at a time, and then it would most likely take years of daily work to finish, even more if it wants to revive the RTS genre.
Even Retera in his engine building adventure is using already existing assets to test everything.
 
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Hope that Frost Giant games can do something interesting! From their interviews, they want to make a game inline with the Warcraft/Starcraft games and have talent that left Blizzard to work on new RTS games. Consider applying to work there if you're really passionate!
 

pyf

pyf

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[...] Consider applying to work there if you're really passionate!

@Halithor: the thread starter envisions himself as having the qualifications to be a project leader, yet did not provide here any link to his post on Reddit (which has extra info not provided here on THW), did not come back here to answer our questions yet, and has not even answered on Reddit the question "What would you define as the golden vein of the RTS genre?" by slinkyrock after more than one month, despite him still being active there 13 days ago.

Project leadership is about communication skills, sharing a vision, and team management. And job applicants are also evaluated on how they behave on the web.
 
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