On November 03 2025 01:52 RogerChillingworth wrote:
On October 31 2025 19:43 Harris1st wrote: Some movement/ pathfinding info on ZeroSpace
It's nice to have breakdowns like this but I can't help but to be distracted by the unit behaviors of ZeroSpace itself, as well as SC2. How everything flows like sardines instead of having elbow room will never achieve the look or feel of great RTS for me. Units need a larger footprint. Not only is it much more aesthetically pleasing but it opens up a lot of doors to more interesting gameplay, like blocks and surrounds. It's generally more interesting than f2ing a giant blob of shit. Just my opinion though. But I'm right, sry.
Be careful what you wish for. The result will be either that:
-Individual units will be too small to control
or
-You will control much smaller armies.
I guess you are a BW player, but that kind of Army control is not fun for many players, and was frustrating to some even at release.
Hmm, I don't understand your first point Slydie, like why the units would be too small to control? I would never shrink my units down to accommodate for their having a larger footprint. And on that topic, I am a huge proponent of a tighter zoom and larger units and buildings in general. There is a small tradeoff but it's way better for immersion and micro. For your second point about smaller armies--not necessarily. The armies could definitely be smaller, but that's a design decision. The only thing that should happen is fewer units on screen at once. Is all of this an ultra-modern take, or super casual friendly? Maybe not at first glance. But I am always careful about assuming anything. If the goal is to make the most fun game possible, then it will be casual friendly even when choosing this other path. In the end, it's all about implementation. We can theorycraft all day about what could work despite popular opinion. It ultimately comes down to convincing people of this different way once they see and feel it for themselves, that might seem or feel uncomfortable in the first moments but is soon understood to be better or at least in competition with what they find more familiar. And also to add, this bulkier unit footprint doesn't have to mean units move like drunk potatoes, but it could. I think at least a little wobbliness and jank is good. That dial can be tuned accordingly, but I think players have gotten very lazy and just want shit to work despite their lack of effort. Games pander to players way too much, for obvious reasons. But if the goal is to make a better game, and not just give people exactly what they want, then i think you encourage players to put more effort in. The kicker is to offer much higher rewards for the effort imo. I wouldn't expect or want a game to necessarily recreate all the frustrations of Brood War, but it bothers me that Brood War's strengths are pretty much unanimously disregarded by modern devs. Again, it's a dial that can be tuned. edit: In general, I'm a big fan of warcraft 3's unit behavior. I very much like Brood War too, but Warcraft 3 has less jank and inherent frustration (like sometimes a dragoon literally freezing and not attacking AT ALL when you tell it to) while assuming probably one of the coolest combat styles. Warcraft 3 is super unique, but then again so is Brood War. Two of the Chadliest of all time. And yet people still turn up their nose!
I believe they were showing gigantic armies just to show off their pathfinding, I don’t think it’s 100% representative of the game.
Their guy also did showcase that WC3 style body blocking was also possible, which is interesting.
I think sometimes people conflate engine capabilities with design decisions, so I’m interested to see how Zero Space implement everything. I mean Unreal Tournament is slower and floatier than Quake 3 (albeit still faster than most modern FPS games), but that’s not really down to the engine.
As an interesting aside from that demonstration, apparently it was running at tick rate of 80, and still seemed very performant, although the guy said they may drop it to find a sweet spot.
As someone who isn’t an expert in such things, I’d thought some of the performance issues with Stormgate were down to shooting for a needlessly high tick rate, but it seems the Zero Space crew are managing it. I’d be intrigued as to why that is and what the two teams have done differently!
On November 03 2025 04:28 WombaT wrote: I believe they were showing gigantic armies just to show off their pathfinding, I don’t think it’s 100% representative of the game.
Their guy also did showcase that WC3 style body blocking was also possible, which is interesting.
I think sometimes people conflate engine capabilities with design decisions, so I’m interested to see how Zero Space implement everything. I mean Unreal Tournament is slower and floatier than Quake 3 (albeit still faster than most modern FPS games), but that’s not really down to the engine.
As an interesting aside from that demonstration, apparently it was running at tick rate of 80, and still seemed very performant, although the guy said they may drop it to find a sweet spot.
As someone who isn’t an expert in such things, I’d thought some of the performance issues with Stormgate were down to shooting for a needlessly high tick rate, but it seems the Zero Space crew are managing it. I’d be intrigued as to why that is and what the two teams have done differently!
Ubisoft will be better at getting money out of the City of Montreal, Province of Quebec, and country of Canada. That might keep the studio going longer without bringing in any cash coming from customers buying a video game.
On December 17 2025 19:30 Harris1st wrote: Some fodder for this thread:
Amazon Games is working on a MOBA / RTS Hybrid called March of the Giants:
The thing I like is the difference in scale between small and big units. The trade-off is small units become an umicroable blob most of the time. A bit of a tangent but if I had to choose between rad realistic scaling and being able to micro the small guys, I'd choose the latter. But I think this idea of small units you can't micro, like MOBA AI-controlled units or something, is a legitimate angle just as long as there's plenty else to do.
There's a lot to say about the visual style of a lot of these games and the difference between 2D and 3D, even bad 3D and good 3D. When I think of really sweet art direction, Breath of the Wild, Hades, Halo, and obviously the old Blizz games come to mind. Even when they're 3D, I don't see it. The art fits and seems true to itself. I think as soon as you see something as 3D—the softness of the models, the muddiness of the palette, the thickness of the projectiles, whatever it is—the resonance falls off pretty quickly. Of course it's a ridiculous amount of work that I don't think anyone has done yet, but actually drawing all of the elements by hand adds a quality that's hard to articulate, but is obvious when you see it. In the words of the great Mr. Plinkett of youtube fame, you might not have noticed it but your brain did. The small inconsistencies, the slight wobbliness of the edges, the shading, the presence or absence of lines...the biggest drawback isn't necessarily time but inflexibility when something needs to be adjusted. But that can be offset in a number of ways, like choosing not to adjust things. Measure twice, cut once kind of thing.
Anyways, thanks for sharing. I hope people keep sharing stuff because I know there's a lot out there and I'm bad at finding it. At the very least, it's good fodder for discussion. Even if the game doesn't look good or pan out, it's still a case study.
EPT
