Spring RTS Engine

David Sirlin is a game designer for BackBone entertainment, as well as a longtime gamer who has been involved in competitive play for several large games in gaming history. He's also in my opinon one of the best game design theorist the internet has ever showcased. If you're a competitive gamer or gamedesigner alike I think you're doing yourself a diservice to not look over Sirlin's stuff. I've literally read pretty much every article on his site and I quite enjoyed them all, most of you will probably love his art of war series, but it's all quite interesting.

Anyways: http://www.sirlin.net/articles

I'd expecially recommend our mod authors browse through here, as I really don't think that there is anything there that will do anything but help you think more introspectively and creatively about the gameplay structures you are creating. Enjoy!

Very cool Swiftspear. I especially enjoyed the articles about game balance. It certainly gave me some ideas to put into my mod.

Wow. His "playing to win" series really got me thinking about how to be better at SSB.

The original, of course. For the N64.

In my opinion his playing to win series is a must read for any competitive gamer or game designer. Competitive players will understand more about how to take thier game to the next level and exactly what to look for as you play through a game, and game designers will understand what they need to do to give games more depth and ironclad when the top tier starts tearing into them.

If i had time i would explaint it a bit but, to be honest, i didn't liked his articles much... Read 3, can't remember which without going there to check out.

Why not? He's really a great writer. Weather or not he is right is a fun debate, but I think it's worth reading anyways. Expecially his game design articles are really solid. He's a developer who has expored alot in gaming, and his say is valuable for that.

I wouldn't call him a great writer... Anyway, in one of the articles, he quotes himsleft in a rather stupid way.

Many of what he wrote lacks goal in the discussion(?), beeing just considerations on facts without argumentation or analisis of those facts, sounding more like a rant. At least one of the articles finished the argumentation without any kind of decision. Also, he seems to promote rock paper scisors.

But still somewhat interesting, i would say.

PauloMorfeo wrote:I wouldn't call him a great writer... Anyway, in one of the articles, he quotes himsleft in a rather stupid way.

Many of what he wrote lacks goal in the discussion(?), beeing just considerations on facts without argumentation or analisis of those facts, sounding more like a rant. At least one of the articles finished the argumentation without any kind of decision. Also, he seems to promote rock paper scisors.

But still somewhat interesting, i would say.

RPS is the counter to slippery slope, you need it like it or not or the game will be boring.

Hmm, I will have to read through here. Sound interesting.

Thanks Swiftspear!

I play to have fun. I win a lot more than I lose, but I at least try to have a good time regardless.

No one likes the guy that throws a temper tantrum every time he loses.

quoth sirlin

I submit that ultimate goal of the "playing to win" mindset is ironically not just to win├óÔé¼┬ªbut to improve. So practice, improve, play with discipline, and play to win.

It's not about winning, its about breaking down mental barriers the prevent you from improving your game. I've never been very competitive in TAS, probably because I'm just not that unstoppable an RTS player, but I've played competitively and been fairly serious about it for other games. If you're a competitive player you're doing yourself a diservice to not play to win, yet alot of people don't see that. If you're not a competitive player then don't play with a competitive mindset, it's not for you, it's for those that want to experiance playing at the top of the game and want to play the game to the deepest depths it can be played. That being said, if you're a game designer you're also doing your fans a diservice to not design your games with this in mind. Games with more competitive depth will have more competitive following because the more you master them the more fun they are to play.

Man, this guy. Sometimes he is just right on, IE his article about WoW on Gamasutra (check it out...) but sometimes he just just fails to connect, IE his article on pacing on that page.

Either way, I can't help but agree that it is nice to get inside a designers head sometimes. Metagaming is really a pretty large interest of mine.

I read his balance article, and I am unimpressed. People who theorize about games should really have at least some knowledge of formal game thoery. This guy obviously has none.

His definition of balance is just a mess.

SwiftSpear wrote:

PauloMorfeo wrote:I wouldn't call him a great writer... Anyway, in one of the articles, he quotes himsleft in a rather stupid way.

Many of what he wrote lacks goal in the discussion(?), beeing just considerations on facts without argumentation or analisis of those facts, sounding more like a rant. At least one of the articles finished the argumentation without any kind of decision. Also, he seems to promote rock paper scisors.

But still somewhat interesting, i would say.

RPS is the counter to slippery slope, you need it like it or not or the game will be boring.

I was going to say that this post is just clueless Swift, but I thought I might ask you to clarify what you mean first. What does RPS have to do with slippery slope?

If you don't get that you don't get what happens when good players play a game. Without the ability to counter your opponent's moves when you know what he is doing the game is over the moment your opponent gets the slightest upper hand on you. Rock paper scissors is a mind game where you anticipate or understand what move your opponent is making next, and you counter their move with the appropriate counter in order to win. Ignorant gamers see rock paper scissors as a game of chance, but if I was using a term to refer to a game of chance I would refer to dice or flipping a coin. The fundamental game play element of RPS is anticipation and counter, and this game mechanic is necessary for any game, especially RTS games, to prevent the game from immediately decaying to the point where the player who gets the first slight victory wins the whole game.

Frankly, it's the weakest of game design styles to rely on differences of skill to prevent a game from slippery sloping, because by definition your game is only balanced if it is balanced between players with equal skill.

In the End it is the Skill of thinking into your enemys head that decides almost all competionGAmes. Therefore all Competition Games - on the Highest Levels, are social Guessgames .
I can`not say i read everything on the side, it is way to much, but i think in one week i can post more, i need to read and think over it. I m more a Follower of Hamas School - that Game Design is mainly improving of Interfaces and the with them connected abilitys of the Players in the Games. It was a hard hit for myself, but look- it is the Genious - still undefeated TA UserInterface, which makes Spring that great.

PicassoCT wrote:In the End it is the Skill of thinking into your enemys head that decides almost all competionGAmes. Therefore all Competition Games - on the Highest Levels, are social Guessgames .
I can`not say i read everything on the side, it is way to much, but i think in one week i can post more, i need to read and think over it. I m more a Follower of Hamas School - that Game Design is mainly improving of Interfaces and the with them connected abilitys of the Players in the Games. It was a hard hit for myself, but look- it is the Genious - still undefeated TA UserInterface, which makes Spring that great.

The interface can only open the options the game in total entails. While you're correct, for 2 equal games the game that has the more polished interface will usually be preferable, interface is only half the battle. You really can't improve the interface of chess be it computer or physical, yet still chess is unarguably one of the best games ever conceived, not because of it's interface, it's interface is relatively easy to emulate, it's good because of it's game play.

I'd have to say that fundamentally one of the greatest failings of game play in our generation is the interfaces game developers give us to communicate with our in game environments, that being said, if it was perfected there would still be other problems to deal with.

I'd agree whole-heartadly that RPS is a very, very nessisary thing. I'd just say personaly I HATE how most games impliment it. I find the whole "Arches do 2x to spearman and 50% to swordsman" thing stupid. I don't want my spearman to pwn horseman just because they do extra damage, I want them to pwn horseman because the horses can't get into the spears. This is really one of the main reasons I really like TA and its mods ect.. Few of them rely on RPS via bonuses more than RPS via unit design.

Please don't kill me if he said this or w/e, I didn't read the articles I was just throwing this out there.

RTW does pretty well with this IMO, obviously the balance could be a lot better but there is plenty of variety and circumstances and strategies really affect how you can use units.

5,000 people will find something that a team of 1-5 missed.

There ya go.. Heheh..