Real Time Strategy?

Ok, so, looking at how Second Life works, seeing how the server performance is very limited, I've been looking to make something in regards to this game genre (Real Time Strategy). I don't know how (if at all) possible this concept could be. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

How limited as far as the size of this type of game could be in regards to server performance issues? I've been looking at several possibilities but they all include AI. Which right now SL is very limited of doing.

Thoughts, suggestions?

Hm. You don't have NPC avatars, you can't get more than 30 avs in a sim without crashing it, you'd need a huge amount of land unless you want to overrun everyone else's land with whatever you're doing (air battles, maybe?)... but all that only applies if you want to have full-size characters.

I think you might be able to do it with small, single-prim units and existing movement scripts (e.g. flocking), but you might need to wait for the improvements to object-to-object communication to keep it from lagging to death. Then you could have each player (start with two) have several types of units and a control box of some kind. I don't know. I've never programed an RTS outside of SL either, so I don't know how much AI you need if you have at least two human players directing the action. It's an interesting idea.

I recommend reading Ian Banks' The Player of Games for some interesting suggestions about unusual games.

neko

Thanks for the input. I have the land required, its just a matter of implementing the design and finding someone dedicated on helping it out. Since there's no profit incentive involved, there's a hard time finding someone willing to see it happen.

Also in just programming the AI is a monumental task as far as SL is concerned, which would be time consuming.

Einsman, you'll get many people interested in RTS games once the SL platform has the performance needed to run them. AI needs a lot of cycles and a lot of persistent memory, which is exactly what we lack at the moment. But the devs have SL firmly pointed in that direction, so it's worthwhile sketching out ideas for the RTS game you plan to implement once we get Havoc2 and a good high-security interface for client machines to contribute processing power and off-world data storage for the AI. (You might want to consider the business model for a RTS game on a mixed platform like that.)

I would warn you against trying to be too lavish with this genre. If you wish to pursue it, expect to make some concessions with regards to movement and AI... or you'll bring the sim to its knees.

We've been piecing together our own version of an RTS, which is really more like a 3D version of lemmings. In doing so, I've noticed a lot of glaring holes, particularly in physics, that could very easily bring a sim to its knees with very few units.

Case in point: Think conservatively, at least for now, and you should be fine.