Show HN: I made a browser-based RTS game (opens in new tab)

It's probably a completely different architecture, see the classic article "1500 archers on a 28.8":

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-...

The server runs at ~100 FPS, but things like worker updates and attacks happen at a 1.5 second interval. Only the changes (like walking a step, collecting a resource) are sent to the client(s). There is no client side prediction. There is no specific aiming on targets like in FPS games, just need the opponent id, so don't really need to do that Team Fortress thing.

I was going to ask the same question. I'd love to try it, but creating an account just to do so is a deal breaker.

You can type in a random name/password/email if you want, and start playing.

Exactly what I thought. I wonder if OP played

> I think there's so much potential now to make some crazy browser based games given current state of web apps.

I believe that this could have be done ~20 years ago with about the same effort.

Websocket is maybe minimally easier than AJAX + 20 years old javascript, and the newer ECMA standards also have some nice syntactic sugars, but nothing radical. Objects, classes, closures, passing and modifying functions, javascript was so powerful and easy to work with from the beginning. People just didn't used it back then.

I remember playing e.g. travianer 15 years ago, different genre, but the technology was given.

I've been working on this since 2014, but the actual time spent on development is maybe a few months.

I'd love to make a good browser game and I know how, but I am absolutely useless wrt. game design stuff itself.

There are games that run exclusively on the clients by being deterministic. Like Starcraft 2. Server is just proxying packets back and forth, but doesn't actually know what's going on with the game.

It works really well with RTSes because of the number of things moving around. Unfortunately the drawback is that the client knows everything that's going on in the game. So fog of war is entirely client-side too. Another drawback is that rejoining a game (or a new player joining) is much harder (need a way to encode/decode the entire game state, or client needs to replay the game inputs up until that point to be able to play).

It has some really elegant side effects (tiny replay files, easy to reproduce most bugs, easy to check if a bug is fixed by playing a replay file with a new version, etc.)

A client-solves-server-verifies model introduces an interesting metagame that you'd have to be prepared to embrace. To run with your pathfinding example: odds are the stock client's pathfinder isn't ideal for every circumstance. You'd inevitably see alternate clients emerge with better or specialized pathfinding that would still check out with the server but would accomplish the player's goals better.

As far as I can tell there's no way to have the server prevent this while still saving any compute time, so you would have to design your game around the idea that this metagame exists. It could be really interesting for a certain type of player, but frustrating for many others.

This is a common vector for cheats, so most developers eschew some sort of P2P lobby system.

This is the idea behind prediction. It’s used to reduce delays between client inputs and seeing the actions happen. More important in high reaction time things like fighting games.

Skip picking a name, just jump in. If they want a name, that's when they register an account.

A recent web game on HN ("Pounce") did the first part well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31073332

Also I suggest making it really easy to invite someone else to play with you by sending them a link. That's more complex though.

Also since you already have a spectator mode, it'd be cool if people see an active game when they go to the home page, like lichess.org. That might be even harder to do that invite links.

Nice that you can share the result of a game! http://www.battle-of-flags.com/match/index/695

I second this. The likelihood that I'll try the game out is drastically increased if I can enter a throw-away name and quickly start playing.

You could automatically assign a throw-away generic name, and then slap a 'try it right now' type button prominently on the home page. If the game is good, then I'd be willing to create an account.

I second this.

I opened a tab to give it a try, but backed out when I had to provide an email to see how it played. Assuming I enjoyed it, I'd then be motivated to make an account to keep track of my play.

My experience is that almost 100% do sign up. Signing up is not a barrier. Funny statistic I had in a game was that while almost 100% did sign up, only 50% of those entered the game. After highlighting the "enter game" button, that 50% went up to something like 85%. But the takeaway is that almost everyone do signup almost automatically.

Thank you for the feedback! This sounds like something that I will get implemented in due time.

Would love to see support for viewing the group of selected units, group hot-keys, fog of war, a* path finding...

Awesome dude

- Not WebGL, there are just some "canvas" draw functions. - Source is not public currently. - Just jQuery - Game is desktop only, based on 32x32 sprites, there is an option to scale though if you are on a high resolution display.

Left click to select and move is how the Westwood RTSs worked.

Eg. Red alert 2

> Using left click to select as well as move feels really unnatural to somebody coming from other RTS games.

Is there a documented standard for RTS controls, at least for baseline features?

Agreed but maybe this is a concession for mobile users? Can't confirm without registering an account.

This. I don't have nearly that much time in SC/2, but I still want to R-click to move.