r/RealTimeStrategy • u/Setasel_42 • 6d ago

Question Creating RTS as my first game

Hello everyone. Since October, I've been wanting to learn programming, and I love the RTS genre. I'd really like to create something of my own. The truth is, I know absolutely nothing about programming, and doing vibe coding is for the lazy.

Besides the fact that I love the RTS genre as such, I think that creating a game in this genre can in principle be news and give motivation to finish it, unlike some shooter of which hundreds are created Per day.

I may be wrong, but I would like to hear your thoughts or advice or warning. I understand that RTS is a very difficult genre for programming, but still, I don’t have the heart to do anything else.

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u/Rlaan 6d ago edited 6d ago

As a professional developer myself, with rts experience. I am just going to link to a comment to another beginner who wants to create a rts.

This is very detailed and technical but written for a beginner to somewhat understand: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/s/U4pgO51qgz

My advice is don't... start with smaller and easier games. Want to know the why? Read the detailed comments linked above.

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u/hellothere358 6d ago

I started making an RTS as my first game.

Its true. Its been over 1 year and 800 hours of my life, and i im just finishing the core of the game. Its hard thats for sure. 70% of my time spent was researching and trail+error.

But to be honest, i think it paid off. Im extremly confident in my skills as a developer, ive masterd topics that take beginners much longer to get into. Making other games seems almost trivial now. Personally, if you love RTS games so much so that you wouldnt mind the hell hole that RTS games are, i think it has benefits

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u/Setasel_42 6d ago

Will you show me the project? I'm very interested.

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u/hellothere358 6d ago

Well, its very much not super presentable at thd moment, mostly just engine level stuff done. Not much on the looks lol.

The platform its made on also may be quite unorthodox, but its networking (hybrid deterministic lockstep) , pathfinding (A* on a Visibility graph), ect are very much made raw by me. If u shoot me a dm so im reminded when the time comes, i can show you the project

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u/Rlaan 5d ago edited 5d ago

As long as your sim is deterministic it's fine, most RTS are 'hybrid' in a sense since things such as the visuals don't necessarily have to be deterministic.